Why is Toyoda Toyota?

Since I have a grasp of Japanese, people keep asking me why Toyota has a CEO named Akio Toyoda (who's the grandson of the founder of the company), because his name is spelled with a "d" instead of a "t". Here's the Japanese version of his name: 豊田章男 (Japan puts last names first, so it reads "Toyoda Akio").

Here's what's interesting: The first kanji 豊 is "toyo", which is one of the Japanese (kun) readings (as opposed to the Chinese "on" readings). But the second kanji is 田 "ta". It becomes "da" in the name because of lenition. An English version of such a sound change is when we say "waiter" like "waider": we pronounce the "t" like a "d" before the "er". So in Japanese the same thing happens: after certain sounds, the "t" becomes a "d".

So really, the name "Toyota" is a raw pronunciation of the founder's name. And what's even more interesting is what the Washington Post found out:

Writing "Toyoda" in Japanese requires 10 brush strokes...but writing "Toyota" requires eight..."Ten" consists of two strokes crossed against each other and resembles the "plus" symbol, or even a crossroads or an uncertain path. Not a good omen for a company.

And, according to the Detroit Free Press:

The number eight is considered good luck in Japan because of the way it is written: two strokes side by side, placed so that the character resembles an open mountain top.

So let's compare: this is 10 in Japanese: 十 and this is 8 in Japanese: 八

In Japanese, they decided to write the company's name in katakana instead of kanji, so "Toyoda" looks like トヨダ (10 strokes) and "Toyota looks like トヨタ (8 strokes). They decided on the latter.

What the Free Press gets wrong, however, is saying that the hard "t" sound is "softer" than the "d" sound. Even in English, "d" is softer than "t".

Well after I wrote all this, I decided to check out the popular Language Log (where linguists post, not simple language lovers like me), and saw that they discussed the topic in way more depth, including refuting what the newspapers reported.

So here's my obvious conclusion: it's ironic that they went to all that trouble to switch from "Toyoda" to "Toyota" because Americans pronounce it "Toyoda" anyway!

What I'm trying to read

In Japanese class, we were reading part of the book 盛田昭夫語録 [Morita Akio Sayings], which is about Akio Morita, who cofounded Sony. We read part of the sixth chapter 父を語る(盛田英夫) [Talking about Father (Morita Hideo)], where his son, Hideo, talks about growing up with his dad. Now I'm re-reading what we studied in class so that I can translate part of it to post here. So stay tuned...you'll find out in English what Akio Morita was like, at least from the perspective of his son.

ハッピー・バレンタインデー

To continue my new year's resolution to consistently study Japanese, I've decided to title my Valentine's Day post in Japanese (though it's of course in katakana since China nor Japan invented it).

There's an article about Valentine's Day in easy-to-read Japanese (they provide all the furigana for any kanji you might not know) at the Yomiuri online. It seems like the articles are for people to learn Japanese, but they are part of a series of English learning articles. Maybe they're for both English and Japanese speakers, since the information is in easy Japanese with some English phrases thrown in. There's also a cute video that will help you practice English with Japanese accents.

Facebook in Japanese is fun!

I've been using Facebook in British English, but today I decided to mix it up and use it in Japanese. It's really great! Since I've already seen a lot of the stuff in English, I can figure out what the Japanese is, but if I want to understand all the kanji, then I go to my beloved Popjisyo to get the exact reading.

There are many cool things about the Japanese version, including: the use of さん (san) after everyone's name, the politeness of the Facebookチーム because in English they usually say nothing in an email alert, but in Japanese they have the formal closing phrase よろしくお願いいたします. And if you "like" someone's status or link, it becomes "いいね！" in Japanese. And of course, it's neato to see all the Japanese everywhere. Very cool and I highly recommend using Facebook in a language that you're learning because it's good practice. And nerdy fun!

Still studying Japanese

I said at the beginning of this year that I would make it a resolution to study Japanese consistently, and that's what I've been doing, which is unbelievable because it's hard to remain disciplined, especially while trying to still do stuff in the volatile business of Radio. I touch base with Japanese almost every day, though sometimes I take a couple days off due to complex commitments or simple laziness :D But I will definitely be studying it tomorrow as long as I can, and my brain will probably be happy and pleasantly occupied because I sometimes feel like my mind hasn't wrapped itself around enough kanji to make it settle down.

Translation of what I ate

I got some instant soup (鍋うどんきつね) from a Japanese store and had to follow the directions in Japanese, since they only bothered to translate the company's information and ingredients. So since I went to the trouble to decipher the directions, I've decided to post the original text and translation here:

御召し上がり方
スープをコップ１杯半の湯又は水でうすめて鍋に入れ、火にかけて煮込んで下さい。

Directions
Add one and a half cups of hot water or water to the soup, then heat it in a pot.

If you know Japanese, then you'll notice that they've been pretty wordy to express the simple concept of "directions". And what's notable is that they say "hot water or water" which in English sounds strange. And why can't you add the water to the soup *in* the pot instead of before putting it all in? Maybe someone would have a different translation, but it rolls out that way to me. I did omit the word "dilute" (うすめて) because it's unnecessary, so the English you see is a simple, straightforward rendering of what was communicated in Japanese.

謹賀新年

The reason why I titled my Happy New Year post in Japanese is because one of my New Year's resolutions is to translate more Japanese! I didn't do so much last year because I ended up doing more in radio, but now that it's receded I can now resume translating. Plus, my brain has become mushy and I really need to challenge it with more kanji pain. Today I read some Japanese and my brain thanked me for occupying it because it's been quite dormant for a few weeks.

And...
みなさん, 新年明けましておめでとうございます. 今年もよろしくお願いいたします.

Mayumi Heene's name in katakana instead of kanji

The Japanese woman who is going to jail for using her son in a balloon hoax is still a Japanese citizen, but instead of the Japanese press using kanji for her name (as either 真由美 or 真弓), they're using katakana (マユミ). In a CNN/Yahoo article they say:

虚偽通報の罪に問われた妻の マユミ 被告は禁固20日を言い渡されたが、子供たちの面倒を見るためにとの配慮で、リチャード被告が刑期を終えた後の服役となる。

And in an article from the Mainichi newspaper they say:

夫のリチャード・ヒーニー被告（４８）を禁固９０日（うち６０日間は日中に建設労働）、妻の マユミ 被告（４５）を禁固２０日とした。

This is significant because katakana usually represents foreign names, words, and concepts. But she's not a foreigner. She hasn't become an American citizen, and there was actually a possibility that they were going to deport her. But from the Japanese media's perspective, her name is foreign. Is that because she's lived in the US for years and is married to an American? Or did the crime make her even more distant in their eyes? I'd be curious to know why these news outlets spelled her name that way.

