Science and Technology: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)

More AP Japanese Language guides

• Personal and Public Identities
• Beauty and Aesthetics
• Contemporary Life
• Global Challenges

Kagaku gijutsu (科学技術)

Science and technology; 技術 alone means technique/technology, 科学者 scientist, 技術者 engineer, 研究 research.

Shinkansen (新幹線)

Bullet train launched in 1964 for the Tokyo Olympics; famous for punctuality (average delay under a minute) and safety record.

Robotto (ロボット)

Japan leads in industrial and humanoid robots (ASIMO, Pepper) and care robots (介護ロボット) for its aging society.

Sumaho (スマホ)

Abbreviated loanword for smartphone; Japanese shortens katakana words: パソコン (PC), コンビニ, エアコン, リモコン.

Keitai culture (携帯)

Japanese flip phones (ガラケー) pioneered mobile email, cameras and emoji before smartphones; 絵文字 is a Japanese word.

Emoji (絵文字)

Picture characters created for Japanese mobile phones in 1999 by Kurita Shigetaka; now a global standard.

Suica / IC cards

Rechargeable transit cards (Suica, PASMO, ICOCA) used for trains, buses, vending machines and konbini; tap with ピッ.

Jidōhanbaiki (自動販売機)

Vending machines, roughly one per 25 people, selling hot and cold drinks, ramen and umbrellas; a symbol of safe public technology.

Konbini technology

Convenience stores handle bill payments, ticket printing, ATMs and package pickup (宅配便) using integrated POS systems.

Washlet (ウォシュレット)

High-tech toilet by TOTO with heated seat, bidet and sound masking; a frequent culture-shock topic in AP passages.

Nobel laureates in science

Japan has more than 20 science Nobel laureates, e.g., Yamanaka Shinya (iPS cells, 2012), Yoshino Akira (lithium-ion battery, 2019).

iPS cells (iPS細胞)

Induced pluripotent stem cells created by Yamanaka at Kyoto University; a common example of Japanese biomedical research.

JAXA and Hayabusa

Japan's space agency; Hayabusa2 returned asteroid Ryugu samples in 2020; astronaut 野口聡一 is well known.

Genpatsu (原発)

Nuclear power plant; after Fukushima Daiichi (2011) most reactors were shut down, sparking energy debates and 再生可能エネルギー growth.

Saisei kanō enerugī (再生可能エネルギー)

Renewable energy: 太陽光 (solar), 風力 (wind), 地熱 (geothermal); Japan targets carbon neutrality by 2050.

Jishin sokuhō (地震速報)

Earthquake early-warning alerts sent to all phones seconds before shaking; a technology built for a disaster-prone country.

Taishin (耐震) engineering

Earthquake-resistant construction: 耐震 (resistant), 免震 (base isolation), 制震 (damping) in skyscrapers like Tokyo Skytree.

Monozukuri (ものづくり)

'The making of things': national pride in craftsmanship and manufacturing quality, from Toyota to precision instruments.

Kaizen (改善)

Continuous improvement, a management philosophy from Toyota Production System that spread worldwide (kanban, just-in-time).

Hybrid and EV cars

Toyota Prius (1997) was the first mass-produced hybrid; ハイブリッド車, 電気自動車 (EV), 自動運転 (self-driving) are key vocab.

Gēmu industry

Nintendo, Sony PlayStation and Sega made video games a major export; テレビゲーム and ゲームセンター are everyday words.

Society 5.0

Government vision of a super-smart society integrating AI, IoT and big data to solve aging and depopulation problems.

AI (人工知能)

Artificial intelligence; discussions of AI translation (機械翻訳) and whether AI will replace jobs appear in reading tasks.

Denshi manē (電子マネー)

Electronic money and cashless payment (PayPay, QRコード決済); Japan long remained cash-heavy compared with China or Korea.

Hanko vs. digital

Personal seals (判子) required on documents; the pandemic pushed デジタル庁 (Digital Agency, 2021) reforms to reduce paper and seals.

Fax and paper persistence

Japan's offices still use ファックス and paper forms; contrast between advanced hardware and slow digital administration is a common essay topic.

Sūpākonpyūtā Fugaku

富岳 supercomputer at RIKEN in Kobe was ranked the world's fastest in 2020, used for COVID and climate simulation.

Karakuri ningyō (からくり人形)

Edo-period mechanical dolls that serve tea or shoot arrows, seen as ancestors of Japanese robotics.

Loanword abbreviations

Long katakana words shorten to four morae: デジカメ (digital camera), スマホ, アプリ (application), インフラ (infrastructure).

Wasei eigo (和製英語)

Japanese-made English: サラリーマン, マンション (condo), ノートパソコン (laptop), コンセント (outlet); meanings differ from English.

Passive form for reporting

Science writing uses passive: 発見される (be discovered), 開発された (was developed), 使われている (is used).

〜ようになる

Change over time: スマホで払えるようになりました (it became possible to pay by smartphone); pairs with potential form.

〜によって

'By means of / depending on': 技術によって生活が便利になった (life became convenient through technology).

Potential form

Group 1: 話す→話せる; Group 2: 見る→見られる; する→できる, 来る→来られる; used for what technology lets you do.

Rika (理科) and STEM schooling

Elementary/junior-high science is 理科; high school splits into 物理, 化学, 生物, 地学; the 理系/文系 track choice shapes careers.

Netto and SNS vocabulary

インターネット, SNS (social media), ネットいじめ (cyberbullying), 炎上 (online flaming), 動画 (video), 配信 (streaming).