Music is a language everybody understands. At least so I thought, until I learned that the note I had known as H back home in Germany was called B in English.

B also exists in German, but it's what the English-speaking world calls B flat. By the way, in Dutch that same note is known as Bes, whereas in France they call it Si bémol. What a cacophonous clash of terminology!

And Japanese? Well, the scale that children normally first learn in elementary school is the Italian-based do-re-mi system. It goes as follows (Italian in parentheses after the Japanese where it differs): ド (do), レ (re), ミ (mi), ファ (fa), ソ (so, sol) ラ (ra, la) and シ (shi, si).