Japanese learning blog
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
All articles · Page 103
Japanese Kanji Radicals by Meaning Group: Water, Fire, Tree, Person and More
Nine radicals, water, fire, tree, person, hand, heart, speech, road and roof, sit inside hundreds of everyday kanji, and once you can spot them you can guess the rough meaning of a character you have never studied.
13 min readJapanese Hiragana Word List for Beginners: 85 Words That Drill Every Row
The best first hiragana vocabulary is a short list of words you will hear on day one, arranged so that each group drills a few kana rows, and this list of about 85 words does exactly that with a sentence for each group.
11 min readJapanese Kana Print vs Handwritten Shapes: Reading き, さ, そ, ふ and り
A handful of hiragana, especially き, さ, そ, ふ, り, ら and な, are printed with joined strokes that nobody actually writes by hand, so learners who only know the font shape stumble on handwritten menus, notes and signs.
13 min readJapanese Katakana Words You Already Know: Free Vocabulary for English Speakers
If you speak English you already know hundreds of Japanese words, because katakana loanwords like kōhī, hoteru, shatsu and sakkā are English words reshaped to Japanese sounds, and learning the reshaping rules unlocks them all at once.
12 min readJapanese Writing: A Self-Introduction Paragraph for Forms, Profiles and Class
A written Japanese self-introduction is five or six polite desu and masu sentences in a fixed order: name, where you are from, what you do, one personal detail such as a hobby, and a closing yoroshiku onegai shimasu.
13 min readKatakana Reading Practice with Menus and Signs: Real Words, Real Places
The fastest way to get fluent at reading katakana is to practise on the words you will actually meet, menu by menu and sign by sign, sounding each one out until the English hiding inside it appears.
12 min readJapanese Writing a Postcard from Japan: Greetings, Openers and Closings
A Japanese postcard follows a simple four-line shape: a greeting with a seasonal touch, one or two lines about where you are and what you did, a wish for the reader, and a short closing with your name.
12 min readJapanese Writing a Review Online: Restaurants, Hotels and Products
A Japanese online review is short, written in the polite desu and masu style, opens with when and why you went, praises specifics, softens any criticism with a hedge, and closes with whether you would go again.
12 min readJapanese Writing a Social Media Post: Captions, Hashtags and Replies
A natural Japanese social media caption is short, written in casual plain form or soft polite form, drops the subject, ends with a light particle or emoji, and carries a few Japanese hashtags that describe the scene rather than the whole sentence.
12 min readJapanese Writing a Thank-You Email After an Interview: The O-rei Mail
The Japanese thank-you email after an interview, the o-rei mēru, is a short keigo message sent the same day or the next morning that names the interview, thanks the interviewer for their time, restates your interest in one or two lines and closes with a formal signature.
13 min readJapanese Writing Instructions and Recipes: Steps, Sequencing and Quantities
Japanese instructions are written as numbered steps in either the plain dictionary form or the polite masu form, linked by sequencing words such as mazu, tsugi ni and saigo ni, with quantities and times stated before the verb.
13 min readJapanese Listening: Anime vs Real Speech, What Transfers and What Does Not
Anime trains your ear on clean, acted, exaggerated Japanese, and real conversation is mumbled, contracted and flat, so the listening skill transfers only partly, but the gap is specific and you can close it on purpose.
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