Category: Japanese

Autumn Nanakusa

In the past, I’ve written about a certain obscure holiday in Japanese culture called Nanakusa (七草, “seven herbs”)1, which takes place every January 7th, just after the New Year.

While reading about the Diary of Lady Murasaki (discussed on my other blog) I discovered that there is a parallel Nanakusa tradition in Autumn as well. There is no designated holiday, but since antiquity, these flowers and herbs were prized during the season of Autumn.

Old Japanese NameModern NameEnglishScientific Name
女郎花 (おみなえし) 
ominaeshi		オミナエシ 
ominaeshi		Golden LacePatrinia scabiosifolia
尾花 (おばな) 
obana		ススキ 
susuki		Chinese Silver GrassMiscanthus sinensis
桔梗 (ききょう) 
kikyou		キキョウ 
kikyou		Balloon FlowerPlatycodon grandiflorus
撫子 (なでしこ) 
nadeshiko		カワラナデシコ 
kawaranadeshiko		Fringed PinkDianthus superbus
藤袴 (ふじばかま) 
fujibakama		フジバカマ 
fujibakama		–Eupatorium fortunei
葛 (くず)
kuzu		クズ 
kuzu		KudzuPueraria lobata
萩 (はぎ)
hagi		ハギ 
hagi		Japanese bush cloverLespedeza
Courtesy of Wikipedia

This page shows some really nice visuals of each flower.

Some of these plants aren’t necessarily well-known today, but even as a foreigner, I recoginize a few of them. Susuki grass (a.k.a. Chinese silver grass) is an important part of Otsukimi, and Nadeshiko flowers are frequently used as a symbol of femininity in Japan. The national soccer/football team is named Nadeshiko Japan in fact. Hagi is used in Ohagi treats as well.

Regarding the reference in Lady Murasaki’s diary near the beginning is written the following text:

I look out from my room at the head of the corridor into the light morning mist. Dew is still on the ground, but His Excellency [Fujiwara no Michinaga, her benefactor] is already out in the garden ordering his attends to clear the stream of some obstruction. Plucking a sprig from a large cluster of maiden-flowers that blooms there on the south side of the bridge, he peers in over the top of the curtain frame…

Translation by Dr Richard Bowring

The “maiden flowers” according to the Japanese text are ominaeshi (golden lace) flowers. So, even in the 11th century, a thousand years ago, these flowers were prized among the aristocracy of Japan. Immediately after, Michinaga challenges her to compose a poem about the ominaeshi he plucked (a common practice back then), and she composes the following:

JapaneseRomanizationTranslation
女郎花OminaeshiNow I see the
さかりの色をSakari no iro wocolor of this maiden-flower
見るからにMiru kara niin bloom,
露のわきけるTsuyu no wakikeruI know how much the dew
身こそ知らるれMikoso shirarurediscriminates against me.
Translation by Dr Richard Bowring

Michinaga is impressed by her quick wit (it’s basically why he hired her as a handmaiden to his daughter), he responds with:

JapaneseRomanizationTranslation
白露はShiratsuyu waIt is not the dew
わきてもおかじWakitemo okajithat chooses where
女郎花Ominaeshito fall;
こころからにやKokoro kara ni yadoes not the flower choose
色の染むらむIro no somu ranthe color it desires?
Translation by Dr Richard Bowring

Such a poetic exchange for a single flower.

In fact, the Autumn list of flowers dates much further back than the 11th century. Take a look at these two poems from the Manyoshu anthology, poem 1537:

Original Manyogana2Modern JapaneseRomanizationRough Translation
秋野尓秋の野にAki no no niIn the autumn fields
咲有花乎咲きたる花をSakitaru hana woif you count the
指折指折りOyobi-oriblossoming flowers
可伎數者かき数ふればKakikazo furebaon your fingers:
七種花七種の花Nanakusa no hanathe flowers of Nanakusa
Other source: https://manyoshu-japan.com/12041/

and poem 1538:

Original ManyoganaModern JapaneseRomanizationRough Translation
芽之花萩の花Hagi no hanaHagi flowers
乎花葛花尾花葛花Obana kuzu hanaObana, kudzu flowers
瞿麦之花なでしこの花Nadeshiko no hanaNadeshiko flowers
姫部志をみなへしOminaeshiOminaeshi,
又藤袴また藤袴Mata fujihakamaand Fuji-hakama
朝皃之花朝顔の花Asagao no hanaAsagao flowers3
Other source: https://manyoshu-japan.com/12040/

… as you can see, these two poems are linked. It’s interesting that even as far back as the 7th century, these seven flowers were celebrated in poetry, and this tradition still persists in Japan today, the 21st.

Wishing you all a happy Nanakusa!

1 Not to be confused with the Colonel’s “eleven herbs and spices”. 😉 I have enjoyed Kentucky Fried Chicken in Japan, and we try to try to enjoy it for Christmas every year even in the US, per Japanese tradition.

2 Manyogana was an early Japanese script that used Chinese characters in a very phonetic way. This was eventually replaced by the simpler, short-hand form called hiragana. Only very early works of Japanese are recorded in Manyogana, but that does include the Manyoshu anthology.

