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Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Let's start with a quiz today. What do you think the following equation yields? excess + talk a. headache, earache b. gossip c. insincerity d. digression While you think about it, I'll share some photos from my recent trip to New Zealand (so as to block the answer). The Japanese writing is fuzzy. But you can blame any fuzziness on the millions of New Zealand sheep. The sign says this: キウィ・サウス (Kiui Sausu: Kiwi South) 羊の国のセーター (hitsuji no kuni no sētā:     knitwear)      sheep + country I love how "knitwear" turns into "sheep country sweaters"! The characters 喫茶 (kissa: tea house, to... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Happy New Year! Or is it so happy right now? Quite possibly, you’re home with one of these: 宿酔 (shukusui: hangover) And how would I know that you happen to be at home with your hangover? Well, if you're feeling sick, it's likely that you'll want to stay home. But beyond that, the "ingredients" in 宿酔 more or less mandate that you be at home: 宿酔 (shukusui: hangover)     home + to become intoxicated Actually, it would seem from the breakdown (the kanji kind, not the bodily sort) as if you had gotten drunk at home, too. But I'll leave such matters to your discretion. You could probably succeed in getting drunk in any number of locales.   ... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary At this time of year, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate: 12 days of Christmas, 8 days of Chanukah, 7 days of Kwanzaa, and a partridge in a pear tree. But in all this merrymaking, you may have overlooked one important cause for celebration: 赤道祭（sekidōsai: ceremony to celebrate crossing the equator)     red + road + festival The Equator Is the Red Road?! ... As it turns out, an equatorial crossing is exactly what I celebrated this week. Somewhere over the Pacific, as others slept, I hooted and hollered as we crossed from winter into summer en route to New Zealand. I also celebrated the idea of seeing water swirl down the drain in... Show more

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from everyone here at JapanesePod101.com! We're grateful to have listeners just like you, and we're eagerly waiting for the upcoming year to learn Japanese together! And when the New Year comes around, be sure to make a resolution to study Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! Have a healthy and happy holiday season. From Peter, Naomi, Natsuko, Sakura and the whole JapanesePod101.com team!

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary I feel that I've overloaded recent blogs, making us all work way too hard. There's been too much consideration of fine distinctions between similar kanji, too many examples, too many links to click, and too much to read. So it's time for an extended vacation from all that hard work—from all that thinking. (It sometimes seems as though we're never allowed to give our brains a rest, doesn't it? So much to stuff in there and keep straight.) I've decided that, over the next month or so, I'll return to the thing that inspires me most about kanji—cool compounds. In each blog, I'll present some great compounds, grouping them according to a theme (just to provide a reassuring... Show more

Picture this. You’re out holiday shopping. You see a sign for 10% OFF. You feel like you’re getting a really good deal, so you rush into the store and make your purchase. You’re a happy customer. 2 days later… You’re out holiday shopping again. You pass by the same store, and the sale sign doesn’t just catch your eye, it punches you in the face! 20% OFF! You're not such a happy customer. Sound familiar? We’ve all experienced it. You buy something at a low price just to see it selling at a lower one the next day. Now the good deal we got suddenly doesn’t seem so good anymore. And you know what? It didn’t seem fair. In fact, we think responsible people who act early should be rewarded. So…we came up with the Reverse... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary I love the yomi arawa. It rolls off the tongue. And yet the sequence of sounds is also tough to remember—so much so that when I first learned arawa(seru) as the kun-yomi of 表, I had to associate it with a mnemonic: Ottawa. Strangely, those words sound similar—or they do when I pronounce them! Last week we found that 露 can have the yomi of arawa, in which case it means "exposed, scanty, bare, unconcealed, naked." In a tucked-away corner of an August blog, we looked at three other kanji with the kun-yomi of arawa and with similar meanings. So here's what we now have altogether: 1. 露 (arawa: exposed, scanty, bare, unconcealed, naked) 2. 著 (arawa(su): to write,... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary Two weeks ago, we came to know 露 (RO, RŌ, tsuyu) as "dew." So when I saw 露 in the following compound, my mind naturally turned to "dew": 流露 After all, 流 (RYŪ, naga(reru)) means "to flow," and dew could easily flow. But in this case, 露 means "to expose"! Here's the word again: 流露 (ryūro: to disclose, reveal, express)     to flow + to expose In fact, 露 often conveys a sense of exposure. That was actually our first taste of this kanji two weeks ago, when I introduced a compound about introductions: 披露 (hirō: announcement, introduction)     to reveal + to expose We also knew 露 as "to expose" back in March, when we... Show more

Quick Links Welcome to Kanji Curiosity | The Basics | Glossary We saw last week that 露 (RO, RŌ, tsuyu) primarily means "dew." But this kanji has also spun off several auxiliary meanings, most relating to dew metaphorically. Let's take them one by one. DewPhoto: Mustangaly   Tears This will be a very short section, because I can offer you only one expression involving 露 as "tears." But it's a doozy: 袖の露 (sode no tsuyu: tears falling onto the sleeve)     sleeve + tears I'm hoping there's also a phrase for "tears falling onto shoes" or "tears (sparked by poverty) falling onto empty wallet," but if so, I haven't yet found those expressions. If you need to know more about tears in a... Show more

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