JapanesePod101.com Blog
Learn Japanese with Free Daily
Audio and Video Lessons!
Start Your Free Trial 6 FREE Features

More on

眼が冴える (me ga saeru: to be wide awake)
     eyeball + to be wide awake

Note that the first kanji isn’t (me: eye) but rather (GAN, me: eyeball), the first kanji in this compound:

眼鏡 (megane: glasses)     eyeball + lens

Wow, is just ripe for confusion with (nemu(ru): to sleep)!

As for , you may know it as kagami, “mirror.” The kanji also has the yomi of KYŌ. Megane is a special reading (meaning, ateji reading) of 眼鏡, but you can also read it as gankyō, which matches the official yomi.

Back to Breaking It All Down …

Back to the Blog …