Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Japanese (Page 6)
Japan’s favourite cartoon dog continues his quest for country-wide domination this month with a brand new Snoopy-themed cafe scheduled to open in Oita Prefecture on April 19th. The cafe’s theme fuses Snoopy cartoons and traditional Japanese style, or wa (和). The new venture comes hot on the tails of Snoopy x Japanesque, a collaboration last year that saw the cute line-drawn character from Charles M. Schulz’s comics combined with traditional Japanese artisan works.
Well, good afternoon/evening/morning/day everyone! Today we’re going to talk about Japanese greetings and what they really mean.
Just as in English, “Konnichiwa” or “Good day” is a greeting that is technically an idiom with a complex and near-forgotten past. Just as English language greetings tend to stem from bastardizations of foreign loan words and/or full sentences that have been gradually shortened over the years, “konnichiwa” is actually a shortened version of a full and meaningful greeting, because, if anything, human beings are a lazy sort with a bad habit of cutting corners whenever possible.
It’s no secret that you can buy whale meat in Japan. It’s served in schools to young children and even offered up 16 different ways at this shop in Tokyo. In fact, the Japanese have had a history of whaling that dates back to the 12th century. In recent history, however, Japan’s whaling program has been condemned by the international community and its practice of consuming whale meat proven unhealthy. But both whaling and the eating of whale meat, whether you agree with it or not, may be a thing of the past as a result of a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice.
Getting a haircut in another country – in a foreign language – can be a daunting experience. We’ve all heard stories about that one unfortunate soul who, just wanting a trim, indicated a few centimetres between thumb and forefinger, only for the hairdresser to think that was how much they wanted to remain on their head and start lopping off hair left, right and centre.
Japan being Japan, of course there are a few surprising and funny things they do at salons that are different from back home too! But with some simple words and phrases under your belt, you can visit a Japanese hair salon with confidence. Join us after the jump for a guide to surviving – and hopefully enjoying – a haircut in Japan!
A photo of what appears to be an entry in a Japanese textbook tweeted by Kurita as been surprising netizens across the country. It shows a list of foreign loan words that had been turned into Japanese during the early 1940s. Most surprising of the list, as pointed out by netizens, was the word for “saxophone,” which was transformed into an awkward 19-character-long mouthful. Let’s take a closer look at why this happened and the results of English being deemed an “enemy language” during WWII.
It’s no secret the Japan is home to a vast array of flavors for the popular chocolate covered wafer. From Grape, Chili, and Wasbi flavors to bake-able Custard Pudding Kit Kats, there’s a seemingly never-ending stream of possible varieties for the popular sweet snack.
This time we’ve stumbled upon some Zunda Flavored Kit Kats. After a brief explanation on what zunda is for those of us not schooled in Tohoku region cuisine, an attempt will be made at describing how these deceptively deep candies taste.
As we’ve seen before, with many international releases the names of films can sometimes be vastly different from the original. The changes are made for a variety of reasons due to language, culture, or style. This begs the question: How much of an impact do these title changes make on the people who see them?
Just for fun, we took 19 movies from other countries that have had their names changed for Japanese audiences, translated them back to English and put them in their original posters.
So join us after the jump for such gems as Academy Award-nominated Nairobi Bees, Love is Deja Vu with Bill Murray, and cult classic Captain Supermarket. What, never heard of them!?
YouTuber and full-time Japan fan Sharla is back this week with a brand new video. After bringing us exploding condom ice cream and giving us a peek inside one of Japan’s typical love hotels, she’s currently back in her native Canada and just for kicks decided to try out a few English loan words that appear in the Japanese language on her non-Japanese-speaking friend.
As we’re about to see, despite the majority of these words originally coming from English, once pumped through the Japanese lexicon and read back to a native English speaker they make almost zero sense. The full, laugh-out-loud video after the jump.
The Japanese language is peppered with zippy onomatopoeia that allow you to express the sound of just about anything. Website Netallica recently surveyed readers to find the fastest-sounding words in the Japanese language. As you’d expect, WHIZZ, BANG and SHWOOP are nowhere to be seen!
We explore the top five fastest words, what exactly is so speedy about them, and what kind of images they conjure up for Japanese people.
