Pronounce Japanese vowels like Italian: a as in "father," e as in "sled," i as in "free," o as in "no," u as in "fool." Consonants are like English, with g as in "girl," and j as in "juice." Words tend to be accented on the first syllable, for example, "O-saka" not "O-sa-ka."

Japanese names are written family name first, personal name second - "Toyotomi Hideyoshi" is "Hideyoshi" (personal name) of the Toyotomi family. "No" means "of," and appears frequently in older personal names. For example, Fujiwara no Yorimichi = Yorimichi of the Fujiwara Clan.

Japanese nouns have the same form in singular and plural: "bushi" = "warrior" or "warriors," depending on the context.

Japanese frequently creates compound words by putting simpler words together. For example, "bushi-do" is "the way of the warrior," and "yama-bushi" means "mountain warriors." Compounds are sometimes hyphenated in English transcription, but not consistently: "bushido" is much more common than "bushi-do", but "To-ji" and Toji" are about equally common. When performing Web searches, it is useful to try both the hyphenated and the unhyphenated forms of your search terms.