A good way to sharpen your skills in this area is to switch your whole computer over to the Japanese for a day. On the mac, you can change the language in your System Preferences -> Language & Text and I’m sure it’s a similar place in Windows.

System Preferences – English and Japanese

It’s a scary thought but having to work out all the menu items and buttons can be a fun way to improve your Japanese vocabulary. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you have to translate just to get around your computer. ^_^

ファ

The word “File” as you would know is at the top of the first menu of most applications on your computer. It is written as ファイル, which is broken down as “ファ (fa) イ (i) ル (ru)”. The tricky part is the first two Katakana.

You may not have noticed but the katakana after フ is actually a small “ァ” and not the normal size “ア”. So when you pair “フ (fu)” with a small “ァ” the combination becomes “ファ” and is pronounced “Fa” and not the expected “Fua” with the larger ア.

The combination of “ファ” and “イ” gives us the “Fai” sound like in “Taiwan”. That sound together with ル (ru) gives us “Fai-ru” or “File”. Remember there is no “L” in the Japanese language.

ウィ

The ウィ sound is another katakana combination that you may not have encountered before. While it’s not rare, it’s certainly not something that you will see in most everyday textbooks.

The combination consists of “ウ (u)” and a “ィ (i)”. As with the example above the second katakana is smaller than normal and as such it performs a different function than a regular “イ” – like in the word for internet (インターネット).

So when you find the combination of “ウィ”, it is pronounced “Wi”. The easiest way to remember it is that Nintendo’s Wii console is spelt “ウィー”. We have the “Wi” followed by the long dash (chōonpu), which doubles the vowel so we get “Wii”.

I hope that has given you enough to work on. Apart from the chōonpu, there are also plenty of little Katakana tricks below such as the small “ョ” in “ショ”, which gives you “sho” (shi plus o). There’s also “ディ”, which is “de” plus “i” to give us “di”.

Work through the explanations below and please leave a note in the comments if you have any questions.

Download my free Katakana Beginner’s Worksheet to practice the basic Katakana and also check out my small tsu article for a little bit more about how the small hiragana and katakana work.

• Japan Vocab: Around My Home
• Japan Signs: Tokyo Fruit Juice Bar
• Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
• WTF….$70 Grapes!
• The Tale of the Little Tsu

All booklets from Level 0 through the Level 4 are written in hiragana, along with the appropriate level of kanji mixed within the text.

Furigana is used extensively throughout the series, so as long as you have a good knowledge of hiragana you’ll know enough to at least be able to read through any text at this level.

A Look Inside – ジョンさん日本へ

The feeling you get from being able to read actual Japanese text yourself is a powerful one for beginners.

Even if you only know every third word/kanji, you’re reading in another language and that’s pretty amazing I think.

Each level has several volumes (Level 1 is available in three volumes), which come in multi-booklet packs and as the level number increases, the booklets add more vocabulary, kanji and more complex grammar.

The Level 1 booklets feature a 350 word vocabulary and each story at this level has between 400-1,500 characters.

If you’re currently studying at the N4/N5 level, these booklets are an ideal starting point for you.

Box Set – Front Cover

Basic grammar is covered with conjugations ranging from the -masu, -te and tai forms through to present and past tense, desu and several others.

The five illustrated stories included in the first volume of Level 1 are:

• おんあの子 – The Girl
• ハチの話 – The Story of Hachi
• ジョンさん日本へ – John goes to Japan
• 浦島太廊 – Urashimatarou
• 笑い話 – A Funny Story

Level 1 Volume 1 Booklets

An added bonus is the free CD, which includes the text from each booklet being read by a native speaker, which is a perfect way to improve listening comprehension while reading along with each story.

When I first started the series I ripped the CD and then listened to the booklets while reading along with the text from the booklets.

Having the audio with me wherever I went enabled me to practice my listening comprehension at any time of day.

As you move through the booklets, any new vocabulary you find in a booklet will repeated multiple times throughout the other booklets to reinforce their use and meaning in context.

I found this of particular use in quickly building my arsenal of Japanese words in the early days.

