Japan Know How archive
Your animal sign and its element, with the floating Lunar New Year handled properly – the detail that makes most calculators wrong for January and early February birthdays. Sign profiles, year tables, compatibility, and how Japan’s own eto calendar differs from the Chinese one.
Chinese Zodiac
Japan’s animal-year stamps are regular seasonal products, but the matching Mint set follows a different calendar and buying process. Here is when each collectible appears, where to find it, and when an application may lead to a lottery.
Chinese Zodiac
Cards, stamps, shrine plaques and department store windows: the animal arrives in November and is gone by February. What to send, buy and look for.
Chinese Zodiac
The famous pairings come from the geometry of a twelve-point circle, not from anything about the animals. How the system works, how seriously it is taken, and where to stop.
Chinese Zodiac
Japan starts the zodiac year on 1 January, calls the eighth sign a sheep and the twelfth a boar - and has one combination that cut the national birth rate by a quarter.
Chinese Zodiac
Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water: how to find yours from the last digit of the year, why the cycle is sixty and not twelve, and where the elements turn up in daily Japanese.
Chinese Zodiac
The zodiac year begins at Lunar New Year, which moves by nearly a month. Roughly one birthday in seven is in the window where year-only calculators get it wrong.
Chinese Zodiac
Twelve animals, five elements and a year that does not start on 1 January. The full system, the arithmetic to work out any year, and why 2026 is a Fire Horse.
