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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I’ve worked in Japanese companies for a total of 11 years, and learned a lot about thriving and surviving working in a culturally Japanese workplace.

Here are some tips I’ve picked up over the years:

The Panda Syndrome

As a foreigner, and more particularly a westerner, it is likely that you will be treated as somewhat of a pop idol when entering a new workplace.

However, bear in mind that when I say pop idol, I don’t mean U2. I mean more like….well….Bros or Vanilla Ice.

Enjoy it, but don’t let it go to your head, and be prepared for it ending abruptly after a few months when people start to realise your limitations as a non-native Japanese speaker in a Japanese company.

Manage Expectations

It’s common for Japanese companies to only have one or two foreign employees in an office, and as a result, most Japanese co-workers won’t understand the kinds of limitations you face.

This usually results in high expectations of your ability that you may not be able to meet. Make sure to manage expectations from early on, and be realistic about your abilities.

Beware of Typecasting

As a native English speaker, it is natural that others will want you to translate or check English for them. Remember to keep a handle how much of this kind of work you do to ensure it doesn’t dominate how your role is perceived.

Douki Life Patrol

In the hierarchical world of senpai (先輩) and kouhai (後輩) in the office, Japanese people tend to limit their circle of close friends at work to their small circle of “douki” or co-hires.

It is a good idea to quickly identify who your “douki” are, as they will often become your counsellors at work, and even lifelong friends.

More about senpai and kouhai →

Keep Your Teineigo Guard Up

When a conversation is cheery and going well with a boss or customer, it can feel natural to drop your polite Japanese (teineigo – 丁寧 – polite, 語 – word, language) for a few phrases.

This is something I was warned against by my douki, as it can come across as disrespectful. Even if it feels silly, always maintain the appropriate level of polite Japanese.

Nommunication

What first seems like the best part of working in a Japanese company – organised binge drinking – can quickly turn out to be the worst when you realise your role is to keep filling glasses and speaking politely to your boss no matter how wasted you get.

To avoid stress, try to save getting completely smashed for when it is just you and your douki or non-work friends.

Overtime

This could be a whole separate post, but suffice to say, Japanese do lots of overtime, and will expect you to as well.

There are a variety of reasons for staying late, but a lot has to do with fear that leaving early will make it look like you are not pulling your weight.

The key to understand is that if anything, you can end up penalised for trying to be “efficient” and finishing work early. You are expected to use your time “fully”.

Understanding that mindset and expectation helps things go by easier.

Sharing Too Much

Although conversations about the weekend, surfing, clubbing and TV are common among douki, senpais will often take talk at work of non-work stuff as a sign of lack of focus or idleness.

People learn just to keep their private stuff private at work.

In-Crowd or Out-Crowd?

The above pointers are basically the road to remaining in the corporate “in” crowd.

However, if you feel that this path is driving you close to burnout, don’t be afraid of the frowns you may get that suggest you are heading toward the “out-crowd”.

It’s better than sacrificing your health or sanity for your job.

You’re a Gaijin. It Could Be Worse

You will always stand out a little as a gaijin, so try not to waste energy on frustration at being the only person called by your first name in the office, or asked to help with English.

Try to roll along and remember that most of the attention you receive is usually positive.

The reward of surviving working in Japan, is the ability to have a sustained life here, which lets you play in Japan.

Living here is a big adjustment, but with the right balance, I came to the conclusion that it is well worth the effort.

Remember to keep a good sense of self awareness and enjoy the ride.

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Hikosameon is a New Zealand-born Tokyo video blogger & bilingual news geek. Watch Hikosameon’s world-famous YouTube channel and then head on over to read his thoughtful views on Japan at hikosaemon.blogspot.com He can also be found on Twitter – @hikosaemon

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Restaurants in Japan are a culinary and cultural adventure. Knowing how to act is crucial to speaking the language. They’re also great places to practice many facets of conversational Japanese!

So, here are 5 steps to ordering food in Japan.

Find a Place to Eat

Most foreigners know about sushi and ramen. But there are many things to eat and it’s hard to list them all so here’s just a few of the more popular meals:

Yakitori

• Udon (うどん), a noodle usually served in soup
• Soba (そば), a thin buckwheat noodle (which is sometimes served cold)
• Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き), a vegetable-meat-and-egg pancake with a sweet brown sauce
• Yakitori (やきとり), a kebab usually on a stick
• Yakiniku (焼き肉), where you grill your own meat at your table
• Yakisoba (焼きそば), a stir-fried noodle dish with barbecue sauce and pork

You’ll see plastic replicas of the food outside of most restaurants, so even if you can’t read Japanese, you’ll have some idea of what to expect.

