Recently three new Japanese words made their way into the Oxford English Dictionary, officially blessing the English speaking world with concepts such as hikikomori, karoshi, and otaku. But, these aren’t the only words that have done this, just the most recent ones. There are actually a lot of Japanese words that we use as English words now – it’s not only the Japanese who get to turn someone else’s language into their own.

Japanese Words That English Speakers Use Pretty Commonly

I thought it would be fun to list out and define a bunch of the common Japanese words that have made it into the English language. There’s a lot of them, and I don’t think I’ve thought of all of them, so if you come up with any add them in the comments and I’ll try to update the list for future people reading this article (hello, if you’re from the future. How are the flying cars?).

Anime: Japanese cartoons / animation.

Banzai: A cheer. Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

Bento: A meal served in a box with separations in it.

Bonsai: These are the little trees that are actually really old, but are really small because they’ve been trimmed and stunted by bonsai artists.

Dojo: A place for martial artists to practice.

Futon: A thin mattress of tufted cotton batting or similar material

Haiku: A type of poem that (in English) is typically 5-7-5 syllables.

Hancho: Squad leader. The person in charge… i.e. the “Head Hancho.”

Hara-kiri: Suicide by disembowelment.

Hikikomori: The abnormal avoidance of social contact, especially by adolescent males.*

Jujitsu: A soft-style type of Japanese martial art.

Kamikaze: Literally means “divine wind” but in English it’s known to refer to a suicide attack (usually by airplane).

Karaoke: A machine that plays a song for you and has you sing along, usually with a bunch of people and a bunch of sake.

Karate: A hard-style type of Japanese martial art.

Karoshi: Death from overwork*

Kimono: Traditional Japanese clothing.

Koan: A paradox that Buddhist monks meditate on.

Manga: Japanese comics.

Miso: Made mostly from soybeans, this paste is in all kinds of foods, the most common being “miso soup.”

Ninja: The guys that wear black, sneak around, and assassinate people. These guys are sneaky.

Origami: The art of folding paper into different shapes, figures, etc.

Otaku: Huge fanboy of something, like anime, gundam models, or Tofugu (I know you’re all Tofugu otaku, right?)*

Ramen: Japanese noodle soupy dish.

Sake: Rice wine.

Samurai: A warrior from feudal Japan.

Sashimi: Raw fish, sliced into pieces (not to be confused with sushi).

Seppuku: Another word for disemboweling yourself.

Sudoku: The number placement puzzle that’s popular in a lot of newspapers and other places.

Sumo: This is the sport where two big guys try to knock each other down. i.e. “Sumo Wrestling.”

Sushi: a small bit of cold rice with something on top or inside it. C’mon, you know what sushi is.

Tsunami: Huge waves!

Tycoon: Someone who’s a powerful business person (original Japanese word, 大君 (taikun) means liege lord or shogunate, so it’s evolved in its English meaning).

Typhoon: A violent tropical storm or cyclone (probably originally a Chinese word, though).

Wasabi: Similar to horseradish. This is a green paste that’s nice and spicy, and often used with sushi.

Yakuza: Japanese mafia.

Zen: A sect of Buddhism in Japan.

*These three were just added to the official English Dictionary list!

Oh, and if you aren’t bored already (or are bored), here’s a video talking about the three new words that were just added: hikikomori, otaku, and karoshi. Enjoy!

So what else would you add to this list? Any other Japanese words you hear quite a bit that are used pretty easily in English? My favorite by far is hancho. I thought that was Spanish, or something.

Related posts:

1. Four Japanese Words For Summer (And Gifts From The Venerable Gakuranman)
2. How To Type (Hidden) Special Characters In Japanese
3. How To Learn Japanese Using Flickr

In a couple hours at 1:40pm Pacific Time, I’ll be live on BBC Radio (sorry, no idea which one… people tell me it’s probably #4, though) talking about “Character Amnesia” (or for us Tofugu-folk, “Kanji Amnesia”), so I thought a good way to get my ducks in a line would be to write a post about it… That way, hopefully, I won’t forget what I want to talk about it.

What Is “Character Amnesia” (Kanji Amnesia)?

Basically, people in Japan (and China) are using computers, phones, and other electronic devices so much that they’re forgetting how to write their kanji. Thanks to these things, there’s almost no reason to write something using your hands. Think about it, when’s the last time you hand wrote anything? For a lot of you, I’m guessing it was either to sign a receipt (or you just can’t remember). The world is revolving around our phones and computers, which means we’re typing… a lot.

It’s the exact same thing with Japanese, but with Japanese, you’re taking something really a lot more complicated to write (kanji) and making it a lot simpler. All you have to do nowadays is write the sounds that make up a word in Japanese, and *poof!* automagically your electronic device shows you the most likely kanji match to the thing you wrote out. If it’s not the first match, there’s usually quite a few others which you can choose from. This means the emphasis of being able to write kanji is nearly nonexistent in real life. All you have to do is be able to recognize a kanji and be able to read it. Literally half the work of written communication has vanished, and I think it’s awesome.