Close Up – Hiragana/Kanji with Furigana

I know I bang the “no romaji” drum quite a lot but it is something I feel strongly about and that’s what I enjoy about these booklets as they are 100% Japanese and therefore there’s no option to cheat yourself with romaji or English.

If you don’t know the hiragana or kanji then you’ll need to look it up and memorise it. It’s a powerful motivator.

While the Japanese Graded Readers Series will introduce you to new words and help to maintain your current reading and listening abilities, I think the biggest plus is to keep you thinking and reading in pure Japanese – there are no crutches whatsoever.

With it’s colourful illustrations and easy to read text, the Japanese Graded Readers Series sure beats the heck out of wading through boring lists of vocabulary and grammar.

Highly recommended.

BTW check out Harvey’s views on Level 0 of the Graded Readers Series over at japannewbie.com

• 3 Ways to Learn Japanese With YouTube
• The Tale of the Little Tsu
• Word Of The Week: Monogatari (物語)
• Hiragana: The S Line
• App Review: Japanese 101 – Particles

The first kanji (会) means meeting, meet, join or party and has the readings – カイ, エ, あう, あわせる and あつまる. We’ll be using the カイ (かい) reading for today’s word.

The second kanji is – 話 meaning talk (or tale) and the readings are ワ, はな.す or はなし.

The meaning of 会話 becomes clearer when we join together 会 (meeting, meet, join or party) and 話 (talk) and we get a “meeting or a joining together to talk”, which gives us “conversation”.

Examples

I particularly like the last compound in the list – 世話人.

We can break these down in to their meanings to arrive at the final translation – 世 (generation, world, society, public ), 話 (talk), 人 (person). So that gives us “public”, “talk”, “person”, which is a “manager” or “agent” for a movie star or band as an example.

Any questions? Please leave a comment below.

• Word Of The Week: Monogatari (物語)
• Word Of The Week: Gaikokujin (外国人)
• Word Of The Week: Densha (電車)
• Japan Signs: Waiting Room
• Word Of The Week: Choushoku (朝食)

To get you started I’ll kick you off with a quick explanation of some of the more popular terms.

Rōmaji

Rōmaji (ローマ字), often mis-spelt as romanji or rōmanji, is where Japanese words are written in the Latin alphabet. For example, konnichiwa rather than こんにちわ.

Rōmaji is mostly used in Japan where tourists need to be able to read signs such as a railway station, hotel, airport or restaurant. The further you get out of the major cities, the less rōmaji you’ll see.

It is also frequently seen in Japanese dictionaries and textbooks for use by Japanese language beginners.

Rōmaji is commonly used to input Japanese characters into computers. Japanese keyboards mostly look exactly the same as Western keyboards. So to input a Japanese word, the user must type in the romanised version of the word (konnichiwa rather than こんにちわ) and the computer will do the rest.

I am not a fan of rōmaji for serious Japanese students as I feel it is better to learn kana and kanji than to rely on rōmaji. Use whatever you feel works best for your situation and level.

Furigana

Furigana (振り仮名) is the small hiragana or katakana printed next to or above a kanji character to explain its pronunciation. It is mostly found in children’s books or Japanese textbooks for beginners.

Furigana is especially helpful when you are making the transition to learning kanji and don’t yet know the many readings needed to be fluent at Japanese.

Hiragana

Hiragana is the first of three writing systems (hiragana, katakana and kanji) taught to Japanese children and most books for kids are written purely in hiragana. As they move in to grade one, kanji is gradually introduced and hiragana mostly removed. A typical university graduate is expected to know over 2000 kanji!

Although hiragana is used by children and replaced by kanji in grade school, it remains a very important part of Japanese as it is commonly found in the grammatical endings of nouns, verbs and adjectives, as well as for particles like が or から, and many other Japanese words that have no kanji equivalent.

Each hiragana is either an individual vowel or a consonant followed by a vowel. The exception, and there always is one, is “n” (ん).

Find out more about hiragana and download free worksheets here

Katakana

Katakana (カタカナ) is the second component of the Japanese writing system and is generally learnt alongside or after hiragana.

While a beginner may not initially be able to tell Katakana and Hiragana apart, with a little practice they are distinctively different.

Katakana is generally more angular and has short, straight strokes while hiragana is rounded and more cursive. The difference is much like in the English language where we start off writing in a printing-style before learning cursive writing as we move through school.