3 A couple quick notes from the referenced website: the name Fujihakama has gradually changed pronunciation to Fujibakama. Also, apparently the Asagao flower referenced in the Manyoshu isn’t the same as the modern Asagao “morning glory” flower. It’s not clear what flower this referred to at the time. Finally, this flower isn’t the same as the kikyou flower that is now part of the seven flowers of Autumn Nanakusa.

The Many Names of The Nianfo

The nianfo (念佛) is widely recited across many cultures and languages by people who follow the Pure Land Buddhist tradition. In Japanese it is called the nembutsu (念仏), and that is the name I most often use on this blog. In Korean it is the yeombul (염불), and in Vietnamese it is the niệm phật. Just as the name differs by language, the phrase itself has changed pronunciation as it is adopted in other cultures and languages, just like the sutras did.

Let’s look at examples.

The original form of the nianfo (as far as I can tell) comes from Sanskrit language in India. In Sanskrit, “nianfo” was buddhānusmṛti (buddhānussati in Pāli language). The venerable site Visible Mantra states that it was recited like so:1

namo’mitābhāyabuddhāya

In the Siddham script, still used in some esoteric practices, this is written as:

𑖡𑖦𑖺𑖦𑖰𑖝𑖯𑖥𑖯𑖧𑖤𑖲𑖟𑖿𑖠𑖯𑖧

From here, Buddhism was gradually imported into China from India (a fascinating story in and of itself), and because Chinese language and Sanskrit are so different, this was no easy task. Nevertheless, the buddhānusmṛti was translated as nianfo (念佛) and written as:

南無阿彌陀佛

This was how the Chinese at the time approximated the sound of the Sanskrit phrase. In modern, Simplified Chinese characters this looks like:

南无阿弥陀佛

But how does one read these characteres? That’s a fun question to answer.

You see, Chinese has many dialects because of geography, regional differences, and migration of people. Thus, even though Chinese characters are written the same (with only modest regional differences), the way they are read and pronounced varies. Thanks to Wiktionary, I found a helpful list to illustrate:

Dialect or writing systemPronunciation
Mandarin, Pinyin systemNāmó Ēmítuófó or
Námó Ēmítuófó
Mandarin, Zhuyin (Bopomofo) systemㄋㄚ ㄇㄛˊ ㄜ ㄇㄧˊ ㄊㄨㄛˊ ㄈㄛˊ, or
ㄋㄚˊ ㄇㄛˊ ㄜ ㄇㄧˊ ㄊㄨㄛˊ ㄈㄛˊ
Cantonese, Jyutping systemnaam4 mo4 o1 mei4 to4 fat6
naam4 mo4 o1 nei4-1 to4 fat6
naa1 mo4 o1 mei4 to4 fat6, or
naa1 mo4 o1 nei4-1 to4 fat6
Hakka, Sixian or Phak-fa-su systemNà-mò Ô-mì-thò-fu̍t
Nà-mò Ô-nî-thò-fu̍t
Nà-mò Â-mì-thò-fu̍t
Eastern Min, BUC system
Nàng-mò̤-ŏ̤-mì-tò̤-hŭk
Puxian Min, Pouseng Ping’ing systemna2 mo2 or1 bi2 tor2 hoh7, or
na2 mo2 or1 bi2 tor2 huoh7
Southern Min (a.k.a. Hokkien), Peh-oe-ji systemLâm-bû O-bí-tô-hu̍t
Lâm-bû-oo-mì-tôo-hu̍t

Of these dialects, I am only familiar with Mandarin and (to a much lesser extent) Hokkien, so I can only trust the others based on Wikipedia.

Anyhow, China was a powerful, dynamic culture at the time, and it had a profound influence on its smaller neighbors such as the Korean peninsula, Japan, and northern Vietnam (a.k.a. Dai Viet). Just as the neighbors of the Romans (including the Byzantines) absorbed Roman culture, the neighbors of China did the same even though the languages were very different.

Thus, the nembutsu in these languages became:

LanguageHow to Recite
JapaneseKanji: 南無阿弥陀仏
Romaji: Namu Amida Butsu
KoreanHanja: 南無阿彌陀佛
Hangul: 나무아미타불
Romanization: Namu Amita Bul
VietnameseChữ Hán: 南無阿彌陀佛
Quốc ngữ: Nam mô A-di-đà Phật2

What about Tibetan Buddhism? I am really unfamiliar with that tradition, so I might be wrong here, but my understanding is that Tibetan veneration of Amida Buddha stems from a different tradition, so instead of the nianfo, they recite appropriate mantras instead. Beyond that, I don’t know.

Anyhow, this is a brief look at how a simple Sanskrit phrase has evolved into so many traditions and ways to express veneration to the Buddha of Infinite Light. Thanks for reading!

𑖡𑖦𑖺𑖦𑖰𑖝𑖯𑖥𑖯𑖧𑖤𑖲𑖟𑖿𑖠𑖯𑖧
南無阿彌陀佛
Namu Amida Butsu

P.S. Another post despite my intended rest. The time off really has helped, so it’s been well worth it, but now I am eager to write again. 😌

1 As I’ve written before, writing Sanskrit in the more modern Devanagari script is kind of pointless since Sanskrit was never written in that until late in history, long after Buddhism in India was gone. Sanskrit does not have a native script either, so the Roman Alphabet is as god as any.