Kanji practice site

Wow, Dartmouth has some really nice Japanese resources. They built a kanji site where you can practice reading, listening, and even watching someone write the kanji in a mini video! And the person who is voicing the Japanese sentences sounds excellent--obvious a native speaker who knows how to read beautifully. It has up to 400 kanji, and you can listen to the on-yomi and kun-yomi readings of each character and follow along with the transcription of what is being said. A very good site--one of the reasons why I'm glad universities have lots of money.

I was actually responsible today

I've had a strange schedule lately, so today I decided to take it easy while it was raining outside. I was quite lazy, though I did manage to do a bit of work, but I didn't do laundry or clean or even read any of my books.

Then I thought, "Hey, I should study Japanese today since there was no class last night," but I didn't want to read anything online because I'd already killed lots of time watching various episodes of comedians and stupid sitcoms, and I'm not one of those folks who likes to spend a ton of time online.

The option was to go to the Japanese Consulate, where they have a library that's open to the public every weekday. I figured if I went there, surrounded by Japanese books and magazines, and even some Japanese people, it would force me to study. So after I managed to break through my laziness, I actually went there, got a kanji dictionary and Japanese-English dictionary off the shelf, grabbed a manga, and got to work.

Since I got there not too far before closing time, I didn't study as long as I wanted, but at least I did! So I'll be going back next week because I've discovered that I *can* be responsible and disciplined when Japanese beckons :D

Obama as a Japanese verb

Mad Minerva told me about a blog about Japan that reports the use of Obama as a verb:

obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think “Yes we can, Yes we can,” and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).

I pasted this sample sentence ほら、何落ち込んでいるんだよ。オバめよ、オバめ。that he used in his blog into Popjisyo (which is now my homepage) and they had no translation for オバめ ("obame"). So it's a really new, and possibly obscure, phrase...until now, because it looks like a lot of people are blogging about it :D

Pink castle!

I sometimes read the Japanese Yahoo site to practice my reading skills, and I found this pretty pink castle. The Japanese caption says that the Nagoya Castle was lit up pink to raise awareness for the early detection of breast cancer. The castle is located within the city, and it's being restored, so that's why there's a construction site there.

English that's probably been translated from Japanese or that's just odd

I ended up at the website of Zoom, a Japanese company that makes sound gear. The Japanese version of the site is interesting, of course, but what's even more interesting is the English version.

The writing is a little stilted. It's not just wordy, but seems rigid, so I've concluded that it's probably been translated from Japanese. At least some of the site has probably been translated, because going from Japanese to English is VERY hard and sometimes people get so caught up in translating, they forget to check if the English sounds natural, not Japanese-Englishy (yes, that "y" at the end was intentional).

On one part of the Zoom site, they have this odd sentence that I had to read twice because I wasn't sure why they used the word "some" in front of "engineers":

The company was so named by a group of founding some engineers who chose "Zoom" for the simple reason that it would stand out in an alphabetical listing by starting with the letter "Z."

Another odd thing I noticed is that one of the links on the right and the title of the page say "The Zoom History". Usually an English site would say "Zoom's History" or "The History of Zoom" ie, there would be no "the" at the beginning. The difference between "the" and "a", and the correct use of articles, are hard for non-native speakers to figure out, which is another sign that the site wasn't at least checked by a native speaker.

There are also either typos, as in "Nearly all of Zoom products..." (there has to be a possessive there) or lack of plurals. On the FAQ page, they say "Common Question"--but there is more than one! So obviously it should be "questions". And what about the top navigation area? One of the buttons says "Product", as in "We only offer one product". English sites would probably never keep it singular unless they were literally offering just ONE product.

There are plenty of native English speakers in Japan who know how to write English well, and Japanese companies usually have the money to hire good English copywriters and editors (as opposed to companies in poorer countries that just plop a non-native English speaker in front of a computer and tell them to translate or write the English themselves because it's a lot cheaper than hiring a foreigner who would definitely do it a lot better). It's just too bad that they don't make sure their English looks good.

But at least they had the incredible talent to create both an English and Japanese site--that's hard to build!

Japanese guy shocked by large American drink

I found a Japanese site that gives information about the US, and was amused by the post: 映画館でこのコーラはMサイズ(WHAT!?). [Translation: this cola at the movie theater is an M size (WHAT!?)]

Here's the short blog post in Japanese, and below it is my translation. I've just tried for over an hour to upload the picture, but for some reason, Blogger isn't able to upload images, so you'll have to see the photo at the site.

金曜日に映画館に行きました。何かが飲みたいなと思いましたから、飲み物を買って、びっくりした！Mサイズは私の頭（頭が大きいよ）より大きかった。確かに、このコーラは５ドル（５００円ぐらい）だったが、これを飲めません！映画館の飲み物／食べ物は特に大きいですが、これは馬鹿みたいです。

次回、Lサイズを見せるために買ってあげる。バケツでしょうか？

My translation:

I went to the movie theater on Friday. I wanted to drink something, so I got a drink, and I was surprised! The M size was bigger than my head (my head is big). This cola was five dollars (about 500 yen), but I couldn't drink it! The drinks and food at the movie theater are very big--that's dumb.

Next time, I'm going to get the L size to see what it's like. Is it going to be a bucket?

And to that guy I say: ようこそアメリカへ! Welcome to America!

Truly translating Japanese

I said in my last post that I was going to resume reading Japanese and doing some translations, and that's what I've really been doing. I stayed up very late last night reading some text and trying to translate it, and it took a while, because while I can grasp the meaning, putting it into some type of sense into English takes a lot more brain action.

And today, when my ESL students were taking a test, I read more Japanese, and noticed that I really slow down and almost read between the strokes within the kanji. It's as if I become a microscope and really want to understand what I'm reading. Maybe that's what having reading problems in English is like for people who speak the language natively.

