Things About Japan: Time

Telling the time and date in Japanese makes a lot of sense, for the most part.

Lesson 1

The kanji for hour is 時.

The kanji for minute is 分.

If you want to say it's 11:35, you say it's 11時35分.

Japan uses military time, so there's no a.m./p.m. confusion; after 12時 comes 13時.

If you want to say you did something for a length of time ("I studied for an hour"), you add a kanji meaning "length of time, period of time" to this number - 間 - turning the whole thing into an amount of time instead of a specific time-of-day. (This applies to days, months, and years as well, so as not to confuse "I have lived in Japan for 2 years" with "I have lived in Japan since the year 2." An important distinction to make, I feel.)

Let's review:

6:45 is 6時45分.

Doing something for 6 hours and 45 minutes is 6時45分間.

5:12 pm is 17時12分.

Lesson 2

The kanji for day is 日. (This also means "sun.")

The kanji for month is 月. (This also means "moon.")

The kanji for year is 年.

So, when you write the date, you use these kanji to separate the different numbers. Thus, when written with kanji, it's impossible to mistake which is the day and which is the month - they're clearly written out. The order tends to be year, then month, then day. In addition, the names are the months are the same as each number; March is literally called "3rd month" / "Month 3." There are old, traditional names for each month, but these are largely unused at this point.

Let's review:

Today is May 30th, 2009.

The Japanese would write this 2009年5月30日.

Lesson 3

Only one thing makes telling Japanese dates really confusing. While some times you will see the date written as it is above, many times it is written like this:

21年5月30日

Or, more specifically, like this:

平成21年5月30日.

This is because the Japanese calendar counts years not only on the Gregorian scale, but also through the reign of their emperors. The two kanji before "21" in the second example read "Heisei" - that is the name of the current emperor, who is currently in his 21st year of reign. Before Heisei was Showa, whose reign was for 64 years (technically 63 and some change.)

How does the change-over count? The year in which Showa died and Heisei took over started as Showa 64 and then became Heisei 1.

As middle schoolers, the Japanese learn these dates and years. After school, though, it's similar to learning the order and years of each of the presidents - it's regular use is fairly limited. Everyone knows the current year. Most people know the year of their own birth, and maybe the year their children, spouse, or other important people to their life were born. Outside of that, it seems to not matter all that much in everyday life.

Let's review:

My birthday is March 27th, 1985. The Heisei reign started in 1989, so I was born 4 years before the end of the Showa reign. That means my birthday is written as:

昭和60年3月27日

Today's post was brought to you by the ever observant hannah d. Thank/blame her accordingly. Also, if you can't see Japanese characters on your computer, you're missing out! You should've fixed that long ago, anyway.