2 Brushing off my college Vietnamese, this is pronounced as “Nam-moe Ah-zee-dah-fut”.

The Japanese Way of Doing Things

My guide book on Japanese culture talks about a concept called sahō (作法), which in a mundane sense just means “instructions” for doing stuff. But the book explains that it also describes how things are done culturally:

… for example, in the case of the tea ceremony, every act is carefully choreographed, from where people sit, to how the water is boiled, to how the ea is prepared and so on.

Again, in the business world, one can observe sahō in action as the seller employs polite language and bows often as he shows various forms of respect to the buyer. Another case would be the social setting of a company, where a subordinate will use particular sahō with his boss.

Page 156

The book further explains:

For most Japanese, sahō is an ingrained pattern of behavior that affects their day-to-day actions without them even being aware of it. However, for people who come from overseas, some of these practices may appear puzzling. Why is someone bowing so many times in a particular setting? Or at another time, why is someone sitting ramrod straight? But for the Japanese, they are simply following the sahō that is appropriate for that place and circumstance.

I definitely experienced some of this confusion in the early years when I visited Japan with my wife. My in-laws kindly took me to a local Takashimaya department store and paid to get me a tailored suit. As a poor white kid in America, the experience was kind of awkward on a few levels: I wasn’t used to getting measured for a tailored suit, I wasn’t used to the very polite speech and mannerisms of the store employee, I wasn’t very good at speaking Japanese, and I wasn’t even used to owning my own suit.1

This concept of sahō isn’t limited to Japanese culture, of course. It is true, based on limited experience, that things can feel really choreographed in Japanese culture compared to American culture, but the idea of “how people do things” is universal. The American handshake is on example, the tendency for Russians not to smile during formal settings, the “pub culture” in Ireland and so on. There’s countless examples unique to each culture.

Even for a culture like Japan, where everything really is kind of choreographed, you do get used to it. The extra flourishes at the bookstore (wrapping the books, extra bowing, etc) were a bit confusing at first, but after a while, I don’t even really mind it anymore. Similarly, certain habits became ingrained more and more each time I visit.

So, when you encounter another culture, the important to bear in mind is that each culture has its own sahō, and it will be different than yours. Be observant, be flexible. If you do, you’ll quickly adapt and will succeed. People who stand like tall trees in the wind get blown down, but those who bend like grass prosper.

Food for thought.

P.S. Fun bonus post before Thanksgiving weekend! Happy Thanksgiving Day and Native American Heritage Day to readers in the US.

1 It is still the only suit I own, but I save it for important occasions only, such as my mother-in-law’s funeral. Speaking of sahō, funerals in Japan are very formal compared to American ones.

Effort

Garibaldi: This isn’t gonna be easy.
G’kar: Nothing worthwhile ever is.

Babylon 5, “And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place”, s3:ep20

Recently, I talked about the key to practicing Zen (or Buddhism in general) is training while incorporating other things in your life toward that same goal. Like Rocky Balboa training in Rocky, or Li Fong in the excellent movie Karate Kid: Legends, or someone working hard to learn a language by making other aspects of life conducive toward language learning.

In most cases, we go through a some stages when we take up a project like this.

  1. New thing – “this is fun, I can see the benefits already!”
  2. Steady practice – “gotta keep this up”
  3. Boredom – “ugh, I gotta do this again”
  4. Skipped days – “I’ll make up for it tomorrow”
  5. More skipped days – “No, really, I’ll make up it up tomorrow.”
  6. Guilt – “I suck”
  7. Despair – “I’ll never succeed.”
  8. Quitting.

My usual pattern with new projects, or dieting and exercise, is to eventually feel guilty, despair, and quit. It happens to me a lot over the years, admittedly.

But also, there are a few things that surprisingly I have managed to stick with for years, decades even. I’ve been actively studying Japanese since 2008, for example. I realized though that the way I’ve studied Japanese has changed and shifted many times. Some experiments succeeded, others failed immediately. But the goal was important enough to me, that even when I failed I just shifted tactics and tried again. I failed the N1 JLPT twice in the last five years, and to my surprise, I am still at it, but now trying a new tactic.

Put another way: when I hit a roadblock, instead of hitting my head on the wall harder and harder, I tried another route. I knew where I wanted to go (language fluency) and just kept trying methods until I found something that stuck.

I realized too that my pursuit of the Buddhist path has been much the same way. I started out in 2005 with very little understanding, but I really liked reciting the nembutsu, and I loved the simple, down-to-earth, and highly approachable Jodo Shu sect as taught by Honen (still do!). But while I’ve had the same basic goal, my understanding of Buddhism has grown over time, and like language learning, has gone through many false-starts, projects that soon ended, or things that just didn’t work. So, I just shifted, tried another route, backtracked, and so on. This what I think happened to me, and why I took up Zen practice since May.

My current Zen practice is, I suppose, just another track toward my goal.

So, I think the point of all this is that the goal is more important than the particular approach. If the goal is something you really care about you’ll find a way. In fact, you’ll probably bend other aspects of your life toward it. If not, then the goal maybe wasn’t that important to begin with. That’s OK. Better to acknowledge it, cut your losses, and move on.

But if the goal is worthwhile to you, then like G’Kar says, you’ll find a way.

Namu Shakamuni Butsu
Namu Amida Butsu

Hokkien: the Forgotten Chinese Dialect

This is not something I usually post about, but after my recent post about Ando Momofuku, I learned some fascinating things about Chinese language and wanted to share with a wider audience. In high school, I took two years of Chinese language and was an enthusiastic student. We learned the Mandarin dialect, though our teacher was from Taiwan, and we never really explored other dialetcs.