I finally went to Japanese class

I've had to miss Japanese class for more than a couple of months because I got some cool work doing voiceovers and production at a great Chicago station. Because of the Japanese drought, I decided to go to the station earlier to see if I had a lot of work, because sometimes I get there and there's not much to do, and other times I have quite a bit to do. There was nothing there, so I decided to go to my class. I'm very glad I got to go! But I noticed that I couldn't read as many kanji as before. So I'm going to publicly say that I WILL resume my Japanese reading, and will sometimes post translations here in order to practice and show people that I can actually translate it into English :D

I will also say publicly that I've noticed that my obsession with trying to translate correctly is similar to the obsession I've acquired of trying to get voiceovers right. Especially tonight (I went there after class) when a very accomplished and talented local media star who's also my boss was pointing out areas where I need to improve. Then I listened to other spots I did, and realized that some folks might not like them either. So now I'm wondering: will I be able to succeed?

Basically, I want to do things well, and when I was doing a lot of translating at one point, I remember getting really upset at my inability to know all the kanji on the planet--I would really stress out and think I'd never make it. But I got through it and did okay, which is what I have to realize now, because I feel the same extreme concern (ie, worry) about getting broadcasting right as well!

Japanese spelling of sensei and dojo

Sometimes I meet people who do karate or other Japanese-based martial arts, and they'll call their teacher "sensei" and the place where they practice "dojo," and that's all the Japanese they know. But have they ever wondered what those words look like in Japanese?

So I decided to post those words here in the Japanese Kanji and Hiragana, just in case people want to see what they look like.

Sensei
kanji: 先生
hiragana: せんせい


Dojo
kanji: 道場
hiragana: どうじょう

Note: the English transliteration and reading of "sensei" is correct, but the pronunciation and transliteration for "dojo" isn't. It should really be pronounced with long o's, like "dohjoh", which means the spelling of the English representation should be different as well. Usually the long "o" is represented with "ou" or an "o" with a horizontal line over it. So some dictionaries portray it as "doujou" or "dōjō".

Japanese article about standing at Canon

There's a blog post circulating out there about how Canon is making their employees stand and walk faster at work to increase productivity and employee relationships.

If you want to see the original Japanese article, you can find it at a Japanese IT site.

The title is 本当に「いす」がなかった，キヤノン電子のオフィス (There really are no chairs at the Canon Electronics office).

And here's the introductory paragraph (no time to translate it now, though I might do it after I fulfill my radio duties):

先日，キヤノン電子の酒巻久社長に，桜が満開となっていた同社の秩父工場（写真1）を案内していただいた。酒巻社長は『椅子とパソコンをなくせば会社は伸びる！』（祥伝社）の著者であり，職場から「いす」をなくすという大胆な改革を実行した人である。秩父工場内には，応接室など一部を除き，会議室にも，開発部門や管理部門のオフィスにもいすがない。もちろん，社長室にもないという。

Watch anime and Korean dramas for free!

If you want to improve your Korean or Japanese, go to Crunchyroll. There are lots of Japanese anime (don't know if I should add an "s" because Japanese doesn't have plurals) and Korean dramas with English subtitles. I think there might be Japanese dramas but I couldn't find any in the recent list. You can also subscribe to bypass advertising and get access to even more anime.

I'm not into anime, but since they have English subtitles, they'd be hard to resist because it's a good way to improve my diminishing Japanese skills.

(thanks to Lumpy for the heads up)

Japanese commercial with English subtitles

This is a good way to practice your Japanese because you can see the English translation beneath. It's also entertaining and combines historical and modern culture.

Keitai Shosetsu (cell phone novels)

I was reading about keitai shosetsu (ケータイ小説), which literally means cell phone [keitai] novel [shosetsu], and had no idea how popular they've become in Japan.

One article explains how it works:

Novels are posted by members of cell phone community sites to be downloaded for free and read on other cell phones...The works are published in 70-word installments, or abbreviated chapters that are the ideal length to be read between shorter train stops. This means that, despite small cell phone screens, lots of white space is left for ease of reading. Multiple short lines of compressed sentences, mostly composed of fragmentary dialogue, are strung together with lots of cell phone-only symbols. The resulting works are emotional, fast-paced and highly visual, with an impact not unlike manga.

And another article says that some authors have gotten good book deals:

These days, books aren’t selling so well, but Keitai Shosetsu, which have low production and promotion costs, have managed to create mass appeal to thousands of readers. Ironically, when they’re bound and printed, Keitai Shosetsu often wind up on the best seller list. Major publishers are starting to acknowledge this new market and there are already 30 professional Keitai Shosetsu writers in Japan.

I also managed to find the Japanese Wikipedia article about keitai shosetsu, with a number of links to books and sites.

I wonder if they'll become popular in the US eventually, or if this is just a Japanese phenomenon.

I finally met a Japanese person

There aren't a lot of Japanese people in Chicago, though there were more in the mid-80's to mid-90's before their economy started going down and some companies either folded or had to decrease their American branches.

The station where I work is next to a Japanese company, and I've said hello to some Japanese people from there, and have definitely eavesdropped on their conversations, but I've never really "met" anyone from there. One time I talked to a Japanese guy from another Japanese company which is located on a higher floor, and he invited me to stop by, but I wasn't sure if he meant it, plus I forgot the name of the company, and I didn't want to try to figure it out. And I forgot his name of course, so the whole opportunity was just lost.

Several months passed until I interacted with another Japanese person: one day I saw an Asian woman on the elevator, and I asked her if she was Japanese, and she said yes. Then we talked in English and I told her in Japanese that I can speak it a bit (I didn't say I could speak it pretty well because that's too arrogant for their culture, plus for all I know my Japanese could be quite lame to her ears). So we spoke a little bit of Japanese and I thought, "This could be a good opportunity to actually socialize with one of them."

So I told her where I work, and suggested we go out to lunch sometime, and she said yes, and invited me to stop by the company. This time, I made sure to get her name and of course knew where the company was, so I walked in there a few days ago and she and a couple coworkers invited me out to lunch, though I had to decline because I had other plans.

But we are actually going to get together this week, so the bottom line is: not only did I finally meet a Japanese person, but I'll be able to actually talk to them in Japanese occasionally, and will finally be able to practice Japanese outside of my Japanese class! Not a big deal to folks who live in Asia, but it is to Chicago-dwelling me!

"Drunk" Japanese Finance Minister with Japanese Subtitles

Watch more LiveLeak videos on AOL Video

This video of the "drunk" (I put it in quotes because he didn't say he was) Finance Minister is all over the place, but this version has Japanese subtitles. So in case you don't understand drunk Japanese, you can follow what he's saying by reading the subtitles. Now I understand what the heck he was saying, because I don't understand Drunk Japanese either, especially when the vocabulary is more complicated.

