Because of this decision, my girlfriend and I have decided to start learning Japanese. Spanish is still my primary language of study, and that won’t change, so we plan to only study Japanese for one hour a week. We don’t intend to become fluent speakers, we just want to be able to get around. We just started this and have only studied twice now, but so far we have been having fun.

We are focusing mostly on learning to communicate verbally, and in our first sesssion we sampled both Carl Kenner’s free Japanese audio course, and the Michel Thomas Method Japanese for Beginners. Carl Kenner’s course teaches writing along with speaking, while the Michel Thomas course is focused entirely on speaking. We found that Carl Kenner moved a little to quickly for us to keep up, and decided to stick with the Michel Thomas course for now.

I was surprised at just how much fun learning a brand new language together with my girlfriend is. We both laugh at our silly mistakes, while simultaneously being very encouraging to each other. During our second session, we needed to say “kore o kudasai, ” which means something like “please may I have this?” My girlfriend couldn’t remember how to say it, so I held up a piece of mail and said “correo” which in Spanish means “mail”, but sounds very similar to the Japanese “kore o.” This got a laugh out of her and now she remembers that “kore” means “this” in Japanese.

I hope we continue to have this much fun with Japanese, because we are both looking forward to our next Japanese session!

One last thing. I know it’s been very quiet around here. Thomas and I have been working on something big, and soon we’ll be able to tell you all about it! I’m actually very excited about this, but I can’t say more yet! Stay tuned…

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I ran across a word in a book the other day.  植民 (しょくみん [shokumin]).

The first character (植) means plant, as in trees, vines and flowers.  You find it in the Japanese word for plant, 植物 (しょくぶつ [shokubutsu], plant+things), and also in the word that means “to plant (a tree)”, 植える (うえる [ueru]).

The second character （民) means something like group of people.  You find it in words like citizen: 国民 (こくみん [kokumin], country + people).

So 植 (plant) + 民 (group of people) = plant people.  What the hell does “plant people” mean?  Botonists? Nope.

Colonization!

Shokumin is the Japanese word for colonization.  That’s where you take people from your own country and plant them in another land.

How do you say colonization in your language (or the language you are studying)?  Leave a comment and let us know!

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1. Cool Japanese Word – 十字軍
2. Twisting the snake’s mouth
3. Japanese Tomboys

The character 十 (juu) normally means ten, but not in this case.  Here it’s coupled with 字 (ji) which means character/letter.  It’s the same ji in kanji (漢字) and romaji (ローマ字). Put 十 and 字 together and you get 十字 (juuji), which means cross, as in a cross-shape.  It often refers to the Christian cross symbol.

軍 (gun) means army or war.  It’s the same gun we see in Shogun (将軍 – leader + army/war = general).

十字軍 (juujigun – cross + army/war) is the Japanese word for the Crusades.

How do you say the Crusades in your language? (or the language you are studying?) Leave a comment and let us know!

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1. Cool Japanese Word – 植民
2. Twisting the snake’s mouth
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The main difference is that Japanese snowmen are made from only two snowballs instead of three. They also tend to be much smaller than our snowmen, although that’s not always the case.

The Japanese word for “snowman” is 雪だるま (yuki-daruma).  雪 (yuki) means snow.  だるま (daruma) does not mean man though.

Daruma is the Japanese form of dharma, a Sanskrit word that you may have heard before.  It shows up a lot in Buddhism and Hinduism.  Japanese actually borrowed daruma from Bodhidharma, which is the name of the monk who brought Zen (Chan) Buddhism to China from India. Here he is:

So why are snowmen called “Snow Bodhidharmas” in Japanese? Check it out.

Japan has these things called Daruma dolls, which look like this:

People use these to make their wishes come true. You make a wish and color in one of the Daruma doll’s eyes. Then you wait and when your wish comes true, you color in the other eye. Japan is full of one-eyed daruma dolls.

Apparently yuki-darumas (snowmen) are meant to resemble these dolls (though I think they more resemble the painting above). That’s why they don’t use three big snow balls.

If it snows this year, you can bet your hat that I’m going to be making some Snow Bodhidharmas.

How do you say snowman in your language (native or study language)??  Please leave a comment and tell me!

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But this is not the case.  This word is actually a loan word.  Normally loan words with kanjis in them come from Chinese.  Most non-Chinese loan words are written in katakana like “hamburger”: ハンバーガー.   But お転婆さん (otenbasan) doesn’t come from Chinese.