The food will be softer, though, and the chopsticks won’t levitate.^^

Get A Table

The greeter will ask how many people there are – 何名さまですか。 (Nan-mei sa-ma de-su ka?)

Back Street Japanese Restaurant

You could shout “3″ at them (“San!”) which is sort of as wrong as shouting “Number Three!” in English. The server might think you are very proud of your placement in a recent race.

Here’s how you count people:

Most of these are the Japanese number followed by the word “nin”. If you have three people in your party, you say “san-nin”.

The exceptions: One person (ひとり – hitori) and two people (ふたり – futari). Everything else (yes even 178 or 352) is the normal Japanese number plus “-nin”.

You’ll be seated and given a cloth – cold in summer, hot in winter – called an oshiburi. Guidebooks will tell you to only use these on your hands. But if it’s a lunch-cart or fast food place, rub that thing wherever you want.

Order Your Food

If you have been a kind person all your life, you might be offered an English menu. You can ask for one by saying, “英語のメニューがありますか。” (pronounced roughly as Eh-go no men-yu ga aree-mass-ka?)

But mostly you’ll only have a Japanese menu. If the kanji makes your eyes bleed, look at pictures. You can point to a picture and say “kore (w)o onegaishimasu” (koh-ray-oh on-nee-gai-she-mass) – “That one, please”.

No pictures? Get crafty.

Do you have a digital camera? Sneak outside, find a yummy plastic sculpture of the food you want and photograph it. Then show the picture to the waitress with the old “Kore (w)o onegaishimasu”.

Plastic Food Display

If you know what you want – say, udon – you can order it by saying, “Udon onegaishimasu”. (ooh-don on-nee-gai-she-mass). If you want many things, you can list them all by saying “to” in between: “うどんとラメんとハンバーガーおねがいします (Udon to Ramen to Hambaagaa onegaishimasu”. (“Udon, ramen and a hamburger, please”)

What if you want more than one of something? You need to use a different set of number-counters.

If you want two bowls of udon, you can’t say “udon futari,” that means “two udon people”. The waitress might wonder, “Where are the udon people? Did they beat him in that race he was talking about?”

Instead, you should say “Udon (w)o futatsu onegaishimasu”. Can you guess what the counter is for food items? It’s “-tsu”. That “ts” should sound a tiny bit like a soft “z”. Like the staccato ‘z’ in pizza…. “pizzu!”

So where you said “futa-ri” for two people, you would say “futa-tsu” for “two plates”.

Just to clarify the w(o) I have used above. をis a Japanese particle whose job it is to mark the direct object you’re talking about eg Udon. So on your hiragana chart it is “wo” but the sound is “o” confusing hey? ^^

These are standard counters for objects in any situation, so they’re worth memorising.

Notice the “little tsu” in the hiragana column eg やっつ? The “little tsu’s” job is to double the sound of the next consonant. So the “t” from “tsu” gets doubled by the “little tsu”. Read more about it here →

Eat Your Food

The staff won’t bother you unless you call them over. This requires a polite “Excuse me,” or in Japanese, “すみません (su-mi-ma-se-n)” pronounced su-mee-mah-sen. Until I figured this out, I thought Japanese service was awful.

Food will not come out at the same time. Start eating as soon as you get it. It’s standard to say “itadakimasu” (ee-tah-dak-ee-masu) and give a little nod to the food, or quickly put your hands together like a prayer.

Three quick rules on chopsticks:

1. Don’t rub them together. It implies you have cheap, splintered chopsticks.
2. Don’t pass food between chopsticks. They do this with bones at funerals. (Really).
3. Don’t stick your chopsticks straight up into a bowl of rice. Unless you are at a funeral.

Basically, don’t bum everyone out by acting like you’re at a Japanese funeral.

Pay Your Bill

When you’re finished, take your bill to the front of the shop. There are two ways to pay: “べつべつ (be-tsu-be-tsu)” – separate – means everyone pays for what they ordered. “いっしょ (i-s-sho)” meaning “together” – the meal is evenly divided by the number of people.