I love Japanese

I take Japanese once a week, and sometimes I'm so tired from work and my brain has been stretched to the point where trying to stuff Japanese in there might end up tearing it open.

But then when I look at the Japanese text, the kanji looks friendly instead of its usual scary self, and I love learning new vocabulary, even though I tend to forget it if I don't see it again for a while.

I guess that studying Japanese can be a very enjoyable diversion even though it's a brain-bender because it's stimulating and uses a part of my brain that I don't tend to use elsewhere. Not that the process is easy, but it's just really enjoyable.

When Japanese ends up in Chinese

When I translated Japanese years ago and did a search online, I ended up on Japanese pages. But it seems like there are a lot more Chinese sites out there recently because now if I don't know a Japanese word and do a search online to find out the meaning, I keep ending up on Chinese pages that contain the same characters as the Japanese word.

For instance, I saw the word 高分子 (koubunshi) and wanted to find out how it was used in context (it means "macromolecule" and "polymer"), and hit so many Chinese pages, I had to choose the "Japanese" option to be able to find just those pages.

Maybe it's scientific and technical stuff that is more prevalent in Chinese, especially since they block so many sites and information over there, but it really shows that they've entered the digital age because they definitely have crowded out Japanese sources online.

Japanese smell site

There's a Japanese smell site called Nioibu.com ("nioi" means "smell"), which "pinpoints and describes smells from all over the world, mapping them using Google Maps."

My friend, Chris, who I met in Japanese class, was quoted in this article:

As of Tuesday, there were just four smell reports out of North America. The balloon over Chicago—near Michigan Avenue and Ontario Street—says, "A room filled with the aroma of lightly burned coffee," Chris Kelly of the Japanese Information Center in Chicago told us. "Then it goes on to say, 'All around the United States it smells like coffee you would get at offices and schools.'"

An odd but cool site--and a good way to practice Japanese!

Pronunciation of tofu

I've noticed that people pronounce "tofu" like to-FU. As if there's an accent on the second syllable. Maybe they think they're speaking French or something.

The pronunciation is TO-fu, because in Japanese it's 豆腐, where the first kanji is とう (tou) so the "o" is long, and the second kanji is ふ (fu), which is a short sound.

What kabuki looks like

I've seen the word "kabuki" everywhere, but when I saw it in Japanese, I didn't recognize it: 歌舞伎

I guess because I've seen it so often in English, it's odd to see what it really should look like.

news24 loads!

After much time trying to figure out what was wrong with my Internet access because I couldn't access foreign sites or government sites, and after whining about it, it finally worked itself out and now I can go to News24.jp! The only problem is that I can't access it from anywhere in my home because there's something wrong with the wireless router, which might have been the cause of my strange accessibility problems.

My ISP said they'd never heard of such a thing: why wouldn't I be able to go to foreign and government sites? I still don't know what was happening, but at least I can now view Japanese news and practice reading it as well. So thanks for putting up with my whining and have a nice day :D

What does "good" at Japanese mean?

I've noticed that there are Westerners who will say that they're good at Japanese, but they can't really read it. Which makes me wonder if being "good" at Japanese means that you have to be able to read *and* speak it.

Of course, Japanese is difficult to read, so a lot of Westerners spend their time trying to become fluent. But I think it's weird when I meet someone who's fluent who can barely read it beyond hiragana and katakana.

I wonder what Japanese people think--they talk with Westerners in Japanese, but when they go out to eat, for instance, and the Westerner can't read the menu so well (or at all), does their opinion of them change?

When I was living there, I met a lot of Japanese people who expected foreigners to not speak it, let alone read it, so maybe their expectations are already low.

Japanese news site

A really smart guy I know who speaks both Japanese and Chinese fluently (and Spanish too, I think) told me about a Japanese news site news24.jp that has both video and text. He said that he spends 30 minutes a day listening and reading, and his Japanese is awesome. It's not great just because of that site, but I'm sure it helps him maintain his aptitude.

For some reason, I haven't been able to access the site, but I'm going to try to make that a daily habit too (unless it ends up being too difficult).

Failed attempt at understanding Japanese

I work in a building with a couple of Japanese companies, and sometimes I'm lucky to hear some Japanese conversations going on in the hall or elevator. Today a couple of Japanese businessmen got on the elevator and were talking about something--but I couldn't totally understand! I know that they were talking about business and work, but I couldn't get the details. Little did they know that I was intensely eavesdropping--they probably thought I was a clueless American :D But still, in a way I was clueless because I couldn't decipher everything they were saying.

This may not be a big deal to a lot of people, but to me it is because I still study and translate Japanese, but I think I've been away from Japan for too long and there aren't enough Japanese people around to get enough listening practice. Maybe those guys were using idioms or more polite language than I was used to--I don't know. But I hope to keep running into Japanese people to be able to improve my eavesdropping skills :D

Original Japanese Speed Racer opening with English subtitles

The show was called "Mach Go Go Go" in Japan, but was called Speed Racer in the US. I didn't check the translation, so let's hope it's correct :D

Below is the introduction and close of the American Speed Racer show that I used to watch (the Japanese close is the same, except with no titles and they sing "Mach Go" instead of "Speed Racer").

I just eavesdropped on a Japanese conversation

I hear different languages every day, but I don't hear Japanese that much, even though I live near the Japanese Consulate and work near a Japanese company. Tonight I walked to the store, and heard a couple of women talking. I didn't zone in on what they were saying because sometimes I initially think people are speaking Japanese when they're really speaking Korean (I can tell the difference between the two languages btw, but I need to get accustomed to them when I hear them in a sea of English).

The two women were talking about areas of Chicago, and I was psyched! There weren't many people around, so I could try to figure out what they were saying. The problem was that I looked like a creep because I slowed my usual fast pace to hover within close proximity to their voices. At times I couldn't hear them, so I slowed down even more to the point where someone might think we were part of the same group. I wonder if they noticed that I was eavesdropping. Eventually they drifted away, and I couldn't hear everything they were saying due to wind and traffic. But at least I heard something.

What I could figure out was that the younger woman was either born in the US or had spent quite a bit of time here, because she would occasionally throw in teeny English phrases, but very briefly, as if it was natural for her to switch between the two languages. Plus, even though her accent was good, it wasn't as "native" as the older woman. Bottom line: that younger woman is lucky to be fluent in both (which I'm assuming she is).

