How to write Happy New Year in Japanese

The celebration of New Year is called "Shogatsu" in Japan and it is the most important holiday there. Most Japanese exchange New Year card called "Nengajo". If you have a friend in Japan, why don't you try sending him or her a Happy New Year card? This article talks about one way in writing "Happy New Year" in Japanese.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pen
• Paper / card

1. 
   Happy New Year (Part 1)

   There are several ways to write "Happy New Year" in Japanese. One of the most common way to say is "akemasite omedeto(u)gozaimasu" (note that I put "u" in parenthesis because this "u" in omedeto(u) is very weak and isn't really pronounced) and it's written as "あけましておめでとうございます". If a person who wishes Happy New Year is a good friend of yours, you may omit "gozaimasu (ございます)" part and just write "あけましておめでとう". The graphic next shows how to write Happy New Year in Japanese. (note: if any of the graphic in this article is blurry, you may want to open it in a new window or save it in your computer and open it.) The first two lines are all written in "Hiragana". If you want to study carefully how to write Hiragana characters, try checking: "How to Write Japanese alphabet HIRAGANA Part1/4" (http://www.ehow.com/video_4498380_write-japanese-alphabet-hiragana-part.html) to "How to Write Japanese alphabet HIRAGANA Part4/4". These sites have a video showing how to write Hiragana and it is very useful. The characters で ("de"), ご ("go") ざ, ("za") look like the new characters. But these characters are the same as て ("te"),　こ ("ko"),　さ ("sa"), except it contains two dots at the upper right corner.

2. 

   Very often the first "a" in "akemasite omedetogozaimasu" is written in Kanji as showing the third line in the graphic in Step 1. The picture next is shown how to write "a" in "akemasite" in Kanji. The blue lines show the stroke orders.

3. 
   Happy New Year (Part 2)

   If you want to write "Happy New Year" in Japanese vertically, you can check the graphic next (if the graphic doesn't look good, you might want to save it in your computer and open it. I tried to fix the resolution of this picture but no avail... "Save Target As..." seems to be the best option.) You want to start writing from the right corner of the paper and continue to left. If "akemasite omedetogozaimasu" does not fit in one line or this is the only message you want to write in a card (other than the date and your name), you can split it to two lines. In that case, it is the best if you split the sentences "あけまして" and　"おめでとうございます" as shown in the picture.

Resources

• How to Write Japanese alphabet HIRAGANA Part1/4
• How to Write Japanese alphabet HIRAGANA Part2/4
• How to Write Japanese alphabet HIRAGANA Part3/4
• How to Write Japanese alphabet HIRAGANA Part4/4

[sneedc]

on 1/13/2009 Wow that seems like an awful lot of strokes just to say happy new year in japanese, can't I just say it? lol 5*