Glossary

Romanization note: We have primarily used the hebon-shiki (Hepburn) method of translating Japanese writing into the English alphabet and determining how best to spell the words (though accent marks have been excluded), as it is generally considered the most useful insofar as pronunciation is concerned. We have italicized foreign terms such that they can be readily differentiated from their English counterparts (e.g., dan meaning black belt rank versus Dan , the male familiar name for Daniel). As the Japanese (and Chinese) languages do not use capitalization, we have only capitalized those words that would be used as proper nouns in English.

Japanese is a challenging language for many English speakers to pronounce correctly. A few hints—for the most part, short vowels sound just like their English counterparts (e.g., a as in father, e as in pen). Long vowels are essentially double-length (e.g., o as in oil, in the word oyo ). The u is nearly silent, except where it is an initial syllable (e.g., uke ). Vowel combination e + i sounds like day (e.g., bugeisha ), a + i sounds like alive (e.g., bunkai ), o + u sounds like float (e.g., tou ), and a + e sounds like lie (kamae ). The consonant r is pronounced with the tip of the tongue, midway between l and r (e.g., daruma ). Consonant combination ts is pronounced like cats, almost a z (e.g., tsuki ).