For those of you who don’t have much experience with kanji (if you want to learn, check out the kanji section of TextFugu for a way to learn kanji that actually makes sense), here’s a good parallel. With English (I know this from experience), spell check has made it so I don’t have to know how to spell things. Misspelled something? Red underline tells me to change it (thanks!). Once I start writing by hand, I definitely notice all the things I don’t know how to spell (anymore) that I probably learned in middle school. Take this example and multiply it by a billion, and you have the Kanji/Japanese issue. They can recognize the kanji. They can read the kanji. They can type the kanji… but, when it comes to writing a lot of kanji by hand, expect there to be a lot of mistakes and omissions.

To Be Honest, This Is Awesome

A lot of old school Japanese teachers will probably tell you otherwise. I was one of them not too long ago, until I started writing TextFugu, and started seeing what I could remove to make the lessons simpler. When I asked “what is pretty unnecessary 90% of the time?” I realized that the ability to write kanji by hand was one of them. So, I cut that requirement so that people can focus on much more important things (like being able to read… and type the kanji).

Even Japan is admitting to this. They’re going to add nearly 200 kanji to the required kanji learning list for kids because so many kanji have become a lot more common through use of typing the characters (i.e. a lot of characters that were tough to write by hand, but became common because they’re really easy to type out). On top of that, Japan is totally a cell-phone culture. Everyone seems to have a cell phone, and everyone seems to be typing away at it. It’s just so much easier to communicate in this way, and handwriting is becoming a thing of the past.

So, in summary, I don’t think this is a bad thing, especially for language learners out there. It just (once again) supports that the ability to hand write kanji is becoming increasingly unimportant. That means you can start focusing your limited efforts (everyone has limits, so you need to make the most of them!) on doing much more important things, whatever that may be. I think that’s amazing news. You have permission to spend your time learning things that you’ll be able to use a lot more commonly :)

So what do you think? Any of you experienced this? I’ve definitely become terrible at hand writing kanji (embarrassingly terrible, actually), but on the other hand, it’s so easy to type kanji out that I have almost no reason to hand write anything. The cool thing? When I do have to hand write something, I just type it up first so I can use that as a reference… I hope any impending apocalypses don’t take away my cell phone, or I’ll be screwed.

Related posts:

1. The Kanjipocolypse Is Here: 196 Additional Kanji To Be Added To The Joyo Kanji List
2. Skritter’s A Great Way To Practice Kanji, Stroke Order
3. 12 Completely (Un)inspiring Images To Help You Learn Kanji

Greetings fellow fugu-ers! Gakuranman here. (That’s right, ‘schoolboy coat man’.) You may remember me from such indie B-posts as ‘Katakana Words Ate My Soul‘ and Invasion of the Kanji.

But not to fear! I’ve returned today to shower you with gifts. Gifts of knowledge and prosperity. Your Japanese skills will soar and…ahh, what the heck. Let’s just get on with it. Here’s some words related to the Japanese summer with a few colourful anecdotes. Because, you know, language and culture are inseparable. Kinda like this twisted daikon above. Also a mini giveaway for you hungry learners at the end of this post!

夏バテ (natsubate) – Summer Lethargy

Here in Japan, summer comes in a self-contained bubble of humidity. For about 3-5 months of the year, temperatures soar and people drop like flies having had all the life force sucked out of them. You might imagine that everyone slips into a zombified state doing nothing but waving 扇子 (sensu – folding fans) or うちわ (uchiwa – paper fans) and you wouldn’t be far off. So yes, right now yours truly is attempting to fight off zombifiction from the suffering summer heat. That’s natsubate for you!

セミ (semi) – cicada (noisy insect!)

Ahh, the sound of summer. Do you have these little critters where you live? For me in the U.K, we always had a resident wood pigeon who would coo sweet pigeon melodies down our chimney pipe. Now when I leave the house it sounds like a battleground, littered with the corpses of these short-lived insects. Personally, my ears have always interpreted the noise as the sound of Spaniards. (No offence to our Spanish friends our there, or the Inquisition!) Si si si si si si si si si. Sisisisisisisisisssss…..

かき氷 (kakigoori) – Shaved Ice.

Or so the dictionary tells us. I prefer to think of them as mounds of delicious cool. Covered with your favourite flavoured syrup (awesome, two British spellings in a row, right there!), these heavenly creations can be the only thing keeping you alive through many hot days. Other summer necessities include ちゅうちゅう (chuu-chuu) – flavoured ice lollies – or ガリガリ君 (garigari-kun) – a particular brand of ice pole sporting a kid with big teeth!

線香花火 (senkou-hanabi) – Sparkler

A kind of Japanese sparkler. You get all the fizz and crackle of normal sparklers, but with a curious little ball of hot goo forming at the tip. The ball grows bigger and bigger as the firework continues, before dropping to the floor and dying. People compete to see whose ball will hang on the longest. Very poetic and a great metaphor for many things Japanese, I reckon – the fleeting beauty found in transient objects and all that. I’m curious though, do they have these fireworks in other countries? I’ve only seen them in Japan myself.

There you have it then. A few summery Japanese words. Little and often eh? That’s the best way to keep up your Japanese studies, young grasshoppers (or should I say cicadas? har har har).

