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Saying AND in Japanese has always been kind of frustrating for me. It’s a concept that, in English (and in my mother tongue, Italian), feels simple and universal: you just use “and” and move on.
But in Japanese, you need to stop and think: what exactly am I connecting, and what do I actually want to say?
It’s been a long time since my last post and since my last serious effort to make a significant improvement in my Japanese, so let’s start again by breaking down something that has always confused me.
1. Connecting nouns
と = “and” (complete list)
Use と when you are listing specific things and the list is complete.
Examples:
猫と犬がいます。
= I have a cat and a dog.
日本語と英語を話します。
= I speak Japanese and English.
や = “A, B, and things like that” (incomplete list)
Use や when you mention examples but there are more things that are not listed.
Examples:
猫や犬が好きです。
= I like cats, dogs, and things like that.
本や映画を見る。
= I read books, watch movies, and do things like that.
とか = “things like A and B / for example”
とか is more casual and flexible than や.
Examples:
映画とか音楽が好きです。
= I like things like movies and music.
週末はゲームをするとか、友達と会うとかします。
= On weekends, I do things like play games or meet friends.
It can also show uncertainty:
明日とか？
= Maybe tomorrow or something?
2. Connecting adjectives
い-adjectives → くて
Remove the final い and add くて.
Examples:
安い → 安くて
= cheap and...
この店は安くておいしいです。
= This shop is cheap and delicious.
な-adjectives → で
Add で.
Examples:
静か → 静かで
= quiet and...
この町は静かで便利です。
= This town is quiet and convenient.
Mixing い-adjectives and な-adjectives
The rule stays the same: change the first adjective into its connecting form.
Examples:
安くて便利
= cheap and convenient
静かで面白い
= quiet and interesting
3. Connecting verbs
て-form = “do A and then B / do A and B”
The て-form is the basic way to connect actions.
Examples:
起きて、顔を洗う。
= Wake up and wash my face.
ご飯を食べて、学校へ行く。
= Eat and go to school.
たり〜たりする = “do things like A and B”
Use this when listing examples of actions, not a complete list.
Structure:
Verb た-form + り + Verb た-form + り + する
Examples:
映画を見たり、本を読んだりします。
= I do things like watch movies and read books.
週末は寝たり、ゲームをしたりします。
= On weekends, I do things like sleep and play games.
4. Connecting phrases
そして = and / then
Example:
日本へ行きました。そして、日本語を勉強しました。
= I went to Japan. Then, I studied Japanese.
だから = so / therefore
Example:
雨です。だから、家にいます。
= It’s raining, so I’m staying home.
The important thing to understand is that Japanese doesn’t really have one single word for "and". Instead, it asks you: what kind of relationship do these two things have? And once you start thinking that way, it becomes much easier.
or, “How the transition to horizontal writing went both ways on the sides of cars”
In Japan, some company cars and trucks write the company’s name from the front of the car to the back: left to right on the left side, but from right to left on the right side.
It’s not well documented why people did that, but my personal pet theory is that this started when Japanese was still in the transition from vertical writing (columns right to left) and had to decide between which way to write Japanese horizontally.
Top to bottom, right to left
According to Wikipedia’s article on “horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts”, before WWII, Japanese was written horizontally only in one row when constrained for space, and since columns went from right to left, the one row went from right to left.
Here is an old print ad for Calpico (カルピス) where the logo, being horizontal, reads from right to left, and the ad copy underneath goes from top to bottom, right to left:
This is a lot like writing words top to bottom with upright Latin letters. Here are two signs in Dutch for a liquor store (slijterij), one vertical and the other horizontal.
But especially after WWII when Japan rushed to Westernize, Japan adopted left-to-right horizontal writing to match the Latin alphabet. This follows the footsteps of the January 1915 issue of the Chinese magazine Science, which wrote Chinese horizontally to make various scientific formulae easier to read.
本雜誌印法，旁行上左，並用西文句讀點之，以便插寫算術及物理化學諸程式，非故好新奇，讀者諒之。
This magazine is printed sideways from the top left, and marked with Western punctuation. This is to make more convenient the insertion of mathematical, physical and chemical formulae, and not for novelty's sake. We ask for our readers' understanding.
