Rarely would you want to visit a doctor when you are in Japan, but when you do, you want to make sure you have the right grammar and vocabulary to make the experience as easy as possible. In this chapter we’ll take a look at body parts and describing when things go wrong.
When you go to the doctor’s, if you don’t learn anything else, you should at least know how to name different parts of your body—particularly what’s inside you, that you can’t easily point to.
As is the case with Japanese colour names, the way the Japanese perceive and name different concepts may differ from the way we do in English. For example, both the leg and the foot are called ashi (あし, ⾜), fingers and toes; yubi (ゆび, 指).
Overall, however, body parts in Japanese are fairly straightforward and the vocabulary should be easy to learn & use in daily life.
Download the cheat sheet below, print it out, and try to learn every body part so that you can explain yourself if anything ever happens to you in Japan.
You are free to distribute the reference sheet wherever you want as long as the file remains intact and the work is properly credited.