Now I have to get in the habit of eavesdropping on my ESL students because they often speak Spanish and my Spanish at this point is quite lame, and I have plenty of chances to at least get my ear used to it and even practice once in a while.

It's hard to translate Japanese when I have other work too

I used to do mostly language stuff, so I'd divide my work by doing translating on certain days, interspersed with other work on the non-translating days. But lately I've been busy with radio (which is one of the reasons why it's hard to take language classes), and it's really hard to translate after reporting to work before dawn. Even though today is Labor Day, I had to be at work at 4, then had non-work obligations after that, took a nap, then started tackling Japanese. But the mind power that's required to translate Japanese is far more than what's needed for French or Spanish or Portuguese, so I'm still not done, and I have to go to bed soon. And my mind is definitely active from so much Japanese processing, but it feels maxed-out, and I think I'll have to swim or go for a walk before sleeping, otherwise I'll have kanji and complex syntax dreams.

Thus concludes my Labor Day Japanese Translating Report.

This is KAZU?

This is how hard Japanese names are (as if Japanese isn't difficult enough): the character 一 means "one" and can be pronounced different ways. People usually think it's "ichi" or "hitotsu" because that's the most common reading, and if it's combined with other kanji, the pronunciation alters, though it's based on the basic reading of the character, so it's not such a big deal.

But I had to look up this name: 一哉 which is probably very common in Japanese, but I had no idea how it was supposed to be transliterated. After much searching, I found out it is Kazuya. 一哉 is KAZUYA? I know the second character can be pronounced "ya", but 一 is KAZU? What? How the heck are we supposed to learn this language?

Do you see how crazy Japanese can make people, and what headaches it can cause?

This is why my brain goes on over-drive when I try to translate it or make sense of it. This is why French and Portuguese and Spanish seem relatively easy :D

Japanese with Mexican

I just did something quite nerdy: after my Japanese class, I went to a Mexican restaurant with a couple of very smart fellow students, and one of them said we should speak Japanese. So for most of our time there, we did that, until I realized that one of them wasn't paying attention to my badly spoken reflections. So we switched to English towards the end. But it was really nifty to be Japanese-speaking Americans in a Mexican restaurant. At least we got some practice, since I don't get many chances to speak.

This Japanese guy pimped his roomba

(A bit of Japanese entertainment I saw at Mad Minerva)

Japanese government internet TV

The concept is cool: the Japanese government posted a bunch of videos at a government "TV" site though they're not the most interesting on the planet. But still, it's a good idea. Some of the videos are in Chinese, Korean, and English.

The office in Japanese

I work with some folks who watch "The Office" (the American version), but I don't usually watch it because it doesn't seem that funny. This clip is funny, though, not only because they're speaking Japanese with odd accents while maintaining their Americanisms, but because it pokes fun at British humor as well (what Ricky Gervais says at the end). It's also funny to see how Westerners portray Japan (though I bet a well-informed person wrote the sketch, because it has some good Japanese details).

Japanese break

I never thought I'd say this, but I need a Japanese break (instead of the usual French one) because I've been out of the translating and language scene for a bit, due to recent radio bounty. So even though I've been awake since before 2 AM and haven't yet slept, I'm going to go to Japanese class because I need serious Japanese practice and input.

So I guess sometimes Japanese is my friend, after all :D

Is it still popular?

Whenever I see advice about learning kanji, I think about the book Remembering the Kanji. When I was living in Japan, it seemed like everyone who wanted to learn how to read Japanese had that book. I bought it, too, but I didn't finish reading it. I wonder how many people nowadays have that book, or if it's as popular as it used to be. It seems like a book that people buy, but don't finish.

gusset from machi

The more Japanese I read and translate, the less katakana I seem to know. I think it's also because more katakana words have entered the language because of globalization.

I was recently confounded by the word マチ (machi). It didn't originate from English, because it was describing the bottom of a bag. So I did a search, and found out that it means gusset, which is "a usually diamond-shaped or triangular insert in a seam...to provide expansion or reinforcement."

I also found some websites of companies that sell bags with gussets. What's lame is that I'd never heard of a "gusset" before. It sounded like an old word, and I was right about that, since it comes from Middle English (16th century). I'd also never heard anyone use the word "gusset", and I'm sure if I were to ask people if they knew what it was, I'd get different responses.

Now that I know the meaning, I still don't know what language "machi" comes from.

Update: commenter Paul said that "machi" isn't a foreign word (マチ), but is the reading (まち) for 襠! My bad :(

Noodle is complicated

Often in Japanese, we see the word for "noodle" in hiragana: めん (men). But sometimes it appears in its kanji form: 麺

For such a simple word and concept, that kanji is certainly complicated. Though the reading is easy to remember, since the right-hand side has a character that is pronounced "men". So at least we can relax about that.

This is soap?

I had to translate the katakana word シャボン (shabon) from Japanese into English, but I couldn't figure out what it meant. Usually I can figure katakana words out because they usually come from English, but this was baffling, so I went to my beloved Popjisyo (though the online katakana dictionary has it too). It means "soap" and is derived from the Portuguese word "sabão."

Ok, I have some questions: why did they decide to use the Portuguese word for soap instead of the English word, which is ソープ (soupu) in katakana? And why don't they just use the Japanese word for soap 石鹸 (sekken)? And by the way, how does シャボン (shabon) sound like sabão? They sound quite different from each other.

Maybe they wanted to be fancy: by choosing the Portuguese word, they were being a little more "exotic" and "special" since English is often used. As for the katakana representation of "sabao", maybe they were trying to capture the "oa" sound at the end of Portuguese words that sound like "n" to some of us lame Portuguese speakers.

Repetition works

A while ago when I was teaching ESL, a coworker said that he likes to do round-robin reading, which is having each student read a part of a text, and then when all of it has been read, the students go around and read it again. He said that he noticed the students' reading became better, but I never did that activity in class because I thought the students wouldn't enjoy it. But I was wrong.

Recently in Japanese class, we've been doing round-robin reading. At first I wondered what the purpose was, and if the teacher knew what she was doing. But last night the penny dropped: we were on our third reading of a short essay, and I really felt a lot more comfortable with the text. And that's important, because seeing a bunch of kanji and vocabulary that I don't understand can be intimidating, and during the first read, I focus more on getting through the individual words rather than trying to understand the entire text. But by the end, I feel like I have a better grasp of what is going on.

