Browsing the blog archives for November, 2009
kumo, un Clouds or a cloud is kumo. Kumo sometimes becomes voiced sound gumo, other words added to the beginning. Akanegumo is madder red cloud seen at dawn or in the twilight. Hikōkigumo is a contrail. Hikōki is an airplane. Clouds that are likely to snow are yukigumo. Yuki is snow. Clouds that thunder are [...]
ame, ama, u (wu) Ame is rain. Baiu or tsuyu is the rainy season that usually comes in June. Both baiu and tsuyu have the same two characters. Bai means plum and u is this character. Rain shower is niwaka ame. Niwaka means sudden. A thunderstorm is raiu. Rai means thunder. A heavy rain is [...]
hikari, hika-ru, kō Hikari is light. The verb hika-ru means to shine. Gekkō means moonlight. Nikkō means sunlight. Nikkō is the name of a world heritage site, too. This character also means scenery. Kanko is sightseeing. Kan means to see. Japan Tourism Agency is Kankōchō, which has English, Chinese, and Korean websites. Draw the vertical [...]
akane Akane is a plant called rubia (madder) or the color madder red. Draw the upper part first. Draw the dot top left. Draw the horizontal line crossing the first dot. Draw the sweeping dot top right. Begin to draw the lower part. Draw the horizontal line from left to right. Draw the left side [...]
ki, moku, boku A tree is ki. Trees are kigi. When you write kigi, you can either write this character twice or change the second character, gi, into another that means ditto. This character also expresses wood. Thursday is mokuyōbi. Mokusei is Jupiter. Mokusei whose sei is another character means something made of wood. Mokkin [...]
yama, san Yama is a mountain. Most Japanese mountains have the suffix -san, such as Fujisan (Mt. Fuji) between Shizuoka and Yamanashi, Asosan (Mt. Aso) in Kumamoto, Zaōsan (Mt. Zaō) in Tōhoku, Rokkōsan (Mt. Rokkō) in Kōbe to name a few. The suffix –yama is similarly used for some mountains. Some examples are Kurohimeyama (Mt. [...]
ka-ku, sho Sho or shodō is calligraphy. Sho also means calligraphy work. Shodō implies art and techniques. One of the tags we put in this blog is kaisho. The sho of kaisho is this character, meaning calligraphy. Kaisho is the square style of writing. The simplest meaning of this character is to write. It’s a [...]
naka, chū, jū The inside of something is “something no naka.” For example, the inside of a box is hako no naka. Hako is a box. No is joshi (a particle). We use the particle, no, to combine two nouns. The latter belongs to the former. The center is chūshin or chūō. Both shin and [...]
mizu, sui Water is mizu. Some Japanese sayings accompany the word, mizu. To leap ahead is mizu wo akeru. Akeru is the verb to open up. Mizu ni nagasu means to forgive and forget. Nagasu is to drain. Mizu no awa is failure. It literally means bubbles in water. Suidō means waterworks. Tap water is [...]
kan In my understanding, kan is something related to China. Kanji means Chinese characters, which were invented in ancient China and were introduced to Japan in the early centuries of the Christian era. All the Japanese characters I put the tag ,kanji, here are kanji. This is also the name of the dynasty, Han, first [...]