A grim reality?

Why don't we listen to our inner voice? This week I told myself "buy that and your love of Japan will suffer." I did, and it has....

The Rogue "gave me" a Borders book voucher for Father's Day last week. I love book vouchers. I got one because Kazue complains that I always give people the same thing, which is largely true. I see book vouchers, particularly for Borders here in Bristol, as the gift that gives twice - on one level you get a few quids worth of books, but you also get the fun of looking for a book to buy. Borders rocks for me as I can stroll about on an evening (open till 10pm), browsing books on Japanese (nice Kodansha dictionary), IT, businessey stuff, new fiction, Iain Banks and so on.

I wondered about buying some GTOs (nearly half way) or perhaps a guide to Samurai warfare techniques but I was attracted to Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr. I'd heard about this book when it was released, but hadn't ever had a chance to buy it. But as I'm thinking about returning again I thought a browse might be in order. I kinda wish I hadn't.

Kerr's hypothesis, not unique, is that Japan is eating itself. It is country that has never really gotten to grips with the fact it is an advanced nation and it going hell for leather along the same path that it set for itself in 1940 (even 1853) without ever really adjusting for the reality of modern living. This, he argues, explains the inability to reform the banking sector, the obsession with building huge roads way over-engineered (the road on stilts to Nikko is one I remember), the "messy" appearance of streets and so forth.

It makes for very grim reading - the never ending march of progress to a goal that Japan achieved in the 1980s. The chapter on buried pollution in particular is depressing - especially if you are thinking of living there. It seems from Kerr's reporting that you are taking your life in to your own hands if you do!

I think it is an important book, and worth reading by every potential long term NJ resident, even more so by Japanese themselves, but only if you are willing to face the inevitable moments of loathing it will induce.

We -illas stick together

A few months ago I posted something with Godzilla on the grounds that our names are similar, despite it not really being in any way, even tenuously, language related.

Well, much as I hate to post too frequently, here's another one: Fumakilla - a Japanese roach spray. Frankly, it's another "only in Japan" moment, and of course, my little boy LOVED it.

What are they on about? J-League Names

If ever you've stopped to think about the names of Japan's sports teams, and thousands haven't, one odd feature is that almost exclusively they are rendered in Romaji and are intelligible to foreigners without assistance.

In the case of soccer, or as it is known correctly, footy, it starts at the top with the national squad being Team Japan and the league even being called the J-League (Japan's name for itself, in case you didn't realise, is not Japan, but Nihon).

The names of Japan's soccer teams are high profile examples of brilliantly combined Japanese and Gaikokugo; more than just Japlish though, but Japlian (Japanese-Italian), Japanish (Japanse-Spanish) and so on. But far from being the usual rubbish there has usually been a degree of thought behind the titles. Let's have a look at them:

Kashiwa Reysol: Hailing from Chiba, Kashiwa were once the team of Hitachi, still their prime sponsor. The hi of Hitachi is sun, hence we get sol. Rey is a reference to king, in Spanish - think Rex or roi (not sure if this is related to tachi). So Kashiwa are the sun kings (as well as the best team in the league*).

Urawa Red Diamonds: Ever coveted an Evo (that's a fast car for those that haven't). If so, you've seen the red diamonds in question splashed across the front grill - Urawa have their origins in the factory team of Mitsubishi, whose name means three diamonds.

JEF United: WTF? A team called Jeff? Hmm, not quite. Chiba Ichihara JEF United, to give them their full (and redundant) title are the former team of Furukawa Electric (the F), later merged with the team of Japan Rail East (the J and E). Not so clever, but an amusing quirk, ne?

Ventforet Kofu: The "plucky" minnows of J1, Kofu have a name inspired by a great warlord, Takeda Shingen. The name is comes from a quote he in turn took from Sun Tzu's Art of War. And then it's been translated loosely in to French, coming across as "Windy Forest". Brilliant!

Vissel Kobe: The best thing I can do here is refer to the brilliant analysis from Rising Sun News:

"What the heck is a vissel?" Perhaps the team was choosing a yiddish word to describe what fans do after the opposing team scores a goal? No, the team explained, "Vissel" is a combination of the words "victory" and "vessel". This was a ship that was going to carry Kobe to victory.

Ha ha ha. Losers.

