Monday, Week 8  -  Kanji of the five elements

Kanji characters start to get more and more complicated for each chapter I study. Learning kanji is tough and challenging but at the same time fun. It's completely different from hiragana and katakana. I've introduced basic kanji of numbers before and this time I'll write about the five elements: fire, water, wood, metal and earth.

The stroke order is important because the characters will look better if the stroke order is followed. It makes it easier for both the reader and the writer to use uniform characters. The chart below shows the correct stroke order for the elements.

These are actually the Chinese five elements. The Japanese elements are: Earth (地), water (水), wind (風), fire (火) and heaven (空). The reason why I write about Chinese elements are that they are used in the weekdays, see Weekdays and months.

Tuesday, Week 8  -  Counter words in Japanese

Japanese uses counter words like Chinese and Korean. This means that numbers can't quantify alone. Two pears is for example: 梨二個. In the sentence 個 is the counter for pear. Notice that the number is placed after the noun.

For small items the traditional numbers can be used as counters. For example: 弁当二つ, means two lunch boxes

Wednesday, Week 8  -  More on counter words

This time I will put together some counter words that are used more often.

* There are two exceptions for the people counter:
One man, 一人（ひとり）
Two men, 二人（ふたり）

Thursday, Week 8  -  Kanji - the cardinal directions

	北 きた North
西 にし West		東 ひがし East
	南 みなみ South

Friday, Week 8  -  Directions

Following the same theme I'll write about directions today.

前	間	後ろ
まえ	あいだ	うしろ
Front	Middle	Back

上	間	下
うえ	あいだ	した
Above	Middle	Under

左	間	右
ひだり	あいだ	みぎ
Left	Middle	Right

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