A few days a go I made a post with some common Japanese words that you could use in situations for traveling and basic communication. Writing that post reminded me of a list of vocab/ kanji words I had put together a few years ago. After a little bit of searching I was able to find the list and have included it at the bottom of the post for anyone to download. It is a collection of words from the Japanese textbooks I had used when I was a study abroad student in Japan. The list contains nearly 1300 Japanese words with kanji, hiragana, and English readings.
The Japanese words on this list are in the order that they appeared in the text. The text books were generally in order of easier common words to more difficult words. However, the fact still remains they came from a text book and there will be words you should probably skip or at least put off to a later study date. Since some of them will not be that important (for instance, if you are just learning Japanese then you probable don’t need to learn “Shinai” (bamboo sword) right away) I recommend that you go through the list and mark off uncommon and rarely used words.
Removing the rare and unused words will save you a lot of wasted time on learning Japanese words that you will never use. I have left the list complete, but most people will benefit by eliminating some of the words from their study. You can find a better explanation on learning Japanese words in this article on How to Learn Japanese Words.
To download the file, right click the below link and choose “save link as”or “save file as”.
Japanese words list
First 20 entries in the Japanese words list:
| 漢字 | Pronunciation | Meaning |
| 歴史 | れきし | History |
| 文学 | ぶんがく | Literature |
| 国際関係 | こくさいかんけい | International relations |
| 奨学金 | しょうがくきん | Scholarship |
| 図書室 | としょしつ | Library room |
| 作文 | さくぶん | composition/essay |
| 事務所 | じむしょ | Office |
| お昼 | おひる | Noon |
| 朝 | あさ | Morning |
| 今朝 | けさ | This morning |
| 夕べ | ゆうべ | Last night |
| 横浜 | よこはま | Place name |
| 箱根 | はこね | Place name |
| 漢字 | かんじ | Chinese character |
| 雑誌 | ざっし | Magazine |
| 晩 | ばん | Evening |
| 夜 | よる | Night |
| 遊ぶ | あそぶ | Play |
| 勉強 | べんきょう | Study |
| 剣道 | けんどう | Kendo |
This was something I made a few years ago, so please don’t hesitate to contact me if you find any errors.
please if you can can you print these words in japanese minden wado kai karate thanks
I am very much interested in learning japneese language
so kindly help us to learn japneeses words list
Hey, how do you say ‘Short Stories’ in Japanese? I can’t read the japanese characters, and was hoping you could maybe write it out in enlish letters so that I could understand them
Short story is “tanpen Shousetsu”.
i am marcus jetson… i am currently trying to learn japanese from the web…i have created a host of study aids for anyone else,that is serious about learning japanese…hit me on my email and ill send u movies to help u learn hiragana,as well as some very useful word” documents.
ill be available at espndough@gmail.com
Marcus, let me know what aids you have gathered. Maybe there is a way I can offer them as downloads from the site. All credit will go to you of course.
hey, what is the Japanese term for i love you?
do you know what is the difference between sumimasen and gomen nasai?
your blog is really interesting.: )
Love you is 愛してる aishiteru, but it is not that commonly said in Japan.