You’ve probably heard the stories, seen the pictures, and watched the videos: Japanese apartments are infamous for being tiny abodes where you have to be a size 0 just to slip through the kitchen. In a country with limited real estate but a huge population, it’s just the way things roll. Especially in the cities,…
I’m a bit late with the final part of this series, but it’s here, nonetheless! As a recap, Part 1 dealt with given name conventions, and Part 2 talked about Japanese surnames. What does that leave us with? Nicknames, of course! (For the sake of brevity, this article isn’t going to go over nicknames that…
Last week I discussed Japanese naming conventions for first names. This week, it’s family land ville!Most of you are probably familiar with the Eastern convention of putting the family name first, then the given name last. (Japanese people, at least, usually do not have middle names.) This puts prominence on the family name, which is…
(Part 1 will deal with given names. Please see next week for Part 2, which will be about family names!) To the unfamiliar ear, Japanese names may sound, well, foreign. By this I mean they’re hard to remember (woe to your new Japanese friends) or just plain weird sounding. Of course, to the Japanese (and…