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 use this vocabulary in the sense…

「あの人は前向きですね。」

“That guy is really positive isn’t he.”

The rest of this sentence isn’t especially tricky.

The 「に」after 「男」has the same operation as the 「に」in the first part of this ad. It is showing “direction”.

「フェイスケアシリーズ」

Can you figure out this Katakana English? 「フェイス」is “face”. 「ケア」is “care”. Finally 「シリーズ」is series.

Sometimes these Katakana words are not something you can look up in a dictionary, so you’ll just need to pronounce them out loud, and try to imagine what English they could possibly be referring to.

Katakana words however do not always refer to English words. There are a few exceptions where Katakana refers to words that have come into Japanese from other languages… Such as 「パン」which means “bread” and has roots in Portuguese… and 「アルバイト」which means “part-time job” and has roots in German. Watch for those.

So for a rough translation of this whole sentence…

前向きに生きる男に、Q10フェイスケアシリーズ。

“For men who live positively, Q10 face care series!”

素肌に、こだわる。第一印象に、こだわる。

「素肌」This word means “bare skin”. The Kanji 「素」alone, means “element”, or “principle”, so just the raw essence of something.
Using the same Kanji, another frequently seen word is 「素顔」which would literally mean “bare face”, and refers to girls who are not wearing make-up!

「こだわる」

This is another useful vocabulary. To 「こだわる」is to “dwell on” or to be “fixated with something”. One dictionary translates it as to “have a hang up” on something.

In this case, it means “be fixed on bare skin”, with the nuance of people who really don’t want to put anything like lotion, aftershave, perfume, or anything else on their skin.

You can also use it in the form 「こだわりがある」which basically means “to be picky about something”.

For example, you could say…

「日本人は米にこだわるがある」Which would mean that Japanese people are picky about their rice. As in, they won’t eat just any quality of rice… It’s gotta be the good stuff.

「第一印象」is okay to memorize as a set. This means “first-impression”. This phrase is used quite often in Japanese so I would recommend to put it into your long-term memory.

This entire sentence…

素肌に、こだわる。第一印象に、こだわる。

Could be roughly translated as…

“Insist on bare skin. Insist on the first impression.”
Remember, when Japanese is written vertically, you read from top to bottom, right to left!

- Harvey