However, over the years, I’ve met various overseas Chinese who don’t speak Mandarin-dialect Chinese as a first language, and instead know Cantonese, Toisan, Taiwanese and so on. The history of Chinese languages and its various dialects is complicated. Fascinating, but far too much to cover here and I am not expert. In fact, it’s fair to say that all these dialects aren’t really dialects, but more like a language family, in the same was as Latin to French, Italian and Spanish, or Sanskrit to Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi, etc.

But I did want to cover a particular dialect that’s actually pretty widespread and influential, but not well-known: Hokkien (福建話, hoh-kee-en), sometimes also called Minnan or Bân-lâm (閩南) among other names. In Mandarin, this dialect is called Fújiànhuà (“Fujian speech”). So, we might think of Hokkien as Fujian-dialect Chinese, although as this video explains, that’s not 100% accurate:

It helps to think of Hokkien as one form of “Southern Chinese” vs. Mandarin “Northern Chinese”. This is a very rough comparison, but helps illustrate the history behind the two dialects. Hokkien is one of many, many dialects in southern China, where mountainous geography kept many communities isolated from one another over time. Meanwhile, Mandarin has its origins in northern plains of China, which also happens to be where most Imperial capitals resided in Chinese history, hence it had more influence and prestige.

Another thing to note is that the vast majority of the Chinese characters used are the same regardless of dialect, but they are read and pronounced differently depending on the dialect:

But out of all the fascinating dialects in Southern China, why am I writing about Hokkien? Two reasons.

The first reason is that the influence of Hokkien is surprisingly wide. It’s a very common dialect spoken across Southeast Asia. One of my long-time friends is Indonesian Chinese, and he told me that many people use it in Indonesia, and explained how Hokkien terms often get mixed in Indonesian conversational speech (which is natively Malay, not Chinese). This video below is a fascinating explanation of how Hokkien spread, and has continued to thrive across Southeast Asia.

Hokkien is also an important language in Taiwan. Mandarin became one of the national languages after the Nationalists fled there after 1950, but Hokkien (via Taiwanese) is very widespread too. I have a childhood friend who’s a second-generation Taiwanese-American, and he grew up learning both Mandarin (for practical reasons, every Chinese person knows at least some Mandarin), but also Taiwanese language. When his father passed away last year, I attended the funeral,1 and it was the first time I ever heard Hokkien spoken since most of the attendees were fellow Taiwanese people, and the eulogy was spoken in Taiwanese. Taiwanese is a form of Hokkien, probably the most widely spoken.

So, it’s used far more often than one might expect. But if you didn’t know how to distinguish Hokkien from Mandarain from Cantonese, you might easily miss it.

The second reason I am talking about this might surprise you.

Hokkien has a big influence on Japanese language, because that’s where all the on-yomi (“Chinese readings”) of Kanji come from, not Mandarin.

It’s easier to see when you actually compare words in Japanese, Hokkien, and Mandarin.

A common word in Japanese is 感謝 (かんしゃ, kansha) meaning “gratitude” or to be thankful. In Mandarin this is pronounced as gǎn xiè. That sounds fairly close. But in Hokkien it’s gam sia, (“gum shyah”) which sounds even closer.

Another example is the character 我 (“wa” or “ga”) in Japanese and is used for things like “self”, “mine”, “our”, etc. In Mandarin this is pronounced as wǒ, but in Hokkien it’s wa or gwá. Again, this sounds closer to Japanese than Mandarin does.

If you are curious to learn some basic Hokkien words, this is a nice video below, though it does not include Chinese characters (Romanization only):

This video is a fun, light-hearted comparison between Hokkien and other dialects by someone trying to learn Hokkien but who grew up learning Cantonese instead.

Side note, I asked my Taiwanese friend about how well he could understand other southern dialects. To him, Teochew was fairly easy to follow, but Cantonese was 50-50 for him: sometimes he could pick up what was being said, other times he could not.

Anyhow, that’s a very brief look at Hokkien by someone who’s obviously not Chinese, but fascinating by its influence across Asia. I hope to write more about Hokkien as I learn more, but I am quickly discovering how limited resources are. The only dictionary I could find was from 1922 and used for missionary work. Clearly, more research needs to be done, but I am happy to see younger generation Chinese making all these helpful Youtube videos to share information rather than Westerners doing it.

P.S. Featured photo is the city of Quanzhou (“chwan-joe”, 泉州), birthplace of Hokkien.

1 His parents had always been kind to me in school, and patient when I practiced my Chinese language skills with them.

The Healing Power of Nature

In the past, I talked about the four-character phrases, or yojijukugo, popular in Japanese culture. Recently, I learned about a new phrase that I hadn’t heard before: kachō-fūgetsu (花鳥風月). This phrase describes the beauty of nature, literally the Kanji characters for “flower”, “bird”, “wind” and “moon”.

The meaning here is various aspects of nature, but also in a positive healing sense.

Spock: Indeed, gentlemen. May I point out that I had an opportunity to observe your counterparts here quite closely. They were brutal, savage, unprincipled, uncivilized, treacherous; in every way, splendid examples of homo sapiens, the very flower of humanity. I found them quite refreshing. [he returns to the science station]

Kirk: I’m not sure, but I think we’ve just been insulted.

