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Remembering the Kanji I: James W. Heisig

Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary

Making Sense of Japanese: Jay Rubin

Colloquial Kansai Japanese: D. C. Palter

Japanese in Mangaland: Marc Bernabe

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  • Recent Comments:

    • Healthy Drink Green Tea... part 2 (2)
      • R: or make that, more likely, the name is basically because water boils faster in that type of pot.
      • R: After futzing with the denshi jisho for a bit, and focusing on the kanji 須 which I've only seen before in names,...
    • Rainbow of Fruit Flavors (1)
      • Alex: That's cheating.
    • One a Day (4)
      • Michael: Haven't run it by anyone else, so I may be completely off. But being someone who looks for those forecasts...
      • harvey: Hey Michael I like your idea on 健康日和。 Weather forecast says, good health. That would explain the...
    • Don't disturb the peace, man (3)
      • harvey: Mayumi! Thanks so much for that! It's great to have a real live Japanese person adding to the content :-) I...
      • まゆみ: Thank you for your beneficial blog. “inside of a boat” は「船内」です。...
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    Tip Box!

    Archive for July, 2007

    Japanese Jokes

    「いろんな情報がいっパイン!」「もう見てくレッタスか?」
    If you haven’t had enough, check the white text in the lower left…
    「ご利用果&菜!」
    This poster is full of bad… awful… rotten… terrible… Japanese jokes. Understand them. Analyze their structure. Make worse jokes of your own. Join me. Come to the dark side of Japanese. It is your destiny.
    「いろんな情報がいっパイン!」
    OK, just to be sure we are all understanding […]

    Terrifying

    Ad Text in Japanese:
    「テロ警戒にご協力を!」
    「不審な人や車、荷物などを見かけたときは、警察署、交番(駐在所)、110番もうしくは近くの警察官にお知らせください。」
    大阪府警察
    Gotta love the flames in the background.
    「テロ警戒にご協力を!」
    「テロ」is short for「テロイズム」, which is, “terrorism”. It -is- in fact the shorttened form of that work, but the true is, these days you barely ever hear「テロイズム」spelled out. The abbreviation has become commonplace.
    「警戒」This is a useful word to know, it means “warning”, or “precaution” or “lookout”. […]

    Trash and Frogs

    A wonderful day down by the Yodo river in Osaka.

    Oh? What’s this important looking sign?

    Why, there’s a sleepy frog on it, and look! He’s sitting on a lily pad!
    「ゴミはもちカエル」 
    「公園利用者の方が心地 よく過ごせるようにゴミはすべてお持ち帰りください。」
    First let’s look at「ゴミはもちカエル」, or,  bad  Japanese puns!
    「ゴミ」means “trash, waste, rubbish, litter, etc”, and is usually written in hiragana.
    「持ち帰る」is how 「もちカエル」is usually written. The verb 「持つ」means […]

    Japanese Beer Song

    Malt Beer!
    マルツ マルツ マルツ!
    Enough said about that no? New Malt Beer available. Well, it was new in April…
    To make up for the lack of language in this ad, here’s a cultral video bonus.
    Japanese 飲み会 on YouTube!
    Ah, one thing though. If you were to actually talk about a “Malt Beer” in Japanese I beleive the term is 発砲酒。I’m […]

    Healthy Drink Green Tea… part 2

    Back to finish drinking that tea. Don’t you hat it when you leave a tea bag in the cup too long, and the last sip is so bitter it makes you gag? Or with real green tea, if you wait forever, the tea and the water will separate so that the bottom of your cup […]

    Healthy Drink Green Tea

    Ad Text in Japanese:
    「ゆっくり、じっくり、健やか毎日『緑茶』」
    「毎日ストレッチをしたり、ゆっくりと急須で入れて、お茶の時間を楽しんだり、健やかなあなたの毎、日緑茶のある暮らし。」
    I’ll break this one up into two parts as well. I found this poster outside of a green tea shop. The shop is a mom and pop place, so it makes me wonder if they had this poster made up themselves. I haven’t seen it any other place… It’s […]

    Rainbow of Fruit Flavors

    Ad Text in Japanese:
    Heh. Looks like I get a break!
    - Harvey