So I'm going to use that activity in my ESL class, for sure.

Online katakana dictionary!

I have a katakana dictionary in book form, but I couldn't find a word in it, so I looked online to do the usual "what does this word mean in context" thing, and came upon an online katakana dictionary created by a Japanese guy named Yamada Yosuke (or, in the English version of the name, Yosuke Yamada, since Yamada is his last name). At least that was the name I saw after the Japanese word for "publisher".

What is really great is that he gives you the katakana word, the English meaning, then an example in Japanese! I hope he never takes this site down!

I need mnemonics

I was at Japanese class tonight, and saw a kanji that I should have known. So I used a mnemonic to remember it, and when I saw it again, I remembered what the reading was.

When I first studied Japanese, I always used mnemonics because that was the only way I was going to make sense of that very different language. But as I learned more kanji, I thought there wasn't a "need" to use mnemonics anymore. I guess I figured I could manage to memorize them without such a "crutch", but mnemonics really are helpful. I knew that, but I thought I was stronger than that. Well, there's nothing weak or wimpy about mnemonics, so I'm going to resume using them. They're not just for beginners.

Sometimes Japanese is relaxing

Japanese is very hard to translate because it requires maximum brain energy to convert such different expressions into natural English, but lately, it's been relaxing. I think it's because I've been spending many hours working and doing intellectual-type of work, and when I translate Japanese, it's a break from all that. It's still intellectual, but it requires different mental efforts. Mental efforts. Now that sounds like Japanese-English (Japlish). Which means I need to take a break from Japanese as well.

Swedish Meguro

Sometimes I have to write Japanese addresses in English, and the prefectures aren't hard to figure out because such lists are everywhere. But the more detailed the addresses get, the more difficult it becomes to get correct readings of the words because the combination of kanji can lead to numerous readings. Even Japanese people don't always know the readings when they hear an address--they spend time on the phone or in conversations explaining which kanji represent which sounds to describe where they live or want to send a package.

So when I had to find out about sections of the Meguro area of Tokyo, I did a search online. Wikipedia does a great job of breaking down the sounds of various districts, so I looked for such an entry in a google search, and interestingly, I came upon the Swedish Wikipedia. It had what I was looking for--a list of areas of Meguro, and the task was made even more enjoyable because it was cool to see Swedish surrounding what I needed in Japanese.

Goo

Here's a little victory I had today, which may seem insignificant to people who don't have to battle kanji or other difficult Japanese stuff: I was able to find out the meaning of a word by reading it in context--in Japanese. I feel like a grown-up.

In trying to find out the meaning of the word, which didn't exist in my large kanji dictionary, my even larger Japanese-English dictionary, or my beloved Popjisyo, I discovered Goo. It has lots of stuff, including a Japanese (kokugo) dictionary, English-Japanese dictionary, Japanese-English dictionary, and searches in Japanese Wikipedia.

I haven't tested out a lot of words there, but the name is totally cute.

One of the things that's annoying about Japanese

Japanese is enjoyable to study, but there are some things that are annoying about it, especially for a Westerner like me.

If I have a question about French, I can type in the word or phrase that I'm looking for in a Google search, and can come upon online discussions or dictionaries or whatever pretty easily--someone somewhere knows what the words are in English. Or I can read French text that provides context for what I'm looking for.

But with Japanese, it's not very easy to find discussions online or use dictionaries quickly, because if you're reading Japanese on paper, you can't just quickly type in the word or phrase on the computer to do a search. You have to go through a lot of steps to find out what the heck anything means. First you have to change your computer's settings to Japanese, then type in the reading using the English keyboard which then pops up a box with a bunch of kanji in it. Then you have to look through the kanji to choose what you need, then you can paste it in the Google search box or use one of the online text readers such as Popjisyo. And there aren't a lot of Westerners discussing meanings of Japanese online--perhaps they represent a fraction of the number of French-speaking/reading folks.

It obviously takes a while, so it's easier to use a book. Unlike French, which you can research more conveniently online.

I need to be friends with kanji

To prepare for the translating that I've resumed, I started to brush up on my kanji with some flashcards that I made a while ago. There are many kanji that I've forgotten, which means many headaches are in store for me. But I already feel invigorated, stimulated, and challenged enough to keep my brain fully occupied.

I remember writing "friends" on the front of a kanji notebook that I created a while ago because I figured that was the only way I was going to be able to memorize them--if I considered them my "friends" instead of "foes" that I had to try to stuff in my brain.

If you're wondering why all this Japanese-related whining is occuring, it's because Japanese is hard. But it's worth the pain :D

Today is under construction

Somebody sent me this picture of a Japanese sign--it's an odd translation that actually has a philosophical message. So maybe the translator is an aspiring poet :)

Are Japanese snacks scary?

I'm planning to have people over for Japanese snacks and drinks, and I think some people are sort of scared about it. Why, I don't know, because Japanese snacks don't bite. I've noticed varying reactions, from "cool!" to "oh...why?" to "yeah, I'm uh busy." Living abroad made me see things differently, to the point of changing my definitions of what "normal" and "odd" are. But I think some people aren't as, well, adventurous. Maybe it's weird and possibly nerdy to have a Japanese snack party, but life is bland enough to necessitate weirdly harmless things.

Erroneous characters

Somebody sent me a link to an article that's no longer new news, but some people may not know about it: the wrong Japanese on the Wikipedia logo. What's funny is that it's written in katakana, which is a script that even people who can't read Japanese well usually learn quite decently because it is usually used for foreign (non-Japanese) words, and people learn at least how to write their names with it.

I can't believe with all the people who use and write Wikipedia, they couldn't get such a simple thing right. As the image says, the correct characters spell "wi" but the ones that Wikipedia originally used spell "kwi". And that's something else I'm wondering about: why didn't the New York Times, which published the story and the image, say what Wikipedia used? All they said is that it "contains two erroneous characters."

WRONG.

It contains ONE erroneous character because "wi" and "kwi" use the SAME second character イ which is "i".

Update: komfo pointed out that the second erroneous character is the Devanagari one--I was just focusing on the Japanese ones.

Midwest Japan site

A guy in my Japanese class who works at the Japanese Consulate created the Japan Media Midwest blog.

JMM covers traditional and modern Japan-related events, fine arts, film, dining, and music in a ten-state area. States include Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.

