Merry Christmas in the Land of the Rising Sun

In Japan, Christmas is known as more of a time to spread happiness rather than a religious
celebration. Christmas became popular through American influence and many of the
phrases associated with Christmas are words and phrases from English.
Japanese uses a special script, Katakana, to write words it has borrowed from other
languages. Here are some rules about Katakana:
 Each symbol is a syllable instead of just one letter;
 A syllable starts with a consonant followed by a vowel;
 Only the “n” has its own symbol / letter;
 Japanese does not have certain sounds that we have in English, for example there is
no “w” – so this sound is not written in Japanese;
 There are no special characters for capital letters – there’s no difference between
capitals and lower case letters in Katakana;
 As the Japanese sound for “r” sounds a bit between our “r” and “l” sounds, Japanese
speakers translate every “l” sound in English with their “r”

 ッ is a special symbol that is a little pause before the next syllable is said. It is used
when the English word has two consonants for example, “Hello” in Japanese would

be ヘッロ, which is literally: “he – ro”.

 “ta”, “te”, “to” etc. can be turned into “da”, “de” , “do” very easily by adding a little

accent-like symbol that looks like a double apostrophe: ta = タ and da = ダ

Question 1: Can you fill in the blanks with the English translation? (there are some hints on
the next page to help you if you get stuck)
Japanese word /phrase: English word / phrase:
(a) Present (literally in Japanese: “puresento”)
プレセント
(b) Christmas wreath (literally in Japanese:
クリスマス リース “kurisumasu ri-su”)
(c) Santa
サンタ
(d) marsh mellow (literally in Japanese
マルシュ メッロ “marushuju” for “marsh”)
(e) Christmas light (literally in Japanese “raito”
クリスマス ライト for “light”)

(f)
メッリ クリスマス

(g)
クリスマス クラクル

(h)
サンタ クロス

Question 2: Using all the Katakana characters you have seen in this activity so far, write
the following in Japanese: (again hints on the next page)
(a) Prancer (one of Santa’s reindeer): __________________________________

(b) Christmas stollen: ________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

(c) Lapland: ________________________

Hints:
Question 1:
(f) A nice thing to say to people in the holiday season!
(g) British traditional object that is pulled apart with a loud bang during Christmas dinner.
(h) Santa’s full name.

Question 2:
(a) Prancer would be pronounced in Japanese as “Puransa”

(b) Don’t forget that Japanese doesn’t have a “l” sound so the pronunciation of stollen
would be “suto-ren” (with a little pause where in English there are two letters l).

(c) Lapland would be pronounced as “rapurando”.