Japanese (Page 3)

Characters in this textbook from Taiwan want to teach you Japanese using two-timing tactics

You’ll feel motivated to both study harder and buy this textbook when you see this unconventional sample sentence!

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Japanese people react to “But we’re speaking Japanese!” video, and it’s kind of stunning

What do ordinary Japanese people think of a viral video which depicts a situation wherein a Japanese person is unable to process foreigners’ fluent Japanese?

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What are Facebook’s five new “reactions” called in Japan?

In Japan, you don’t “like” something on Facebook, you “ii ne” it. But what about the five other “reactions” that Facebook has just added?

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“This is a movie” among 10 of Japan’s lamest movie taglines

Condensing the entire plot of a feature film into a handful of words without accidentally implying that it sucks is surprisingly difficult—as these 10 eye-wateringly terrible film taglines clearly show.

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When “yes” means “no” — The Japanese language quirk that trips English speakers up

You can learn all the words and practice all the kanji, but there’s one little Japanese language quirk that will almost certainly trip you up when you first encounter it.

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Researchers use uniformity of Japanese language to read people’s minds

A research group from the Kyushu Institute of Technology have announced that they have successfully read certain words and letters from people’s minds without them saying anything.

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The top 10 hardest Japanese words to pronounce – which ones trip you up?【Video】

In terms of pronunciation Japanese is surprisingly easy to get to grips with, but some words can be real tongue-tanglers! Here are 10 of the worst!

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Yuki teaches us how to make our very own Domo-kun Christmas pudding!【Recipe】

Why have a boring old round Christmas pudding when you could have a delicious fruit-cake version of Japan’s national broadcaster’s mascot on your table?

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Student amused to find entry—and corresponding visual—for “cat ears” in his electronic dictionary

What happens when children contribute new entries to dictionaries? Cat ears happen, that’s what! Err, but maybe not the kind we were hoping for…

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RocketNews24’s six top tips for learning Japanese

Love Japan? Want to learn Japanese? Check out RocketNews24’s six fundamental top tips for learning Japanese!

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Learning Japanese? Beware these 19 loan words—they’re not what they sound like!

Speakers of certain languages sometimes get a leg-up when learning Japanese. For example, Japanese includes Chinese characters, which means Chinese speakers can often get the gist of a text even if they don’t understand the grammar. Similarly, Korean speakers might find that Japanese grammar is kinda similar to theirs. And we native English speakers get a huge helping hand from the hundreds of English loan words that have been adopted into modern Japanese.

But sometimes, these loan words aren’t really our friends at all. Instead, they’re what’s known as false friends – words that sound similar in two languages yet have a completely different meaning. In co-opting English words into Japanese, sometimes our crafty Nihonjin pals have assigned our words to things that actually mean something totally different. It’s almost like they’re trying to trick us!

Join us for a quick primer on some Japanese loanwords you might have heard before, and what they really mean!

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Talk with your hands — Mr Sato tests your knowledge of common Japanese hand gestures【Video】

For English speakers, the Japanese language can be difficult to master. The writing system is completely alien, sentences sound like something Yoda would say thanks to the order the words come in, and while it makes perfect sense once you get the hang of it, the Japanese’s habit of omitting pronouns can make conversations almost impossible to follow.

The good news is that for short visits to Japan you can usually get by with very little Japanese since people are usually extremely patient and accommodating. A bit of miming here and a “please” and a “thank you” there will get you a long way.

But if you’re not familiar with Japanese hand gestures, you may end up in a sticky—or at least rather embarrassing—situation…

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Survey reveals the top five times Japanese travelers realise just how Japanese they are

Whether we like to admit it or not, where we were brought up has a huge impact on the person we become. From our way of thinking to what foods we prefer, it’s hard to deny that our environment shapes our personal identity.

While some people come from nations that are veritable melting pots of backgrounds, languages, and cultures, others come from a country with much more homogeneity. Japan is one such country, and its people have a strong sense of identity—though they may not readily admit it.

