Japan Know How archive
Your Name in Japanese
Japan did not ban creative baby names. It changed what parents must prove. Since May 26, 2025, a newborn’s registered pronunciation must have a recognizable connection to the kanji chosen for the name.
Writing & Language
Japanese adults sometimes forget how to handwrite characters they still read and type every day. That gap reveals a practical lesson for learners: recognition and handwritten recall are separate skills.
Japanese Crafts
Japanese joinery is not wood held together by magic. See how carpenters mark, cut and test structural joints—and why “without nails” needs qualification.
Your Name in Japanese
Sato and Suzuki lead Japan’s surname rankings, yet even the national top ten account for only about one person in ten. This worked example follows Sato from a national survey to Okinawa, where Higa, Kinjo and Oshiro reveal a different historical and regional layer.
Japanese Eras
Japanese documents do not use one consistent calendar. Follow the same date across a driver’s license, residence card and family register to see where Western years appear, where era conversion is required and how copying a date literally can create a form error.
Travel to Japan
No airline had posted Black Friday dates for U.S.–Japan routes by Oct. 27. Here are JAL's current fares for spring 2027, JR Pass and eSIM prices, and Japan's new tax-free rules.
Writing & Language
The JLPT measures vocabulary, grammar, reading, and listening across five levels, but it includes no speaking or writing section. Here is what American test takers need to know about registration, scoring, certificates, and the abilities the exam leaves untested.
Writing & Language
Japan’s official character system is not one master list. Learn how the 2,136 commonly used kanji differ from the 1,026 school characters and the separate 863-character list used for personal names.
Japanese Crafts
Aizome does not begin with cloth entering blue liquid. In Tokushima, harvested indigo leaves are dried, composted for about one hundred days and turned into sukumo before a fermentation vat can make their pigment usable. The process explains both the depth of the craft and why synthetic indigo transformed its market.
Japanese Eras
Japan has not banned Western years from official paperwork. The real rule is form by form: family-register records favor era years, residence cards use Western dates, and licenses mix both. This guide shows how to read the field before entering a date.
