I found this sign hanging on a fence around a small public park, which also doubles as a kindergarten playground, near Tokyo Tower.

Perhaps they thought subtility wasn’t going to get the message across ^_^

For the Japanese beginners out there, “とびだし” means “something that leaps” and “注意” means “warning or caution”.

So remember kids – don’t jump the chain and fall on to the road as you will get hit by car and blood will stream out of your feet and the car tyres and go everywhere! ^_^

• WOTW: Doubutsuen
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I stumbled on this juice bar at a train station in Tokyo and thought it would make a perfect image for my Japan Sign series.

There’s a great mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji although I’ll mainly be looking at the katakana in today’s example. As always please feel free to work your way through the whole sign and see what you can work out.

Banana Juice (バナナジュース)

First up on the left we have Banana Juice (バナナジュース), which is entirely in Katakana. Banana is written as バナナ (ba-na-na) and juice is ジュース (ju-u-su).

While banana is straight forward, juice is a little more tricky as it has two problem areas for beginners – the small yu (ュ) joined to the ジ (ji) to form ジュ (ju) and then a ー, which doubles the vowel sound preceding it.

Small Kana

To arrive at the final syllable (ju), we need to start with シ (shi) and then add the double marks (ジ), known as dakuten, which then changes its meaning to ji. From there we add the small ュ (yu) to form ジュ (ju). The ー after ジュ doubles the vowel sound to get juu. Phew!

There are several hiragana/katakana that can be both normal and small size including ゃ (ya), ゅ (yu), ょ (yo) and tsu (っ) or in katakana ャ (ya), ュ (yu), ョ (yo) and tsu (ッ). Check out my little tsu article for more information.

There are two main rules to apply when a little kana follows a normal size kana.

The first rule is for two letter kana (eg most of them) – remove the last letter of the kana and add the full little kana. An example is きゃ (kya), which starts as き (ki) but when the little hiragana ゃ(ya) is added it becomes きゃ (kya).

When it comes to three-letter kana like し (shi), the rule changes. In this instance you remove the last letter and keep the first two to get しゃ (sha) rather than shya or sya as you might expect.

More Fruit

Mango Juice follows the same pattern with Mango written as マンゴ followed by ジュース (juice). Mango, like banana, is a loan word and as such is always written in katakana.

Our next sign is カシスと黒酢ジュース, which translates as Black Currant and Black Vinegar Juice.

The spelling of Black Currant (カシス ka-shi-su) comes from the word – Cassis – which means French Black Currants.

We then see the particle – と – that basically means “and”.

Finally we get to 黒酢ジュース.

黒酢 can be broken down as 黒 (くろ – black) and 酢 (ず – vinegar).

Kiwi and Apple Juice (キーウィとりんごジュース) is our last Japan Sign on the right.

Kiwi is another loan word so is written in katakana – キーウィ. We see the と particle again and then りんご, which you most likely know means “Apple”.

Well we’ve made it through all of the great fruit drinks on offer. I hope it’s been useful to you and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

The Breakdown

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I found this small ¥1,000 barber shop hidden somewhere in the back blocks of Ueno Station in Tokyo.

The whole concept highlights the Japanese predilection for hyper-efficiency and I must admit that is exactly what I love about Japan.

Although the love doesn’t extend far enough to get my haircut for ¥1,000. I’d assume you get one style here – salaryman standard. ^_^

While the English words on the sign read like something from Seinfeld’s infamous Soup Nazi episode, the Japanese is actually a little more polite.

I’ll break down a couple of the phrases below from the sign and then you can take it from there.

If you’d like to learn more please use an online dictionary such as www.tangorin.com to work through the kana and kanji.

1st Phrase: 千円札をご用意ください

2nd Phrase: 両替はできません

I’m not going to go in to the details of every line on the sign. Instead, I have chosen a couple of key items from the 2nd phrase that are worth noting.

は Particle

While I won’t go deeply in to particles at this stage, the は particle in the phrase above is one of the most important in the Japanese language.

It is known as a “topic marker” and signifies the topic of the sentence, which in this case is the “changing of money” or “money exchange” eg if you don’t have a ¥1,000 bill, you’re out of luck.

There is no direct English translation for the は particle but it essentially has the meaning “as for”. So in this context it roughly means “As for the changing of money, we are unable to do (it).”

You’ll probably first come across the は particle in a sentence such as “わたはジョンです” which literally means “As for me, I am John” or in normal English – “I am John”.

Verbs – Tense

The dictionary form of できません is できる, which means “to be able to”.

To make a “ru” verb in to the negative present form as we see in our example above, you just remove the る and add on ません, which gives us できません.

There’s plenty more to know about verbs but that’s for another article.

Any questions please leave a comment below.

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I found this sign in the grounds of Ueno Zoo, which is just 10 minutes north of central Tokyo by train. We visited there when we stayed in Ueno and apart from it being the coldest and wettest day of our trip, it was definitely worth the visit. There’s plenty to see and do for everyone.

There’s a fair bit going on in this sign but don’t worry as I’m going to break it all down and we’ll go though the kanji and katakana one at a time.

Go West

Starting from the left side of the top sign we see 西園, which indicates the West section of the park (zoo). The two kanji work separately here so 西 means West and 園 is garden or park, this is not a kanji compound. If you’re in Japan for any length of time you’ll more than likely see the kanji for park (園) in a lot of public places in the following format – 公園. This a kanji compound – public (公) and park (園).

