Help me decipher this date!

[xxllua]

After running some circles, I now understand everything on my Japanese karate diploma, except for the date:

It should be August 7th 2011, but for me the writing before the 年 just doesn’t make any sense. Please help me solve this mystery!

[dboltz03]

Looks like Heisei 23. Take a look at the wikipedia pages to learn more about Japanese eras

Japanese era name

Heisei

[xxllua]

Ah, of course! I really should have known this. Thanks!
That’s quite an interesting 十, by the way.

[Belthazar]

@xxllua

That’s quite an interesting 十, by the way.

Could be worse. 二十 is sometimes written in calligraphy as 廿 or 卄.

[xxllua]

There should be a WaniKani hard mode, where you have to recognize handwritten kanji.

[seanblue]

Jitai (字体): The font randomizer that fits

This is a third-party script/app and is not created by the WaniKani team. By using this, you understand that it can stop working at any time or be discontinued indefinitely. [Jitai logo] What is Jitai? This is a third-party script/app and is not created by the WaniKani team. By using this, you understand that it can stop working at any time or be discontinued indefinitely. One thing that can become a bit of a problem when using WaniKani is that you are only ever expose…

[xxllua]

It may have been naive to think that nobody thought about it before…

[seanblue]

It’s a really cool script. You just have to install some cursive fonts to your computer and add them to the script and they’ll show up during reviews.

[Fiasko444]

If you haven’t tried them already, some of the built-in alternate fonts on Tsurukame are quite a challenge to read.

Edit: Not built-in but easily downloadable within the app.

[RachelG]

It’s also helpful to learn your birthday in the Japanese era way. This will likely be 昭和 (Showa) or 平成 (Heisei) __ 年. More places are starting to have the western calendar year on documents but many still require you to circle your Japanese birthday and write in the number.

[tpatana]

I’m Showa 50. I wonder how to remember that…

[VaguelyDownwards]

I mean there could be folks on here from the 大正 era. A lot more likely than seeing anyone from 令和, unless they’re extremely precocious.

[Belthazar]

@xxllua

There should be a WaniKani hard mode, where you have to recognize handwritten kanji

For actual handwriting, there’s always the Let’s Decipher Stylised Kanji thread - especially in recent posts, where we’ve been discussing goshuin.

@RachelG

This will likely be 昭和 (Showa) or 平成 (Heisei) __ 年.

“Likely”? You don’t think there’s any 大正 babies still lurking around these forums? Or 令和 literal babies?

@RachelG

It’s also helpful to learn your birthday in the Japanese era way.

I got to learn the reading of 20日 plenty fast, because the day we learnt the days-of-the-month readings in class, we immediately had an exercise where we got to mingle around and tell our birthdays to our classmates. Birth years weren’t covered, though.

[xxllua]

@Belthazar

I got to learn the reading of 20日 plenty fast

That’s what I need, too

I may give a try to the font randomizer in Flaming Durtles. It seems to support jitai, too. I know there are some fancy fonts used out there in the wild, so it definitely doesn’t hurt to be more familiar with them.

[plantron]

All my fellow Meiji era kids say…

[xxllua]

I just wanted to say:
Whoop! Whoop!

But Discourse seemed to dislike the idea:

[jneapan]

If struggling with Japanese-style era dates, I’ll just pop the date into jisho.org and it’ll convert it. Check this out:

平成二十三年 - Jisho.org