Once you can count, the calendar almost builds itself. The seven weekdays are named after the classical elements, the twelve months are just a number plus one kanji, and dates follow a short list of patterns. Here's the whole calendar — weekdays, months, days of the month, and the everyday words for today and tomorrow.
Every weekday name ends in 曜日 (yōbi), literally "day of the week". What changes is the first kanji — and it's a lovely system, because each one is one of the five classical elements plus the sun and the moon, the same set behind the planets in English (Sun-day, Mon-day, Satur-day).
| Day | Kanji | Romaji | Element |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 月曜日 | getsuyōbi | moon 月 |
| Tuesday | 火曜日 | kayōbi | fire 火 |
| Wednesday | 水曜日 | suiyōbi | water 水 |
| Thursday | 木曜日 | mokuyōbi | wood 木 |
| Friday | 金曜日 | kin'yōbi | gold/metal 金 |
| Saturday | 土曜日 | doyōbi | earth 土 |
| Sunday | 日曜日 | nichiyōbi | sun 日 |
A memory trick. The order runs moon, fire, water, wood, metal, earth, sun — and you only really need the first kanji. To ask "what day is it?" say 何曜日ですか (nan'yōbi desu ka), literally "what day-of-week is it?". The casual short forms drop the 日: people often just say getsuyō, kayō, and so on.
This is the easiest part of the whole calendar. A month is simply its number + 月 (gatsu) — "month". January is "one-month", February is "two-month", and so on all the way to December. There are no special month names to memorise like January or February in English.
| Month | Kanji | Romaji |
|---|---|---|
| Jan | 一月 | ichigatsu |
| Feb | 二月 | nigatsu |
| Mar | 三月 | sangatsu |
| Apr | 四月 | shigatsu |
| May | 五月 | gogatsu |
| Jun | 六月 | rokugatsu |
| Month | Kanji | Romaji |
|---|---|---|
| Jul | 七月 | shichigatsu |
| Aug | 八月 | hachigatsu |
| Sep | 九月 | kugatsu |
| Oct | 十月 | jūgatsu |
| Nov | 十一月 | jūichigatsu |
| Dec | 十二月 | jūnigatsu |
The April / July / September trap. If you've learned to default to yon, nana and kyū for the numbers 4, 7 and 9, the months quietly reverse that. April is shigatsu (not yongatsu), July is shichigatsu (not nanagatsu), and September is kugatsu (not kyūgatsu). These three lock in the older on'yomi readings and never change — they're the only thing about months you actually have to memorise. (See the dual readings explained on the numbers page.)
Here's where the calendar earns its reputation. The day-of-the-month counter is 日, but for the 1st through the 10th it borrows the old native counting set (the same hitotsu, futatsu family), so the readings look nothing like the plain numbers. Learn these first ten plus a couple of stragglers and the rest fall into a tidy pattern.
| Date | Kanji | Hiragana | Romaji |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 一日 | ついたち | tsuitachi |
| 2nd | 二日 | ふつか | futsuka |
| 3rd | 三日 | みっか | mikka |
| 4th | 四日 | よっか | yokka |
| 5th | 五日 | いつか | itsuka |
| 6th | 六日 | むいか | muika |
| 7th | 七日 | なのか | nanoka |
| 8th | 八日 | ようか | yōka |
| 9th | 九日 | ここのか | kokonoka |
| 10th | 十日 | とおか | tōka |
From the 11th onward dates are mostly regular: take the number and add -nichi (日). So the 11th is jūichinichi, the 15th is jūgonichi, the 30th is sanjūnichi. There are just three exceptions to remember, all reusing the native readings above:
| Date | Kanji | Hiragana | Romaji |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14th | 十四日 | じゅうよっか | jūyokka |
| 20th | 二十日 | はつか | hatsuka |
| 24th | 二十四日 | にじゅうよっか | nijūyokka |
The two to really burn in. The 1st, ついたち (tsuitachi), comes from an old word meaning "the moon's beginning" and is completely unlike "ichi". The 20th, はつか (hatsuka), is the other one nobody guesses. The 14th and 24th simply carry the 4th's yokka along for the ride. Everything else from 11 up is number + nichi.
Japanese dates run biggest unit to smallest: year, then month, then day — the opposite order to most English styles, and the same logic as the ISO-8601 calendar. The pattern is …年…月…日 (…nen …gatsu …nichi).
For example, 6 June 2026 is written 二〇二六年六月六日 and read nisen-nijūroku-nen roku-gatsu muika — "2026-year, six-month, sixth-day". The year uses the plain number plus 年 (nen); the weekday, if added, comes last in brackets: （土） for Saturday.
You'll reach for these relative-time words far more often than a specific date, so they're worth learning as a set. A handful are irregular readings (today, tomorrow, yesterday) that are best simply memorised.
| English | Kanji | Romaji |
|---|---|---|
| today | 今日 | kyō |
| tomorrow | 明日 | ashita |
| yesterday | 昨日 | kinō |
| every day | 毎日 | mainichi |
| English | Kanji | Romaji |
|---|---|---|
| this week | 今週 | konshū |
| next week | 来週 | raishū |
| last week | 先週 | senshū |
| weekend | 週末 | shūmatsu |
Swap 週 (shū, week) for 月 (tsuki, month) or 年 (toshi/nen, year) and the same prefixes work: raigetsu is next month, kyonen is last year. The pattern 今・来・先 (now / coming / previous) repeats neatly across all three.
Read the kana first. Every reading on this page is written in hiragana — so before the calendar clicks, the script needs to be second nature. The kana typing game shows you a character and asks you to type its romaji against the clock, turning that recall into a combo chase, with a mastery tracker that surfaces the kana you keep missing.
Want the numbers behind the months and dates? See counting in Japanese. New to the scripts? Start with the hiragana chart & reading guide, or pick up everyday phrases in the greetings guide.