A stranger in Japanese

Japanese has some interesting idioms that can be used to make your spoken language sound even more impressive.

Let's try a Japanese language quiz!

Today's phrase : A stranger

「今日から、君とは（　　）の他人だ！」

Meaning: From today, you and I are like strangers!

Choose an answer from from 1～4.

①白
②黒
③赤
④青

◆Vocabulary Hint

白（しろ）white
黒（くろ）black
赤（あか）red
青（あお）blue

答えは・・・The answer is・・・

④赤（あか） - red

◆ New Vocabulary

赤の他人 complete strangers

◆ Explanation of the idiom

Why the color red? Why not white or blue?

One explanation is that the Kanji for red "赤い" in Japanese originally came from another Japanese word "明い（あかい)" which also means "evident" or "clear-cut".

So this idiom's meaning is derived from the original meaning of red, which had another meaning of "clear-cut".