I'm beginning to suspect that you are actually a part of the Witness Protection Program. Not to worry, your secret is safe with me. And anyone who reads this blog.
Sincerely,
Me
Over the past few months of studying the country I'll soon be calling home, I learned that "Japan" is not even remotely close to the country's true name. If you want to be fancy about it, the name Japan is an exonym. And yes, I did look that up on Wikipedia. No, I'm not sure how to pronounce it.
The Japanese call their country Nihon (Knee-hon) or Nippon, the fancier version. Before you ask, that does not make the people Nihonese. They call themselves Nihonjin and speak Nihongo.
If you want to be really detailed, Nihon is typically translated as "Land of the Rising Sun." The kanji are 日本 and those more or less mean the "where the sun originates." If you want to learn more about meaning of kanji, that'll be a lesson for another day...from someone who actually knows what they're talking about. Meaning, not me.
So how did Nihon get switched for Japan? Somebody obviously messed up somewhere. Think of it like a giant game of Telephone spread over several countries and years. But long story short, the Portugese traders heard a Chinese dialect call the country "Giapan." And it went downhill from there.
So there's your Sparknotes version of the origins of
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