長 means long; leader; superior; or senior

訓読み: なが.い, おさ
音読み: チョウ

you might see it on:

長い [ながい] long; lengthy
長い間 [ながいあいだ] long time; long interval
社長 [しゃちょう] company president
長さ [ながさ] length
長生き [ながいき] long life; longevity
部長 [ぶちょう] head of a section or department
長い目で見る [ながいめでみる] too look at the long term

間 means interval; or space

訓読み: あいだ, ま, あい
音読み: カン, ケン

you might see it on:

時間 [じかん] time; hours
人間 [にんげん] human being; person
間違う [まちがう] to make a mistake
間違い [まちがい] mistake; error
週間 [しゅうかん] weeks (interval of weeks)
間もなく [まもなく] soon; before long
間に合う [まにあう] to be in time for
年間 [ねんかん] years (interval of years)
何時間 [なんじかん] how many hours?

雨 means rain

訓読み: あめ, あま-, -さめ
音読み: ウ

you might see it on:

雨 [あめ] rain
にわか雨 [にわかあめ] rain shower
大雨 [おおあめ] heavy rain
梅雨 [つゆ] raini season; rain during the rainy season
小雨 [こさめ] light rain; drizzle
雨上がり [あめあがり] after the rain
雨水 [あまみず] rain water
梅雨入り [つゆいり] entering the rainy season

電 means electricity

音読み: デン

you might see it on:

電話 [でんわ] telephone; telephone call
電車 [でんしゃ] train; electric train
電気 [でんき] electricity; light
電池 [でんち] battery
停電 [ていでん] power outage; electricity outage; blackout; fialure of electricity supply
電力 [でんりょく] electric power

食 means to eat; or food

訓読み: く,う, く,らう, た,べる, はむ
音読み: ショク, ジキ

you might see it on:

食べる [たべる] to eat; to live on
食事 [しょくじ] meal; to eat
朝食 [ちょうしょく] breakfast (proper)
昼食 [ちゅうしょく] lunch (proper)
食べられる [たべられる] to be able to eat
食料 [しょくりょう] food
食物 [しょくもつ] food; foodstuff; edible thing
夕食後 [ゆうしょくご] after dinner
外食 [がいしょく] eating out
食う [くう] to eat; to live (informal)

高 means tall; high; or expensive

訓読み: たか.い, たか, -だか, たか.まる, たか.める
音読み: コウ

you might see it on:

高い [たかい] high; tall; expensive
背が高い [せがたかい] tall (adjective for a person)
最高 [さいこう] highest; supreme; awesome (slang)
高校 [こうこう] senior high school
高さ [たかさ] height; altitude
高校生 [こうこうせい] senior high school student
高校時代 [こうこうじだい] one' s high school days
高める [たかめる] to raise; to lift

and we're done with the JLPT N5 Level kanji!

remember there's a kana chart (the kana are the hiragana and katakana, the japanese syllabary) on a pinned message

you can use to read the way in which all of these kanji are read

you can review the pronunciaton of the hiragana (and the katakana, because they are phonetically the same)

in these

hiragana あいうえお https://youtu.be/8zfBMDNkJuI
hiragana かきくけこ https://youtu.be/BquugHa7wKg
hiragana さしすせそ https://youtu.be/IGwu3T-4npo
hiragana たちつてと https://youtu.be/yTMfTfAY7ZA
hiragana なにぬねの https://youtu.be/khkuLPIiS3I
hiragana はひふへほ https://youtu.be/nsgFUkub3Fk
hiragana まみむめも https://youtu.be/M_ONsy2E3J8
hiragana やゆよ https://youtu.be/sIpzSouCZ5I
hiragana らりるれろ https://youtu.be/zCbTj6a6S7E
hiragana わをん https://youtu.be/b1TTJj0GCn8

I'll be adding some sporadic animated gifs (or videos, but it'll probably be gifs) with scenes of anime with subtitles in japanese where they say some things that should be relatively easy to understand, or, even if they aren't that easy to understand, I'll be breaking them down into all the components of the sentence

I was very busy with college, I'll post some updates soon

I was way more tired than I thought I was, that's why I haven't posted anything for so long, I'lll try to do one or two posts on the days I post anything (not including these updates)

check out the wikipedia page on Hepburn Romanization (http://wki.pe/Hepburn_romanization) to understand how we write japanese in roman letters!
ふ becomes "fu", but the 'f' in "fu" is not read as the 'f' in fire, it's sound is between the foo in fool and the hoo in cahoots

it's very important to understand this, romanization is writing a language (in this case, the Japanese language), using the Roman alphabet, this has some problems, because Japanese wasn't really made with roman characters in mind, that's in part why in this channel we went to using kana and are now using some kanji, because Japanese is written like that, and people tend to use romanized Japanese as a crutch and stop moving forward

English for instance has very different phonetics (sounds) than Japanese, so it's sometimes difficult for native English speakers to get their Japanese pronunciation right, and it could be that they keep telling themselves that "I can read it in the letters I understand, so I must be saying it right", I personally think this is the wrong way to go about it, so I wanted to learn the Kana and the Kanji, it's difficult, but after learning more and more, it's really rewarding to be able to read them, I imagine people who play instruments feel that way when they can play songs they like

戴きます [いただきます]
頂きます [いただきます]

is an expression that means "thank you" (for the meal just served), it's literally "I receive (this meal)" and has a connotation of humbleness

it has two different kanji, because it's an expression that is older than the modern Japanese spoken/written today, which is a result of government standardization of the language that has been done a few times, like after WW2

there's also the argument that different kanji are used to say the same thing with slightly different connotations, like how you can, in English, say "Father", or "Dad", both mean basically the same thing, but "Father" is more formal

for all the kanji we've posted, you can see the meaning, readings, stroke order (both static, and animated), and sample words in jisho.org

for example, https://jisho.org/search/%E5%BD%BC%20%23kanji for "he" or "him"

we're not associated with jisho.org, we just find it a very useful resource for japanese learning

(this is already in the document from the link on the pinned message)

Kanji are Chinese characters imported into Japan. There are tens of thousands of them, but the japanese government published a list of them that every citizen needs to know: the Jouyou kanji which consists of the 1945 most commonly used kanji

Hiragana is one of the two syllabic alphabets of Japanese. It is used mainly to write Japanese words and to show how a to read a word or phrase in kanji

Katakana is the second of the two syllabaries of Japanese. Nowadays, it is used mainly for foreign names and terms, items in Japanese pop culture and for some onomatopoeia.

The following shows the three systems being used at the same time is 私の名前はマリアです (My name is Maria):

私 [watashi] -> kanji
の [no] -> hiragana
名前 [namae] -> kanji
は [wa] -> hiragana
マリア [Maria] -> katakana
です [desu] -> hiragana

An example with a writing form on all three systems is [dame] literally, “no good”, commonly used to say something should not be done, for instance, たたかうはダメ [tatakau wa dame] which means “you shouldn’t fight”, in kanji is 駄目, in hiragana is だめ, and in katakana is ダメ

note that an introduction would not really be done like this, "私の名前は〇 〇 〇 です" sounds unnatural, this is an example only to illustrate the writing systems

Hello, it's been a while, work has kept me really busy

and we had some problems with the bot, first, the server in which it was running had a disk failure, and I've only recently been able to fix it, and even after that, today, I've seen 2 separate bot crashes, and I'm working on fixing them, as soon as I finish with that I'll get working into more updates

the bot is live again!

here's how to use the bot, remember you can send us suggestions!