Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Today we'll start with a Verbal Logic Quiz! But first, consider this compound: 郷土 (kyōdo: native place; birthplace; old home)     village + soil If you come from Kyoto, you're lucky, because you can say this: 京都は郷土だ。 Kyōto wa kyōdo da. My hometown is Kyoto. OK, now you're ready for the quiz! Quiz 1: If-Then 1. If 色 (SHOKU, iro) means "color," what color is 郷土色 (kyōdoshoku: village + soil + color)? Does the answer vary with the color of the local soil? 2. If 博物館 (hakubutsukan) means "museum," what kind of museum is 郷土博物館 (kyōdo hakubutsukan: village + soil + extensive (knowledge) + physical phenomenon + public building)? 3. If 文学 (bungaku) means... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary The contest results are in! Although I predicted that the high score might be 2 or 3 correct out of 8, I couldn't have been more wrong! Out of 45 contestants, an astounding 21 had perfect scores! And it's not as if the questions seemed easy to people; many spent two to three hours on research. What a motivated, ambitious group! Can it be that they simply wanted a copy of Crazy for Kanji? Or do they love kanji as much as I do? Even a self-identified kanji newbie spent several hours on the questions, getting many of them right. This impressed me enormously, because doing kanji research is no small task. Knowing how to look for answers is most of the battle, and that... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Here's a Seinfeldian type of question: Have you ever wondered why we call odd numbers odd? After all, every other number is odd. What's so strange about that? They're hardly scarce. (By contrast, much scarcer numbers are called prime, as if they're of great value, like prime rib or prime real estate.) I'd never considered the matter of numerical oddness until I came upon this compound: 奇数 (kisū: odd number)     odd number + number In 奇数, says Halpern, 奇 means "odd number." But the original and most common meaning of 奇 (KI, ku(shiki)) is "unusual, strange, odd," and the meaning "odd number" clearly spun off from that. In both English and... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Today's blog features two parts: a contest and a palindrome puzzle. They're both challenging in their own ways, so 頑張ってください (Ganbatte kudasai: Good luck)! Back next week with a more typical blog!   Contest! Do you want to win a copy of Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters? I'm hoping that my new book will make you fall in love with kanji. I'm also hoping it will serve as a map that orients you in the vast and often confusing world of kanji characters. For a free copy, try your hand at the eight questions in the contest at the first link. Whether you're a kanji newbie or an expert, you'll find a fairly level playing... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary When an actor wins an award for a film, one rarely hears a profound acceptance speech. But that's what happened in January. At the Golden Globes, Colin Farrell won "Best Actor in a Motion Picture—Musical Or Comedy" for In Bruges, a movie I adored. And when he accepted the honor, he equated curiosity to love. "Aha!" I thought. "That's exactly right!" When you're passionately in love with someone or something, you want to know everything you can about that love object. Which is how I feel about kanji. Which is why "Kanji Curiosity" could just as easily be called "Kanji Love" (though the alliteration would disappear). And as it turns out, you can use the kanji for... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary If you've got a good head, you're smart. That works in both English and Japanese: 頭がいい (atama ga ii: smart)     head + good And if you have a bad head? Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense in English (possibly suggesting a headache), but in Japanese the logic continues: 頭が悪い (atama ga warui: dumb, slow)     head + bad OK, then, what if your head is strange or funny? For English speakers, that might conjure up images of Jay Leno (long-chinned), Abe Lincoln (long everything), or Barry Bonds post-"steroids" (plumped-up head). But in Japanese, here's what a funny head gets you: 頭がおかしい (atama ga okashii: insane)     head + funny When it comes to heads, "funny" and... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Not long ago, one of my Japanese-language partners told me this: むちゃがしたくなる。 I had no idea what he was saying, so he wrote it down (thank goodness for Skype's chatting features!) as follows: 無茶がしたくなる。 That didn't help at all. Among other problems, I couldn't figure out where to divide the hiragana, so the romanized rendering seemed like this: Mucha ga shitakunaru. Huh? ¡Mucha confusión! Kensuke explained that したくなる was したい (shitai: I want to do) + なる (naru: to become). The final い of したい had turned into く to accommodate なる. So we had "I want to do" or "I want to become" or some combination of the two. I want to do what? Become what? The first word stumped me.... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Am I crazy? Who's to say? By Einstein's definition, I may well be. He said insanity was repeatedly doing the same thing while hoping for a different outcome. As I write this, I'm drinking caffeinated tea at 7 p.m. All the while, I'm telling myself that it won't affect my sleep. At some deeper level, I also know that if tea has kept me awake on a thousand other occasions, I can probably expect some misery tonight. Crazy, right? Yes, but I can't help it, because I'm crazy about black and green tea. (I mean, black tea and green tea. Not tea that's simultaneously black and green.) Crazy—there's that word again. When you speak of being "crazy about something," it has nothing... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary When my husband read the Sunday New York Times this week, he came upon some kanji in a photo and decided to give me a quiz. Covering all the surrounding English, he said, "You don't get any context. See if you can read this." Here's what it said: 大企業の首切りを許さないぞ！ My first reaction was to panic and to go blank. I don't know why that is. I love kanji as much I love chocolate and tea, and I've never panicked on seeing either of those things—not once. Then again, chocolate and tea don't require much of me, except perhaps willpower! Once I gave myself a moment, though, things started to fall into place. I could easily recognize 切 as ki(ru), "to cut." So what was being... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Last week I mentioned that an email from Japan had left me scratching my head about one word. Actually, more than one word in the letter had that effect! The following sentences also gave me pause: 社員のリストラとか、良くない景況の話ばかりです。それでも人々は健気に精一杯前を向いて生きています。 Shain no risutora toka, yokunai keikyō no hanashi bakari desu. Soredemo hitobito wa kenage ni seiippai mae o muite ikite imasu. With downsizing and so forth, all anybody talks about is the bad economic outlook. Nevertheless, people are bravely doing all they can to look ahead and move forward. There are so many things to explore in this passage that it's hard to know where to begin! So I'll wrestle with each thing in... Show more