han, bon   This character has three major meanings: about, average and all. When its reading is oyo-so, it means about, approximately, roughly or generally.   However, this reading is not regarded as common.  In publications, you will find that oyoso is written in hiragana generally.   Heibon or futsū is used to describe something [...]

  shaku When Nao sent me this character, I doubted whether this was included in “jō yō kan ji” (common kanji). Is it? The answer is yes and no. This character is in the list of jōyōkanji according to our dictionary published in 2004. This was excluded from the list last year. I thought this [...]

na-i, bō, mō In official documents, death is expressed as shibō. Nakunaru is a polite verb meaning “to pass away.” When somebody passes away, we sometimes say, “onakunarini narimashita” politely. The character implies that something or somebody ceases to exist. Those who are obsessed with money are called “kane no mōja.” Mōja is somebody who [...]

oyo-bu, oyo-bosu, oyo-bi, kyū The major meaning of the character is “to reach.” Each reading has a slightly different meaning. Oyo-bu is a verb meaning “to reach” or “to spread.” It is used when something reaches a particular degree. In most cases, it has already exceeded a level of tolerance. The past form of “oyobu” [...]

shi This character originally depicts a strong man. When I use “originally” like this, it always means when it came from China because kanji was brought from China to Japan. For some characters, we have Japanese original meanings. In Japanese, today’s character means samurai (a warrior) which is Japanese original. And it also means a [...]

    kin Even the Japanese are not familiar with this character. There are only a few words including this character and relatively known. Probably, this is one of the reasons why we hardly write or see this character. Another reason is that these words are used in limited occasions in our daily life. We [...]

In English, there is no word equivalent to this character. There is no particular reading for this character, either. If you are using a Japanese word processor, type “onaji” and you can get this character. It means the same. This character is used to avoid repetition of the same character. In the following words, for [...]

sun Pronounce this character like the “son” in “lesson” or “bison.” Issun (one sun) is a classical unit of length and approximately 3.03 cm or a full one inch long. We are using the metric system in Japan. This unit is obsolete but it still remains in proverbs such as issun saki wa yami, which [...]

onore, ko, ki The noun “onore” meaning oneself sounds classical. Jiko is a more familiar word having the same meaning. What do people do with jiko (themselves)? Here are some examples: To take a good look at oneself … jiko wo mitsumeru To know oneself … jiko wo shiru To affirm oneself … jiko wo [...]

ko, shi, su This character means a child or the Rat of the oriental zodiac. The former is ko; the latter, ne. The recent year of the Rat, nedoshi, was two years ago. The next nedoshi is year 2020. A child in general is called kodomo. Domo used to be a suffix meaning plural but [...]