Kanji

In Japanese, there are four "alphabets," for lack of a better word. There are two sets of syllabries called hiragana and katana, which have about 47 characters each, representing sounds like "a, ka, sa, shi, ne". There is also romaji, and then there is kanji.

Hiragana is mostly used for native Japanese words and some names, while katakana is usually reserved for foreign loan words (but not always). Here's an example, my name:

えりっく

エリック

The top is hiragana and the bottom is katakana, which is how my name is normally spelled, since it is of foreign origin. They both have the exact same pronunciation: erikku. When words are spelled using the english alphabet like that, it is called romaji. Pretty much every Japanese person learns the English ("roman") alphabet and romaji is used all over Japan.

Finally we have kanji, which are basically Chinese characters that have been imported and incorporated into the Japanese language across many centuries. Kanji are used for Japanese names, for placenames, for many nouns and verbs...for just about everything. This is the hard stuff...because in order to read something basic like a Japanese newspaper, you need to know roughly 2,000 characters. Kanji is the stuff that makes Japanese learners cry and curse their brains. I am supposed to know somewhere around 1,000 kanji at my level, though the number I can actually remember how to write is far below that (reading is easier than writing; you can recognize many characters even if you cannot recall them perfectly for writing). I have recently begun attempting to learn all 2,000+ general kanji from scratch in order to gain true literacy. I certainly find myself with the time to do it.

Kanji looks like this: 期末試験.

Kanji are difficult to learn not just because there are many characters, but also because most of the time each character has mutiple ways in which it can be pronounced. For this reason I consider Japanese to be the hardest written language in the world (though admittedly I cannot speak for all other languages, not having attemped to learn them).

Back from the Dead but not in Japan

Hello everyone! (that is to say...no one, seeing as it's been so long)

I sincerely apologize for abandoning this blog while I was still in Japan last year; I was either too busy or too lazy to continue updating it, even though I did a lot of things that were definitely blog-worthy. Oh well, anyway...I've decided to once again resurrect this blog because there's a chance I will travel back to Japan next year as an English teacher or maybe if I'm lucky a city government clerk, or something like that (JET program). Anyway, I've heard the process of applying is rather painstaking, so I've already started to gather up some necessary documents like transcripts just in case I really choose to take the plunge.

In the meantime, seeing as my job search here in Washington state is repeatedly running me into brick walls, I've decided to start devoting more time to studying Japanese again, specifically kanji--the Chinese symbols which number in the thousands and are undoubtedly the greatest obstacle facing anyone who wants to become literate in Japanese. I'll write more on this later!

Hakone

On the 18th, Sakura and I went on a two-day trip to Hakone, a famous sight-seeing area located about an hour and a half away from Tokyo by train. Hakone is mostly famous for being a hot spot for onsen (hot springs - pun probably intended), but there's a lot more to do then sit in extremely hot slightly sulfurous water all day.










The first picture is just the first picture taken when we got off the train. Hakone is located in and around mountains, so if you look in any direction you're probably going to see one. It was a nice change of scenery. The second picture was taken from the "Hakone Ropeway," a pretty neat form of transportation. The next picture is the Ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) where we stayed. It was quite nice though not dissimilar from the previous Ryokan I stayed at last year. You are supposed to be able to see Mt. Fuji from Lake Ashinoko, but as you can see in the last picture it was a bit too cloudy on the second day of our visit.

Oarai

Here's the last set of pictures from Mito. This place by the sea is called Oarai (the great wash..?). I didn't actually go on the beach or into the aquarium, but it was nice to be there anyway. This beach is a lot cleaner than most of the beaches in Japan, which seem to be typically littered with trash. Some of the pictures are taken from a big tower where I ate ice cream.

Mito

The other day we went up to Mito, the capital city of Ibaraki prefecture. Mito is pretty famous because it's where one line of the Tokugawa family lived during the Edo period (the Tokugawa family being the ruling family of Japan for over two centuries). It's also where a lot of important stuff happened leading up to the overthrow of that family and the modernization of Japan. These first set of pictures were taken at a sort of "summer cottage" for Tokugawa Nariaki, called Koubuntei.

Tokyo Disneyland

Monday was Disneyland!! I didn't take many pictures, but Sakura has a couple that I will try to get and post later. I have never been to Disneyland in the U.S. before so it was pretty cool for me. Some of the rides I had done before, like Splash Mountain, but I find Disneyland to be much better than Disney World, because everythign is located in the same park and not spread out across ridiculous distances.

The park was really fun, and once again it was ridiculously hot, though it got better towards the evening. We rode just about every major ride in the park, despite some incredible waiting times. Every ride had huge lines, with waiting periods up to 100 minutes. I'd say the only thing I didn't enjoy so much was the cuisine, because everything was just typical American hotdogs and burgers and such. There was curry-flavored popcorn but I didn't try it. Anyway, sorry about the lack of pictures...I guess I was just having too much fun to bother with the camera. :)

Hanabi (Fireworks)

On August 2 me and Sakura went to a big fireworks display in southern Chiba. It was really hot and crowded, but I had a good time. All of the pictures I took turned out horribly, but I will post a couple here just to give you an idea of what it was like.