Three Funny Things about Japanese (2)

1.) If you want to say you 'love' something, as in, you 'really like it', in Japanese, you use the expression 'daisuki'. This is made of two components: Dai (Big) and Suki (Like). Big Like!

2.) Japanese uses different sets of numbers to count things with different shapes. These are called counters. For example, one is ichi, but one year - issai, one bird - ichiwa, one dog or cat or insect - ippiki, one person - hitori. Although there is a 'place holder' counter for use when the counter is unknown, and some counters are not in common use, unique counters exist for such things as: paragraphs, footsteps, nursery trees (and stocks), bows during worship at a shrine, cannons, and theatrical acts.

3.) These names themselves can be made up from two different original systems - Chinese and Japanese. The basic words for four, seven, and nine, however, are problematic. Four is Shi, a word which also means death. This is unlucky, kind of like our number 13, so they replace it with the euphemism Yon sometimes (and in some cases you HAVE to say yon, such as Yoji (four o'clock)). The same goes for Ku, which means suffering and it often switched out with Kyu. Seven is Shichi, which Japanese people sometimes worry gets lost floating around next to shi (four) and ichi (one), so they sometimes say nana instead. :)