Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. By calling it Japanese, if you meant... - "A book from Japan" then it'd be: Nihon no hon - "A book written in Japanese" then it'd be: Nihongo no hon ("Nihon" means Japan. "Go" means language. Put them together and you have "Japanese language.") If you reversed it... It would make it something like "book's Japan" rather than "Japanese book." Why? Because this little guy in the middle said so: that "no" in between. "No" is a particle. Particles are little words for proper grammar. When you first see "no," they tell you it indicates the possessive, like the English apostrophe S. E.g 1. English: Carl's book In Japanese: Carl NO hon - E.g. 2: English: [The] cat's ear In Japanese: Neko NO mimi "No" also has the general function of turning nouns into modifiers. It doesn't actually have to possess anything. Used this way, many will tell you it's like "of" in English. (Warning: it is not the best translation... We don't have a direct translation for multi-purpose miracles like Japanese "no" in English.) E.g. English: Japanese language teacher In Japanese: Nihongo NO sensei [Teacher OF Japanese] - So... "Nihongo NO hon" would make "book OF Japanese." I'm not too sure if I'm clear on this, so I'll leave this lovely link here. It's an article on how to use "no." www.japaneseprofessor.com/lessons/beginning/modifying-particle-no/ Hope I wasn't too much of a mess ^^;