Most Japanese people default to “issho,” whereas most Westerners default to “betsu-betsu”. So make sure you tell the host “betsu-betsu” if you only want to pay for what you ate.

But, you have to choose one or the other. Most Japanese people will ask for “issho” and, frankly, you should follow along if they’ve invited you out.

If you love the food (or despise it, it doesn’t really matter) express your gratitude by saying “gochisou sama deshita” (go-chee-soh-sama-desh-ta) – “Thanks for your role in preparing this food”.

Another good phrase for the chef is “おいしいです (o-i-shi-i de-su)”, pronounced oy-shee-des, which means “It’s delicious!” or “おいしかった (o-i-shi-ka-t-ta), meaning “That was delicious!”.

Enjoy your meal!

New To Japanese?

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Eryk is a former newspaper editor from Maine now teaching English in Japan with the JET Program. Find his excellent posts on all things strangely Japanese at www.thisjapaneselife.org He can also be found on Twitter – @owls_mcgee

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Make sure you check out the rest of Mizu Kami’s origami handywork and other interesting images on his blog.

View more Japanese images in my gallery →

Vocabulary

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Have you ever wondered what those lion-like statues standing in front of a Japanese shrine are? They are called Komainu (狛犬).

Komainu is a half-lion, half-dog (犬 = dog) statue guarding the entrance to the shrine and are supposed to ward off the evil spirits.

There are two kind of Komainu, one with its mouth open and the other one with its mouth closed.

The open mouth is pronouncing the first letter of the historic Sanskrit alphabet, which is pronounced ‘a’ and the closed one is sounding the last letter which is pronounced ‘um’.

Together they are said to represent the beginning and the end of all things.

This guest post is from Teddy, who runs the excellent Thumbnail Of Life blog. You can also find him on Twitter @dansnosekai

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So upon arriving in Japan I expected TV to be chock-full of cheerful Japanese willing to be injured for my enjoyment. What I actually saw was a collection of “Gourmet travel” shows, ropey dramas, game shows and variety shows.

Variety shows seem to be the most popular type in Japan. Normally they star all kinds of celebrities, comedians, singers, actors etc.

What can you expect from a variety show?

世界一受けたい授業

Well lots of famous people watching ‘interesting’ clips. One example of a variety show is 世界一受けたい授業 (Sekaiichi uketai jyugyou, The world’s most useful school), where famous faces are taught things “they don’t teach you at school” by various teachers.

Most variety shows are light-hearted and feature Japanese comedians with their own brand of Japanese humour (Manzai), I could go into more detail about Japanese comedy and how it compares to “Western humour” but that will have to wait for another post.

It may sound like I don’t like Japanese TV and well, I didn’t.

Coming to Japan thinking there would be TV similar to what I was used to in the UK was probably quite naïve. So when I finally watched some Japanese TV I was quite disappointed and vowed never to bother with it.

Eventually I did watch it again and I’m glad I did, it just took a bit of adjustment. If you look at Japanese TV with an open mind it can be quite fun, and an educational tool.

For very beginners I don’t think there is much educational benefit in watching TV, the language used is typical day-to-day speech at a pace which makes it hard to catch for new learners. Intermediate and advanced speakers would get the most out of watching TV but that’s not to say it wouldn’t be entertaining for beginners.

Personally I can only speak about variety shows (that’s mainly all I watch of Japanese TV apart from news); understanding the conventions of variety shows make them more enjoyable to watch. A large part of variety shows are the “reactions”, as mentioned previously there is normally a panel of “famous” people in the studio who react to videos/skits etc.

Reaction Boxes

One of the stranger features of variety shows are the “reaction boxes” which show one of the celeb’s faces whilst watching a video. When I tried to find out an answer as to why TV producers do this there was no clear answer.

Online, people mentioned that perhaps it was because the audience wants to see how celebs react to amazing or unusual videos. When I asked a Japanese friend they said they didn’t really think about it, it has been a feature on shows for so long it’s just part of Japanese TV.

Whilst on the subject of strange Japanese TV features I suppose I should mention subtitles. Mainly on variety shows they add subtitles, shows are not fully subbed just certain parts, when jokes are told or interesting points are made etc.

Subtitles

Again opinion is split over why shows feature these subtitles, some argue that they are used to emphasise jokes or important information.

