It has been a while since I posted anything about learning Japanese so I’m back with a short and rather silly post about Kanji and how to recognise the easy ones and some of my favourites.
Through some examples I have raided from recent anime and Japanese news programmes I watched I want to show Kanji characters that anybody can quickly recognise.
Let’s go… or should that be 行きましょう!!!!
First things first… How do I recognise Japan in Kanji? Say I get off my JAL flight, what will I see exactly? You see this:
Stop staring at the poor girl advertising the (tacky) tourism bra… Now notice the two Kanji I ineptly circled in the top-right corner?
They can be read as
The first character can be read as 日Sun whilst the second character 本 can be read as Origin. Origin of the Sun. Land of the Rising Sun. Nihon. Japan.
Okay so chances are you’ve gone to Tokyo. What is Tokyo in Kanji?
Notice the hiragana から? Kara effectively means ‘from’. This fine young lady in (rather fetching) historical costume is from Tokyo – Tōkyō kara desu.
What do the characters represent?
東 とう East
京 きょう Capital
So this picture is a date which has been helpfully translated. Dates are pretty easy to read due to the simplicity of the characters and the numbers.
Days and months can be shown using Kanji or numbers. Here we have the numbers 7 and 21. While there are 7 days in a month, there aren’t 21 months in a year unless I missed some announcement. Even if this wasn’t translated you can work out the date because Japan uses the Gregorian calendar.
Anyway, the Kanji character月represents moon or month and can be read as:
月 ガツ Month
The second Kanji character日 represents sun or day and can be read as:
日 ニチ Day
Knowing that the two characters represent month and day respectively, one need only look at the numbers in front of them to establish the date.
7 月 21日Seventh Month, 21st Day. 21st July in British English.
The Kanji for year is 年 ねん
2010 ねん = 2010 or the year 2010.
So the date: 11月 19日 2010年 is effectively 11th Month, 19th Day, year 2010. Or 19th November 2010 in British English.
An expensive bunch of apples. We all know that the Japanese use yen right? I should hope so. If you look at the numbers and symbols you will find shopping easy…ish. Money. like dates and time, can be represented by either Kanji or numbers. Here we have 100 followed be a series of characters.
Well the character for Japanese yen is:
So if you find something 100 円、that means it’s 100 yen and rather cheap. There are 100 yen shops, let me know if they stock anything interesting. Anyway, the other symbol, 万、 means ten thousand. 100 ten thousands? 100 multiplied by ten thousands equals… 1 million yen for APPLES?
百 千 万
ひゃく せん まん
Hyaku Sen Man
Hundred Thousand Ten Thousand
Anyway, just look for the numbers in front of the circles and do your own multiplication.
Thanks to the television show, Heroes, the Japanese word for ‘what’ was cemented in my mind. Why? Because Hiro and Ando kept repeating it over and over again. Anyway, I like the word and the character because it’s simple.
何 = What
Nani – What?
何 を Nani o – With what?
Anyway, next lesson I will try and come up with something of a much higher educational standard than this. Perhaps more reviews for online Japanese language learning games and maybe some more Kanji. I will also have a go at explaining Japanese verbs at some point… recipe for disaster? Maybe. Until next time, adieu.
Next lesson, Genki Jason digs up Japanese language games so people can actually have fun. 8o