OK now, how about the kanji for some of the Japanese words that are also used in other languages?

着物 Kimono

侍 Samurai

忍者 Ninja

柔道 Judo

空手 Karate

漢字 Kanji (!!)

折り紙 Origami

Please don't hesitate to ask if you'd like to know the kanji for any other words.

Adding some other world-wide known Japanese words:

芸者　geisha

合気道 aikido

盆栽 bonsai

万歳 banzai!

乾杯 kanpai!

切腹 seppuku (for westerners more commonly known as harakiri)

Nagoyankee-san: Forrest Gump is my favourite movie and I came across this quotation when I was writting a 'sakubun' as a homework :)

I knew I'd heard it somewhere! That is one good translation, too!

Now, how about the names of some colors in their respectice colors!


黒　（くろ）

赤　（あか）

黄　（き）

青　（あお）

緑　（みどり）

And there are kanji for the days of the week

月 (getsu) - moon - Monday

火 (ka) - fire - Tuesday

水 (sui) - water - Wednesday

木 (moku) - tree - Thursday

金 (kin) - gold - Friday

土 (do) - earth, soil - Saturday

日 (nichi) - day - Sunday

Those listed readings are so-called 'onyomi' (or sinojapanese readings) which are used in kanji compounds. In fact there is always added 曜日 'youbi' (means a day of a week) creating for example 月曜日 (getsuyoubi) - Monday. But in Japanese diaries, calendars and so on you can see the days marked just by above listed kanji.

Normally, if these kanji stands in the sentence as one word their are read 'tsuki', 'hi', 'mizu', 'ki', 'kane', 'tsuchi', 'hi' .... 　　

My favorite has always been 月. I like how it looks as it means.

神風 kamikaze
Which has a very and interesting etymology.
And unexpected too, at school I learnt nothing about the far east history.

I agree 100%. That kanji looks like the crescent moon.

There are also some funny kanji that are made from other kanji and thanks to that they are really easy to remember. For example:

男　- this one is read 'otoko' and means male. It's compounded from 田 ('ta' - rice field) and　力 ('chikara' - power, energy) so the main work power on a rice field is a man.　

休 - this one is compounded from 人 (hito - person, slightly modified to adjust the dynamics of the kanji) and　木 (ki - tree). If you were tired and spot a tree on an incredibly hot and humid Japanese summer day, you would definitely want to take a small nap in its nice shadow. And that's exactly what this kanji means. Yasumu - to take a rest, to relax....

好 - its parts are 女(onna - woman) and　子 (ko - child) and it is read 'suki' - to like smt. or smb.

雨　（あめ） = Rain　< It's been raining in Tokyo for some days now.

音楽　（おんがく）　＝　Music

in hopes of bringing some of the J-Rock fans to the Language Help section....