Well, I know you guys can’t get enough of giveaways around here, so as I promised here’s another great chance to win cool stuff from Japan. I have not less than *12* sets of prizes to ship out, including:

Stuff for learning Japanese while lounging in the loo.

And items for poking people with.

How about a pointy Japanese phrasebook to help your language studies?

Or, since we all worship the Tofu-gu around here, some authentic tofu-flavoured paper! In actual tofu packaging!

Oh yes. These and a Schoolboy-coat-man signed postcard from Japan could be yours. All you have to do is tell me what your best advice is for learning a foreign language.

Check out the full post for detailed information (and an embarrassing video!) I’m also giving a little time extension because you all rock. You have until Wednesday 25th August 2010! Not long then! Go for it!

P.S. If you think summer is too warm, you should follow Gakuranman on Twitter.

P.P.S. If you thought that tofu flavored paper was a good idea, you should try to win something from his contest.

No related posts.

Sometimes (well, often times), you look at the Japanese culture and think “gosh, Japan is really weird.” This is probably one of those times. Then again, what’s so weird about wanting refrigerated panties every once in a while, especially with the kinds of summers Japan tends to get?

As you may have gathered from the video, I just froze my boxers. It’s surprisingly nice to have on a cold day, so you’ll see no judgment from me today, Japan…

More info on these underwears can be found on Alafista and AkibaBlog (both can sometimes be NSFW).

P.S. If you wish you had colder underwear, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

P.P.S. If your underwear is “plenty cold, thank you!” you should probably check out the Tofugu Newsletter.

Related posts:

1. Japanese Snow Monkeys Warm Your Heart With Hot Springs
2. In Japan, You Visit A Scary Japanese Doctor 12+ Times A Year
3. Tofukubukuro: Get Your Tofugu Grab-Bag While It’s Hot

You know how it’s hard to quit bad habits? Biting your nails, drinking, eating too many cookies, yadda yadda (sure, you could take it to be the Seinfeld reference if you want)… But I bet you didn’t realize you have a ton of good habits as well. Brushing your teeth (well, not all of you have this), putting away the dishes, going running, etc.

Now, I’m not saying that creating a habit to study Japanese on a daily basis is easy (it’s not!), and that’s why I’ve compiled a few sneaky things that will “trick” you into studying Japanese and getting yourself into a good habit. It all comes down to analyzing what makes habits into habits, and taking advantage of those things so that you can create a habit without actually having a… habit.

Why Look At Habits?

I think you may think the answer to this is self explanatory, but give me an opportunity to try and create a revelation for you anyways.

Now, I’m not trying to get you to form (actual) good study habits. Perhaps that will be the outcome if you try the following techniques out, but that’s not the end goal. I’m only going to try to help you trick yourself into studying by using certain aspects of “real” habits that you can implement on your own. It’s not easy to form a good habit. It is, however, easy to trick yourself into thinking you have a good habit, and if you do it enough it may just become a reality.

Sure, it’d be easy to say “you should study every day” (and I suppose I do say that), but here’s how you’ll be able to get there, one little victory at a time.

Creating Action Associations

Riddle me this, Batman. Is it easier for a smoker to stop smoking on vacation or at home?

Answer: On vacation. Why? Because there are fewer action associations with smoking.

At home, there are so many reminders that the smoker should start smoking. Ash trays, porches, rooms that are particularly good for smoking, etc. Over time, associations are built up. If I see this, I think “oh, I often smoke there… I should smoke a cigarette.” On vacation, however, none of that exists. There are no associations with Smoking & the hotel pool, for example. That’s not to say there won’t be reminders (ash trays, other people smoking, etc), but there certainly are fewer associations like this.

You can trick your mind into doing something like this with your Japanese studies, as well. I do this with my work time. If I’m at the local cafe, it means I work on TextFugu (and nothing else). If I’m not working on something, I try to do it away from my desk. I’ve created boundaries in my life where I force myself to only do certain things in certain areas. Although this won’t work immediately, you can also choose to separate certain things and associate them with certain places (or things). Some examples of what you could do with Japanese studies:

1. A particular bean bag that you only sit on when you are studying Japanese.
2. A colored light bulb you turn on only when you study Japanese.
3. Certain music you play during Japanese study time, and nowhere else (I’d vote Mozart).
4. A certain part of the house that’s a Japanese study area.

And so on…

The idea is to create associations with things and associate those things with Japanese study (and only Japanese study). Now, this won’t necessarily get you to study (at least, not before you’ve created these associations), so let’s take a look at some other habit-forming trickery that will get you to study. Then, all you have to do is apply this section when you do study and create some action associations. Before you know it, you’ll walk by your beanbag and say, “oh yeah, I study Japanese there. I should study Japanese,” and you’ll become a Japanese studying rock star.

Writing Down Exactly What You Plan To Do

Did you know that if you write down exactly what you’re planning to do you’ll have a 75% higher chance that you’ll actually do it? I’ve used this with all sorts of things, and it works great.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Figure out what it is you want / need to do (it’s really important that you want to do something. If you don’t want to do it, well, you’ll find a way not to do it, so I can’t help you much there). I’m guessing the thing you want to do is study Japanese, because that’s what this article’s all about.
2. Get a piece of paper (I’d recommend writing this by hand… there’s just something about writing by hand that makes things feel more solid) and a pen/pencil.
3. Write down exactly what it is you plan to do. This includes, when you’ll do something (down to the minute), where you’ll do it (one the beanbag?), how you’ll do it (I’ll use TextFugu to learn Japanese, of course! DOI), and what you’ll do (I’m going to study kanji XYZ in this study session).

