Have a look at this cat. What colour is it?
If you're a native English speaker, you probably said "orange" without thinking twice. But ask a native Japanese speaker the same question, and most will tell you it's chairo (茶色), the Japanese word for "brown."
Wait, brown?
If you're sitting there thinking "that's not brown, that's clearly orange," you're not wrong. From an English speaker's perspective, calling this cat brown sounds bizarre. Brown is dark, earthy, chocolate-like. This cat is bright, warm, clearly in the orange family.
But native Japanese speakers look at you calling it orange and think you're the odd one out. From their perspective, you're the one making the strange choice. This cat is chairo, something in the orange-brown range that Japanese speakers group differently from what they'd call orenji (オレンジ, the Japanese word for "orange").
The real issue is that the boundary line between chairo and orenji in Japanese doesn't sit in the same place as the boundary between "brown" and "orange" in English. Linguists and psychologists have studied this. Colour boundaries aren't universal. They shift between languages and cultures.
Native Japanese speakers are carving up the colour spectrum differently. Some shades that you'd firmly place in "orange" territory, they see as chairo. And the way they'd categorise colours that fall somewhere between orange and brown often won't match your instincts.
This is why learning a language isn't just about memorising word pairs like "chairo = brown" and moving on. Real language learning means understanding how native speakers actually experience and use these words, not just mapping them onto your own language's categories. That's a fundamentally different kind of knowledge.
The cat colour example is just one of hundreds. Japanese is full of these subtle mismatches that don't show up in dictionaries or language apps. Words that seem like straightforward translations turn out to have different ranges of meaning, different cultural associations, different contexts where they feel natural or awkward.
You can spend years working through textbooks and apps and still miss much of this if you're learning on your own.
A good teacher doesn't just hand you vocabulary lists. They help you build intuition. They can tell you why native Japanese speakers see this cat as chairo, explain the cultural and linguistic logic behind it, and help you start to develop that same instinct.
Here's the thing: when you make these subtle mistakes (using orenji where a native speaker would say chairo, or any of the hundreds of similar mismatches) it's difficult to expect current AI chatbots and language apps to notice and correct them. But an experienced teacher will recognise it immediately as a common learner mistake and explain what's actually going on.
Would you have ever worked out on your own that what English speakers call an "orange" cat, native Japanese speakers call chairo? Probably not. And there are countless moments like this throughout the language, small revelations that shift your whole understanding. That's what a knowledgeable teacher brings to the table.
At SuikaTalk, we're serious about teacher quality. We only bring on tutors who have deep knowledge of Japanese, not just the language, but the cultural and linguistic nuances that make it work. They're the kind of teachers who can open your eyes to things you didn't even know you were missing.
Whether you're just starting out or you've been studying for a while and want to fill in the gaps, our teachers can help you see the language differently. You'll start to understand not just what words mean, but how they actually work in context.
Want to see what proper instruction can do? Book a free trial lesson and find out. You might be surprised how much depth there is to Japanese once you've got someone who knows what they're talking about showing you the way.