Coincidentally, this solution was mostly equivalent to rotating vertically written Japanese 90° to the left, then rotating every letter 90° to the right.
Why not both?
The thing is that there was a pretty long time in Japan where left-to-right and right-to-left writing coexisted. So when writing text on vehicles, people wrote the name from the front to the back, so that a stationary observer can read it better when the vehicle is in motion. But it’s weird now that left-to-right won out by a huge margin.
Here are two advertisement plaques for Calpico—I don’t know when the specific dates are—that have motly the same design, but the older one (using the kyūjitai 戀) goes from right to left, and the newer one (using the shinjitai 恋) goes from left to right. (I don’t know why the character in the ad looks so blackface-y, but it’s what it is...)
This post was prompted by this Quora question, which listed some times when this practice went sideways (pun definitely intended). Translation follows.
平野 幸司 (Koji Hirano)さんの回答: 諸説ありますが、船は進行方向から文字を先頭にして書くことで「どっちが先頭か」をわかりやすくしており、それを真似ている…というのが有力ですね。トラックは別にどっちが先頭かわかりにくいわけではないので真似しなくても良いと思いますけど
Q: Why are company names, like on the side of a truck, written from right to left?
Answer by Kōji Hirano • president of idealShip, Inc. (2006–now) • 1215 answers written, seen 130.87 million times
There are various hypotheses, but the prevailing one is that it’s in imitation of ships writing letters from the front to the back to make it clearer which side it’s facing. Though, I don’t think a truck needs to imitate that, being obvious which end is the front end of one...
Also, I’ve directly heard before that many companies do it as a good luck charm to keep the company moving forward. They seem to associate going against the direction of movement with things going badly, and want to avoid that.
I often hear the hypothesis that it’s easier for a moving car to read it when the text goes from the front to the back, but I don’t trust that...
You see this↑ brand often! It’s Sujahta. [Note: written “スジャータ”, a dairy product company, and the #1 brand of coffee creamer and chilled soup in Japan as of 2009]
Writing backwards causes these kinds of... mishaps...
Not 送輸—トイレ : [portTrans — Toilet]... but レイトー輸送 [Reitō Transport]
Not わかいあの肉 [That Young Meat]... but 肉のあいかわ [Aikawa Meats].
Not 所業エロ山 [Actions Lewd Mountain]... but 山口工業所 [Yamaguchi Industrial Works]
Not クッサア [EW, IT REEKS!]... but アサック [Asack]
I’m personally against this practice of writing right to left...
First tweet: “I saw a piece of fabric? on the floor of my room so I went to pick it up but it was actually the moonlight that entered through the window lmao”
Quote RT: “1000 years ago this would have been a poem, not a tweet”
I was able to read almost all of this short comic and guess some of the words based on context, which is something I haven’t been able to do before!! So exciting! 🥹
I was able to do this because I was already familiar with the words, just not how they’re written in kanji. This is why previous vocabulary knowledge is so important! Even learning how to write a word in hiragana is helpful - it builds the foundation for the kanji later. And by tying previous knowledge to new knowledge, the memory of that previous knowledge gets stronger, which improves recall.
Because this is a comic and uses visuals, I was able to guess that 屋 was pronounced や (パン屋 = bakery) and that 初 was pronounced はじ (初めて = first time, one’s first) based on the context: a) the events in this comic are happening in a bakery, and b) the person is just helping himself to the bread and eating it before paying, so he’s clearly never been to a bakery before. I was also able to guess that 客 was pronounced きゃく (お客さま = customer) because this is how retail customers are addressed in Japanese, and お and さま are indicators of polite, formal language. Lastly, I was able to guess that 当 was pronounced あ because I was familiar with the colloquial phrase 当たり前でしょ! already (あたりまえでしょ!) and I already knew that 前 was pronounced まえ.
It’s like playing Hangman: if there’s a series of letters you already know to be a part of a word, there’s a good chance you can guess what the rest of the word is.