Jubilo Iwata: The former company team of uber-vehiclists Toyota, Jubilo take their name from the Spanish for "delight". Straightforward enough.

Nagoya Grampus Eight: Grampus are arguably the most well known Japanese team in the UK, thanks to their signing Living National Treasure Gary "Gary" Lineker (heck, even my brother considers them his Japanese team of choice and he's got nothing but contempt for the Japanese game). What's less well known is the meaning of their name - even in Nagoya.
The Grampus part is documented as being an English name for some dolphin-like figures atop Nagoya Castle. The mystery bit is the "Eight", which is probably why it is ignored in everyday use. Curiously, it is spelt "eight" on their logo, i.e. in English.

Sanfrecce Hiroshima: This team get their name in a spectacular example of Japlian, combining as it does san, Japanese for three, and frecce, allegedly an Italian word meaning arrow. The three arrows motif is a powerful symbol in and around Hiroshima, referring to wisdom from an ancient warlord to his sons.

Albirex Niigata: The team at the end of the most expensive bit of bullet train track in the country take inspiration from the stars. Albireo is the third brightest star in the constellation Cygnus, so no overly ambitious symbol then. Cygnus is, of course, the Swan; the swan being a local symbol apparently. Since the name Albireo was already taken by someone else (my sources can't say who), the club were forced to append the word king to the title, this time in the form rex. Sure enough, the club mascot is a fat-assed swan in a crown.
Interestingly, the club have a spin off team in a league in Singapore(?!), usefully entitled Albirex Niigata FC (Singapore). Perhaps ManU or Chelsea should look in to this.

Oita Trinita: Way down in Kyushu, the southern most of the four main islands of Japan, is where Christianity has its firmest evil roots. In recognition of this, the most prominent club on the island are named after the Holy Trinity, the sickening religiosity tempered slightly by clever use of the the -ta ending of the city's name.

Yokohama F. Marinos: Okay, so the former club team of motoring also-rans Nissan are based in the town that has one of the biggest ports in a country full of big ports. Marines was out thanks to the local presence of the rather less pleasant USMC; Mariners is out as they are a (Japanese-owned) baseball team in the States; so we get the quasi-Latinate sounding Marinos, presumably named after the greatest quarterback in the history of the Miami Dolphins.
Rather more interesting is the F. There used to be two teams in Yokohama: Marinos and the Flugels (WTF?). One day, without warning, the two clubs were "merged". Just how much of a merger this was is evident from the reduction of one half of the new team being reduced to an initial. All the Flugels fans turned their backs on the new team (haha) and instead supported an alternative team, Yokohama FC, who his year were promoted to J1 themselves. Hurrah!

Shimizu S-Pulse: These guys see themselves as the Pulse of Shizuoka-ken. Obvious really; though this claim is contested annually by the rather more successful Jubilo, also from Shizuoka-ken.

Kashima Antlers: Deer have a long tradition of links with football - see White Hart Lane, home of Spurs, and, er, {ahem} oh, and Gary "Gary" Lineker played there too [neat distraction work - Ed]. The eastern coastal city of Kashima has deer as a local symbol, so that's obvious enough. Functional, though hardly imaginative, it's the best one can expect from a team in Ibaraki-ken.

Omiya Ardija: A word in Spanish for squirrels. I mean, why? Where is the thinking behind that? Still, they're from Saitama-ken, so it's hardly surprising.

It's not all exciting, mysterious names though: thank heavens for the rather more prosaic FCs Tokyo and Yokohama, and the bold move taken by Gamba Osaka to actually take a name based in Japanese (roughly translated for the terraces, Gamba means "Go on!").

*Okay, so Reysol aren't the best team in the sense that they are the most successful (Antlers), currently top of the league (Gamba), title holders (Reds), or even best in the face of obvious adversity (Ventforet are waay smaller than the other clubs, but still do okay) or the best supported (take your pick). But in another, very real sense, they are without question, the best.

Advice on dating, from an expert

I'm a cautious man by nature - I like to stick with what I know - so it's no real surprise to see that the author of this very good overview on finding a language exchange partner is none other than Tae Kim, who is second only to Tony for name checking here.