One of the more questionable explanations theorise that when Japan was under American control all TV had subtitles and Japanese people got used to reading them. When broadcasts were switched back to Japanese they continued adding subtitles as people had got used to them.

No matter your initial opinions of Japanese TV don’t be so quick to write it off. If you give it a chance you could actually learn something, or god forbid enjoy it. Hopefully my post has interested you enough to watch some TV, post your favourite shows below so others can check them out.

Mike normally writes for NihonBurp, a blog covering his life as a student of Japanese Studies and general interest articles about Japan.

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If you’re in to finding out more about Japan before the neon lights, anime and robots then this is for you.

The video is only an extract, you can find the full BBC video for sale across the internet. There’s also a book of the photography available on Amazon and others.

“In 1908, the French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn launched one of the most ambitious projects in the history of photography. A pacifist, internationalist and utopian idealist, Kahn decided to use his private fortune to improve understanding between the nations of the world. To this end, he created what he called his Archive of the Planet.”

“For the next two decades, he dispatched professional photographers to document the everyday lives of people in more than 50 countries all around the world. Kahn’s wealth enabled him to supply his photographers with the most advanced camera technology available.”

“They used the autochrome – the first user-friendly camera system capable of producing true-colour photographs.”

“Some of the most important of all the 72,000 colour images in Kahn’s Archive were shot during three separate visits (in 1908, 1912 and 1926) to Japan.”

“This film showcases Kahn’s treasury of films and autochromes of silk-farmers, Shinto monks, schoolchildren, porcelain merchants, Kabuki stars and geishas – pictures that were recorded at a time when this fascinating country was going through momentous changes.”

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did ^^

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I’m looking for fresh articles that have a strong leaning towards Japan itself and/or learning Japanese preferably from people living in Japan.

Article ideas might range from travel in Japan, anime, hiragana, katakana, kanji or learning Japanese in general. As long as it has something to do with Japan then it’s all good.

If you already have a blog or have a product you’d like to push, I’m more than happy to add that in to the article as a thanks for your hard work. Awwww – how generous of me ^^

So anyway, if you’re keen email me or DM me at @zonjineko

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing from you.

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We arrived at around 6pm on Sunday and the place was buzzing with people so there was a slight wait in line before we got to order.

I ordered a Teriyaki Chicken Burger and fries plus an iced green tea and in typical Japanese style it all arrived quickly – even though the place was full.

The food was great and I can’t wait to go back again and try the Yakiniku or Pork Ginger burgers with the rice buns.

Also found a few more Japanese restaurants close by that I didn’t know about so we’ll be back very soon I’m sure!

You can find MOS Burger at:

Shop 34, Sunnybank Plaza
Cnr Mains Rd and McCullough St
Sunnybank QLD

It’s currently open from 9am to 9pm 7 days a week.

I scanned the MOS Burger menu below for your viewing pleasure. You can print it out and dribble on it while you’re waiting for MOS to come to a suburb near you ^_^

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It has been 88 years since the Great Kanto earthquake (magnitude 7.9) struck Tokyo and claimed over 100,000 lives and another 70 odd years prior to that with the Great Ansei earthquakes in the mid-1850’s. Of course, outside of the Tokyo area, Japan’s history is littered with one earthquake after another.

Coming from a country that has close to no seismic activity, it is difficult to comprehend the fear and devastation caused by earthquakes and the resulting tsunamis.

It’s like a ticking timebomb that no-one knows when and where it will go off. This Japanese earthquake list on Wikipedia is a sobering reminder how just how often it does go off.

Live TV

If you’re looking to keep up with the news coming from Japan, now would be a good time to download Key Hole TV, which allows viewing of several Japanese TV channels live over the internet.

The quality is average but it’s a great way to view native speakers, improve your listening comprehension and keep up with the latest news. There’s a special earthquake TV channel being transmitted as we speak.

More news footage can be seen here (in English) and here (in Japanese).

UPDATE: More viewing options can be found on Ustream for NHK, NTV, TBS, FujiTV and TVAsahi. Thanks to @masaruikeda for the links and everyone on Twitter for suggestions ^_^

Our thoughts go out to our friends in Japan and let’s hope this is the last we see of this type of tragedy for a very long time.

Donations can be made online at redcross.org, salvationarmy.org, oxfamamerica.org and worldvision.org.

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