Welcome to the Nihongo Lesson feature. We strive to give you useful manga-based Japanese language tips and maybe even a glimpse into the translation process. This week’s lesson will be about something we look at and pore over week after week—ZASSHI, or in English, magazines!

HYOUSHI 表紙 (ひょうし)

HYOUSHI means “cover” and is comprised of the characters for “front” and “paper.” This week’s HYOUSHI features Luffy in our English edition. The Japanese cover commemorates Jump’s 50th anniversary and also features classic series like Knights of the Zodiac, Captain Tsubasa and Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daishou. We would’ve liked to include all those images on the HYOUSHI, but for various reasons, we couldn’t.

MOKUJI 目次 (もくじ)

The table of contents is called MOKUJI in Japanese. Many readers like to look at the MOKUJI to analyze and speculate how series are doing in popularity. In Japan, the author comments are sometimes referred to as MOKUJI KOMENTO or “MOKUJI comments” because they appear in the contents page of the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump issues.

ANKETO アンケート (あんけーと)

Surveys are called ANKETO in Japanese. The term originates from the French word enquête, which means “survey” or “inquiry.” ANKETO are an important part of Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan, and we like to hear your opinions too! Fill this week’s out by clicking HERE!

KANTOU KARAA 巻頭カラー (かんとうからー)

Our final terms for this week are for color pages. Lead color pages are called KANTOU KARAA and center color pages are SENTAA KARAA. It may be obvious to some that KARAA comes from “color” and that SENTAA comes from the word “center.” This week’s issue sure had some awesome KANTOU KARAA pages from My Hero Academia and a great SENTAA KARAA page from Black Clover.

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