Canned Coffee Time!
Canned coffee is big in Japan. You can get hot coffee in vending machines at any time of day. You can even get cold cafe lattes and things. They’re everywhere.
This coffee by Fire is boasting some big time benefits in this advertisement…
Let’s read to find out what’s going on.
Ad Text in Japanese:
「挽きたて工房」
「24時間 […]

The lack of insulation in Japanese homes and absence of central heating always has me freezing through Japanese winters… Maybe this stuff will keep me warm…

Ad Text in Japanese:
寒いあなたをほっとケン。
「寒いあなた」
In Japanese the noun modifiers come before the noun. 「寒い」means “cold” as in weather, and 「あなた」means you. So this simply means literally, “cold you”, or stated more […]

Ad Text in Japanese:
誰も知らない朝ゴハン、はじまる。
Trivia:
Did you know that in Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, etc), McDonald’s is called マクド、but in Kanto (Tokyo, Yokohama, Etc), it is more commonly called マック？
Okay let’s get into the Japanese!
「誰も知らない」This simply translates into “nobody knows”. In fact there was a mega-hit movie in Japan with this same title.
Using the same structure you […]

Let’s finish up this Nivea ad!

More Ad Text in Japanese:

前向きに生きる男に、Q10フェイスケアシリーズ。
「前向き」
This is a very useful phrase that comes up a lot even in spoken Japanese. 「前向き」just means someone who is has a positive, proactive outlook on life. If you break down the words literally, 「前」means forward, or front, and 「向き」means towards, in terms of direction.
You can […]

Ad Text in Japanese:

男の肌にもハリとツヤ。
Remember you can enable mouse roll-over Kanji look-up by clicking on the POPjisyo.com link in the upper right of the site!!!!
Okay! Let’s break down the vocabulary first.
「男」 means male. Easy right? We have seen this before! Even for people who shy away from learning Kanji, this is one to pick up. It […]

In the NTT Can herupu yuu I invited readers to ask if they wanted to know the nitty-gritty details regarding the difference in Japanese「ば」or「たら」。Well, someone did, so here we go.
For a quick review, both 「ば」and 「たら」can have the meaning of “if” when used in the manner below.
A:「彼女に聞いたら教えてもらえるよ。」
B:「彼女に聞けば教えてもらえるよ。」
Both of these sentences can be roughly translated to […]

It’s X’mas with Diamor in Osaka! Is it January already? Apologies… (恥)

[Ad Text in Japanese]
おしゃれは、私を照らし出す灯り。
Remember, enable POPjisyo.com to read Kanji!
Let’s get right into the language explanation.
「おしゃれ」 means “fashion”. It can also be used to describe fashionable people.
Like, 「ともこさんはおしゃれですね！」, “Tomoko is very fashionable!”
「照らし出す」
This is a type of compound verb. There is a linguistic name for […]