Learn Japanese N5 and N4

15/12/2022

There are a lot of mountain region, range and highland in Japan, as about 70% of the land is mountain area.
These mountains provide clean water and grow green in the islands.
Please understand about water additionally through understanding geographical mountain locations.

15/12/2022

Surrounded by sea, more than 70% occupied by mountains, long island from north to south, under these situations Japan has variety of climate by area and season.
In order to understand Japan, first required to know about geographical information.
Japan is divided into 47 prefectures and 8 regions. When we think about climates, we can divide Japan into 12 regions as below.

03/08/2022

Mountain Day is also known as 'Yama no hi' and is Japan's newest public holiday.

Since 2016, it has been celebrated on August 11th. If August 11th falls on a Sunday, the following Monday will be observed as a holiday.

As it is a modern holiday, there are no particular traditional ceremonies associated with the day.

The inaugural National Ceremony for Mountain Day was held in the Japanese Alps at Kamikochi in Matsumoto, Nagano.

In 2016, a survey by the Japan Weather Association showed that only 68% of people were aware of the new holiday. It will take some time for Mountain Day to become established as a national holiday - in the same survey nearly 10% of people said they were not aware of Marine Day which was introduced in 1996.

28/10/2021

Japanese language Jobs

Company Name : Fujitsu India

Qualification: JLPT N4, N3 and Graduation

Freshers and Experience Both

10/09/2021

03/08/2021

The festival of Obon lasts for three days; however, its starting date varies within different regions of Japan. When the lunar calendar was changed to the Gregorian calendar at the beginning of the Meiji era, the localities in Japan responded differently, which resulted in three different times of Obon. Shichigatsu Bon (Bon in July) is based on the solar calendar and is celebrated around the 15th of July in eastern Japan (Kantō region such as Tokyo, Yokohama and the Tōhoku region), coinciding with Chūgen. Hachigatsu Bon (Bon in August), based on the lunar calendar, is celebrated around the 15th of August and is the most commonly celebrated time. Kyū Bon (Old Bon) is celebrated on the 15th day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, and so differs each year, which appears between August 8 and September 7. One exception was in 2008 and 2019, when the solar and lunar calendar matched so Hachigatsu Bon and Kyū Bon were celebrated on the same day. Kyū Bon is celebrated in areas such as the northern part of the Kantō region, Chūgoku region, Shikoku, and Okinawa Prefecture. These three festival days are not listed as public holidays, but it is customary for people to be given leave.[1]

03/08/2021

Families place offerings of fruit, rice, green tea, sake and lotus-shaped sweets at the graves or family altars. Paper lanterns are hung round the house to help guide the spirits home. Some families carry lanterns from the graves back to their homes. Although Obon is a memorial, it is not solemn.

03/08/2021

Obon (お盆) or just Bon (盆) is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist–Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon Odori.

30/07/2021

Japanese Language Proficiency Test(JLPT)

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験, Nihongo Nōryoku Shiken) measures a person's proficiency in the Japanese language. Test results are widely used by professionals seeking employment at Japanese companies and students seeking acceptance at Japanese educational institutions to certify their language proficiency.

The test has five levels, from level 5 for beginners to level 1 for advanced students. Writing, reading, listening, vocabulary and grammar skills are all tested during the 2-3 hour test. The JLPT is held twice a year, in July and December, in various cities inside and outside of Japan (only once per year in some locations).

Anyone wishing to take the test should register at least three months in advance (check official website for exact dates). Test results are released about two months after the test.

Due to the COVID pandemic in some places JLPT was cancelled.

30/07/2021

Loan Words
Over the centuries, many words from foreign languages were incorporated into the Japanese language, especially from the Chinese and English languages.

A large amount of Chinese words were introduced together with the Chinese writing system in the 5th century and afterwards. Chinese loan words are naturally written in kanji (Chinese characters).

In more recent times, many words were also borrowed from Portuguese, Dutch, German (especially from the fields of medicine and mountaineering), French and Italian (especially from the fields of music and food), and, of course, English which is the origin of most modern loan words. Non-Chinese loan words are written in katakana.

Loan words are often heavily Japanized in various ways (see below), which is a complicating factor not only for students of the Japanese language but also for Japanese students of foreign languages:

The pronunciation of loan words is Japanized, and sometimes quite different from the original pronunciation: e.g. curtain=kāten, elevator=elebētā, girl=gāru.
Many loan words get abbreviated in ways they do not get abbreviated in the original language: e.g. sūpaa=supermarket, kilo=kilometer (and kilogram), depāto=department store, wāpuro=word processor.
The meanings of some loan words do not correspond with the words' original meanings: e.g. "manshon" from the English "mansion" means "apartment".
And finally, some "loan words" are actually Japanese creations rather than loan words. For example, "salaryman" is a Japanese word for a typical Japanese company worker, while the "walkman" even found its way back into English dictionaries.

30/07/2021

Keigo - Honorific Language
The Japanese language accommodates several levels of politeness through different verb endings and alternative expressions and words. There are three general levels of politeness, which are expressed through different kinds of speech. The levels correspond to colloquial, polite and honorific situations. The honorific level of speech is called keigo (敬語).

When speaking to those of much higher social status, (for example, customers, teachers or elders), one is supposed to use honorific speech. Generally, keigo involves using very humble expressions to refer to oneself and very honorific ones to refer to the person addressed.

Students of the Japanese language may find keigo complicates their attempts to communicate. However, even native Japanese speakers need considerable exercise in order to be able to correctly express themselves in this formal, honorific way.

30/07/2021

Kanji
Kanji (漢字), one of the three scripts used in the Japanese language, are Chinese characters, which were first introduced to Japan in the 5th century via the Korean peninsula.

Kanji are ideograms, i.e. each character has its own meaning and corresponds to a word. By combining characters, more words can be created. For example, the combination of "electricity" with "car" means "train". There are tens of thousands of characters, of which 2000 to 3000 are required to understand newspapers. A set of 2136 characters has been officially declared as the "kanji for everyday use".

Before the introduction of Chinese characters, no Japanese writing system existed. When adopting the characters, the Japanese did not only introduce the characters' original Chinese pronunciations, but also associated them with the corresponding, native Japanese words and their pronunciations. Consequently, most kanji can still be pronounced in at least two ways, a Chinese (on-yomi) and a Japanese (kun-yomi) way, which considerably further complicates the study of the Japanese language.

Kanji are used for writing nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. But unlike the Chinese language, Japanese cannot be written entirely in kanji. For grammatical endings and words without corresponding kanji, two additional, syllable-based scripts are being used, hiragana and katakana, each consisting of 46 syllables.

Calligraphy is the art of writing beautifully.