What’s your occupation? In this vocabulary list, we’ll learn the names of some occupations in Japanese. 仕事 (しごと, shigotou) – work; job; business; occupation; employment; vocation; task 職業 (しょくぎょう, shokugyou) – occupation; business Of course, we have to start off by learning what the word ‘occupation’ is in Japanese. As you might be able to tell from the word definitions, 仕事 is a more general… Read more »
Today’s kanji spotlight is on the word 歌! You may have seen this kanji around recently… Yup. It’s the kanji for song, and it appeared in the previous post as the Kouhaku theme for this year, “夢を歌おう”, or Sing the dream. Sing? Song? I’ll explain in a bit! But first, let’s look at how the kanji is written! Now back… Read more »
This entry of kanji spotlight is dedicated to the universal solvent – water. Learners of the Japanese language will encounter this word (水) pretty early on. It’s classified as an N5 vocab. After all, who could live without water? Not me. Good thing the word is easy to write, with just a total of four strokes, you can express this… Read more »
A friend shared this really hilarious meme to me, and I just had to share it here. Oh the things that can happen when you don’t know the language! Gummies? Grandma? In Tokyo? During Christmas? It’s funny that I see a number of people asking about this sentence, because apparently it never gets subbed in animes. Or TV shows. Because…… Read more »
A while back, someone asked in a group chat what ‘katakuriko’ meant. Of course, I turned to my favorite Japanese dictionary site, jisho.org, to find out. Turns out that katakuriko, or 片栗粉, means potato starch. Eh? Potato starch? But potato is じゃが芋 (jagaimo)… How did potato starch become 片栗粉? So I did my research. Not that I have to look far though, because… Read more »
Hi everyone, it’s kanji spotlight time! The kanji that I’ll be focusing on today is 忍. Anime and manga fans would probably have seen this word before… Yup, that’s right, this kanji is pronounced as ‘にん, nin’, as in ‘忍者, ninja’. Let’s look at the definition of 忍 first. This word is actually an old word, one that is hardly used on… Read more »
Hi! So… I was really busy last weekend and didn’t manage to get this post out…. this is a little late but enjoy! Following the previous week’s kanji spotlight post, this week we’ll talk about a related kanji! Remember I talked about how the kanji 金 can be a radical? That’s right! When 金 is part of a kanji as a radical…… Read more »
Hi! It’s been a while since I did the last kanji spotlight! The word I’m going to introduce is gold! This is gold. Well. Not literally, but the gold kanji. “Wait! Isn’t that the kanji for money?” You ask. Yup! That’s right. The kanji has two pronunciations. It can be read as kin, which would mean gold – both the… Read more »
I got a whiteboard sometime back, and since I love writing on whiteboards, here are three words that I’ll highlight… The first kanji we’re looking at is 木, meaning tree or wood. As you can see in the second kanji, by adding a single stroke, we get 本, meaning book. The 木 kanji can also be used as a radical, as seen in… Read more »