The more specific you get, the better all this works. When you do this, for some reason you get something special stuck in your mind. When the time comes, you’re way more likely to get out the study tools and get studying. I definitely challenge all of you to give this a try, even if it’s with something else in your life. This trick is incredibly useful.

For me, I use it check e-mail (though, sometimes I’m bad and break this rule). Although I don’t include the “place” in my plan, every morning I decide what time I’ll check my e-mail. For example, this morning I said I’d check my e-mail at 9am, and that’s exactly what I did. Most days I choose a time that’s around 1pm or 2pm, and limit the amount of time I have. So, in the morning I’ll write down: “Checking e-mail between 2pm-3pm today.” Then, when 2pm rolls around, I’m checking my e-mail and I stop at 3pm. For some reason, when I do this, it totally stops me from worrying about e-mail the rest of the day. When I don’t do this, I check e-mail every 30 minutes (definitely a bad addiction).

For you, you could come up with something like this for your Japanese studies:

From 2pm-3pm today, I will sit down at my desk and open up my kanji book. I am going to study the kanji 食, 飲, 県, 急. I will learn the on’yomi and kun’yomi of them, as well as three common  vocab that use each one of those. At 3pm I will stop studying and go do XZY.

See how incredibly specific that was? The more specific you can make these, the more likely you’re going to actually do them and follow through. Doing this essentially creates a fake habit in your brain. Really, all habits do is tell you what you should do and when you should do it. By writing down exactly what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, you’re tricking your brain into thinking this is something you always do in this place and at this time. It’s really great brain hackery, if you ask me.

Give this a try and let me know how it goes for you!

Writing Down What You Won’t Do

Just like the previous section, this one also involves writing things down. The difference is that you’ll be writing down the things you don’t want to do. There’s only so much time in a day, and there’s always a lot of things competing for your time. You can use the techniques in the above section to come up with things you won’t be doing during the day as well. This leaves more time for other things (like studying your Japanese) and will allow you to focus more effectively when you do start studying Japanese.

Things I sometimes add to my not-to-do list:

• No checking e-mail except during e-mail checking time
• No Google Reader (this week, this day, this month, etc).
• Check Twitter only during lunch time
• Don’t listen to music while I’m working

And so on. Think of the bad habits you have. Now, write out your not-to-do list. This will trick your brain into thinking you don’t really do those things (or, at the very least, you’ll get an alert in your head the moment you try to do one of these things, and it will say “hey, you said you weren’t going to do that,” so you have time to stop yourself).

Make The Road Easier

Really, when you think about it, habits are habits because they’re really easy to do. Well, they’re not necessarily easy, but at the very least you think they are. They’ve become so ordinary and regular that you go on autopilot when you’re completing these habits. Do you really think about brushing your teeth every night, or do you just kind of… do it? I’m guessing it’s more of the latter. Habits are pretty darn easy to do as long as you actually have those habits. That’s the difficult part.

One thing you can do, however, is make the things you want to be habits easier. For example, if you want to create a good habit to exercise every morning, you should put your exercise clothes out and ready to go the night before. This little thing make sit just a little bit easier to exercise when you really don’t want to early that next morning. Perhaps you could pack your lunch the night before so you have more time. There are any number of things you could do to make the “dreaded” act of exercising easier on yourself, which means you’re likely to do it more often, which means you’re more likely to turn it into an actual habit.

With Japanese, you can do the same thing. A little prep goes a long way. Here are some ways to make Japanese study easier, which in turn will help you make Japanese study into a more regular habit.

• Decide exactly what you’re going to study next at the end of your previous session.
• Stop studying when you feel most motivated to keep studying
• Start reading about what you’re going to study next the day before. Just a little bit, like five minutes will do. This will make it so you’ve already started, and starting is always the hardest part. The next day all you need to do is continue where you left off from your mini study session.
• Put out the flashcards you’re going to learn tomorrow today. Put them out on their own, though. This is a lot less daunting than putting them on top of a huge stack.
• Put some paper and pencils/pens out, all ready for studying so you don’t have to do it tomorrow.

Do you notice a pattern in some of these? A lot of them have to do with planning ahead and knowing what you’re going to do the next day. With habits, you always know what you’re going to do next. it’s autopilot, after all. Japanese studies is one of those things where you have to learn something new every day, which makes it much harder to form a habit around. If you take an extra five minutes at the end of every study session and decide exactly what you’re going to do next, you’re making studying the next day 100x easier on yourself. With habits, they’re easy to do because you know exactly what to do. So, with Japanese studies, you’re making habit-forming a lot easier if you figure out what you’re doing next before you actually do it.

What Are Your Tricks?

There has to be a bunch of habit-forming hacks out there that you’ve used and love. Share your secrets in the comments and help others trying to study Japanese, too! :)

P.S. You should make a habit out of following Tofugu on Twitter

P.P.S. Don’t you think your friends need to form better habits too? You should “like” this article by clicking the like button below to share it with them.

