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 97
Japanese Hay Fever Vocabulary: Kafunshō, Pollen Forecasts and Symptoms
Hay fever in Japanese is kafunshō; each spring, forecasts rate the pollen in the air as sukunai, yaya ōi, ōi or hijō ni ōi, while cedar, sugi, peaks around February and March and cypress, hinoki, follows into April.
12 min readJapanese Heatstroke Alerts: The WBGT Heat Index, Its Bands and TV Phrases
Japanese heat warnings are built on the heat index, atsusa shisū (WBGT), not the thermometer: five bands from hobo anzen to kiken, a netchūshō keikai arāto at a forecast 33, and a tokubetsu keikai arāto at 35.
12 min readJapanese Coin Parking: Lock Plates, Rate Signs and the Pay Machine
At a Japanese coin parking you park in a numbered bay, a lock plate called the rokku-ban rises under your car, and when you leave you type that bay number into the seisanki, pay, and wait for the plate to drop.
12 min readJapanese Expressway Tolls: ETC Lanes, Toll Gates, SA, PA, IC and JCT
At a Japanese toll gate, choose your lane by its board: purple ETC sen'yō needs an ETC card in the car, green ippan means stopping to take a ticket or pay, and the split ETC/ippan board takes both.
12 min readJapanese Train Ticket Machine: Fare Maps, Buttons and Child Fares
At a Japanese station ticket machine you buy a price, not a destination: find your stop on the fare map above, choose how many adults and children, press that fare on the screen, pay, and take the ticket and change.
12 min readJapanese Castle Parts: Tenshu, Ishigaki, Honmaru and the 12 Original Keeps
A Japanese castle is layers of defence from the outside in: moats (hori), stone walls (ishigaki), gates (mon) and walled enclosures (maru) around the honmaru, where the keep (tenshu) stands; only twelve keeps from the Edo period or earlier survive.
13 min readJapanese Prefectures and Regions Map: To, Dō, Fu, Ken and the Eight Regions
Japan has 47 prefectures, called todōfuken: one to (Tokyo), one dō (Hokkaidō), two fu (Osaka and Kyoto) and 43 ken, and people group them into eight regions, from Hokkaidō in the north to Kyūshū and Okinawa in the south.
12 min readJapanese Subway Station Numbers and Line Colours: How to Read G09
A Japanese station number such as G09 is an address on one line: the letter and colour tell you which line you are on, the number tells you where along it, so you can count stops and find transfers without reading kanji.
12 min readJapanese Kanreki and Longevity Celebrations: The Kanji Behind Each Age
Japanese longevity celebrations mark 60, 70, 77, 80, 88, 90, 99 and 100, and most of their names hide the age in a kanji: 米, rice, splits into eight, ten, eight for beiju, and 白 is 百 minus one for hakuju at 99.
12 min readJapanese Kazoedoshi and Yakudoshi: Counting Age and the Unlucky Years
Kazoedoshi is Japan's traditional age count, in which you are one at birth and everyone gains a year on New Year's Day; the unlucky years, yakudoshi, are set by it: 25, 42 and 61 for men, 19, 33 and 37 for women.
13 min readJapanese Zodiac Eto: The Twelve Animals, Their Kanji and Hidden Uses
The Japanese zodiac, eto or jūnishi, is a cycle of twelve signs, ne, ushi, tora, u, tatsu, mi, uma, hitsuji, saru, tori, inu and i, each nicknamed after an animal; 2026 is uma, the horse, and the same twelve once named hours and directions.
13 min readJapanese Furoshiki Wrapping: Sizes, Basic Wraps and the Knot That Holds
A furoshiki is a square wrapping cloth: you set the object on the diagonal, bring the corners over it and tie two of them with ma-musubi, a flat square knot; the size, measured in haba, decides what it can hold.
12 min readPractical guides
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