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Gear for your Brain


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

  JNewbie Friends

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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。...
  • Learn Something?

    Tip Box!

    Archive for 'Other Signage'

    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 […]

    Ticket to Toilet Paper

    This picture was taken inside of a toilet in a Tokyo Line train station…
    Yes… I take my camera everywhere…
    Ad Text in Japanese:
    「このトイレットペーパーは、東京急行の切符等をリサイクルしたものです。」
    Ok, vocab and grammar attack!
    「この」means “this”. As apposed to 「その」which means “that”,
    「トイレットペーパー」 is Katakana for Toilet Paper.
    「東京急行」Literally, 「東京」is “Tokyo” and 「急行」is “Express”, as in Express Train, as you probably know if you’re in Japan. […]