Japanese Food is Very “Herushii” (Healthy)

One interesting aspect of living in Japan is getting used to the, ah, unique pronunciations of English words the Japanese often employ. For example, the Japanese word for “healthy” is kenko-teki, but for various reasons — mainly related to the Japanese having positive feelings about anything expressed with English words — the worth “healthy” is often used as-is, written in the katakana writing system as a foreign loan word (ヘルシー）. Due to limitations of Japanese phonetics, however, it sounds like herushii, something that took me quite a while to become accustomed to. Some other “English” words that are mangled by Japanese pronunciation include “micro” (pronounced MEE-cro about half the time), and “theme” (which is teema in Japanese, due to the fact that it actually came from the German, not English). J-List is happy to be working with Nitroplus, the legendary game company that publishes Demonbane, but in Japanese their name is actually pronounced like “nee-tro” rather than the English word “nitro.” Confusing much?

Japanese food is considered very herushii?