Building on expecting 日本 to be read with the on-yomi of its kanji, and gemination being omnipresent in modern Japanese, you should have expected it to be possibly read "nippon" or "jippon". Before the name was shortened to Nippon, however, Japan had a longer name. During the Meiji Restoration of Japan up until World War II, Japan went by Dai Nippon Teikoku, which translates to Empire of Greater Japan. Then, it was shortened to Nippon. Along the way, they meet many adversaries (most of them being competitors in the quest for the famous balls, often with selfish or even evil intentions), some of whom later become allies, such as Yamcha or Ten Chin Han. 29. Fist of the North Star

Yuji Itadori is an out-of-the-ordinary high school student who lives in Sendai with his grandfather. Despite his innate talent for sports, he refuses to join the sports team due to his aversion to athletics. Instead, he chooses to join the occult research club, where he can relax and leave school by 5 pm to visit his grandfather in the hospital. For sports fans, when the Japanese women’s volleyball team played their Chinese rivals for the bronze medal at the 1988 Olympics, it culminated in an amazing Olympics for volleyball in Asia. However, for language fans like myself, the one thing that was as exciting as the game was the outfit worn by the Japanese athletes: their outfits said ‘Nippon’ instead of ‘Japan’. Ganbare Nippon! (A sporting cheer used at international sporting events, roughly, 'do your best, Japan!') As mentioned above, the English word Japan has a circuitous derivation; but linguists believe it derives in part from the Portuguese recording of the early Mandarin Chinese or Wu Chinese word for Japan: Cipan ( 日本), which is rendered in pinyin as Rìběn ( IPA: ʐʅ˥˩pən˨˩˦), and literally translates to "sun origin". Guó ( IPA: kuo˨˦) is Chinese for "realm" or "kingdom", so it could alternatively be rendered as Cipan-guo. The word was likely introduced to Portuguese through the Malay: Jipan.Wounded, Tetsuo is captured by the Japanese army. He is the subject of numerous tests as part of an ultra-secret military project aimed at identifying and training beings with predispositions to psychic powers (telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, etc.). Asking Japanese people about the name of their country will draw mixed responses. Some people will call it “Nippon” while others may refer to it as “Nihon”. Which one is the official name?

With the advantages linked to the status of State alchemist and their research, the two brothers seek, at the risk of their lives, the philosopher’s stone that would restore their lost bodies. 24. HELLSINGHowever, despite many in Japan calling the country Nippon or some variation thereof, such as Nihon, they will refer to their country as Japan to the rest of the world to stay consistent with the common pronunciation. Why Hasn’t Japan Decided On An Official Pronunciation? In Japan we don’t say “ground floor”, so ikkai is the ground floor. Also careful with the third floor, it’s sangai, not sankai. In the West around the 14th century, Japan was likely going by “the noble island of Chipangu,” which was given to it by none other than the famous explorer Marco Polo. Although it seems likely that Chipangu was Japan, it is not confirmed as Marco Polo included some very fanciful tales about these isles including the presence of rhinos, cannibalistic natives and private houses made of gold.

It’s argued that people at some point might have read “日” as “jitsu”, pronouncing “日本” as “Jippon”. It makes sense that all it needed was a linguistic jump to come to “Japan” from “Jippon”. Akitsukuni ( 秋津國), Akitsushima ( 秋津島), Toyo-akitsushima ( 豐秋津島). According to the literal meanings of the Chinese characters used to transcribe these names of Japan, toyo means "abundant", aki means "autumn", tsu means "harbor", shima means "island", and kuni means "country, land". In this context, -tsu may be interpreted to be a fossilized genitive case suffix, as in matsuge "eyelash" (< Japanese me "eye" + -tsu + Japanese ke "hair") or tokitsukaze "a timely wind, a favorable wind" (< Japanese toki "time" + -tsu + Japanese kaze "wind"). However, akitu or akidu are also archaic or dialectal Japanese words for " dragonfly", so "Akitsushima" may be interpreted to mean 秋津島 ( Dragonfly Island). [34] Another possible interpretation would take akitsu- to be identical with the akitsu- of akitsukami or akitsumikami ("god incarnate, a manifest deity", often used as an honorific epithet for the Emperor of Japan), perhaps with the sense of "the present land, the island(s) where we are at present".In Japan it’s an actual thing to count in Engrish at times. Sometimes this is done to count the beats of a song.

When these two letters make a single word, the “chi” or “tsu” of the first letter gets dropped and the “h-” of the next letter is replaced with a “p-” with a double consonant. Thus you get the word “Nippon”.Yamato people were the largest group of native Japanese who used to live in the modern-day Honshu. They built an imperial court in Nara in the 6th century. There have been efforts over the years to decide on a specific way to pronounce Japan’s name in Japanese, as well as have the country’s name changed officially to Nippon. However, the government hasn’t really seemed to care about making this change.