About Japan Culture Navi
Japan Culture Navi is a bilingual dictionary of Japanese culture, currently 1213 topics.
It was built for Japanese people who need to explain their own country in English — for exams, for study abroad, for work with visitors. That shapes what you find here. Every topic has a one-line answer, a thirty-second explanation and a short speech, plus the questions visitors actually ask and the phrases you need to answer them.
If you are visiting Japan, that same focus makes this a useful reference. Instead of a dictionary definition, you get the explanation a Japanese person would actually give you, including the parts that are usually left out of guidebooks.
How it is written
- All text is written in-house. Nothing is copied from other sites or guidebooks.
- We do not write things we are not sure about. Where accounts differ, we say so.
- We try neither to idealize Japan nor to put it down. Hanami is often a lively party, not just quiet flower viewing, and we say that.
- We avoid presenting one region's or one generation's practice as "what Japan does."
Japan Culture Navi is part of Harada Eigo, a free English-learning site run by Takashi Harada, a high school English teacher.
Comments and feedback
We would love to hear what you think. Tell us which topics helped you, what you would like us to add, or anything that was hard to follow. Your comments help us decide what to write next. If you are writing about a specific entry, please mention which one.
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