McCoy: I’m sure.

Star Trek, “Mirror Mirror” (s2ep4), stardate unknown

For all our veneer of civilization and advancement, we are still deep down biological creatures. We come from nature, and we need nature. Nature heals us and sustains us.

A small patch of grass in my yard, taken in April of 2025.

These days, it’s not hard to feel stressed by all the things that are going on, but I also found solace knowing that nature continues on regardless of what humans do or become. That doesn’t mean the future of humanity will necessarily be positive or negative, but it does remind me that life goes on nonetheless.

It also underscores how important protecting nature is.

P.S. More tips here for protecting the environment.

Making Sense of Japanese Verbs

Japanese language, like any language, uses verbs a lot. But verbs in Japanese differ considerably from Indo-European languages in how verbs are constructed, conjugated and so on. This makes them pretty tricky to learn at first glance, but the good news is that the internal structure and logic is actually fairly straightforward. You just need to unlearn your native language to avoid casual mistakes.

Warning: This post assumes you can read hiragana script. Hiragana takes a bit of work upfront, but you can master it quickly, and be reading Japanese fairly well after that (kanji notwithstanding). You can see my articles here, here and here about it.

The first thing to understand is that Japanese, especially in conversation, has a lot of implicit and contextual meaning. So, you can leave out many parts of speech because it’s already implied, or you just know from the context. But usually a sentence needs at least a verb.

A: [did you eat?]

B: ん、たべた
(yeah, I ate)

This is a perfectly normal sentence in conversation. No subject, object or anything, just the verb (to eat, past-tense).

Also, as I alluded to earlier, the conjugations and usages differ from European languages. Let’s look at some examples. This chart doesn’t cover everything but covers some of the most essential forms.

ConjugationUsageExample “Godan” Verb : 読む・よむExample “Ichidan” Verb : 食べる・たべる
Dictionary formDictionary listing of verb, also used for subordinate clauses, recurring actions (e.g. I eat X daily), and also future tense!読む・よむ食べる・たべる
Polite formUsed in polite, formal speech, especially at work, talking to teachers, or one’s elders. Also used for future tense!読みます・よみます食べます・たべます
“Te” formExtremely useful. Links verbs together in sequence, or allows for other grammatical forms.読んで・よんで食べて・たべて
Simple PastCasual, past tense form. Similar to dictionary form, but expresses past tense.読んだ・よんだ食べた・たべた
Passive formWhen something is being done to you. (e.g. I am being eaten)読まれる・よまれる食べられる・たべられる

Note that I divided verbs by Go-dan (五段), and Ichi-dan (一段) verbs. This is important as each one has a slightly different conjugation process. Ichi-dan verbs, sometimes called “ru-verbs” because the dictionary form always ends in る “ru”, however not all verbs that end in る are ichi-dan verbs. Everything else are go-dan verbs because the dictionary form has five (“go”) possible endings: う “u”, つ “tsu”, る “ru”, ぬ “nu”, and む “mu”.

Speaking from personal experience, people who are first learning Japanese often learn the textbook polite form since they’re talking with other adults, and don’t want to be rude.

However, it’s far more useful to learn the dictionary form and the “te”-form. The dictionary form is useful form many grammatical forms, and for more complex sentence. Note to mention it also expresses future tense in the right context. Similarly, the “te” form is the base of many other grammatical forms.

To conjugate the “te”-form from the dictionary form, change the verb endings like so:

Dictionary Verb
ending		Becomes…Example beforeExample after
う (u)って (tte)言う・いう (iu)言って・いって (itte)
つ (tsu)って (tte)持つ・もつ (motsu)持って・もって (motte)
る (ru)って (tte)切る・きる (kiru)切って・きって (kitte)
る (ru), ichidanて (te)食べる・たべる (taberu)食べて・たべて (tabete)
く (ku)いて (ite)書く・かく (kaku)書いて・かいて (kaite)
ぐ (gu)いで (ide)急ぐ・いそぐ (isogu)急いで・いそいで (isoide)
む (mu)んで (nde)読む・よむ (yomu)読んで・よんで (yonde)

Similarly for the simple past tense, just change the “te” to “ta” like so:

Dictionary Verb
ending		Becomes…Example beforeExample after
う (u)った (tta)言う・いう (iu)言って・いった (itta)
つ (tsu)った (tta)持つ・もつ (motsu)持って・もった (motta)
る (ru)った (tta)切る・きる (kiru)切って・きった (kitta)
る (ru), ichidanた (ta)食べる・たべる (taberu)食べて・たべた (tabete)
く (ku)いた (ita)書く・かく (kaku)書いて・かいた (kaita)
ぐ (gu)いだ (ida)急ぐ・いそぐ (isogu)急いで・いそいだ (isoida)
む (mu)んだ (nda)読む・よむ (yomu)読んで・よんだ (yonda)

Using these simple tricks, you can do more complex forms, like converting a passive form verb to past-tense (i.e. the sushi is being eaten -> the sushi was eaten), and so on.