Children’s Zoo

Next is the top line of the first sign, which is 子供動物園 (Children’s Zoo) and there are two kanji compounds at work here – 子供 (こども) and 動物園 (どうぶつえん). The first one translates as “Children” with the first character 子 meaning child (こ). The second part of that line is 動物園 (どうぶつえん), which means zoo.

Breaking that down even further we get 動物 (animal) and 園 (garden or park), which of course gives us zoo (animal park).

Kirin…But Not The Beer

On the bottom line of the first sign there are three katakana words – キリん, カバ and サイ, which translate to kirin (Giraffe), kaba (Hippopotamus) and sai (Rhinoceros). Katakana is normally used only for loan words, meaning words from other countries. I would suggest these are only written in Katakana here so that smaller children are able to read the sign. I have included the kanji for each of them in the table below.

Keep Your Hands In Your Pockets

In the second sign we come across a few kanji that you might be seeing for the first time: 両生爬虫類館

The breakdown of the kanji compounds in this sentence are 両生 (りょうせい – Amphibian) and 爬虫類 (はちゅうるい – Reptiles) followed by 館, which translates as house, hall or building.

We end up with a sign that roughly means Amphibious Reptile Building eg an area of the zoo that holds the likes of crocodiles or alligators.

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I hate to drag up a photo from warmer days while those of you in the northern hemisphere are still freezing cold but here we go anyway ^_^

This was shot somewhere along the busy market streets of the famous Ameyoko in Ueno, Tokyo.

There is all sorts of produce available for sale including seafood, fruit and vegetables right through to shoes, t-shirts and jeans. The markets are always packed, which makes for an exciting place to visit when you’re next in Tokyo.

The fruit on a stick sells from just ¥100, which is a bargain I reckon, especially in Japan.

Almost all of the fruit in the signs are listed in Katakana so this is a great exercise to sharpen those skills if you’re just starting out with Japanese or getting rusty.

Here’s a few to get you started.

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• Learn Katakana: The Starter Kit

I took this shot of an ad hanging on a train somewhere on the Yamanote line in Tokyo. I think it’s a great real-life example of the use of Katakana for foreign city or country names.

To start you off I’ll go through the first line and then you can take it from there.

We put all the first line together and get “Rondon” or London as it is known in English.

You may have noticed that the Japanese can’t pronounce “L” very well, and with good reason, as that letter/sound doesn’t exist in the Japanese language as is most often substituted with an “r” syllable like ra, ri, ru, re, ro.

To approximate the way the Japanese pronounce the “r” sound you need to think of a tone halfway between and the English R and L.

Those of you that are very new to Katakana will probably be wondering what that extra syllable that looks like a dash (ー) in the Katakana for Singapore (シンガポール). I’ve written about this extender in another article that will explain it for you.

Need help with Katakana? Check out my Katakana Starter Kit with a full explanation of Katakana and a worksheet to download.

As an exercise to use your newly found Katakana powers, why not find the Katakana for the following countries. Good luck!

Try Canada, Cuba, Peru, Egypt, France and of course we better not forget Australia ^_^

Once you have done that without peeking, take a look at this comprehensive country name listing from Jim Breen.

• Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
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This kanji sign caught my eye at Shinjuku station in Tokyo as it was quite a cool November morning and the glass waiting room (待合室) attached to the sign turned out to be a whole lot warmer than standing on the platform waiting for my train up to Nikko.

So as we can see in the photo there are just three kanji featured:

To get to our final meaning, the first two kanji need to be concatenated in to what is known as a kanji compound, where two kanji are joined together to form a new word.

Sometimes the word resulting from the two kanji joined together has very little or nothing to do with the two kanji within it and other times it all makes perfect sense like this example.

待合 as a compound gives us the first part of the phrase “meeting place” plus the third kanji means “room”.

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We came across these white grapes for sale at a large department store in Kashiwa, a city just north of Tokyo.

While they look very tasty, I’m not quite sure they’re worth the approx. AUD$70 they worked out to be against the Aussie dollar at the time. With a stronger dollar, the Amercians could have enjoyed them for a mere USD$55!

The main part of the sign, which is all in katakana, translates as “Muscat of Alexandria” (ムスカット オブ アレキサンドルア) – a well-known type of “white” grape.

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I took this photo in the back streets of Meguro near Gakugei-daigaku train station on a recent trip to Japan. Besides thinking it was a great image for the Japan Signs section of zonjineko, I also have a laugh every time I see a happy little character for almost any situation in Japan – even sewerage!

So we put that all together and get “in the middle of sewerage construction” or as the sign states “Sewerage Under Construction”

It’s worth having a closer look at the kanji for the sewer as they make for an interesting lesson about how the words are formed.

The three kanji quite literally spell out a sewer – “a course of water under (the ground)”

We can all rest a little easier at night knowing our happy little friend is taking care of our drain pipes!

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In this installment of Japan Signs we look at a photo I took in Tokyo a while back when a new Krispy Kreme store was opened in the Yūrakuchō district of Tokyo near Ginza.

When we first walked past, the waiting time was well over two hours but when we came back again it got down to a mere 1 hour 40 minutes. We waited a little while longer and eventually decided to hop into the line and 30 minutes later we enjoyed a box of yummy fresh donuts – drools.

Anyway we better get back to the Japanese – the breakdown of the kanji on the sign is as follows.

只今の待ち時間

So we end up with something like – “At the moment, the waiting time is 1:40”.

There’ll be much more coming up in the Japan Signs series as I think they give a perfect real-life look at how you can use your Japanese skills or help increase what you already know.

• Japan Signs: Waiting Room
• Learn Kanji: North, South, East and West
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo
• Japan Signs: Under Construction
• Japan Signs: Ameyoko Fruit Stall