The only phrase I didn’t recognize was 見殺し (みごろし) which is a colloquial phrase that apparently means letting (someone) die without helping. In the context of this comic, I think this phrase has the nuance of “Thanks for nothing!!!” because it was this person’s first time in a bakery, and the staff person didn’t give him any help at all. I looked up this phrase on Weblio, and it says: “To stand by and watch someone being killed or in distress, and not intervene, or to be unable to help and leave them to their fate.”
Meiji period fashion was some of the best in the world, speaking purely from an aesthetic standpoint you can really see the collision of European and Japanese standards of beauty and how their broad agreement even in particulars (the similarity between Japanese and Gibson girl bouffants, the obi vs the corset, the obi knot vs the bustle, the mutual covetousness for exotic textiles, the feverish swapping of both art styles and subjects) combined and produced some of the most interesting cultural exchange we have this level of documentation for. Europeans were wearing kimono or adapting them into tea gowns, japanese were pairing lacy Edwardian blouses with skirt hakama and little button up boots. haori jackets with bowler hats and European style lapels. if steampunk was any good as an aesthetic it would steal wholesale from the copious records we have in both graphic arts and photography of how people were dressing in this milieu.
«The botany professor,» from Kkokei Shimbun, October 20, 1908.
she's wearing a kimono blouse or haori, edwardian skirt or hakama, gibson girl bouffant, a lacy high-collar blouse with cravat and brooch, and a pocket watch with chain
1910-1930 (Taishō era, right after Meiji, which I should have included in my OP) men's haori with western lapels
I have a love for both kimonos and bustle dresses, so I love seeing how the two fashions influenced each other over this period. And thanks to Pinterest, I have pictures!
Victorian tea gown that clearly started as a kimono. It still has the long furisode sleeves, but now they’re gathered at the shoulder and turned around so that the long open side is facing the front instead of the back. Similarly the back is taken in with curved seams to fit the torso and pleated below that for the skirt.
Woodblock of a woman in a a bustle dress made with colorful patterned fabrics and examples of how a woman could style her hair with it.
More prints to showcase hairstyles, two women wearing western wear and two women wearing kimonos.
This next one’s modern, but it involves hoopskirts so I’ll add it in because it makes me so happy. There’s been different styles of wedding fashion that take kimonos and give them a more modern look. Often this involves taking a kimono and then cutting and resewing it into a new dress. Very pretty, but it can’t ever be worn like a traditional kimono again. But now there’s another trend where the bride wears a hoopskirt with a white skirt, then you take the kimono and drape it on. The back of the kimono covers the front of the dress, the long sleeves fall across the sides or the back, and you still wear an obi with it. The result is pretty and the kimono itself doesn’t have to be altered at all.
And because you mentioned steampunk, I have to add in these two:
Personally I’m a big fan of Taisho Meisen kimono, which are what happen when the Japanese textile industry abruptly gets access to aniline dyes, new spinning and weaving technology, and the concept of Art Deco:
I don't usually post about this, but if anyone is learning or keeping up on their japanese, Asahi just launched やさしい朝日新聞 (Yasashii Asahi Shimbun), which publishes stories written in simple japanese for learners (including toggleable furigana)
❁ Japanese podcast recommendations for intermediate learners (N3/N2) ❁
(Some of these may overlap with the advanced version if they’re suitable for both!)
1.
Lots of interviews/guest talks and deeper topics about life, which makes this one quite unique compared to other podcasts! I especially love Miku’s reflections and perspectives on philosophical topics (the language is still easy to understand for anyone with upper intermediate level and above).
2.
I discovered this recently through Miku’s podcast above so I haven’t listened to all of the episodes, but I would say it’s accessible for N3+ and I especially like her unique travel stories!
3.
This is probably the easiest podcast on the list, especially the earlier episodes, but I still listen to it regularly because I love Layla’s energy and kind attitude!
4.
I think everyone knows this one but it’s definitely worth the hype. My personal favourites are the history episodes and the ghost stories, but there are lots of interesting discussions about the Japanese language too.
5.
I mentioned this in the advanced post, but there are a lot of episodes also suitable for N3 and above.
6.
Also mentioned in the advanced post, but suitable for upper intermediate/N2.
7.
I haven’t actually listened to many of these but I think it’s suitable for lower intermediate, I also like that the episodes come with a vocabulary list