If you live or work in those states and have anything to announce, you can contact them at japanmediamidwest at gmail. Or you can just read it to find out what's going on :)

Westernized bows

I lived in Japan for a few years, and learned some bowing rules, including the fact that you are NOT supposed to make eye contact when you bow.

But if you look at some commercials in the U.S. (and probably Canada too and other parts of the Western world), the Japanese people do not bow that way. They maintain eye contact with the people they're bowing to. The latest example is in the Wii commercials. The Japanese guys who go to people's houses, telling them they'd "like to play", are maintaining eye contact while they're bowing towards the homeowners, which would be considered quite inappropriate in Japan. But obviously, they're doing it for non-Japanese people, and it's quite dramatic, so it works for us.

Those commercials are great, by the way, and include some awesome shamisen playing by the Yoshida Brothers.

Way to go, Japan.

Update: some Japanophiles were telling me that in the martial arts, you HAVE to look at your opponent when you bow. So they suggested that the Japanese guys in the Wii commercials are acting as if they're bowing towards their opponent in martial arts. That makes sense.

Popjisyo to the rescue!

A long time ago (it seems) I mentioned Popjisyo, which is an excellent resource for reading Japanese (and Korean and Chinese, but I don't know them). Today I had to read an article for class, and didn't want to sit down with a dictionary, so decided to "cheat" by using Popjisyo. It made my reading enjoyable, and I was able to understand the article quite easily and quickly! It is just the best!

So if you have any online Japanese (or a few other) texts that you need to read, I highly recommend it!

(And you can tell I'm quite serious about my enthusiasm because I've used a lot of exclamation points in this post.)

The way of sushi

Mad Minerva (a very smart chick) sent me the link to this video. It's quite thorough--maybe too much. But if you wanted to know almost everything about sushi eating and etiquette, then this is for you.

Japanese comfort

When I hear people speaking Japanese, I like to practice my listening skills by eavesdropping on them. Sorry, but I'm going to be rude about it and not respect people's privacy because I've put way too many hours into studying Japanese to not do it.

Last week I was in a cafe, watching the rain and taking a break from writing, when two Japanese people sat down at a table near mine and started talking about different stuff. Even though I had work to do (well, "work" that may never see the light of day because it's a pipe dream), I managed to catch the gist of what they were saying.

If I eavesdrop on Spanish conversations or another language I've studied, I have to concentrate more to figure out what they're saying, even to understand where the words separate into comprehensible units. But with Japanese, I can relax. Sure, I don't know all the words, but because I lived there and have continued to study it, I feel comfortable, so my mind can settle on the sounds of the language. Even if I'm watching a movie where Japanese is spoken and I don't totally understand what they're saying, I still feel "at home" with it. I still have a long way to go until I'm awesome in that language, but at least it doesn't scare me.

They should've asked me...

Someone gave me this weird translation of a Japanese sign--there are so many native English speakers there who could've translated it correctly, but they went with this odd meaning...or they could've asked me to do it :)

Not kiyoto

Here's something I've noticed but have never mentioned here: how English speakers say "Kiyoto" [kee-yoto] instead of "Kyoto." Even the Japanese characters 京都 do not allow for the "ki" sound because the first one is "kyo" (or more precisely, "kyou" because the vowel sound is long).

I think it's because the "kyo" sound isn't common in English, or really exists in English words (I don't think--I haven't done a word study on it), so to say "Kyoto" is strange for English speakers. "Kiyoto" allows for alternating the consonant and vowel sounds and is more comfortable, it seems.

Proves my point

Yesterday I talked about the lack of enthusiasm I encounter when I speak Japanese to Japanese people whose English isn't great. Well, I experienced an example of that today.

I was at a Japanese store, and asked a guy, in English, where the fruit was. He was speaking Japanese with a female coworker, and I haven't seen him speak English with people before, so I didn't know if his English was good. But I used it anyway. He looked at me blankly, and so did his coworker, so I asked them in Japanese. The woman said in muddy English, "You speak Japanese" with a nervous smile, and spoke no Japanese with me, but pointed in the direction of the fruit, then told me in broken English that it was elsewhere as well.

If I had walked into a store in a Mexican neighborhood, they would've spoken Spanish once they discovered I could speak it. And a similar thing would happen in Chinatown, I'm sure. It wasn't as if I had asked the Japanese workers incorrectly where the fruit was, they just didn't want to continue in the language because, I think, I'm not Japanese, so broken English is better than me entering their language world.

So it's both ironic and convenient that such an incidence occurred the day after I had a post about it, lest anyone think I was making such an observation up.

Tsushima-ben

Here's a blogger I actually know offline--Austin, who's in my Japanese class. He is a very smart, interesting guy. We've started going out after class with another guy (usually) to talk about Japan, traveling, history, culture, repatriation, being weird, etc. He wants to be a professor, but I don't meet a lot of people like him (who are either aspiring academics or already there) who are intellectual but open. The ones I usually meet exhibit the typical academic cul-de-sac thinking, which not only is predictable but lacking critical thinking.

Unfortunately, his blogging isn't as frequent now because it was really more of a journal of his life on Tsushima, an island in Japan. However, he's recently posted a list of words he learned there:

Tsushima actually boasts two dialects, one for the whole island and the other for Tsutsu, an isolated village at the very southern tip. Tsutsu-ben is so different that even other Tsushima-jin find it incomprehensible. Tsushima-ben itself is strange to the mainlanders who come to the island...the biggest distinction is that Tsushima-jin attach "cha" and "cho" to the end of damn near everything, and even use the particle "chi" in place of the usual "wa." Along with vocabulary, a woman saying she "didn't eat, I'm alright but I feel bad" can be very different:

Standard: "Tabenakatta. Daijoubu kedo astashi wa kibun ga warui."
Tsushima-ben: "Tabenakacha. Dogeemonai kedo ondo chi anbe ga warui."

Here's the list he created--just from what he knows, which is why it's not that long:

rigacho ... Arigato ... Thanks

Anbe ga warui ... Kibun ga warui ... To feel sick

Iibai ... Ii ... Good!

