Jet Coaster

The sign on this roller coaster is "ジェットコースター" or "Jettokōsutā" phonetically.  Its pronunciation is close to "Jet Coaster," but that is a generic Japanese phrase for roller coasters.  In fact, the English translation of the ride's name on the Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Garden website is simply Roller Coaster.  For these pages, I will refer to the ride's name as Jet Coaster in English, as its pronunciation is most similar to that.

There are three ways to write Japanese words.  This sign uses Katakana characters which are used for foreign words.  Japanese words are usually spelled out with hiragana characters.  The last way of Japanese writing is kanji which uses thousands of individual characters.  Kanji characters represent whole words, not phonetic syllables like the other two systems that each have about 50 characters.

©2020 Joel A. Rogers.