Behind the scenes of Japan travel, many interesting and funny tales are hidden. Your Japan travel will be enriched by knowing them, which are not available in common travel guide. In this series we include Japanese culture and language information, in connection with Japanese perspectives.
Discover another exotic Japan
We also explain the travel related Japanese words, including the origin of the kanji. We place importance on easy-to-understand interpretation, rather than complicated and difficult to understand academic approach, so that you can remember and use them in Japan travel.
English words used as Japanese are written in Glomaji
Regarding the pronunciation and spelling of English words when used as Japanese words, we use Glomaji (alphabet Japanese that you can correctly pronounce them as Japanese words and you can correctly convert into Japanese characters (hiragana, katakana and kanji. Foreign English words are written in katakana.
Japanese words for emergency
Many English words are used as Japanese. Since Japanese sentence order is flexible, you can communicate with Japanese people by using only English words. However, they are pronounced in Japanese style and some words are slightly changed. .So you should learn Japanese emergency words before greeting words that they understand in English．
toire (toilet)
In Japanese it is pronounced “toire” or Japanese word o-tearai/御手洗（wash hands）are commonly used. Usually , the kanji “男” (otoko/men) and “女” (onnna/women), or their illustrations are displayed on the entrance.
konnbini (convenience store)
They say “konnbini.” Long English words are often shortened as department store is “depa-to,” konnbini provides all kind of items from food to umbrella, and services from ATM to copy machine use and more, anything necessary in everyday life is furnished.
koubann (police-box)
They are placed everywhere in Japan, If you are involved in a trouble such as you lost something or you lost a way, ask the policeman, who will be kindly help you. Their wok is not for only crimes in Japan, but also for assisting people.