In fact, I believe when learning Japanese verbs, it’s best to record and list them like so:

dictionary-form, te-form

examples:
読む、読んで
食べる、食べて
切る、切って
着る、着て

This not only helps you memorize the basic grammatical forms, but helps you remember if it is an ichidan verb vs. godan verb. “By their te-form, ye shall know them…“1

Anyhow, that’s a brief look at Japanese verbs. It’s not necessary to learn all the forms and applications at first, but a good way to build solid fundamentals and branch into more advanced lessons more seamlessly.

Good luck and happy studying!

1 This was a trick, not to mention a joke, I learned recently while studying classic, Koine Greek. Nouns are recorded as a combination of nominative + genitive forms, while Greek verbs are listed by principal parts. There’s no reason why Japanese language tools can do the same, but I don’t see books really doing this. That’s a shame. Greek and Latin have been scrutinized and studied for centuries in the West, so the teaching tools and methods are very mature. Japanese language studies in the West are much newer, and lacking many of these handy mnemonics, tools, etc.

Japanese Learning: Going Back to School

I have been studying Japanese language, off and on, for many years, first for curiosity, then to converse with my in-laws, and later because it unlocked aspects of Japanese culture I couldn’t find in English. In the past, I took and passed the JLPT exam, level N2 (failed the N1 twice). And yet despite that certification, I still struggle with conversation, compared to my kids who are pretty bilingual. Of course kids pick up language more easily than adults, but after so many years it is sometimes disheartening to see that my Japanese is functional yet clunky.

Recently though, I stumbled upon one of my son’s old textbooks from Benesse. Benesse is a company in Japan that provides teaching aides for kids (including Japanese kids overseas), through a monthly subscription service. Kids get study materials appropriate for their grade, and submit work monthly by mail, earning special prizes and such. The teaching staff at Benesse grade the work, send friendly feedback, etc. Our kids both subscribed to the service until about the third grade when they got too busy to keep going.

The cover of a textbook with Japanese written on it, where kids can learn 500 words using fun manga illustrations. The front cover features a cartoon character with a professor hat.
The cover of a textbook by Benesse featuring 500 words in Japanese for a 3rd grader to learn, using Manga.

Because of this, we have lots of old Benesse educational material lying around the house that the kids no longer need, and it turns out that even for an adult foreigner like myself, it’s really useful.

A while back, my kids’ local Japanese language teacher once remarked that if you are able to learn 3rd grade level Japanese, then you have a solid foundation. Forget college level or even high school level; just getting conversant at a third grade level is surprisingly useful.

Having seen the contents of the third-grade materials above I now believe it. I was surprised how many vocabulary words in the book were also in my JLPT study materials for the N2 and N1. Not only that, but they were presented in a fun, more engaging way for native speakers (kids). The explanations and examples were more natural and easier to grasp than my pricey JLPT study guides.

Even now, after years of study, I can pick up an old Doraemon comic and mostly be able to read it. And yet, I find I still have to look up words, and sometimes I learn new expressions and phrases in everyday Japanese. It’s not just learning the words, it’s learning in how people just say things. There’s more than one way to say “I’m impressed by something”, but they have slight nuances or differences in grammatical construction that just can’t be easily explained without context.

Doraemon is an old-timey comic for grade school kids and yet it’s clear that it still presents a good challenge for a language student.

All this is to say that if you are learning Japanese, or any language, jumping into adult material and concepts is somewhat counter-productive. It seems like the right thing to do, speaking as an adult, but grade school level language and material is surprisingly important and shouldn’t be overlooked. Everything beyond grade-school level is mostly just specialization in topics. If you focus on advanced materials too much you’ll be familiar with that topic but not much else. In others, you’ll have glaring gaps in your language skills. This essentially what happened to me, and only now am I starting to correct it.

But how does one approach this as a language student? Most students don’t have access to Benesse materials since it’s intended for Japanese audiences. You may have to get creative, but you can find children’s books, manga (including Doraemon), and study guides for Japanese kids online or in a Japanese bookstore. It doesn’t hurt to pick up such materials, and you may find them more challenging than you expected.

Remember: focus on getting to the third grade. However, you may have to start even lower level, first grade Japanese, second grade Japanese, etc.

It’s less about finding specific materials, and more about setting a realistic level of challenge, and then obtaining enough material (not just one book or two) until it becomes easy, innate. You can think of this as starting a new exercise routine, and setting realistic expectations. Just as kids starting learning basic language, and gradually increase in difficulty, language students should do the same. It’s seemingly slower at first, but builds a better foundation and avoids the painful need to go back and correct your Japanese later.

In any case, simply getting to a grade-school level will be surprisingly useful both in day to day interactions with Japanese people, and in passing the JLPT exams.

Measure Words in Japanese

a path leading to a Japanese shrine, with stone lanterns to one side in a row.

Authors’s note: shifting gears a bit as I clear out the blog backlog. 😆

“Measure words” or “counting words” are an interesting phenomenon found in many East Asian languages, but less so in Indo-European languages. This leads to some challenges with counting things.

In English, we might say “one sheet of paper” or “two sticks of incense” or “a box of nails”. But we wouldn’t say “three things of fish”. We say “three fish”, or “three chickens” or “two cows”. People too: two senators, one customer, or three employees. So the use of counting words in English is limited. From what I recall of Classical languages such as Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, it doesn’t exist at all.1 In Japanese, there are counting words for all of them, and some of these counting words can be pretty obscure.

