Evidence-led guides to Japanese language, names, culture, travel, food, anime, the Chinese zodiac and Japanese eras.
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Your Name in Japanese
Ateji: How Foreign Names Get Written in Kanji
The tradition is real and it is a sound game first. Meaning is a filter, not a starting point - and the tattoo failure mode is structural rather than linguistic.
Your Name in Japanese
How to Write Your Name Vertically in Japanese
Vertical Japanese is not horizontal text turned sideways. The long-vowel bar rotates, small kana change corner, and columns run right to left. Here is what actually changes.
Your Name in Japanese
Five English Sounds Japanese Does Not Have
L and R, both th sounds, V, the missing consonant-vowel pairs and the vowels Japanese inserts into consonant clusters. None of it is random, and all of it is predictable.
Your Name in Japanese
Katakana Name Rules, and the Names That Break Them
We tested a rule engine on 61 names with documented Japanese spellings. It scored 77 percent, and the misses were Michael, Thomas, Sean and Charlotte. Here is the autopsy.
Your Name in Japanese
How to Write Your Name in Japanese: The Complete Guide
Which script your name belongs in, how English sounds get remapped, the four adjustments that decide whether a spelling looks natural, and where the rules simply lose to precedent.
Anime & Manga
Manga Reading Order: Direction, Formats and Where to Start
Right to left at every scale, why English publishers stopped mirroring the art in 2002, the five publication formats, and whether to read the manga or watch the anime first.
Anime & Manga
What Gets Lost in the Dub
A dub is not a translation with a deadline. It is a rewrite constrained by mouth movements drawn to a Japanese script - and subtitles lose things too.
Anime & Manga
Character Names in Japanese: Meaning, Kanji and Readings
A Japanese name sounds like something and means something, and translation can usually carry only one. Plus why the same written name has several correct readings.
Anime & Manga
Anime Speech Styles, and What Subtitles Cannot Carry
Ore, boku, watashi and half a dozen more all become 'I'. The pronoun a character picks is characterisation, and English has no slot for it.
Anime & Manga
Japanese Honorifics in Anime: -san, -kun, -chan and the Rest
Nine forms of address, what each one claims, and why the moment a character drops the suffix is a plot event that English subtitles cannot show you.
Japanese Food
Vegetarian, Vegan and Allergies in Japan
The problem is not the meat, it is the fish stock underneath almost everything. What is safe, what to ask, the eight allergens Japanese labels must declare, and where the law stops.
Japanese Food
Japanese Convenience Store Food: What to Buy
Three deliveries a day and a shelf life measured in hours. What to buy, how to open an onigiri without destroying it, and the six things a konbini does besides sell food.