Gairaigo in the context of "ん"

The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana, used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.

Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in Japan are referred to as "Japanese kanji" (和製漢字, wasei kanji), also known as "[our] country's kanji" (国字, kokuji). Each character has an intrinsic meaning (or range of meanings), and most have more than one pronunciation, the choice of which depends on context. Japanese primary and secondary school students are required to learn 2,136 jōyō kanji as of 2010. The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though this includes tens of thousands of characters only present in historical writings and never used in modern Japanese.

Sino-Japanese vocabulary, also known as kango (Japanese: 漢語; pronounced [kaŋɡo], "Han words"), is a subset of Japanese vocabulary that originated in Chinese or was created from elements borrowed from Chinese. Most Sino-Japanese words were borrowed in the 5th–9th centuries AD, from Early Middle Chinese into Old Japanese. Some grammatical structures and sentence patterns can also be identified as Sino-Japanese.

Kango is one of three broad categories into which the Japanese vocabulary is divided. The others are native Japanese vocabulary (yamato kotoba) and borrowings from other, mainly Western languages (gairaigo). It has been estimated that about 60% of the words contained in modern Japanese dictionaries are kango, and that about 18–20% of words used in common speech are kango. The usage of such kango words increases in formal or literary contexts, and in expressions of abstract or complex ideas.

Puroresu (プロレス, Puro-resu) is a Japanese term referring to professional wrestling in Japan and abroad. It is a Japanese loanword that stems from the pronunciation of "professional wrestling" (プロフェッショナル・レスリング, purofesshonaru resuringu), which is abbreviated in Japanese to puro (プロ - "pro") and resu (レス - an abbreviation of "wrestling"). The term became popular among English-speaking fans following the Usenet member Hisaharu Tanabe's online activities.

Puroresu grew out of the traditional American style but has become a separate entity based on Japanese culture that is distinct in its psychology, presentation, and function. It is treated much more like a legitimate competition with fewer theatrics, and the stories told in Japanese wrestling are often about a wrestler's spirit and perseverance. Professional wrestling in Japan led to the development of shoot wrestling and has been closely related to mixed martial arts, starting with Shooto and Pancrase, organizations which predate the UFC, and has influenced subsequent promotions such as Fighting Network Rings and Pride Fighting Championships. There is more overlap between professional wrestlers and mixed martial artists in Japan than other countries.

Pentel Co., Ltd. (ぺんてる株式会社, Penteru Kabushiki Kaisha) is a privately held Japanese manufacturing company of stationery products. The company name was derived from the trademark used for one of their first widely known products, a portmanteau of the English words painting and pastel, but has since been interpreted as a combination of the words pen and tell (as in telling a story). Pentel is also the inventor of non-permanent marker technology. Most Pentel products are manufactured in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and France.

The company is regarded as the inventor of the fibre-tipped (felt-tip) pen in 1963. Nowadays, Pentel produces a wide range of products that include writing implements, art materials and office goods.

Wago (和語; Japanese pronunciation: [waꜜɡo]) are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. Together with kango (漢語) and gairaigo (外来語), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese words (there is also elaborate Japanese sound symbolism, of mimetic origin). They are also known as yamato kotoba (大和言葉; [jamatokoꜜtoba]).

The word yamato kotoba itself is composed of native Japanese words, and hence is an autological word. The synonym wago is instead a kango, and hence a heterological word.