High school is a drag, especially in Japan. Along with all the typical tests and homework that come with being a student, there’s a seemingly never-ending list of rules (you must wear special indoor shoes, wear a mask if you’re sick, open all the windows in the dead of winter to ventilate the room) that are enough to make even the most diligent of students want to scream. That’s why these Japanese students are really nailing this high school thing. Not only have they found a way to have a little fun amongst the stress and pressure of school life, they’re pulling it off with style and creativity that not only brings a smile to their own faces, but the faces of procrastinating netizens all over the world. Nailed it!
Google Translate, the tech giant’s online language translation service, is not always perfect (for example, translating “twenty” from English to Japanese gives us “20”), but it’s a nice, not to mention free, tool that’s available to anyone with an internet connection. Aside from being very useful, the site is also entertaining with plenty of funny tricks to be found, like how to make Google Translate beatbox.
Here’s another trick to add to the list! Just translate a bunch of dots into Japanese and you’ll be treated to a hilarious, and somewhat melodic, interpretation of those little round symbols that perch at the end of our sentences.
Not so long ago, a friend of mine from the UK came to visit me here in Japan. After showing him around town and making sure to take him to all of the most popular tourist spots, he remarked that quite a few of the subtle behaviours Japanese people exhibit seemed, while in no way offensive, remarkably different to those of our own countrymen. As we worked through a couple of the more unusual customs and behaviours that my friend had noticed, it struck me that at some point during my eight years of living here I had come to accept the everyday quirks of the people around me as entirely normal and not in the slightest bit odd.
Last year, we discussed the 10 things that we love and the 10 things we just can’t stomach about Japan, but today we at RocketNews24 felt it was time to present you with a list of random but genuine observations, from the peculiar to the downright endearing, about the Japanese people themselves. Enjoy!
As mentioned many times before on this site, the modern Japanese language uses a set of characters to represent foreign words called katakana. Such characters are used for foreign place names such a Beverly Hills (ビバリーヒルズ) or people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (マフムード・アフマディーネジャード).
However, this feature of Japanese has been criticized by some for allowing the purity of the language to be polluted by foreign influences. It can also cause confusion by creating English words that have different meanings than the original.
That being said, for foreigners visiting Japan with a limited knowledge of the language this list may prove invaluable. Excluding the obvious classics like “OK” (オケ) and “McDonald’s” (マクドナルド) here are some relatively newer loan words ranked by understandability in Japanese.
Sometimes obvious things are hidden right in plain sight and it takes the fresh perspective of someone in another part of the world to point it out. One Twitter user stumbled on such a hidden gem recently when searching the Japanese character for “tsu” , which in the katakana alphabet is written ツ.
As you can probably see from the image above and in the text of the previous sentence, the letter looks quite a lot like a smirking face. This may appear obvious to many Western readers, but according to online reaction most Japanese netizens were taken by surprise at this discovery and had never noticed the similarity. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the character is also apparently getting an unusual amount of use in Middle Eastern countries.
The Japanese love to have fun with words. Kotoba asobi (wordplay) makes up a pretty large portion of Japanese humor on variety programs and comedy shows – possibly a side effect of so many kanji characters sounding phonetically identical despite wildly different meanings.
But YouTube’s The World Video Tour has taken it to a whole new level with a video series of Japanese words and phrases that sound a lot like totally unrelated English terms. Below, we’ll watch the series’ host have some fun with foreign tourists to see if they understand what he’s trying to say.
The characters above should look very familiar to any student of Japanese. Hiragana is the phonetic alphabet that is usually the first writing system you learn. Compared to the much more complex and difficult to remember Chinese characters and the angular katakana alphabet, the loopy hiragana characters have a pleasant round feel that’s often called “cute.”
But which character is the cutest of them all? Japan weighs in.
Hollywood films are popular around the world and Japan gets its fair share of dubbed and subtitled blockbusters. But sometimes things get a little mixed up when changing words from English to Japanese. This gives rise to translated titles that come in a wide range of strange from unintended sexual innuendos to spoilertastic summaries.
Let’s take a look at 13 weird Japanese movie titles that make you wonder what the translators were thinking.
