Having just arrived back from a 10 day trip to Tokyo, we of course had our bags full of all sorts of great stuff including several different varieties of Meiji Chocolate bars.

I was meaning to put this up last week and I noticed over the past 7 days that the pile had mysteriously disappeared eg my wife had eaten them.

So anyway I grabbed the last one for your viewing pleasure below ^^

The front and back of the box provide a fun way to practice your hiragana, katakana and kanji reading while you munch on your own yummy chocolate or salivate over your computer screen.

A few simple ones to get you started – おいしい (o-i-shi-i = delicious, yummy), マシュマロ (ma-shu-ma-ro = marshmellow), イチゴ (i-chi-go = strawberry) and チョコレート (cho-ko-re-e-to= chocolate). Chocolate is often abbreviated to just チョコ (cho-ko).

The small ュ in マシュマロ gets added to シ (shi) to form シュ (shu) while the small ョ in チョコレート forms with チ (chi) to give us チョ (cho) in チョコレート. And finally the ー in チョコレート elongates the vowel sound preceding it so “re” becomes “ree”.

Here’s a much larger version of the back of the box if you feel like going nuts on the translation.

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