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  • A common name in English for the Japanese go, a unit of dry and liquid capacity equal to about 180 mL or 3/4 of a U.S. cup.

    November 6, 2007

  • Curious, in Japanese the word go means five. I wonder if that has anything to do with the size of this measurement.

    November 8, 2007

  • Hmm...I'll check it out.

    November 8, 2007

  • I thought maybe it was a vessel for sake.

    It may be rice-wine to you, but it will always be sake to me

    November 8, 2007

  • Uselessness, I found this: One go is 180.39 milliliters, 0.3812 U.S. pint, or 0.3174 British imperial pint. Don't know whether that helps at all. The only other reference to the Japanese word refers to a board game and doesn't seem to have much to do with measurements.

    November 8, 2007

  • Hmm, those are all very awkward numbers, clearly this unit isn't part of any western measurement standards. I just wonder if it's equivalent to five of a smaller denomination in the same Japanese system. Oh well, I assume it's obsolete now?

    November 8, 2007

  • The go, you mean? The definition I saw said it was a "traditional Japanese unit of liquid volume," so I suppose it could be obsolete. Oh, wait! Found this on Wikipedia:

    "Japan: one cup is 1/5 litre (200 mL). A traditional Japanese cup (g�?) is 180 mL; 10 Japanese cups together make one shou, the traditional flask size, 1.8 litres. Sake is typically sold by both the cup (180 mL) and flask (1.8 litre) sizes. The cup size used for measuring rice is the traditional size of 180 mL. (For example, a 10-cup rice cooker has a capacity of 1.8 litre or 1 shou.)"

    So it may have earned the name because it's one-fifth of a liter, yes?

    November 9, 2007

  • Yes! That is the logical explanation I was looking for! :-)

    November 9, 2007

  • That was fun! Let's do it again.

    November 9, 2007

  • A common name in English for the Japanese go, a unit of dry and liquid capacity equal to about 180 mL or 3/4 of a U.S. cup.

    August 31, 2008