This site will feature images of advertisements from Japan periodically, along with an explanation of the Japanese and an English translation.

I hope that this site will allow readers to learn new Japanese grammar and vocabulary, as well as get a feel for the consumer culture in Japan.

Advertisements are a great way to move beyond textbook Japanese, as they frequently include slang, colloquial speech, and even dialects occasionally that normally students aren’t exposed to in the classroom.

A major advantage that students of Japanese who are actually in Japan have over those who are not is that they are bombarded by the Japanese language daily whether they like it or not. Just riding on a train will expose you to hundreds of Kanji and side conversations that a student outside of the country just can’t get. Students with this exposure will be more likely to have the experience of “having seen that Kanji somewhere before…” when studying, making newly learned Japanese that much easier to remember. This site hopes to fill the Japanese exposure gap for those not in Japan just a bit!

Force yourself to really work through the lessons regularly, and I’m sure you’ll feel improvement in your Japanese reading comprehension!

Good luck!

- Harvey