Related posts:

1. Be Inspired (By TextFugu’s “Inspirational Japanese Learning” List)
2. How To Learn Japanese Using Flickr
3. 12 Completely (Un)inspiring Images To Help You Learn Kanji

Kid’s songs are a wonderful resource to help you learn Japanese better. They are often overlooked because… well, they are a bit silly, but I think they are worth a second look. I’m going to cover a bit of theory here (I promise not too much), and then look at 6 kid’s songs you might use in your studies.

The How

Now I can see you scratching your heads. How can stupid kid’s songs help me learn Japanese? Right? Hold that thought. Let me ask you a question: Can you remember any of the children’s songs you learned when you were a kid? I’m guessing yes.

The basic problems with learning Japanese are pretty well known at this point. If you are a regular Tofugu reader, you probably know many of them. Two of the biggest ones, I think, are that we make our study too hard and we don’t have fun. These are actually two parts of the same problem.

The effects of these two problems are so common they almost go without saying: 1) loss of motivation and 2) burn-out. Kid’s songs help combat this by adding a bit of fun back into your study routine, and also by secretly working on your listening, recognition and (if you are brave and sing out loud with them) your pronunciation and speaking.

How’s that work, huh? Have you heard of a fella by the name of Alexander Arguelles. He’s a professor of languages, a polyglot who can speak some 30+ languages to varying levels of mastery (including some Japanese) . His primary method for learning is the shadow method. I’m sure you all have heard of this, right? This is where someone says something and we attempt to repeat it back at nearly the same moment, maybe only a second or two behind. Now the shadow method is common enough in language learning these days, but he recommends starting with a very strict version of it where all you do is shadow. No looking at text (reading), no looking at the translation to figure out what you are saying, just shadowing.

Crazy you say? How will I know what I’m saying/learning? That’s the point. By only shadowing you are narrowing your learning focus to just a couple things: listening, that is focusing on the actual sounds, and speaking. Interestingly, these are often the hardest areas for language learners to master. You can memorize as many words/sentences, as much grammar as you want, but if you have trouble understanding when someone talks to you or if you have trouble finding the right words when you speak, all that knowledge is for waste.

(If you want to know more about Prof Arguelles and his theories, start with this video on youtube, where he discusses his shadowing approach)

Still awake? Apologizes for all that boring theory. I think it’s useful to consider this stuff. At any rate, on to the list of songs. Most or all of these are very well known by the Japanese, so you will be sure to pleasantly surprise people if you manage to memorize any.

6 great Japanese kid’s songs

First, Mary had a little lamb.

This is about as easy as you are going to get. Unfortunately, the video has English in it. Remember, at this point we really aren’t concerned with what the Japanese actually means. Concentrate on the sounds, both hearing them and reproducing them as best you can.

The acorn song!

This is a fun song. Can you clearly understand the kids’ singing? Listen a few times before you try to shadow it.

Pushing the difficulty up a little, here is The Dog Policeman.

This one is one of those everyone loves. I hear kids singing it all the time in the stores. The video is funny, too. The kana is on the video, but remember, we are working our listening not reading. Try to use your ears to figure out what sounds they are making.

Both the songs from My Neighbor Totoro are fun and easy to learn. Here’s a video with both of them.

As an added bonus, the kids in this video are adorable.

Ah, the Taikaki Song. This song is long and a little challenging, but he sings slowly and you should be able to follow along after a few trys. Unfortunately the one I want to embed here has embedding disabled. Go watch that version at youtube for some animation that will help you understand the song. Here’s another version with the guy who sings it. Awesome hair!

Do you know what Taiyaki is? It’s kind of a hotcake with anko inside in the shape of a fish. This is quite an old song, but mention it or hum a few bars and you’ll bring a smile to the face of anyone over 30 .

Finally, the Japanese dub of one we probably all know. Challenge yourself and learn this version.

Want more?

Follow any of these videos to youtube and you should find a great many video links to other kid’s songs. Find some you like and learn them. You’ll enjoy yourself and it really will help your Japanese.

This post was written by Dave of JapanDave.com who Tweets and has a great newsletter full of amazing pictures of Japan.

If you’re learning Japanese, consider using eduFire to get live online lessons!

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A lot of people ask about bowing in Japan, and what they should do if they ever visit or live in Japan. Now, bowing in Japan is so deeply ingrained in culture and society that it’s not something people really think too much about (unless you’re in business, but we’ll talk about that in a bit). If you’re a foreigner, you’re probably not going to be expected to bow all the time, though that depends on the person. There are, however, so many different ways one can and should bow, depending on the situation (which can make it confusing if you didn’t grow up bowing to everyone your whole life).

Firstly, Bowing Should Be Natural

One thing that I get a kick out of is people who don’t know any better and think bowing should be done like it’s seen in anime. They do the full 45 degree bow and hold it there for a few seconds. On top of this, they make a big deal out of it. Stand straight up, rigid for a second, then slam their head down into their really deep bow, thinking that all Japanese people bow this way.

