JapanUp! magazine

The Global Surname Contrast In many Asian countries, family names are highly concentrated. In South Korea, roughly half of the entire population shares just three last names: Kim, Lee, and Park. In China, huge portions of the population are named Wang or Li. But Japan is a massive, confusing outlier on the global stage. It is estimated that there are over 300,000 different surnames actively used in Japan today! This makes Japan one of the most surname-diverse countries in the world. It is incredibly common for people in specific local regions or rural villages to have unique, hyper-specific last names…

The Katakana Trap When you travel between Los Angeles and Tokyo, knowing a little English can sometimes be a disadvantage. Because Japan imports thousands of foreign words, they adapt them into their own phonetic alphabet called “Katakana.” While words like “Computer” (Konpyuta) are easy to figure out, global brand names and Hollywood celebrity names often undergo massive, confusing transformations. Sometimes the Japanese pronunciation is based strictly on the spelling, and sometimes it is actually closer to the original European pronunciation, leaving American tourists completely baffled during conversations! The IKEA and Costco Confusion Let’s start with the big box stores. If…