It comes from Dutch!  From the word ontembaar, which according to online dictionaries means “indomitable, never-say-die, unsubduable“.   Not hard to see how it could come to mean “tomboy” in Japanese.  But why does a Dutch word get kanjis?  I don’t know the answer for sure, but I’d guess the word was borrowed a long time ago, like back in the 1700s when a bunch of Dutch people were hanging out in Japan.  Using katakana for loan words is kinda new (I think).

Another word that does this is 天ぷら (tempura: Japanese deep-fried food), which comes from the Portuguese word tempero, meaning (again, according to an online dictionary) gravy or meat drippings.  There were some Portuguese guys hanging out in Japan back in the 1600s.  I don’t know for sure, but I would guess this word was borrowed into Japanese back then and that’s why it gets a kanji.

Anyway, back to otenbasan – “tomboy“.  The “-san” suffix here is honorific, like the “-san” you add to peoples’ names.  But the “o-” here is not the honorific prefix “o-”. The Dutch word has the “o” too.  So why isn’t there a kanji for the “o”?  No idea!

Do you know any other European words that get kanji in Japanese?  If so, please let me know!

Related posts:

1. Japanese Study Habits 2008
2. Remembering Kanji
3. How The Japanese Remember Months

To say “turn on the (sink) faucet”, you use the verb ひねる (hineru), which means to twist.  蛇口をひねる。 Turn on the faucet.  But for God’s sake be careful!

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1. Cool Japanese Word – 植民
2. Cool Japanese Word – 十字軍
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My weak point was the listening section (50%).  I also missed a few on the reading section because I ran out of time and had to circle answers randomly.  Stil, the fact that I passed on my first try gives me some confidence.

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For those who don’t know, Heisig’s book offers a different approach to learning kanji (Chinese characters). The normal way to learn kanji is to learn a few at a time, writing each one over and over, learning the different readings, learning some words that contain those kanjis and drilling those words. This way works for millions of people (I’m including Japanese people since they do it this way in school) but it is slow as hell. And it’s boring. And it’s not terribly efficient, at least not for me, because in my experience I’m just as likely to forget a kanji I learned this way than remember.

So Heisig published a book, in the 70s I think, with a different approach. He says screw the readings and just learn the meanings first. He takes about 2000 kanji and assigns them each a unique English keyword. Then he puts them in the most efficient/brilliant order possible, so that each kanji you learn is built from kanji pieces that you’ve learned in the past. For example:

You won’t learn 張 until you’ve learned 弓 and 長. That way, when you do learn 張 (lengthen), you can use the keywords for 弓 (bow [and arrow]) and 長 (long) to help you construct a story/mnemonic device to help you remember the new kanji. You won’t learn 暫 (temporarily) until after you’ve learned 車 (car), 斤 (axe) and 日(day). But once you do learn car, axe and day, you can make up a little story involving cars, axes and days to relate to the keyword “temporarily”. And so on. It makes so much sense.

When you are done, you can’t read any of the kanji, but you know what they all mean. Kinda like a Chinese person would if they were to start learning Japanese.

Of course, I can read a lot of the kanji. I’ve been studying Japanese for years. That’s actually a reason I was reluctant to start this book in the first place, since it felt like “starting over” when I felt I had so much kanji knowledge under my belt already. That reluctance was completely misplaced, because going through this book was the single best thing I’ve ever done for my Japanese study (except maybe using an SRS).

It took me 3 months to finish the book. Now I can write 2042 kanjis from memory. And I know what they all mean. Couldn’t do that before. And if I had stuck to the old method for those 3 months, there is no way in hell I’d be at the same place I am now. And it’s giving me results. Sentences I used to miss consistently in my SRS I suddenly get right now. Words I’ve never seen before I can suddenly know what they mean by a combination of context plus knowing the Heisig keyword for the kanjis. I can write kanjis now. Before I could recognize many kanjis, but if I had to produce them on the spot, I was SOL. Now I can write them. All of them!

Just as a test, I read for a bit in Lion Boy (the young adult Fantasy novel I’m reading in Japanese) today to see if there was any difference. There was a HUGE difference. Before it would take me half an hour to an hour to trudge through 5 pages. I’d have to look up half the words in the dictionary. Sometimes I’d have to look up the same word twice because by the time I was finished looking up words for a sentence, I had forgotten an earlier word in the sentence. Juggling 5 new words in your head can be tricky if you let your concentration slip. Today, during my test, I read 5 pages in about 5 minutes. There were just as many words I didn’t know as before, but my knowledge of the meaning of the individual kanjis made up the extra distance I needed to know the word in context. Didn’t need the dictionary. That’s results.

