So you're playing some RPG in Japanese and there's a "map," or chizu 地図, and someone tells you which cardinal direction you have to go to complete the current quest, but there's a problem: you have no idea how to say north, south, east, west in Japanese!

Worry not! Here's Japanese compass rose so you don't lose your way:

• Cardinal Directions
• Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest
• North-Northeast, East-Northeast, etc.
• East-to-West, North-to-South
• Word for "Cardinal Directions" in Japanese
  • "Cardinal Point"
• NSEW Abbreviations
• Names Containing Cardinal Directions

If you've been watching KonoSuba このすば (if not you should) you might have noticed the character Megumin chants her "explosion" magic with a certain peculiar word: bakuretsu 爆裂. However, there's the more common bakuhatsu 爆発 which also means "explosion." So what's the difference between bakuhatsu and bakuretsu in Japanese?

If you've been learning Japanese for some time you might have heard about the so-called "kanji radicals," or bushu 部首, and wondered exactly what is so radical about kanji? Do they practice skate-boarding? Bungee-jumping? No? Then what's the meaning of "kanji radicals" after all?

In Japanese, the word nakama 仲間 means "someone who's in the same group as you," or can refer to the group itself. This group is, often, a group of friends, colleagues, etc. But it can also mean other sort of groups, like in a "birds of same feather" sense, for example.

In Japanese, kono mama, sono mama, ano mama このまま, そのまま, あのまま mean the way something is right now, used to refer to things that have continued "this way" or "that way" for a while, often in the sense of "the way things are right now is bad." For example:

• kono mama ja minna ga shinjau!
  このままじゃみんなが死んじゃう！
  If [things] continue this way, everybody will die!
  (contraction of shinde-shimau 死んでしまう.)
  
  • We must do something! We need to change the way things are right now!
• zutto kono mama de ii
  ずっとこのままでいい
  [It] would be good [if] [things] forever continued this way.
  • I wish things would stay like this forever, unchanged.

These phrases use the demonstrative pronouns kono, sono, ano この, その, あの combined with the noun mama まま.

See the article about mama まま for details on grammar.

For reference, some usage examples:

• kono mama ja...!
  このままじゃ･･･！
  The way things are right now...!
  (incomplete sentence, typically means something bad will happen.)
• dame da, kono mama ja
  ダメだ、このままじゃ
  [It] is no good, the way things are right now.
  (dislocation.)
  • kono mama ja dame da
    このままじゃダメだ
    The way things are right now is no good.
    • It won't work. It can't go on like this. We must fix it and make it good somehow.
• kore wo sono mama taberu to oishikunai
  それをそのまま食べると美味しくない
  If [you] eat this that way, [it] isn't tasty.
  • If you eat it the way it is, without some preparation or processing first, it isn't tasty, i.e. it's a raw ingredient, and you have to cook it first.
• sono mama ugokanaide kudasai
  そのまま動かないでください
  That way, please don't move.
  • Stay the way you are right now. Don't change pose. E.g. when taking a photo.
• ano mama hotte-okenai
  あのままほっておけない
  [I] can't leave [it] that way.
  
  • I have to, or had to, do something. I just couldn't ignore it.

You have ever watched anime you might have noticed that there are plenty of Japanese words that end with masu ます or mashita ました, and that might make you wonder: what does masu means? What does mashita means? Why all these words end like that?

The Jisho Kioku is a Chrome extension that adds a number of features to the online Japanese-English dictionary Jisho.org. These features are: shows the last dozen kanji you've picked from radical search; lets you quickly filter radicals by their names; records the last hundred searches you've made; and lets you bookmark random vocabulary so you can review it later.

One very popular game that almost everyone knows from a certain meme is Gyakuten Saiban 逆転裁判, also known as Ace Attorney, where the lawyer Naruhodo Ryuuichi 成歩堂龍一, a.k.a. Phoenix Wright goes around lawyering miraculously. Since this is really fun game with a lot of Japanese text to read and that requires actually understanding the phrases to win, I decided to compile in this post some of the vocabulary you need to play the game in Japanese.

• People and Their Titles
• Elements of a Crime
• Proofs, Testimonies and Evidences
• Interrogation
• Truth and Lie
• Court
• Murder and Death

In English, raws are the untranslated manga chapters and anime episodes. A raw manga, or manga raw, is the manga as written in Japanese. A raw anime, or anime raw, is the anime without subtitles and in Japanese, as opposed to an English dubbed version.

The term may also be applied to doujinshi 同人誌, games, visual novels, light novels, etc.

• Context: what a raw manga looks like.
• See also: rumic hand sign.

A lot of series are consumed through official translations or unofficial ones (scanlations, fansubs). A translation, no matter how well-done, is a creative process that changes what the original author intended to convey by mixing in the interpretation of the translator.

If a joke goes over the translator's head, for example, or if he can't translate the joke, it won't make it to the translation, so fans strive to read the raws and watch the raws in order to skip this middleman.

• Meaning
  • Non-Japanese
• Naming of Raw Files

In Japanese, yappari やっぱり means the same thing as yahari やはり. It means "just like I thought," or "as expected," though there are some other uses, too. See the article about yahari やはり for details.

It's also spelled yappari 矢っ張り, with kanji.

• Examples

In Japanese, yahari 矢張り means either "as I thought" or "are you really going to do it?" depending on its usage.

It's also spelled yahari やはり, without kanji, and yahari 矢張, without okurigana. Variants include yappari やっぱり, yappa やっぱ, and yappashi やっぱし.

• Translation
• Usage
  
  • As I thought
  • As Expected
  • Unchanged
• Kanji
• やっぱり
  
  • やっぱ
  • やっぱし
• References

In Japanese, the words that mean "good" and "bad" are ii いい, yoi 良い, and warui 悪い. As you may have already guessed, these words aren't as simple as the words "good" and "bad" in English, because the article barely started and we already have a problem: there's three of them!

• "Bad" in Japanese
• "Good" in Japanese
• いい vs. 良い
• いい vs. よい
• いい vs. 言い
• Basic Adjective Usage
• Negative Adjective Usage
• Examples

In this blog I have explained the meanings of many Japanese words often used in manga and anime. I have explained so many words that in this post I'll just link all the words I have explained so you can learn them all at once!

Perhaps the word I had the most problem understand its meaning in Japanese was kagiri 限り, and later the verb it came from: kagiru 限る, specially its negative form: kagiranai 限らない. They often show up in already confusing sentences and only make them even harder to decipher. So here I'm going to explain what they mean.

• Kagiru 限る
• Kagiri 限り
• Kagiranai 限らない

Like (probably) every other language in the world, the Japanese language also has adjectives. But how do the Japanese adjectives work? How do you tell an adjective from another word? How is the sentence structure with adjectives involved? In this article, I'll explain a little about them.

• What is an Adjective?
• How Adjectives Work in Japanese?
  • Basic Adjectives
  • Intensifiers
  • Adjective Phrases and Clauses
  • Past Adjectives
  • Negative Adjectives
• Kinds of Japanese Adjectives
  • Varying Kinds of Same Adjective
• Predicative Adjectives
  • Adding Da だ Copula
  • Adding Wa は Particle
• Adjectives from Nouns
• Adverbs from Adjectives
• Te-Forms