The thing is, 90% of the time (and even more, unless you’re working in business) bows are incredibly casual and small, even getting down to small nods of the head. We’re going to talk about bowing and how depth, etc., effects what you’re trying to communicate in your bow, but for now, if you’re one of those rigid deep bowers, relax a bit and don’t think about it so much.

What Does A Bow Mean In Japan?

The meaning of a bow totally depends on the situation, depth, and length of time you hold your bow. Bowing in Japan shows respect for the person or thing you’re bowing to. Societal ranking in Japanese is really important. If you’re higher up in society from another person, you’ll notice that they talk more politely to you (to a greater extent than what we do in America / Western cultures), bow more deeply, and even perhaps order the same food as you at a restaurant (so as to not out-food you, of course).

Bows are only one of the many ways you can show respect and humble yourself in front of another person. Depending on who you’re bowing to, you can bow more deeply, bow longer, or even, perhaps, not bow at all. Beyond humbling yourself, it seems like you can bow for almost any other reason at all. You can bow to greet people, say thank you, say you’re sorry, when you’re congratulating someone, and more. I’ve broken all this down into bullets to make it easier for you, and while the breakdown isn’t perfect it should give you some idea of the different things bowing can communicate.

• The nod-bow, 5 Degrees: This is just a small nod of your head. Make sure your head goes forward (we’re not nodding backwards and lifting our chin). The nod-bow is for pretty good friends, and is the most casual bow of them all (because it’s the smallest and shortest). There is another situation you might use this bow in, though. If you’re a higher ranking person (in society, work, whatever) than the person you’re bowing to, you could also use this small nod-bow. Bowing is meant to humble yourself, so if you’re higher ranking, you don’t have to humble yourself too much (but by bowing a little bit, you’re at least acknowledging the other person).
• Greeting Bow, Eshaku (会釈), 15 Degrees: This bow is for greetings, mostly for people you already know or are equals with. The “nod-bow” above is similar, but for when you know someone a lot better. This bow is probably for people you’ve met before and are familiar with, but not familiar enough to just go for the nod.
• Respect Bow, Keirei (敬礼), 30 degrees: This is where bowing gets respectful. Thirty degrees is actually quite a lot and feels like quite a lot, if you go ahead and do it. This bow is reserved for your boss / other people who are higher ranking than you. You could probably do a little more than 30 degrees if you wanted to, too. You wouldn’t use this bow with good friends or relatives (unless you were making a joke), so save this for people you don’t know / people who are above you on that societal scale.
• Highest Respect Bow, Saikeirei 最敬礼, 45 degrees: Say you screw up, big time… perhaps you made some cars that accelerate to 80 mph and crash into things and you need to apologize, or perhaps you’re bowing the the emperor. This is the bow you should use, because it shows the most amount of respect (or regret) possible (at least, until you get on your knees). You won’t need to use this one very often, if you’re lucky.
• Kneeling Bow, Touch Your Head To The Floor: You don’t see this kind of bow very much anymore. This is the kind of bow you see people doing in Samurai flicks when a daimyo goes by (or they messed up really really bad). If you’re flipping out at something terrible you did (like, really terrible), you might just flip out enough to get on your knees and touch your head to the ground (but more likely than not, you won’t ever do this kind of bow, unless you’re doing some kind of martial arts or you’re just trying to be funny).

I also found this image, below, which covers some of the bowing levels that I broke out above. These are the three main ones, and do a good job showing how you should bow. Notice how the guy’s hands are by his side, and his eyes are facing the same direction as his head? The lower your bow, the more you should look down.

Returning Bows

Knowing how much to bow is often pretty hard. It’s sort of a game of “guess who” where you try to figure out the other person’s age, status, company, etc., to figure out how much you need to humble yourself at their expense. There’s a few good ways to do this, though you’ll often find yourself just doing something in between (or overly respectful, just in case) because you don’t know enough about the other person. First though, here are some rules on bowing:

• You should bow back to people who bow at you (with a couple exceptions… i.e. people who greet you at stores / people who try to hand you things on the street).
• Try to get the other person’s business card (people hand out their business card like nothing in Japan). On it should be their company and title, which will give you an idea about where they are in the world.
• Try to guess how old they are. Chances are, if they’re older than you, they’re above you in almost every way. Treat your elders with respect, yo!

If all else fails, just go for the 30 degree bow. It’s right in the middle, respectful, and you probably won’t go wrong with it. The main thing with bowing, I think, is that you put the effort in. Like I mentioned earlier, Japanese people generally don’t expect foreigners to know the ins and outs of bowing. They also don’t expect foreigners to do bowing 100% perfect all of the time. The most important thing is that you don’t make it look rigid and unnatural. Try to relax, bow, and have fun!

Other Fun Tidbits About Bowing

Bowing is so ingrained in Japanese culture that you’ll see it in some funny instances. Here are some “exceptions” (or, at least, odd situations) you might run across a Japanese bow as well as what you should do about it.

Bowing On the Telephone:

Japanese people are so naturally inclined to bow that they often bow on the telephone, too, even though nobody can see them. Usually telephone bows won’t go beyond the “nod-bow” but there are some who are really, really hardcore. Once you’re bowing on the telephone, you’ll know you’ve spent a good amount of time in Japan.

