Yes, it’s true. Japanese has three completely separate sets of characters, called kanji, hiragana, and katakana, that are used in reading and writing. That first rendering of “Tokyo” is in kanji, with ...

Regarding Akita Kimi's Dec. 27 letter, 'Another way of writing names': In response to Mikami Takashi's Dec. 20 reasoned plea for limiting Japanese names to surname-first usage in English, Akita's ...

Japanese is known for its combination of three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. However, a fourth script is also used on occasion, and has even been suggested at times as a replacement for ...

For example, let’s say we wanted to talk about a maid, of the maid cafe variety. Since Japanese syllables can’t end in a “D” sound, “maid” becomes meido (pronounced close to “maid-o”). If we want to ...