Unlike the creature it features, the above image has been floating around online for a few years, but recently has returned back to Japanese shores. However, here such a situation has led to a decidedly punnier outcome. Let’s read what Japanese people have to say about it and maybe learn a little unusual Japanese along the way.
Japan has invented some pretty cool things; Mario, the Nissan Skyline, and PlayStation to name a few. Sure, sexy cars and even sexier game systems are great, but what would you choose as the truly exceptional Japanese inventions that influenced the world? Chinese media site, Xinhua Net News, weighed in on this question, giving us their top 10 list of most influential inventions from Japan.
Although it’s been debated on this site before, life in a Japanese company can be tough. For some it can be downright war. And with more and more companies beginning to adopt English into their daily routines, it can be hard for an average salaryman (the term given to average full-time company employees) to get ahead or even survive.
Nissin’s Cup Noodle tries to sum it up how the feeling of a typical worker in their advert titled Globalization. Let’s take a look.
China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning seems to be affecting Osaka’s Namba and Dotonbori neighborhoods
Nintendo releases Metroid-shaped ice cube/cooking tray and Samus arm cannon pillow【Pics】
Ueno Park’s panda bread is just as warm, fluffy and cute as the pandas themselves 【Photos】
New anime mecha figure’s pilot is…you!?!【Photos】
You can now visit a recreation of Evangelion’s Tokyo-3 and live there in miniature form in【Pics】
Staircase National Highway: the only highway in Japan that cars can’t enter
Is it worth eating at Akihabara Ramen Center?
Everything you wanted to know about the Ainu, with photos and video【Rocketpedia】
We deeply regret spending five hours on this artistic Japanese island (we should have spent more)
Is China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning affecting tourist crowds in Shibuya’s Don Quijote?
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Nintendo’s Kirby now delivering orders at Kura Sushi restaurants, but not in Japan
Japan considering raising international traveler departure tax even more than previously reportedIs China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning affecting tourist crowds in Shibuya’s Don Quijote?
Is China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning affecting tourist crowd sizes in Nara?
Studio Ghibli stamps lift your spirits with motivational phrases from Totoro
Japanese town suing resident for being a jerk
Is Kyoto less crowded with tourists after China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning?【Photos】
You can now buy a Japanese train station clock in Japan
Japanese police attempting to clamp down on “zombie cigarettes”Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan unveils new Christmas goods and a rhinestone tumbler that costs 19,500 yen
Real-world Nausicaa Ghibli anime glider completes its final flight in Japan【Video】
Brand-new Pokémon park opens in Japan with larger-than-life-size Lapras【Photos】
Japanese train company is letting fans buy its actual ticket gates for their homes
Is China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning affecting tourist crowds in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood?
The 10 best day trips from downtown Tokyo【Survey】
Naturally brown-haired Osaka student sues government for forcing her to dye her hair black
Japanese government considering tripling departure taxes to combat overtourism
Unique inclined elevator in Japan leads to a town that inspired Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answerJapan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Japan’s deadliest food claims more victims, but why do people keep eating it for New Year’s?
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
The top 10 annoying foreign tourist behaviors on trains, as chosen by Japanese people【Survey】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
Starbucks Japan reveals new sakura drinkware collection, inspired by evening cherry blossoms
Staircase National Highway: the only highway in Japan that cars can’t enter
Is it worth eating at Akihabara Ramen Center?
Everything you wanted to know about the Ainu, with photos and video【Rocketpedia】
We deeply regret spending five hours on this artistic Japanese island (we should have spent more)
Is China’s don’t-go-to-Japan warning affecting tourist crowds in Shibuya’s Don Quijote?
Nintendo’s Kirby now delivering orders at Kura Sushi restaurants, but not in Japan
Starbucks Japan’s Sakura Ball Cookies and other cherry blossom sweets look beautifully delicious
Cardcaptor Sakura engagement rings are here to help you capture your bride-to-be’s heart
Sanrio characters take over Baskin Robbins Japan for My Melody and Kuromi’s Sweet Christmas
Meet the eerie police statues of Miyakojima in Okinawa Prefecture
Hey guys, unlucky with women? There’s always Latvia!