koe (goe), sei This character expresses something you hear. Voice is koe. When you hear somebody talking, what you hear is hanashigoe. A singing voice is utagoe. The first cry of a newborn baby is ubugoe. A laughing voice is waraigoe. A loud voice is ōgoe; a small voice is kogoe. Meisei means fame. Vocal [...]

susu-meru, syō There are four characters whose reading is susumeru. 3 of them have the same meaning “to recommend.” I vaguely understand there are nuances among them because they are not replaceable when we use them in compounds. With this character, we have a word meaning encouragement. That is shōrei. Scholarship is “shōgaku kin,” which [...]

myaku Myaku or myakuhaku is like a signal sent to tell you whether somebody is alive or not. You can check your own myaku by putting fingers on the wrist. When you wonder whether somebody is alive, put your fingers on the wrist of the subject. If you feel the pulse, you can announce “myaku [...]

fu-ku, buki, sui We express things that can blow using this character. The verb fuku means to blow. Snowstorm is fubuki, which is the combination of today’s character and yuki (snow). >>> Some Japanese words such as fubuki have a special reading. We cannot break up these words into syllables corresponding to each kanji. Yamabuki [...]

suji, kin This character has two meanings: physical strength and outline. Kinniku implies muscle. If you mean that you want to build up muscle, you can say, “kinniku (wo) tsuketai.” In casual conversations, we often drop joshi which connects a verb and the object of the verb. You can omit “wo” from this sentence. Suji [...]

eki The left-hand side of the character is the horse radical. A classical reading of this character is umaya, which is equivalent to a stage where people stop a horse to feed or to take a rest. Nowadays, eki is the place where trains stop. The names of stations end with this character. Tōkyō Station [...]