#nihonjinnoshiranainihongo

Continuing on the topic of counting on fingers, many Europeans start with the thumb and work their way across the hand. That means “4″ is all digits out except the pinkie. Both students from France (フランス) and Italy (イタリア) demonstrate with no problem.

The end of Chapter 5 of Shiranai has a quiz on 国事 (kokuji). Most kanji that the Japanese use came from China, but kokuji are kanji that originated in Japan. The quiz shows four of them. The third one is very interesting, as it’s a kanji for milligram (瓱).

Nagiko-sensei asks one of her students what kind of music he listens to, and he responds that he really likes the band Kabutomushi (カブトムシ).

The teacher says she’s not familiar with that band, which the student finds surprising, since the band is pretty famous. He lists off some of their songs レット　イット　ビー (Let It Be) and イエスタデイ (Yesterday).

Chapter 5 of Shiranai had a section about writing letters (you know, those things that people made using paper and pens, before email). The chapter covers standard greeting and closing statements. One of the standard types of greetings when in a hurry is 前略 (zenryaku, pardon the haste). In this case, 略 refers to omission (or leaving something out).

At the of this section, the teacher encourages the students to try writing their own letters: 皆さんも書いてみましょう (minasan mo kaite mimashou, Everybody, let’s also try writing).

One of the students starts with something that SOUNDS like zenryaku. The teacher politely asks the student not to leave out every part of the letter (全部は略さないで, zenbu wa ryakusanaide, please don’t leave out every part).

Continuing with challenges that students face when learning to write Japanese vertically, Nagiko-sensei says that sometimes students write furigana on everything (those are the little kana next to the kanji that show the pronunciation).

Continuing with common mistakes that students make while learning to write Japanese vertically, Nagiko-sensei notes that students enter in spaces (スペース) unnecessarily. 

Continuing the topic of common mistakes with vertical Japanese writing, Nagiko-sensei says that students sometimes put punctuation (句読点, kutouten) in the exact middle of the box (such as the 。 and 　、 in the comic panel).

Punctuation should go in the upper right quadrant of the square -- that is, it’s closer to the kana that comes before it, just like if you were writing horizontally.