Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary When my Japanese-language partner told me about his brother's wedding reception, he used the word 披露, which tripped me up in a variety of ways. I learned that the yomi was ひろう (hirō), and even though the dictionary identified ひろう as a noun, it sure looked like a verb, and I couldn't shake that sense. I eventually had to relent. After all, it's a noun. This compound contains 露 (RO, RŌ, tsuyu), the kanji for dew! Something about both 露 and the English word "dew" appeal to me immensely. I have no idea why, except that when I was young, I frequently passed a sign for a motel called Dew Drop Inn. It was perhaps my first exposure to wordplay, and that sign made something click... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Today we're going to start with dessert—a quiz! Uncharacteristically, the learning portion will come at the end. Below you'll find a game that I had to excise from my forthcoming kanji book, because of space constraints. (Similar exercises remain in the book, but this one got the axe because it was so long.) It seemed like a shame to waste the material, especially after my friend Mayumi-san was nice enough to help me create the game, so I thought I'd present it here. In the sentences below, one kanji appears repeatedly: 覚. This character has quite a few yomi, and the point of the game is to figure out which yomi applies each time. Rewrite the sentences in hiragana or... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary You may have heard that there's a Japanese town called Obama. Well, it's true! The town is in central Japan, on the island of Honshu, in Fukui Prefecture. To understand the origin of the name Obama, you need to know more about the two characters that form that word: 小浜 (Obama)     small + beach As it turns out, Obama is "small beach," making it one of those wonderful Japanese place names that derive entirely from nature. (We have a bunch of those in English, too, but somehow Pleasant Hill and Pine Valley seem horribly suburban and bland by comparison.) With 小浜, you pronounce the first kanji simply as o. Normally, the second isn't bama but... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Let's start with a quick quiz. We’ve seen that 味 (MI, aji) means "flavor," among other things. Given that, what do you think this compound means? 一味     one + flavor a. the best possible flavor b. unique or peculiar flavor c. gang, clan d. monomaniacal To block the answer from view while you think about it, I'll share something cool I saw in LA recently: The orange thing in the car is the setting sun! You may remember how I said awhile back that accepting my new age was as difficult as looking at the sun? I saw this sunset during an endless traffic jam on my birthday. So I guess I managed to look straight at the sun after all! OK, give... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Today we'll learn how to be pretentious in Japanese. If you've ever watched the show Frasier, you may have heard the character Niles order cappuccino with "just a whisper of cinnamon." And if you saw the movie Sideways, you heard the wine snob protagonist refer to one red wine as having "the faintest soupçon of asparagus and just a flutter of a nutty Edam cheese." These characters used an important bit of syntax when they indicated "a touch of" or "a smidge." How important? Well, it's the difference between calling a movie Evil and A Touch of Evil. In Japanese, 味 (MI, aji) enables you to indicate when something has just a hint of this or a touch of that. This kanji... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary It often seems that food is the best entryway into learning Japanese. Without even taking a Japanese class, most of us know words such as sushi, tempura, miso, and so on. Ah, but do you really know all there is to know about miso? Here's the word in the way you already know it: 味噌 (miso: fermented bean paste)     tasty food + boisterous On the Ateji in 味噌 ... 味噌汁 (miso shiru: miso soup)     miso (1st 2 chars.) + soup Because miso is usually white (shiro, 白), I always want to call this miso shiro. (Plus, that rhymes.) Maybe it would help to associate this shiru with the verb "to know" (shi(ru), 知), using the mnemonic,... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary If a man tastes something bitter and then runs away, what do you get? A man in discomfort? A disappointed (that is to say, bitter!) man? No, you get a "sternly handsome" man, whatever that is! 苦味走った (nigamibashitta: sternly handsome)     bitter + taste + to run The first two characters form the word 苦味 (nigami or kumi), meaning "bitterness" or "bitter taste." Meanwhile, 走った (hashitta, voiced here as bashitta) looks like the past tense of the verb 走 (hashi(ru): to run). But actually, 走った functions here as a participle, a verbal adjective describing the implied 男 (otoko: man). That is, he's a man who ran after he ate something bitter. Sounds... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary I recently rented the Japanese movie 茶の味 (Cha no Aji, tea + taste), thinking it might actually be about tea. After all, someone translated the title as The Taste of Tea, so I don't think I was off base in hoping it might be at least partly about Japanese tea. Out of all the uncontrollable passions in my life, tea runs a close second to kanji. If you want to know just how crazy I am about tea, take a look at my tea cabinet. Green teas fill most of the upper shelf, with teabags to their left.Black teas are on the lower right. Decaf teas are on the lower left.There's more at the office. But the sad truth is that the movie wasn't about tea. Not even a little. Well, OK,... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Given the trials and tribulations I described last week, the title of this blog might make you think I'm referring to my mental health. No. I'm doing OK, because the data-recovery crew salvaged almost 100 percent of my data! Yippee! Hurray! And hallelujah! "Putting the Pieces Together" means that today, in the latter half of a two-part review, we'll shift away from last week's focus on individual kanji and will now look at compounds containing those characters. In past blogs, we've spent time discussing all the words you'll encounter in today's quizzes. But of course, kanji being what it is, there's no guarantee that anything has stuck. That's certainly true for me.... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary I've been staring down one of those traumatic birthdays that zeroes out your age. Just as the numbers on a gas pump cycle through too quickly to comprehend, I've zipped through the past decade faster than I can grasp. I'm unwilling to leave this personal decade, but I don't see that I have a choice. When I arrive at the beginning of the new one, will I even know who to be? I've never been able to imagine myself as quite that ancient, and yet I will be, nonetheless. How to adjust? How to forge a new identity (without the slightest motivation to do so)? I can't seem to make my self-image fit my new age. Shouldn't I be wiser or at least taller? Whenever January comes... Show more