Katakana is predominately used to write foreign or loan words in Japanese.

In the photo above you can see the city and country names from around the world, which are all written in katakana as they are loan words.

Kanji

Kanji (漢字) are the characters that are used in the Japanese writing system along with hiragana and katakana. They were imported from China around 500AD although the timing of its use in Japan varies substantially.

Kanji are taught to Japanese children after learning hiragana and katakana and the Japanese government has strict sets of kanji that are to be learnt at each grade level. By the time a typical Japanese student finishes university they will know approx. 2000 kanji!

The list of 1,945 kanji that must be learnt be all Japanese students is known as Jōyō kanji.

Japanese school children learn 1006 kanji characters from grades one to six and a further 939 kanji characters in secondary school.

There are changes taking place in 2010 that will see the number of official “must-know” kanji move to over 2000.

The total kanji figure is debatable but is said to be around 50,000. Let’s be thankful we don’t need to know all of those!

Readings

Kanji readings fit into just two categories, On (On’yomi – Chinese reading) and Kun (Kun’yomi – Japanese reading).

The difficulty for beginners and advanced students alike is that most kanji have more than one reading. So on top of having to learn the approx. 2000 Jōyō kanji there are also multiple readings of each kanji that you must know.

Also, when you add two or more kanji together their meaning might change or expand making the concept different.

For example the kanji for “outside” is 外. This kanji has the On readings – ガイ (gai),  ゲ (ge) along with the Kun readings – そと (soto),  ほか (hoka),  はずす (hazusu),  はずれる (hazureru),  と- (to).

So when 外 is used in the context of “outside” on it’s own you might pronounce it – そと (soto). However when it is used in 外国 (gaikoku), which means foreign country (eg outside country) then you can see the ガイ (gai) reading is used along with こく (country).

The general rule is that kanji that are on their own are typically read using their kun’yomi, as in the そと (soto) example above.

Kanji that occur in compounds, which are two or more kanji together as in the 外国 (gaikoku) example above are generally read using on’yomi.

These are only general rules and there are many exceptions but that is beyond the scope of this article so I won’t confuse things too much. ^_^

Stroke Order

In Japanese, a stroke order refers to the order in which the strokes of a kana or kanji character are written.

As a general rule, strokes are written from top to bottom and left to right. When there are upper and lower parts of the kanji, the upper strokes are written first, then the lower.

It is debatable that you need to focus heavily on learning the exact stroke order for each kanji. My personal view is that it is a good discipline to have but if you are fluent with the rest of your Japanese, not knowing the stroke orders isn’t going to hold you back too much.

Kana

Kana is the word used to refer to both hiragana and katakana. When you hear someone say that you need to learn the “kana” when starting Japanese, that just means that you need to learn hiragana and/or katakana.

That’s all for now – I hope this has helped to clear up any questions you may have had about these terms. Please leave a comment if you want to know more or let me know if I have missed anything.

• Learn Katakana: The Starter Kit
• Learn Kanji: The Kanji Starter Kit
• Hiragana: The A Line
• Joyo kanji list set for 2010 overhaul
• Hiragana: The T Line

Why are there so many words for breakfast? If you think about it in English we have the same situation as breakfast can also be known as “brekkie”.

Choushoku is made up of two kanji – 朝食 (ちょうしょく).

The first kanji (朝) means morning and has the readings – あさ and チョウ. We’ll be using the チョウ (ちょう – hiragana) reading in today’s example.

As a beginner you’ll first see this kanji in the new N5 level (the first level of the new JLPT) and it can be used in situations such as 今朝 (けさ – this morning) and 毎朝 (まいちょう – every morning).

The second kanji is – 食 – meaning eat or food and the readings are ショク, ジキ, くう, くらう, たべる and はむ.

To wrap up this week’s Word of the Week we join 朝 – morning and 食 – eat, food, which gives us “morning food” eg breakfast.

Examples

Please note that I have only included the relevant kanji readings for this example in the table above. Almost all kanji have multiple readings but not all are applicable to the examples in this article.

Any questions? Please leave a comment below.

