Language | BILINGUAL Jun 12, 2017
Kanji ‘toilet training’ is a hit with kids
by Mark Schreiber
The media is abuzz over a new series of workbooks for children titled うんこ漢字ドリル (Unko Kanji Doriru, "Poop Kanji Drills").
National May 23, 2017
Creator of popular kanji drills for kids turns poop into gold
Learning more than 1,000 kanji during six years of grade school isn't an easy task. But it can be fun if all the characters are associated with a word they love — poop. A workbook series that features a heavy dose of the word "unko," poop ...
Language | BILINGUAL May 15, 2017
Reciting the rescript to flaunt your Japanese
by Mark Schreiber
If you'd like to learn the Imperial Rescript on Education as a Japanese memory test, it's less than a single A4 page in length.
National / Politics Jan 26, 2017
Abe's kanji gaffe makes Twitter's trend tally
by Tomohiro Osaki
Reading kanji characters can be treacherous, and it seems even Prime Minister Shinzo Abe isn't immune to the pitfalls. Abe has become the butt of online ridicule after misreading a kanji while delivering a speech from a script at an Upper House plenary session earlier ...
National Dec 12, 2016
Kanji meaning gold or money picked as best symbolizing 2016
The kanji for kin, meaning gold or money, has been picked as the character best symbolizing this year's social mood in Japan, a Kyoto-based kanji promotion organization said Monday. The selection came after Japan won 12 gold medals at the Rio Olympics and former Tokyo ...
National Feb 9, 2016
Kanji Museum to open in Kyoto in June
The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, the group that annually announces the single character best symbolizing the year, will open a facility in June where visitors can learn about kanji in a fun atmosphere. The Kanji Museum, located in the city of Kyoto, will feature ...
National | FUKUSHIMA FILE Jan 17, 2016
Fukushima town hopes to translate kanji and sake into tourism cash
Residents of Kitakata, a northwestern Fukushima Prefecture city known for promoting antiquated Japanese kanji, are stepping up efforts to attract more tourists by linking the pictographs to sake breweries in the area. Kitakata wo Kanji no Machi ni suru Kai, a citizens' group promoting pictographs ...
National Jan 15, 2016
Kanji workbook's sexual references draw flak, prompting publisher to ponder revision
The workbook, published by a teacher last February, contained phrases such as, “No one should notice the intimate relationship between my professor and I.”
Language | BILINGUAL Aug 18, 2014
Complicated characters: Let us now praise difficult kanji
by Daniel Morales
For beginner and intermediate students of Japanese, encountering a kanji such as 鬱 (utsu, depression) in the wild can be a somewhat traumatic event that, appropriately, induces a deep, introspective depression regarding their language ability. Let's pull out our electron microscopes and examine that ...
General Sep 9, 2013
A friend to kanji learners worldwide
by Louise George Kittaka
Mary Sisk Noguchi helped readers unravel the complexities of Chinese characters, adding an element of fun to a process often fraught with frustration for many learners of Japanese.
Language | BILINGUAL Jan 28, 2013
What's in a Japanese name? More than you might expect
by Mark Schreiber
Last year I went to Yumenoshima Park in Tokyo's Koto Ward to see a museum housing the 第五福竜丸 (Dai-go Fukuryu Maru, aka No. 5 Lucky Dragon), the ill-fated fishing boat that inadvertently sailed too close to a 水爆実験 (suibaku jikken, thermonuclear test) at Bikini ...