Next up in the Japan Signs series is something a little different.

We were in Yūrakuchō (有楽町) near Ginza, Tokyo a while back and I got bored of shopping for clothes with my wife so I headed off to Bic Camera (ビックカメラ) over the other side of the railway line, where I found eight floors of shopping heaven.

There was everything from electronics and sports gear to watches and, of all things, liquor.

Being a keen bourbon drinker, I thought I would see what was on offer and I wasn’t disappointed. They had quite a large range of bourbon that I hadn’t seen before back home and after much deliberation I walked out with a ¥7000 bottle of 15-year-old Virgin Bourbon.

So that’s the background and now on to the label.

I’m not going to transcribe the whole label as that’s something you might like to do yourself to test and/or build your knowledge. However, I will run through a few keywords below and then you can take it from there.

To make it easier to translate, I have also included a link to the full size version of this image, which you can download at any time.

Kana/Kanji	Meaning
品名	Brand Name, Product Name
ウィスキー	Whiskey
ケンタッキー州	Kentucky (State)

Brand Name

品名 is made up of the kanji 品, meaning goods or products, which you’ll see it alot in the supermarket or local street markets in Japan. Confusingly it also has several other meanings including as a counter for meal courses, for example on a menu.

名 makes up the second half of the word and means name. You’ve probably seen this kanji before as it’s part of the word “なまえ” meaning name (なまえ or 名前).

The two other words in the table are both katakana.

Whiskey

Whiskey is made up of ウィ (wi) ス (su) キー (ki-i)

This word has a few tricky parts for the katakana noobie with ウィ and ー. The first part is ウィ, which is pronounced “wi” despite their being a “u” followed by a small “i”. There is a good reason for this and it’s not just to give beginners a headache.

There are only two basic Japanese syllables starting with a w – ワ (wa) and ヲ (wo). To make up the other “w” foreign word sounds in katakana, the letter “u” is followed by a small i, e or o, as per our example above ウィ (wi).

The long dash we see at the end of ウィスキー is called a ちょうおん (chōon). This long dash indicates a doubling (extending) of the vowel sound so キ (ki) becomes キー (kii).

Kentucky

Kentucky, as in the US state and the home of fine bourbon and KFC, also serves up another prickly little katakana quirk for us. The breakdown is as follows: ケンタッキー (ke-n-ta-k-ki-i).

The first hump in the road for beginners comes with タッ. The second syllable is called a small tsu and it acts as doubler of the first consonant of the following syllable, which in this case is “k” from the katakana syllable キ (ki). You can read more about the small tsu in a previous article.

ケンタッキー also end with the same syllables as I mentioned in ウィスキー above so I won’t go over the same ground again.

Lastly, we have the kanji 州 on the end of ケンタッキー州. This kanji means state, province or county and is used to denote that we’re talking about the State of Kentucky as opposed to a city or country.

Well that’s it for my examples, I hope you got something out of today’s Japan Signs lesson and if you’re interested in testing your skills further please make sure to download the hi-res version of the label image.

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