One of our beautiful kimonos, the Flower cart & crane kimono, was chosen by ITV's 60 Minute Makeover to give the living room a Japanese theme.

Our kimono suppliers do not generally make nemaki (lined cotton kimono) but as over the years several of our customers have requested these we have had some nemaki specially made. Currently we stock two sizes of nemaki (to fit heights 5ft5" to just over 6ft) in a tombo (dragon fly) design.

Today we have introduced a new range of yukata, Shochikubai yukata, available in black, red or ivory and our three women's sizes of small (53"), medium (55") and large (57"). In Japan sho (pine), chiku (bamboo), bai (plum) are regarded as symbols of resilience. During the Japanese winter the pine and bamboo stay green and beautiful despite harsh conditions. The plum trees begin to blossom while snow is still on the ground signaling that winter is almost over and spring is on its way. It is a sign to look forward to a brighter future.





During New Year it is customary to arrange pine, bamboo and plum blossom cuttings together in a display.

* Pine: flourishes in the most inhospitable conditions, bringing beauty where no other living thing can survive.

* Bamboo: a symbol of longevity.

* Plum: symbolizing beauty and optimism during times of adversity.

Kanji Zone has teamed up with Zazzle and Printfection, who offer a web-based Print on Demand service, so that you can now design and buy your very own customised Japanese T-shirt online.

Non-Japanese people love to see their name translated into Japanese. Kanji Zone offers a free online Japanese name translation service. Translate your English names into katakana, hiragana or kanji and then buy the T-shirt! Alternatively, select popular words such as Love, Beauty, Happiness or Samurai to put onto your Japanese T-shirt design.

Even if you don't want to buy a T-shirt, it's great fun to play around with the Kanji Zone name translator and image designer!

We have launched a Kanji Zone website. The website currently supplies automatic Japanese name translation. In future, we hope to expand our name translation service to include Japanese related image design. Take a look at what your name would look like when when written in Japanese (katakana, kanji or hiragana) using our Japanese Name Translator!

Kanji Zone Mugs & T-shirts now available at Zazzle.


create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding into 3D shapes.  The most commonly folded shape is that of the Crane (Tsuru).  In Japan, cranes (who pair for life) are a symbol of honour and loyalty, and are also associated with good fortune and longevity. 

The story of Sadako Sasaki and her friends led to the Origami crane (Orizuru) becoming a symbol of  international peace. According to one Japanese legend, a person who folds 1,000 cranes will be granted his or her greatest wish. Sadako was a young Japanese girl, a survivor of the Hiroshima Nuclear bomb, who became sick with Leukaemia in 1955.  She attempted to fold 1000 cranes but died 356 short of her target, though her school friends went on to complete the 1000 for her.

 

The frog is another popular Origami animal shape. The Japanese word for frog, 'Kaeru' also means 'to return' and for this reason, frogs are considered lucky charms in Japan. For example, a traveller is given a frog charm to take on his journey to help him return safely and having a frog charm attached to your purse will help the money come back to it!

In Japanese, foreign names are normally written phonetically using Katakana.  We offer a selection of names written in Katakana on T-shirts and sweatshirts etc. via our Printfection Kanji Zone webshop. A small selection of our T-shirts are shown below.  Please contact us if you would like to see your name added to a T-shirt at our Kanji Zone shop.

         Kim:   Jane:      Mike:

In addition, it is possible to break up a name into syllables and allocate Japanese kanji according to the sound of each syllables. There are often several kanji for one sound, so a particular name may have several combinations of kanji, each with different meaning. When translating a Western name we pick kanji to give the name a positive meaning!  Again please feel free to contact us if you would like a T-shirt customised with a name of your choice in kanji. This customising service is currently offered free of charge.

Japanese uses a combination of the following three writing systems:
Kanji: Chinese characters, introduced to Japan via Korea around the third or fourth century AD, are primarily used for word roots and stems. There may be as many as 50,000 kanji characters, though only 5,000 to 10,000 are commonly used.
Hiragana: 46 phonetic symbols, curvilinear in style, used mainly for grammatical elements of Japanese such as verb and adjective endings and particles.
Katakana: 46 phonetic symbols, more angular in style, used to write words imported into Japanese from other languages  and foreign names.

Kanji and kana (hiragana and katakana) characters are written according to established principles of stroke order with "top to bottom" and "left to right" being the most important.  A knowledge of these principles is extremely important to achieve the proper shape of the characters.

The beauty of kanji has been expressed for centuries in calligraphy, the art of drawing characters with a brush. Nowadays, with the aid of computers and modern printing technology, it is possible to print perfectly formed kanji and kana characters in a variety of colours and styles on T-shirts and other apparel.

Kanji Zone offers a selection of Japanese themed designs on T-shirts and sweatshirts etc. made to order via US based T-shirt webshop Printfection. If you are ordering from outside the US, please be aware you may have to pay local import duty and taxes.

Welcome to Japanya's blog.  Japanya is a  Japanese gift  webshop based in Pinner, UK specialising in kimono dressing gowns and Japanese kokeshi dolls.  The name, Japanya, uses the Japanese word ya meaning roof. It is commonly used as a suffix in Japanese words for shops, for example, nikkuya (butchers), panya (bakers) and honya (bookshop).

Many thanks for visiting.

Japanya