fubuki, kashima, kagerou, hatsuyuki, shirayuki, and 2 more (kantai collection) drawn by sakazaki_freddy

Ten Celestial Stems and Five Elements

Fire

Water

Wood

Kou/Kinoe

Tei/Hinoto

Shin/Kanoto

Jin/Mizunoe

Ki/Mizunoto

That's right.

Metal

Otsu/Kinoto

Ki/Tsuchinoto

Kou/Kanoe

Yin

Yang

Yin

Sounds comfy...

You typically don't hear the ones toward the end very much, but there are ten.

Having two called "ki" and two called "kou" is pretty ambiguous...

Earth

Hei/Hinoe

Yang

Bo/Tsuchinoe

Chitter-chatter

Yang

You can't. There's no such thing.

Yang

I'd like to propose we choose J difficulty for the upcoming operation.

Yin

They can be used to rank things, hence the saying, "it's hard to decide which is A or B". Kou otsu tsukegatai.

Yin

They can also be used simply to distinguish categories.

Yin

Ah, Katori-nee!

I do feel like I've heard "hinoe" and stuff before...

Take Kagerou-san's destroyers, for example.

Mine?