Let’s look at some examples, but first, let’s review basic numbers from one to five:

NumberJapanese WordHiraganaKanji
1Ichi
(ee-chee)		いち一
2Ni
(nee)		に二
3San
(sahn)		さん三
4Shi, Yon
(yohn)		し、よん四
5Go
(goh)		ご五

Four is a special case since there two words for “four”, but for counting stuff, the word “yon” is used.

Anyway, let’s start with good entry-level counting words. For paper, and other flat things like it Japanese counts them with the word “mai” (枚), so counting sheets of paper looks like so (using Kanji):

  1. 一枚 – ichi mai (one sheet)
  2. 二枚 – ni mai (two sheets)
  3. 三枚 – san mai (three sheets)
  4. 四枚 – yon mai (four sheets)
  5. 五枚 – go mai (five sheets)

By the way, it is PERFECTLY normal to use Arabic Numerals for counting too, especially for numbers beyond three.

  • 1枚 – ichi mai (one sheet)
  • 2枚 – ni mai (two sheets)
  • 3枚 – san mai (three sheets)
  • 4枚 – yon mai (four sheets)
  • 5枚 – go mai (five sheets)

Anyhow, the important thing to understand grammatically speaking, is that counting words like this are treated like adverbs, and adverbs in Japanese IMMEDIATELY precede the verb they modify, as in this sentence:

紙を二枚使ったよ。

かみをにまいつかったよ。

kami wo nimai tsukatta yo. “I used two sheets paper”.

In this case, the counting word “ni mai” comes right before the verb to use (使った). It took me a long time to realize this. I kept using the incorrect grammar of nimai no kami wo tsukatta. This is wrong, but is more similar to English, hence my mistake. DO NOT DO THIS. Put the counting word just before the verb and you’ll sound a lot better.

Anyhow, mai is a nice easy counting word and frequently used. Another common counting word is “hon” (本) used for long things, bottles, sticks, and so on:

  1. 一本 – ip-pon (one stick)
  2. 二本 – ni hon (two sticks)
  3. 三本 – san bon (three sticks)
  4. 四本 – yon hon (four sticks)
  5. 五本 – go hon (five sticks)

Wait a minute. Some of them aren’t pronounced as “hon”. Japanese, like many languages, has a grammatical feature called “Sandhi”3 where certain sounds change to make them smoother. English has lots of Sandhi rules, Japanese has relatively few, but one rule is that the “h” sound sometimes becomes a “b” or “p” sound in some cases: n + h = nb, for example. Another rule is that the “chi” or “tsu” sound sometimes becomes a small “tsu”.

Unfortunately, Japanese has a lot of little use-cases like this for counting. There’s no easy way to say this: you just have to memorize these oddities. Most of them make sense when you say them out loud because they evolved to be smoother for native speakers.

But I digress. We’ve learned mai (枚) and hon (本).

Let’s move onto people. This one is particularly tricky:

  1. 一人 – hitori (one person)
  2. 二人 – futari (two people)
  3. 三人 – san nin (three people)
  4. 四人 – yo nin not yon-nin (four people)
  5. 五人 – go nin (five people)

Here, some of the words are complete different, and don’t fit a pattern. This is a somewhat extreme example, but it shows how some common-use cases just don’t always follow a pattern. There are times when you just have to memorize how to count something.

Similarly, for “things” (generic), there is a similar way to count:

  1. 一つ – hitotsu (a thing)
  2. 二つ – futatsu (two things)
  3. 三つ – mittsu (three things)
  4. 四つ – yottsu (four things)
  5. 五つ – itsutsu (five things)

When all else fails, use the generic counter above (except on people!). There are many situations where that is sufficient. If you happen to know the correct, more specific counting word, use that instead.

Anyhow, let’s get back to specific counters. For animals, things get interesting because there are multiple counting words. To list a few that we saw at the top of this post:

  • hiki (匹) – small animals and fish: ip-piki, ni hiki, san biki, yon hiki …
  • wa (羽)- birds and rabbits: ichi wa, ni wa, san wa, yon wa …
  • tō (頭) – large, or hoofed animals: it-tō, ni tō, san tō, yon tō …

So, two cows would be ni tō, while three chickens would be san wa, and three fishes would be san biki.

Let’s talk a bit about rarer counting words.

Tofugu has a great comprehensive list of all the counting words, and some of these are obscure even for Japanese people, but there’s a few worth calling out because they do come up.

You might think that chopsticks are counting using hon as we saw above, but it has its own counting word: “zen” (膳). A single pair of chopsticks is ichi zen (一膳), two pairs are ni zen (二膳), and so on. This counting word is ALSO used for bowls of rice, or bowls of beef and such.

Another example is “chō” (丁). The counting word is used for things like bowls of ramen and kitchen knives, among others. If you wanted to ask for three bowls of ramen, you could say:

ラーメンを3丁下さい。

ラーメンをさんちょうください。

Ra-men wo san-chō kudasai

This one is a bit obscure, but like “zen” (膳) it does come up from time to time, so it’s good to be aware of it.

As I alluded to earlier, this is not a comprehensive list. There are many counting words ranging from very common to very obscure, some even that day to day Japanese might not always know. There are a couple takeaways from this to be aware of as a language student:

  1. counting words behave like adverbs, which in Japanese means that they immediately precede the verb.
  2. some counting words have pronunciation that varies, in order to make smoother sounds. Some are just not pronounced the way you’d expected. You just have to know these, and memorize them.
  3. It is not necessary to know them all. Knowing the most common ones is a good start, and over time you might learn the obscure ones through experience.

