Meishi | 名刺
 

I will need a Meishi for my Japanese class. My professor said it doesn't have to be in Japanese, since we haven't covered formatting yet, but I would like to do the reverse side in Japanese and I need some help in formatting it.

I will include my name (エリック・イングレト) and my home address, which I will not be writing here for privacy reasons, my phone number, and my email.

I would think it would be something like this

エリック・イングレト
(Address)
Austin, Texas (Postal Code)
United States of America
(Phone)
(Email)

I was wondering if I could do the phone number in Kanji. This is an example from my textbook: （〇三）三五〇七ー九七六七

If the textbook you're using in class says it's OK, why wouldn't it be OK in class?

I sure as hell wouldn't do it, though. But that's because I'm a ton more comfortable with arabic numerals than kanji numerals.

The only times I have seen phone numbers presented in kanji have been outside of Japan in Japanese shops and bookstores... When it is something directed toward Japanese and not foreigners.
I see no reason why it wouldn`t be okay to do, as it`s given as an example in your textbook.... But I don`t have a single meishi that has it`s number in Japanese.

Kanji numeral phone numbers and other kanji numbers most often occur in vertical (tategaki) writing, so if your meishi is written top to bottom then kanji phone numbers might be more appropriate. (However, I don't think there is any actual rule about this.)

There is a publisher which makes a sumo wrestling calendar with all the days and months written using kanji numerals, including things like 廿.

BenBullock, have I seen you on sci.lang.japan(ese) before? Your name seems very familiar...

I think that's more for aesthetic reasons than for "information" reasons. We (Japanese) have no touble reading numbers between 1 and 12 in kanji, but we have great trouble reading an entire phone number in kanji. I mean we could read it but would have a hard time memorizing it when making a call.

Just want the Japanese learners to know that we don't use kanji numerals nearly as often as they seem to think we do. They are never used in arithmetic or math in schools, either.

:) As it happens, my kid did some of his times tables problems using kanji numerals.

:eek: Yes, that is me, but I usually put a space in the name. This forum software doesn't allow spaces or underscores.

Haha, small world! I kept going on, but then falling out of practice as checking NNTP ceased to be a daily routine of mine over a decade ago. But I sometimes go back on.

You guys are, in general, far more advanced than me. But that's to be expected from a group of Japanese natives and non-Japanese linguists/professional translators.