Osha ... Omae ... You (rude)

Ondo ... Atashi ... I, me (women's speech)

Katsu ... Tobikomu ... To dive (esp. pearl diving)

Koke ... Koko ... Here

Saen ... Tsumaranai ... Lame, boring

Se de ... Osu koto ... Pushing

Tau ... Te wo todoku ... In reach

Tawan ... Te wo todokanai ... Out of reach

Dari ... Baka ... Stupid

Chi ... Particle "wa" ... Particle marking sentence subject; is

Dogeemonai ... Daijoubu ... Alright

Nanchi ... Nani ... What

Nemaru ... Kusaru ... To rot

Yasukaran ... Takusan, ippai ... Many, full of~

Wakarancha ... Wakaranai ... Don't understand

Waya! ... Dame! ... No good, stop that!

I want to do another post about where he lived because it's a small place with a rich history. It's between Korea and Japan.

2000 kanji

I came upon a list of The Top Two Thousand Kanji:

This list was produced by scanning over a million kanji on thousands of Japanese web pages and ranking them according to the number of times they were seen. In total, over 3200 distinct characters were encountered. However, in order to eliminate anomalous entries at the lower end of the frequency scale, the list was arbitrarily truncated at 2000 entries.

Each kanji character on this page is linked to its entry in WWWJDIC, an online Japanese dictionary that provides more information about the character and words that use it.

The list was created by a guy who's just one of many brains online (it's hard to meet such people offline). Think about it: he created a program to scan the internet to find frequently-occuring kanji. That's a lot of work! Plus, all you have to do is click a kanji to find out its info--ie, convenient programming. The only complaint I have is the font he chose--it's not the "typical" font you see in Japanese text. It looks more like Chinese, though it's not.

San's comment

I've decided to take advantage of the multilingual feature in Blogger and use Japanese as my default language. So that means that all the directions--and everything else--are in Japanese. So when I go to publish this comment, I have to click on the button that doesn't say "publish" but something a lot more wordy.

But what's cool is when I see people's comments in this or other Blogger blogs, because instead of just showing the name of the commenter, it attaches さんのコメント (san no komento) after the name. So, for instance, if a guy named Joe leaves a comment on a blog, then it will say "Joe さんのコメント" (Joe-san's comment).

As you probably know, Japanese people use the word "san" after people's names, such as Tanaka-san or even Judy-san if the person happens to be a gaijin (they usually call foreigners by their first names, then attach "san" to it). So seeing "san" after commenters' names is really cool, and so different.

Drinking god

Right now, I am drinking God, yet another weirdly-named product from Japan (I'm sure there's a website out there that chronicles goofy Japanese product names.) More specifically, I'm drinking God Mocha. What a weird name. But it's tasty.

Helpful JLPT site

If you're like me, you're already buried deep in kanji and those glorious idioms, in an attempt to pass the Japanese Proficiency Test. This site has tips and links that will help you achieve that goal.

He says, "Learning Japanese is not like learning French."

Um, yeah, that's true. Just try studying Japanese for a couple days and you'll be running back to French in no time. But seriously, he does have good advice such as:

"The vocabulary section is, surprisingly, more difficult than the kanji section. If you're like me, you have a lot of trouble remembering onomatopoeic words like harahara, dokidoki, etc. If you just try to memorise the meaning of each word, you may find that you do not retain them well, or that you get confused when presented with two words that sound similar or have similar meanings. Instead of just memorising words, try to remember a short phrase that expresses the meaning of the word."

The site also includes help for reading Japanese.

100 no Shitsumon books

Someone from Belgium (cool!) requested information about a book called "Cent Questions sur le Japon" for Japanese people who want to learn how to talk about Japan in French. The publisher is Sanshusha, and they publish what I'm calling the "100 no Shitsumon Series" because each book has the title １００の質問 (100 no Shitsumon) in it. Here are links to the languages that are covered in this interesting series:

French
German
Italian
Spanish
Korean

What I find interesting is that the books are written in both languages, and are for Japanese people, but they're also helpful for anyone who wants to learn both languages.

Katakana spelling changes

I've seen changes in English spelling from time to time, but I was surprised to see a change in a Japanese Katakana spelling. I had to translate an American's business card into Japanese, so I wanted to ensure that the words I was using were correct. I looked in a Katakana dictionary that was revised in 1994 (the original publishing date was 1972), to check the correct spelling for the word "fax". The dictionary spells it like ファクス (fakusu) but there are a lot more spellings like ファックス (fakkusu) on the Internet, even at companies that manufacture fax machines.

There's also another Katakana spelling that I found that's questionable, which I'll talk about later. Hint: a weird ingredient in gum.

Tsunami

When I was in Japan, I often heard the word "tsunami" because, of course, Japanese people speak Japanese. I was surprised to hear it in the U.S., and I still can't figure out how and when it entered the English language. Here's some information about what a tsunami is:

"Tsunami is a Japanese word; 'tsu' meaning harbour and 'nami' meaning wave. Tsunamis are sometimes incorrectly called tidal waves but have nothing to do with tides...A tsunami is different from normal waves on the ocean. Wind-made ocean waves cause the water to move down to about 150 metres at most. In contrast, the passage of a tsunami involves the movement of water all the way to the seafloor."

Also, if you want to read about what's happening in Asia, you can go to The Bangkok Post (news from Thailand), LankaPage (news from Sri Lanka), and The Jakarta Post (news from Indonesia, though the site might still be blank).

Nihongo Noryoku Shiken

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is fast approaching, and once again, I've wimped out on taking it. I passed level three a long time ago, but level two seems much more difficult--there's a huge jump between them. I've even studied for level two and have books and other study materials to help me study for it, but I'm so afraid of not passing it.

Or maybe I'm just lazy. Right now I'm enjoying reading and speaking Japanese twice a week in my classes, and I walk away satisfied and very happy. So I accept that as progress. It's too late to start intensively training for the December test date, but I should set a goal, finally, to take the test next year. I think I'll do that, and make this blog part of my accountability plan.

If you're one of those folks who's taking the test, check out The Kanji Site to keep you from going crazy from all those characters.

Updates: There's a helpful study guide for the test.

Popjisyo and Rikai help with online reading, kanji, and vocabulary.

Also see info about bilingual books about Japan to assist with your reading skills.

The ALC site has an online Japanese dictionary and publishes helpful books, including 500 Essential Japanese Expressions.

Yookoso has grammar and kanji lists that can be emailed to you every day.

See lists of Words from Japanese Newspapers in kanji, hiragana, and katakana.

Also check out the vocabulary lists for the test.

Read manga, listen to audio files, and read examples at an excellent Giongo and Gitaigo site.

Get online Kanji flashcards.

Other sites: Katango and JLPT Kanji Project (thanks to Kikoubun).