Japanese numerals

* The special reading 〇 maru (which means "round" or "circle") is also found.

A popular example is the famous 109 store in Shibuya, Tokyo which is read as ichi-maru-kyū (Kanji: 一〇九).

(It can also be read as 'ten-nine'—pronounced tō-kyū—which is a pun on the name of the Tokyo department store which owns the building.)

Additionally, two and five are pronounced with a long vowel in phone numbers (i.e. にい nī and ごお gō).

But if 千 (sen) does not directly precede the name of powers of myriad, attaching 一 (ichi) is optional.

Following Chinese tradition, large numbers are created by grouping digits into myriads (every 10,000) rather than the Western thousands (1,000): Variation is due to the Jinkōki (塵劫記), Japan's oldest mathematics text.

恒河沙 (gōgasha) was originally used in Buddhist scripture for an indefinitely large quantity; it derives from the Sanskrit गङ्गा gangā 'Ganges' (which conveniently includes the character 河 (ka, 'river')) and 沙 (sha, 'sand'), referring to the innumerable sands of the Ganges River.

In Japanese, when long numbers are written out in kanji, zeros are omitted for all powers of ten.

Hence 4002 is 四千二 (in contrast, Chinese requires the use of 零 wherever a zero appears, e.g. 四千零二 for 4002).

They are no longer in general use, but are still used in some instances such as batting and fielding averages of baseball players, winning percentages for sports teams, and in some idiomatic phrases such as 五分五分の勝負 (gobugobu no shōbu, 'fifty-fifty chance'), and when representing a rate or discount.

In both cases, however, the reading follows the traditional system (yon-jū ni-ten ichi-kyū go kiromētoru for 42.195 kilometers; go ju-tten rei-yon pāsento for 50.04 percent.)

As with Chinese numerals, there exists in Japanese a separate set of kanji for numerals called daiji (大字) used in legal and financial documents to prevent unscrupulous individuals from adding a stroke or two, turning a one into a two or a three.

In some cases, the digit 1 is explicitly written like 壱百壱拾 for 110, as opposed to 百十 in common writing.

Old Japanese shares some vocabulary with later periods, but there are also unique number terms over 10 which are not used any more, aside from being parts of specific lexemes.

Notes: Japanese uses separate systems for counting for oneself and for displaying numbers to others, which both proceed up to ten.

Counters and ordinal numbers are typically written in Arabic numbers, such as 3人 (san-nin, three people), 7月 (shichigatsu, July, "seventh-month"), 20歳 (hatachi, age 20), etc., although 三人, 七月 and 二十歳 are also acceptable to write (albeit less common).

For example, the term yaoya (八百屋, 'vegetable stand / grocer') translates into "800 store" and uses the Old Japanese pronunciation for 800, ya(h)o.