Employees At Stores, Bowing To You:

Normally it’s nice to bow back to people, but a lot of times you’ll run into people greeting you at stores (not at all like a Walmart greeter) with enthusiastic welcomes and bows. You don’t have to stop and bow back to these people. Don’t worry, they’re getting paid.

Bowing A Train Away:

Occasionally you’ll come across someone seeing off someone getting on a train. The other person will get on and they’ll bow (and hold that bow) until the train is completely gone from the station. That right there is devotion! You, however, will probably never have to do this. Relationships that require this are fairly rare, and as a foreigner to Japan there’s a low likelihood that you’d need to do this (and even if you did, you probably wouldn’t be expected to either). Aside from trains, you’ll see this with cars and elevators as well.

Bowing Over And Over Again:

Often times when you’re bowing with someone, the bows will start off deeper, then gradually get smaller and shorter the more times you bow. It’s kind of a “hey, you bowed, I better bow again,” which is responded to with a “oh no, he/she bowed again, I better bow too,” and this keeps on going until the bows get small enough where both sides can stop. You just don’t want to get out-bowed by the other person if you’re trying to show respect to them (this happens most in equal relationships).

P.S. You should do a small 15 degree bow to Tofugu on Twitter by following it.

P.P.S. If that wasn’t enough, you should do a 45 degree bow to the Tofugu Newsletter.

Related posts:

1. In Japan, You Visit A Scary Japanese Doctor 12+ Times A Year
2. 12 Completely (Un)inspiring Images To Help You Learn Kanji

Win What You Want

Flutterscape (if you haven’t figured it out by now) is a site that sells Japanese goods… with a twist. Regular people in Japan take pictures of items in their local area (at stores, and such), and then they put those pictures up on Flutterscape with a description, price, and so on. They buy the product from their local store when you pay for the item (your money goes to Flutterscape and is kept safe until Flutterscape gets the item to ship to you), and then you get the product a little bit later. Because of this business model, there are a ton of fun things on the site… which makes it hard for me to choose what I want to giveaway, and why I want you to choose for me.

Everyone has different things that they want, and everyone wants something ridiculous from Japan, so now’s your chance. You can choose ~$200 worth of goods from Flutterscape.com and win it (then get it shipped to your home).

How The Contest Works

This is a pretty high-prize contest, so the contest rules are a little more difficult (compared the the previous two).

You do have two choices, though. You can either write a blog post somewhere (I like WordPress, if you don’t have a blog right now and want to create one), or you can create a video and upload it to YouTube. Both have equal weight in terms of scoring, so choose the one you like most. Here’s how the contest works:

1. Go to Flutterscape.com and find approximately $200 worth of things you’d want to win. It can be whatever you want as long as it’s found on Flutterscape.
2. Write a blog post or make a video telling me why you want/deserve these things you picked out. Be creative!
3. In the blog post / in the YouTube description section, link to the items you talk about / want to win, so I can make sure they exist and you’re not making stuff up.
4. Send your entry to contests@tofugu.com. Contest ends July 21, 2010.

Scoring system is a combination of random and preference. I’m going to take my favorite blog posts and my favorite videos, and then I’ll probably amidakuji them to pick a random winner out of my favorite 6-8 entries.

There you have it. ANYTHING YOU WANT. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you want. Feel free to link to your entries in the comments as well! Okay! Go ahead, get started! Questions? Pop them in the comments. So, what do you want to win?

P.S. If you like funny Japanese products, you should follow @flutterscape on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. How To Buy Anything From Japan With FlutterScape [+Giveaway]
2. 8 Ways to Win Unlimited Japanese Lessons (and counting)
3. Two (or Three) More Days To Win These Flashcards

I’m guessing a lot of you know how to type in Japanese (hint: you don’t need a Japanese keyboard), but did you know about all the “hidden” special characters you can type out while you’re in Japanese input mode? You aren’t only limited to hiragana, katakana, romaji, and kanji. There are a score of other weird characters you can use to make your text a lot more interesting, you know? Here’s a lot of them (mostly the good ones) with an explanation of what they are and how to get them to show up!

Typing Musical Notes and Notation in Japanese

One of the things you’ll see quite often when reading Japanese blogs / text messages is various music-related symbols. There are a bunch of them, but they can all be called by the same word. It’s just like when you type in a Japanese word and hit space to see what kanji you can choose from, except this time you type in a Japanese word to show a list of possible symbols you can use.

So, as long as you know the word you can get the symbols for it! Let’s start with おんぷ (above). If you don’t know how to read hiragana, perhaps it’s time to learn how to read hiragana?

Notes: おんぷ

By typing in おんぷ, you get access to all kinds of musical notes.

♩　♫　♪　♬

Beyond musical notes, though, you can type other music related things.

Sharp:　しゃーぷ

Flat:　ふらっと

If you read these out, you’ll notice that they’re just readings of the words “sharp” and “flat.” If you hit space after typing しゃーぷ or ふらっと, you’ll get yourself the following sharp / flat symbols.

♯　♭

If you want to “jazz up” (har dee har har) your text, you can use some of these musical notations. Yee Haw! ♬

Typing Shapes In Japanese

If you can type musical notes, you should be able to type simple shapes, too, right? To type shapes in Japanese, you pretty much only have to know the word for the shape, hit space a few times after you type it in, and find the shape and type of shape you want.