• Word Of The Week: Monogatari (物語)
• Word Of The Week: Toshokan (図書館)
• Word Of The Week: Densha (電車)
• Word Of The Week: Gaikokujin (外国人)
• Word Of The Week: Kaiwa (会話)

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

• Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
• Learn Katakana: Japanese Computer Terms
• The Tale of the Little Tsu
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo
• Japan Signs: Going Overseas?

In terms of similar kanji, 氷 (icicle) and 永 (eternity) are very close. They’re clearly not indistinguishable but at normal reading size they can be difficult to tell apart especially for beginners.

If we threw in 水 to the mix, which is the kanji for water, we could thoroughly confuse ourselves – so I think we’ll just stick with these two for today. ^_^

My mnemonic (visual clue) for keeping these two kanji clear in my mind is to visualise that “If you snap the tip off the icicle (氷), it will be broken for an eternity (永)”.

The icicle kanji – 氷 – has the straight up tip with the small stroke to the left while the kanji for Eternity – 永 – looks like someone has snapped the top and pushed it to the left.

Remember that as crazy as some of these mnemonics sound, they really work.

Example Usage

Readings

氷 (On: ヒョウ Kun: こおり, ひ, こおる)

永 (On: エイ Kun: ながい)

• Japan Vocab: Weather Words
• Word Of The Week: Choushoku (朝食)
• Similar Kanji: Taste vs Wisdom
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo
• Similar Kanji: Eye vs Oneself

Monogatari is made up of two kanji – 物語 (ものがたり).

The first kanji (物) means thing or object and has the readings – ブツ,モツ, もの – although we’re only interested in the もの reading for today’s example.

At the beginner level (JLPT4/N5) you’ll come across this kanji in several words including 食べ物 (food – たべもの), 動物 (animal – どうぶつ) and 飲み物 (drink – のみもの).

The second kanji is – 語 – meaning word or language. The readings for 語 are ゴ (ご), かたる, かたらう and a popular example for those of us learning Japanese is にほんご (Japanese language – 日本語).

To wrap up this week’s Word of the Week we join 物 – thing, object and 語 – word, language, which gives us objects of language or words eg a story.

Examples

Please note that I have only included the relevant kanji readings for this example in the table above. Almost all kanji have multiple readings but not all are applicable to the examples in this article.

Any questions? Please leave a comment below.

• Word Of The Week: Choushoku (朝食)
• Word Of The Week: Gaikokujin (外国人)
• Word Of The Week: Toshokan (図書館)
• Word Of The Week: Densha (電車)
• Word Of The Week: Kaiwa (会話)

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.

• Japan Signs: Tokyo Fruit Juice Bar
• Japan Signs: Waiting Room
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo
• Hiragana: The N Line
• Japan Signs: Watch The Door

A train station such as Shinjuku in Tokyo claims over 3.5 million commuters passing through its gates daily – an incredible figure.

Densha is made up of just two kanji – 電車 (でんしゃ).

The first kanji (電) means electricity and only has one reading (デン) or in hiragana – でん. At the beginner level you will most likely come across this kanji in the word for telephone (電話 – literally Electricity Talk).

The second kanji is – 車 – meaning car or vehicle. The reading for car is most often くるま but as part of another word we use しゃ. An example is the word for bicycle – 自転車 (じてんしゃ).

So to wrap up this week’s Word of the Week we join 電 – Electricity and 車 – Vehicle, which gives us an Electric Vehicle or Train.

As a side note, you may have noticed the little ゃ in the reading しゃ for the kanji 車 and wondered what was going on.

A beginner may read しゃ as “shiya” but when you see the small “ゃ” you need to use a different rule and the reading is actually “sha”. This can also happen with ゅ (yu), ょ (yo) and っ (tsu). See my article about the small tsu for more information.

Examples

Please note that I have only included the relevant kanji readings for this example in the table above. Almost all kanji have multiple readings but not all are applicable to the examples in this article.

Any questions? Please leave a comment below.

• Word Of The Week: Choushoku (朝食)
• Word Of The Week: Monogatari (物語)
• Word Of The Week: Toshokan (図書館)
• Word Of The Week: Gaikokujin (外国人)
• Word Of The Week: Kaiwa (会話)