Best thing I ever did for Japanese. If you are trying to learn Japanese, drop everything right now and go run through Remembering the Kanji.

When you finish you will have much, much power. You don’t have to do it alone either. There’s an awesome website called Reviewing the Kanji that has a whole community of Heisigers and you can borrow their stories/mnemonic devices. Highly recommended.

So now that I’m done with Heisig, what’s next? Well, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test is this December. I’m aiming for level 2 (the second highest level). I bought a kanji/vocab study book for the JLPT2 (Unicom series if anyone cares) and breezed through it in about a week (thanks Heisig). Now I’m working through the JLPT grammar book (which sadly won’t be as quick). I’m going to put most of my study focus into the JLPT and watch J-Dramas/read Lion Boy part-time.

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1. Japanese Study Habits 2008
2. Japanese Tomboys
3. JLPT2 Practice Test #1

Today’s Word Of The Day is うんち (unchi). That’s Japanese for poop.

Last weekend, my wife and I went to the Confectionary Exposition in Himeji, and on the way back to the car we saw this sign:

Here is what the sign says:

Everybody come and play! Come and look! We have poop books!

Rabbit: It’s shit time!

Gorilla: Come and see my shit too!

Elephant: Animal shit is here yo!

See it. Touch it! Smell it! Explore!

Can you guess what animals made this shit? (3 pictures)

Himeji Museum Of Literature, Special Exhibit. April 1st-May 18th

Naturally we couldn’t resist.

We paid our way into the little exhibit. On the walls around the room were little pictures of animals doing the deed:

Then you get to see the real stuff up close, displayed in cute little boxes as if they were Easter treats. You are free to look, handle and sniff to your heart’s content. Can you guess which animals this shit belongs to? (Answers below):

Answers: Zebra shit, Addax shit, Hippo Shit, Giraffe Shit, Elephant Shit.

Excretory Literature

But that’s not even the main attraction! This is the Himeji Museum of Literature. What would this exhibit be without books about poop?

Book Made Out Of Shit

The paper of this book was made from elephant dung:

Unchi Restaurant

This book, titled “Unchi Restaurant” is about a bug that eats dung (warning: plot spoilers ahead):

Trans: Eww.. What’s that smell?

Trans: It’s shit!

Trans: Munch, munch.

Excretory System

Trans: When you eat breakfast your belly starts to move, and your poop starts to move too.

Poop1: I’m getting pushed out!
Poop2: Here I come!

Shit Professor

Trans: I am the Shit Professor. I know everything there is to know about shit!

Nasty Fish

Trans: Fish: Delicious!

Eh? Shit is delicious?

Yes. Shit is delicious food.

The hippo takes a dump and then these little fish eat it, chasing after the hippo’s butt.

End Of The Japanese Poop Exhibit

Finally, after enjoying the literature, you can take a picture at this special cut-out to take home as a souvenir:

If you want to see it first-hand, the exhibit is open until May 18th, 2008 at the Himeji City Museum of Literature. It is well worth it.

Himeji City Museum of Literature Info (Japanese)

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1. Language Learning Tip #2: Read Children’s Books

Japanese families (who have boys) put these carp streamers up to celebrate boys. 　My wife and I had a son last year, so we got some.

At the top of the pole are 矢車 (yaguruma). 矢 means “arrow” and 車 means “car” or “wheel”. If you look closely, you will see that the wheels are spoked with arrows, hence 矢車. The fletching of the arrow-spokes catches the wind and makes the wheels turn.

The koinobori are sold in sets of four. At the top is a plain old wind sock and beneath it are three carp windsocks. The black carp is the father, the red is the mother and the blue one is the boy. A koinobori set can cost anything from 10,000 yen (US$100) to 60,000 yen (US$600). Ours was 40,000 yen and some change. Not cheap by any means, but you only have to buy them once, you use them year after year, and up close they are actually pretty freaking cool.

You hang your koinobori at the beginning of May, and then take them down on June 5th, one month after Children’s Day. Our koinobori are hung off of our balcony, and as you can see, the boy likes it!

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