JapanesePod101.com Blog

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Hey, it's 08/08/08. Whether you come from a country where they put the year first, the month first, or the day first, it's 08/08/08. (That is, unless you're reading this in Japan, in which case it's probably at least the 9th.) How perfect that is for today's discussion about boundaries! The shapes of both 0 and 8 enclose spaces, so these digits constitute boundaries of a sort. (A stupid joke comes to mind. What did the 0 say to the 8? The answer: "Hey, nice belt." OK, you didn't hear that from me.) Last week, we looked at 境 (KYŌ, KEI, sakai), which can mean "boundary." In the words we saw, 境 tended to refer to skinny lines dividing two entities. For instance, we ran... Show more

UPDATE: maintenance has been temporarily delayed but will resume again on Saturday, August 9th at 10pm EST thank you for your patience It’s time for scheduled maintenance at JapanesePod101.com. On Saturday, August 9th at 6am EST, JapanesePod101.com will go down for several hours. When it returns, there may be a few small quirks which will be ironed out ASAP. What can you expect when the sites go live again? Well, most of the changes are “under the hood” so you probably won’t be able to appreciate them fully right away (you will soon). What you will get right away is: 1. A new and improved vocabulary flashcards with audio that are more intuitive and easy to use. 2. A new sample sentence expansion section with audio in the... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary In the last blog, we encountered the following words: 順境 (junkyō: favorable circumstances, prosperity)     favorable + situation 環境 (kankyō: environment, situation)     to surround + situation Clearly, 境 (KYŌ, KEI, sakai: boundary, situation) is clamoring for a closer look. For starters, it might help to crank up the size: 境 Taken alone, 境 strikes me as a cute, perky kanji—perhaps a distant cousin of 意 (I: will, heart, mind). Given that 境 breaks down into recognizable, simple components (土, 立, 日, and 儿), it's not at all unfriendly. On the Etymology of 境 ... But when it appears in 環境, I feel nearly blinded... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Last week, I dangled a promise before you. I said that reading 順 words about organizing objects would help you think more clearly. This week, I'm willing to bet that another set of 順 words will have a very different effect. As we saw last time in a discussion of etymology, 順 (JUN) can mean "order, sequence." But this character can also mean "to obey, submit to, follow." And that's just what bothers me! To be sure, compliance has its uses. When we "go with the flow," life becomes considerably easier. The following compound helps make that happen: 順応 (junnō: to adapt or conform to)     to submit to + to respond to (a situation) This word... Show more

Emily is busy working on a secret project, so I (Ben) get to do another blog. This last weekend I climbed 富士山 (Mt. Fuji). Last Friday night, my girlfriend and I left Shinjuku on a 7:50pm bus bound for the Kawaguchiko 5th Station. The bus trip took a little over 2 hours, getting us to the trailhead a little after 10:00pm. We came rather prepared. Alisa (my girlfriend / hiking partner) spent a good part of the day running Fuji preparation errands. She made 14 おにぎり (onigiri) with her grandma, bought Soyjoys and Powerbars, and since we planned on hiking in the dark, she also bought two headlamps. We each were packing rain coats and heavier clothes (since it gets below freezing at the top). I carried our fluid supply of 4 liters of water and... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary In the last blog, we saw this word: 身長順 (shinchōjun: in order of height)     body + length + order I love all the sharp geometry in these kanji—the way a few diagonals offset the neat horizontals and verticals. But aside from that, here's what jumped out at me when I found this word in the dictionary: 順 (JUN: sequence, compliance) I'd never seen this kanji before. And I was intrigued that river (川) + head (頁) could mean "order." There's order at the head of the river? The Etymology of 順 ... The Meaning of 頁 ... If you want to put things in order, then 順 is your kanji. This character isn't sexy or mysterious. Rather, it's... Show more

Hello JapanesePod101.com Community! My name is Ben Jensen, and I'm interning here at the JapanesePod101.com offices in Tokyo. Emily is a pretty busy person, so I get to make a blog appearance today. About two weeks ago, my girlfriend’s grandmother Mama-chan, who lives here in Tokyo, offered me a ticket to go see Noh. I’ve studied a little about Japanese culture, and I had always heard that Noh is hard to understand—even for Japanese people—and that there is very little action and very few props. Apparently it’s pretty common for audience members to fall asleep. In any case, I thought it would be worth seeing at least once, and it would be a rare opportunity, so I graciously accepted the offer. Hosho Nogakudo viewed from the... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Long time no see! Speaking of length, last time we looked at 長 (CHŌ, naga), which usually means "long" or "chief." In that discussion, we encountered the following word: 足長 (ashinaga: long-leggedness)     legs + long And we saw how this compound puts the long legs in daddy longlegs: 足長おじさん (ashinaga-ojisan: daddy longlegs) Although people usually write ojisan (uncle) in hiragana, you can also represent this word with 叔父さん, which breaks down as uncle + father. On Daddy Longlegs (the Spiders) ... Other Animals with Length to Them ... Something Really Odd ... What happens if we take those long legs and turn them on... Show more

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Hello Readers! It is with excitement and sadness that I've made it through SurvivalPhrases.com Japanese and JapanesePod101.com survival phrases! I'm excited that I've completed all of the lessons and have learned a ton of Japanese in the process, yet I'm sad that this is the end of the line for my survival phrase blogs. It's been a rapid pace, perhaps faster than what I would have done otherwise, but I was excited to get these blogs out to you, the readers, so I worked hard to learn and reflect, to help you out and keep you more informed. I hope you've enjoyed reading along as much as I've enjoyed sharing my experience with you. If nothing else, hopefully you learned something about Japanese culture that you hadn't known before. ... Show more