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Mary Sisk Noguchi
For Mary Sisk Noguchi's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 23, 2012
This summer, signs of setsuden will again be all around us
Now that all but one of Japan's usable nuclear reactors have been halted as a result of the Fukushima No. 1 power plant disaster — which followed the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami — the nation's households, small businesses and factories will once again plow forward through the hot summer following the government's policy of 節電 (setsuden, economize/electricity, "conserving electricity"), which was first implemented last year.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
May 28, 2012
Get your motor running for the JLPT
During its nearly 30-year history, the number of examinees tackling the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) (日本語能力試験) has exploded worldwide from 7,000 in 1984 to 750,000 in 2009. Japan Educational Exchanges and Services (JEES, www.jlpt.jp) now administers the test in 39 prefectures in Japan and 103 cities in 22 countries/areas outside the archipelago.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Mar 26, 2012
Some kanji characters are enough to make you feel sick
Overworked and stressed to the limit in this relentless recession, many Japanese are seeking ways to soothe their bodies and spirits, even if for just one blissful moment. The buzzword iyashi (癒し, soothing) is currently being used to promote an endless stream of relaxation products and services, including massages, weekend hot-spring getaways, jewelry, aroma therapy, even a gadget called an "iyashi wand." Non-intimidating, soft-spoken entertainers are billed as 癒し系 (iyashikei, soothing types): A bit of screen time spent at the end of a grueling workday with the likes of actress Haruka Ayase is ostensibly an effective antidote for frazzled nerves.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Jan 9, 2012
The Kanji of the Year for 2011: human ties that bind
Every November, in its Kanji of the Year poll, the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation invites the public to vote for the character that best symbolizes the year drawing to a close. It then announces the winner in mid December.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Nov 28, 2011
Some kanji can take a lifetime to fully appreciate
I made my first kanji connection with the graphically unassuming character 生 in the early days of a beginners Japanese class, when I stumbled through a self-introduction using the standard 私は学生です (Watashi wa gakusei desu. I am a student.). My instructor explained that one meaning for 生 was "scholar": I was a 学生 (gakusei, study/scholar, student) and she was a 先生 (sensei, ahead/scholar, teacher; i.e., one who has studied ahead of others).
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Sep 26, 2011
Some four-kanji idioms are even officially child's play
Now that summer fireworks have ended and beach toys have been stored away, it's time for jukensei (受験生 entrance examination-takers) throughout the land to burn the midnight oil in earnest. High school seniors and third-year junior high students moving on to higher education — as well as elementary school sixth-graders who aspire to private junior high schools — must prepare to take rigorous late-winter entrance exams. Among other subjects, jukensei will be tested on Japanese (国語 kokugo, "national language"), including knowledge of four-kanji idioms (四字熟語, yojijukugo).
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Jul 25, 2011
Majestic bamboo is firmly rooted in ancient kanji
My first exposure to bamboo in Japan, as a newcomer from the United States in the early 1980s, was the jaw-dropping sight of tabi-clad construction workers deftly scampering about on bamboo scaffolding ten stories high. Although this versatile natural resource — utilized in Japan and China for thousands of years — has largely been nudged aside by man-made materials, bamboo continues to play a role in many aspects of Japanese life, including its written language.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
May 23, 2011
Opposites attract in these kanji compound words
Some Japanese words are written with a single kanji, but countless others are compounds comprised of two (the majority), three, or more kanji. These compound words (jukugo) are not composed randomly; a limited number of patterns govern their construction, and today we will explore one of these: two-kanji jukugo comprised of characters with opposite or contrastive meanings.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Mar 30, 2011
This little kanji is, like, totally worth knowing
As a Japanese compound word-builder, the kanji suffix 的 (teki, -like) is a remarkably productive workhorse. In addition to serving in hundreds of compounds listed in Japanese-English kanji dictionaries, 的 is also heavily featured — for better or worse — in the patois of young Japanese.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Jan 12, 2011
2010 was a sizzling-hot year for kanji