Squares: しかく

□　■　◇　◆

Triangles: さんかく

△　▲　▽　▼　▷ ▶　◁　◀

Circles: まる

○　●　◎　◉　◯

Stars: ほし

☆　★　※　＊

Arrows: やじるし

→　←　↑　↓　⇄　⇅　⇔　⇦　⇧　⇨　⇩　☜　☝　☞　☟

Hearts: はーと

♡　♥

These shapes are pretty simple. If you want to get a little more complicated, there are even more options in the “symbols” category.

Typing “Symbols”

This is where things start getting interesting, I think (and possibly a lot less useful). These symbols include playing card symbols and more.

Playing Card Symbols: とらんぷ

とらんぷ (or trump) are what playing cards are called. When you type this in, you get the clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts symbols.

♠　♣　♥　♦　♡　♢　♧　♤

Beyond trump cards, there are a number of other symbols as well, typed in a couple of different ways.

Emoji: えもじ

☎　♨　〄　〠

〠 is a variant postal mark

〄 shows that a product complies with the Japanese industrial standard

♨ looks like a cup of java but actually has to do with hot springs (which Japan has a lot of)

☎ is a telephone symbol. You might see this next to a telephone number.

Postal: ゆうびん

〒　〠

You might see these symbols on letters or on a Japanese address (especially the first one).

Other Characters?

There are a few more things you can type in using Japanese input, but nothing all that interesting. The ones I’ve written about above are the best and most useful (unless you’re typing out a lot of math, or something). If you are interested in the other ones, check out the Wikipedia article or this article.

Now, I fully expect all your Tofugu comments to be full of musical notes and onsen symbols. Have at it!

P.S. Interested in business? Check out my business blog.

P.P.S. If you can type 140 special characters in Japanese, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

No related posts.

I get all kinds of weird questions in my e-mail inbox. Sometimes they’re creepy, sometimes they’re hilarious, sometimes they’re interesting, and sometimes they’re a part of a pattern. This is one of those patterns. A few times a month I’ll get the following question:

What is the best Japanese Language electronic dictionary?

Once I get the same question too many times, there’s a good likelihood that I’ll just write the answer via a post here, which is exactly what’ I’m doing. So, what is the best Japanese Language electronic dictionary out there? Let’s find out.

The Best Japanese Language Electronic Dictionary Is… Not a Japanese Language Electronic Dictionary…

Guh-what? You’d think that if you were in the market to buy an electronic dictionary you’d buy an electronic dictionary… at least in the “traditional” sense. You can see pictures of them above. Now, for sure, they do the things they’re supposed to do, but that’s about it. If you buy one, you probably won’t be disappointed on this front. You’ll be able to look up words, see sentences, and in some hear audio. Not too shabby.

For me, though, I don’t feel like that’s enough, at least not in this day and age. Even though these do exactly what you want them to do, I don’t think they’re the best tool for the job. Here’s why:

• They’re big (though the big screen could be considered a plus)
• They’re bulky, try putting one of the regular sized ones in your pocket
• They aren’t versatile
• They’re expensive (approximately $200-$400+)

By now, I bet you’ve already guessed the “electronic dictionary” that I’d recommend.

Get An iPod Touch / iPhone Instead Of a Japanese Electronic Dictionary

Instead of a Japanese language electronic dictionary, I highly recommend you get an iPhone or iPod Touch. I think it’s an easy decision, but that’s also because I’m an Apple fanboy. Still, I think anyone will see the logic here.

• An iPod Touch comes in at $179 (if you buy it at Costco) or $199 from the Apple store. This is the same price as the lower end models of the Japanese electronic dictionaries, but you get so much more.
• You can download a dictionary application to your iPhone or iPod Touch. My favorite is “Japanese” because everything is stored locally (i.e. no need for an internet connection to look things up). This app is $16, which is pretty expensive for an iPhone app, but well worth it if you were planning on putting down $200-$400+ on an electronic dictionary. Update: A lot of people seem to like “Kotoba” as well. I haven’t tried it, but it seems to be highly recommended (and free!)
• There are tons of other Japanese language learning related applications in the iTunes store as well. There are so many different things you can get (and who knows what will come out in the future), making it an awesome (mobile) platform for practicing your Japanese.
• You can download Japanese Podcasts to your iPod / iPhone, and listen to them for continued practice while you’re driving, sitting around, at work, at school, etc.
• You can do other things with it, so you aren’t just pinned down to using it to study Japanese (you know, all the things an iPod Touch / iPhone are supposed to do, right?).

So, basically it’s better, more mobile, has apps, and costs less. What is there not to like? Granted, regular Japanese electronic dictionaries have their perks, too, I’m sure, but I personally don’t see the purpose of getting one when you could do this instead.

If that didn’t convince you, watch this video, which just says the same things you just read all over again.

Anyone else doing the same thing? Any angry Japanese electronic dictionary users out there? Let me know in the comments what you think.

Related posts:

1. How To Use Evernote To Study Japanese (Or Any Other Language)
2. What I Want To See With Apple’s iPad (In Regards To Japanese)