But often during a trip to a foreign country, there comes a moment of self-realization where they become aware of just how Japanese they really are. A recent survey asked Japanese travelers to identify the five moments they felt most Japanese when abroad. The results are really quite telling.

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Lingerie for girls with smaller breasts: feast’s new collection “Glossy Ribbon Mermaid” is too cute

Celebrating its first anniversary, feast, the lingerie brand designed by Gomi Hayakawa and known for targeting women with smaller chest sizes, has released a new lingerie collection, called “Glossy Ribbon Mermaid”.

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New range of futons for cats feature traditional Japanese patterns, made with tails in mind

One of the great pleasures of visiting Japan is the chance to sleep in a futon, traditional Japanese bedding that’s freshly laid out on the floor every evening. When you’ve got a nice thick mattress pad, a fluffy, quilted duvet cover and a compact buckwheat pillow, a night sleeping on tatami straw floors is a night few foreigners forget.

Now you can share the traditional Japanese bedtime experience with your feline friends, with a gorgeous new range of futons created especially for the discerning four-legged customer. From the gorgeous Japanese prints to the matching pillow and the ergonomic, tail-friendly design, this is the best chance yet for obliging humans to finally reclaim their beds!

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Selfies taken on smartphones are one of the must-dos for the young girls nowadays, and Japan is no exception. As popular Japanese pop icons or teen models post their selfies on social medias, Japanese young girls would fire up their camera apps and pose the similar way. They do this not just to be like the icons they admire, but also to figure out the best poses for looking good on Twitter or Instagram.

With this in mind, today we have listed 10 selfie poses that young Japanese girls are likely to do on Twitter and Instagram! Maybe you’ll learn a new move or two?

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Artist creates unique badass Stormtrooper covered in Japanese tattoos

Recently, we brought you news of the amazing Star Wars Movie Realisation Series of figurines, which have perfectly transformed Darth Vader, Boba Fett and Stormtroopers into awesome-looking samurai warriors.

But if you’re itching for a Japanese-styled Star Wars character of your own, you might want to do what this clever artist did and simply make one yourself. All you’ll need is a plain figure, some coloured pens and a little—make that a lot—of talent and patience.

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Japan’s heart and Mickey Mouse-shaped bubble wrap is the cutest thing you’ll ever pop

Bubble wrap lovers everywhere were dealt a blow this summer with the devastating news that the company behind the world’s favourite air-filled packaging was launching a new, unpoppable bubble wrap. Sealed Air Corp., the inventors of bubble wrap back in the 1950s, have come up with a new design for an air-filled wrap that doesn’t burst under pressure.

But here at RocketNews24, we probably won’t be buying regular boring old round bubble wrap ever again anyway, because we’ve discovered that Japan has bubble wrap shaped like hearts and Mickey Mouse heads.

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7 more things foreigners do that Japanese people find amusing

As a foreigner in Japan, have you ever experienced a slightly awkward yet somehow humorous interaction with a Japanese person? Perhaps you were curious to know more about some aspect of Japanese culture and asked someone a rather random question, or conversely, a Japanese person was curious to know something about your culture and came to you for all the answers. Or maybe you were just out on the street and happened to witness an amusing exchange between some natives and the local gaijin.

Last year, we brought you 10 such tales of comical intercultural interactions, and today we’d like to introduce seven more fun, quirky, and interesting anecdotes as shared by Japanese Twitter users about their exchanges with foreigners. Have you ever been in a similar situation to one of these yourself?

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Counting in Japanese just became a whole lot easier with this handy infographic

One of the beautiful (or painful, depending on how you look at it) aspects of the Japanese language is its complex system of numbers and counting methods. For starters, there are two commonly used systems of numbers–often referred to as the Sino-Japanese numbers and the native Japanese numbers–that are used in different contexts, as well as a seemingly limitless number of counter words. Confused yet?

So how the heck do you become a master of Japanese numbers? Well, a good way to start is by checking out this handy-dandy infographic put out by Japanese Video Cast! 

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