From June through August of last year, Japan experienced its highest average temperatures on record. So the overwhelming choice of 暑 (atsu-i, sho, hot weather) as Kanji of the Year for 2010 came as no surprise. Day after sweltering day, the nation collectively moaned, "Atsui, atsui!" (「暑い、暑い!」 "It's hot!"), and then watched in disbelief as the thermometer continued to resist going down with the arrival of autumn.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Nov 17, 2010
Autumn is the perfect season to view leaf-kanji
A mosaic carpet of autumn foliage tinted in shades of green, yellow, orange, and red is currently rolling southward through the archipelago of Japan. 紅葉 (kōyō, crimson/leaves), the Japanese word for "autumn leaves," only hints at the splendor of this multihued natural phenomenon.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 15, 2010
196 more reasons to explore Heisig's imagination
Last spring, the bar was raised for kanji learners aiming to attain literacy in Japanese through mastery of the general-use (jōyō) kanji, when the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced the addition of 196 characters to the original list of 1,945 official jōyō kanji approved three decades ago.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 21, 2010
Kanji for ‘big' will expand your Japanese skills
Every year on Aug. 16, at exactly 8 p.m., the first in a series of five giant bonfires is lit on a mountainside overlooking the city of Kyoto, signaling the moment when ancestral ghosts return to the spirit world after visiting relatives on Earth during the three-day O-bon festival. The largest and most iconic blaze, on 大文字山 (Daimonjiyama, Big Letter Mountain), comprises 75 torches arranged in the shape of 大, a kanji meaning "big."
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
May 19, 2010
Soak up a sprinkling of rain-component kanji
The kanji compound word for Japan's annual rainy season — set to commence in early June — is the poetic 梅雨 ("plum rain," baiu/tsuyu), but any resident of the archipelago whose closets have been invaded by noxious green mold during 梅雨 will appreciate why it was originally written 黴雨 ("moldy rain," also pronounced baiu).
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 17, 2010
You can count on the tales behind number-kanji
When giving talks on Japan in elementary school classrooms in the United States, I chalk the kanji 一, 二, and 三 on the blackboard and ask the children to guess their meanings. "One, two, three!" they shout, easily intuiting three kanji introduced to Japanese schoolchildren in the first grade. Japanese students go on to master more than a dozen other kanji representing numerals — in addition to Arabic numerals — and they also learn to count high numbers in a way alien to their American counterparts.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 20, 2010
'New' hope, anxiety in Japan's Kanji of the Year
As the first decade of the 21st century drew to a close, the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation conducted its 15th annual Kanji of the Year poll, inviting the nation to decide which single kanji best symbolized 2009.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Dec 16, 2009
New kanji are mighty compound-word builders
Joyo (general-use) kanji, which currently number 1,945, are the characters officially approved by the Japanese government for use in newspapers and government publications. Japanese schoolchildren study these during their nine years of compulsory education, and non-Japanese speakers must do battle with them, too, to pass the top level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Oct 21, 2009
Get set for next year's overhaul of official kanji
Kanji aficionados and educators are buzzing over the biggest kanji news in nearly three decades: Next fall, for the first time since 1981, Japan’s government is expected to announce a revision of the joyo (general-use) kanji list. Currently numbering 1,945, these kanji comprise the official list allowed for use in newspapers and government publications, and Japanese school children are meant to learn them all during their compulsory education.
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Aug 19, 2009
Driving you 'crazy for kanji' — in a good way
Here's an addiction that doesn't require a 12-step recovery program. For the past six years, Berkeley, Calif.-based freelance writer Eve Kushner has been a self-proclaimed, unapologetic "kanji-holic." Kushner details her passion for Sino-Japanese characters in a new textbook, "Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters" (Stone Bridge Press).
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Jun 17, 2009
The crafty names of Japan's cleverest companies
Fortune magazine's list of the world's top 500 earners for 2008 included 64 Japanese companies. The English names of these global giants are used in both the international and domestic markets. But Japanese versions of each also exist. To cook up these, the enterprises had at hand the sumptuous ingredients of written Japanese — kanji, katakana and Roman letters (romaji) — and a dash of English.

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A statue of "Dragon Ball" character Goku stands outside the offices of Bandai Namco in Tokyo. The figure is now as recognizable as such characters as Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man.
Akira Toriyama's gift to the world