fune , funa , shū Fune 舟 is a boat. An image of the boat implied by this character is an old small boat made of wood, which a man poles downstream. You might see ones in classical paintings. There are two characters for fune (a ship or a boat). The other one is more [...]

ni When you write numbers in kanji, use another two-stroke character instead of this one. Today’s character is used for checks so that the amount of money written on them cannot be chenged. It’s easy to change the other ‘two’ in kanji into ‘three’ in kanji but you cannot change this one into other characters.

ri This rarely used character depicts a person having a flag, symbolizing a civil servant. Kanri means a civil servant but we hardly use it, either.

jun A month consists of 3 periods of ten days. The first ten days is jōjun; the second, chūjun; and the third, gejun. Shun is another reading of this character although it’s not a basic reading. Shun means fresh or in season. Fresh fruit and vegetables can be described as shun. Nowadays, it is hard [...]

mune, shi Aimless writing has been going on but today’s challenge is to make this blog look more useful. I thought about how you can communicate with Japanese people more smoothly. After reading yesterday’s blog entry, I realized that it might be useful to mention how useful each word is. I rarely hear somebody use [...]

boku Boku is the sound of branch snapping and the character depicts the skin of a tree. Major compounds including this character are soboku (simple and undecorated), shitsuboku (simple and unsophisticated), junboku (naïve, honest and simple). The jun of junboku means pure. Write the horizontal stroke. Cross the previous stroke. Write the sweeping stroke falling [...]

kitana-i, yogo-reru, yogo-su, kega-reru, kega-su, kega-rawashii, o Kitanai means dirty. When something becomes dirty, we express it as yogoreru. When somebody makes something dirty, we say, “yogosu.” Kegasu has the same meaning as yogosu but it is often used with abstract things such as ‘name.’ For example, “na wo kegasu” means to give somebody a [...]

son, zon This character 存 is almost equivalent to another character meaning ‘to exist.’ These characters make a word meaning existence: sonzai. Seizon also means existence but it’s related to living creatures. Hozon means preservation. To save files is expressed as hozonsuru. The ho of hozon means ‘to keep.’ Write the horizontal stroke. Write the [...]

hada Hada 肌 is our skin. You can find this word in expressions such as “hada ga awanai” (difficult to get along with something or somebody). It literally means that something or somebody does not match your skin. In other words, hada is a channel through which you feel the atmosphere. Write the sweeping stroke [...]