Good luck and happy counting!

1 IIRC, numbers behaved like adjectives, so they would describe “two cows” as duas vaccas, since the adjective “two” must agree in case, number and (grammatical) gender with “cows”. English has very minimal inflection like this, so we just don’t do it. The Sanskrit version, btw, is dvau gavau because it still has a “dual” case between singular and plural. Ancient Greek dropped dual not long after Homeric Greek, I think. Sanskrit is thus a super old language, even compared to Greek/Latin because it retains some truly ancient grammar patterns.

2 Originally from the “Sandhi” rules in Sanskrit. Sanskrit has a complex series of rules for sound-changes, and linguists borrowed the term to describe the same phenomenon in other langauges. Sanskrit has a lot of rules, Japanese has relatively few.

Separated by Centuries

This is another cool moment in Japanese history (previous post here) that I wanted to share while re-watching the drama Thirteen Lords of the Shogun. Shortly after the death of Kazusa Hirotsune, the head of the Genji (Minamoto) clan named Minamoto no Yoritomo, sought to finally take the fight to Heike (Taira) clan. The trouble was was that he had a rival within the Genji clan itself.

Yoshinaka as portrayed in woodblock print from 1866, source Wikimedia Commons.

The Genji clan was quite large by this time, going all the way back a few centuries to Emperor Saga in the early 9th century. By the time of the Genpei War (late 11th century), the clan had a number of sub-clans, domains and so on. One such branch was led by Yoritomo’s cousin, Kiso no Yoshinaka.1 Yoshinaka and Yoritomo initially worked together, and Yoshinaka even sent his son, Yoshitaka (木曽義高), in good faith as a hostage at Yoritomo’s court in the city of Kamakura. However, the relationship quickly became estranged, and they competed for who could get to the capitol of Kyoto first to rescue the Emperor under house-arrest from the Heike clan.

What Yoshinaka didn’t know was that the scheming Emperor, Go-Shirakawa, was already in league with Yoritomo. Go-Shirakawa expressed gratitude to Yoshinaka, and even bestowed the lofty title of Asahi Shogun, or “Asahi” Commander of the Armed Forces, and commanded him to take the fight to the Heike. And yet, Go-Shirakawa still threw in his lot with with Yoshinaka’s cousin Yoritomo. Things quickly went downhill as Yoshinaka, realizing that he was being double-crossed, seized the Emperor briefly, and battled his cousin’s forces. In the end, Yoshinaka and his army were wiped out. His son, Yoshitaka, did not survive much longer despite being wed to Yoritomo’s daughter O-hime. This part of the historical drama is really sad because it was clear that Yoshitaka did nothing wrong, but was simply a victim of politics.

In the historical drama, and in Japanese literature, Yoshinaka is portrayed as sincere and well-meaning, but out of his league compared to the scheming of the Emperor and of Yoritomo. He was a genuine warrior, loved by his vassals, but court politics were beyond his ability, and he was ultimately betrayed by the very forces he sought to help. Seeing a pattern with Yoritomo?

So, why bring this up?

Yoshinaka’s remains were interred at a small Buddhist temple named Gichū-ji2 in the city of Otsu, in Shiga Prefecture. Centuries later, the famous haiku poet, Matsuo Basho, visited the temple on one of this pilgrimages. Basho was evidentially an admirer of Yoshinaka and composed a haiku upon visiting the gravesite:

JapaneseRomanizedRough Translation2
義仲のYoshinaka noIs this not the mountain
寝覚めの山かMezame no yama kathat Yoshinaka woke up on?
月悲しTsuki kanashiThe melancholy moon.
2 any faults in the translation are my own

According to tradition, it is thought that one night while sleeping on a mountainside, Yoshinaka woke up and gazed at the moon. Here, on that same mountainside, the moon shines melancholy, still reflecting over the demise of Yoshinaka.

Later, when Basho passed away he was, according to his wishes, also interred at Gichū-ji so that he may rest alongside the admired warlord.

There’s a travel blog entry in Japanese that shows the temple grounds and the grave sites, while this page shows the temple.

It’s interesting that such a talented poet was so infatuated by this legendary, though ill-fated warlord that he would be buried alongside him despite the passage of centuries.

P.S. If you thought Yoritomo was a scallywag now, wait until you get to the murder of Yoritomo’s own half-brother, the talented general Yoshitsune.

P.P.S. Yoritomo also punished another branch of the Genji clan, the Genji of Kai province, by executing that lord’s young heir on suspicion of treason as well.

P.P.P.S. Yoritomo was, suffice to say, a cold-blooded ruler. Not surprisingly, the Shogunal military government he founded got off to a rotten foundation and struggled after his death. Unlike the video game character Edelgard, Yoritomo seemed to have no moral conviction. He wanted power and vengeance.

1 Fun fact: the actor who played Kiso no Yoshinaka in the historical drama was also in Godzilla Minus One. He appears in the opening scene as a runway mechanic, Tachibana, talking to the ensign.

2 The kanji characters 義仲 can be read as either “Yoshinaka”, as in Kiso no Yoshinaka’s name, or as “Gichū”, the name of the temple. Clever.