For all my interest in it, I really struggle to get the time to pursue this. However, I can vouch for the value of Mixxer that gets a shout. I signed up there and got half a dozen offers of exchange in the first couple of weeks. It tailed off one I stopped frequenting the site, afraid of how I would explain sitting up late at night chatting to teenage Japanese girls (well, some of the women were a bit older, but there certainly weren't any blokes) to the wife. That may not be a problem for you, in fact it may be something of a draw...

Wanted - Japanese Car

My old man has just traded in his old Mitsubishi Delica, a great 4x4 imported from Japan.

To replace it we are interested in the Nissan Cube, but as you can see, the prices are quite high in the UK. Anyone interested in trying to buy one in Japan for me and export it?

Seriously.

...and no tag backs...

Hmm, seven things I'm willing to reveal here?

1. I apparently look like Hugh Grant - this has been a regular comment from people I know and those I've just met met since I was about 19. Sadly, I've never dated anyone that looks good in a pink cat suit. Frankly, neither has Hugh or anyone else. Pink cat suits are inherently a bad idea.
2. My last words to my Mother as I went through the gates at Heathrow were "Don't worry, I won't come back with a Japanese wife or anything silly like that." No, indeed; I came back with much more than that.

3. I used to play basketball and sucked for five years at school when I played with Tony. But I was taller than him so it was occasionally possible to stop him. This pic documents the county championship winning team of '93. Tony, as our mascot, sits front centre; I'm trying to psyche the camera man out in the number 10; Ian (6) and Ed (9) are subjects of posts by Tony and I bumped in to Joe this week - pretty much one of the first times since this picture was taken... Owain (13), Mike (11) and Graham (12) are MIA.

4. I secretly still like to go skateboarding at the age of 30. This is frowned upon by parents and associates as deviant behaviour so when I have meetings with clients I throw my deck in the back of the car, finish up when I can, then skulk around playing fields looking for shapely bits of of plywood or concrete.

5. Bristol Japan Club is Bristol's premier venue for people in Bristol who are interested in Japanese culture. Most people who go there probably have no idea what my connection to Japan is - my wife never, ever goes. I used to sell Japanese books there, mimicking my love of Good Day Books, but I lost money on the venture.

6. I read the Guardian. I have to keep this secret from my parents, who would doubtless be offended at the soft-bellied liberalism this implies.

7. I was border-line narcoleptic at uni and slept on a speaker in a night club, on the stairs in halls, in the hallway, in a shop doorway, in a park, in the library, in lectures, etc. This was a serious medical condition you understand and not in any way related to consumption of alcohol.

The ドラえもん conundrum.

Why is Doraemon spelt like that?

ドラえもん

Notice that? The name uses both katakana and hiragana. If you don't read kana, notice how the first two characters are angular, the other three more rounded.

Weird. My local expert hasn't a clue. Any suggestions?

Formality saves me!

Taking a leaf out of Tony's book I reached for Doraemon #1. Sure enough, we have a copy. In fact, as far as I can tell, there is not a home in Japan that won't have a copy of these books chronicling the adventures of the earless robotic cat from the 22nd century! They bloody love 'im.

Still, I ploughed on, for most part dumbfounded by the casual language until on page 36...



Someone's, what? Boss? Landlord? Has come by and Nobita-kun has been sent for biscuits. He offers up some animal crackers he finds in his room.

You don't need to be able to read Japanese to tell that Nobita's mum isn't so happy (I reckons she's saying "What's this? What are these biscuits?"). The best bit is that the gentleman, polite as the situation demands, is using the kind of textbook Japanese I've come to know and, well, if not love exactly, at least get a functional understanding of. He's saying "It's okay, I love these biscuits."

36 pages in and at last my starchy, stiff collared Japanese gets a break.

What's also interesting is that alone here 大好き (love - lit. "big like") gets a kanji rendering, while "I" and "what" are in kana. I would presume this because big 大, is learnt early on (it's a man with his arms outstretched, see?) as are 女 and 子, woman and child, that form 好, the root of "like". So the word for love is learnt ahead of self or what just because it is easier to learn (the other kanji being 私 and 何).

What is rather less clear is why the other kanji I have recently learn, 世界, world, and 世紀, century are presented in kanji when they are clearly more advanced (rank about 200 on the list I've been using).

It's this seemingly arbitrary arrangement that has caused me to struggle with the learning in GTO and ラブヒナ as my patchy kanji mean long tracts are impenetrable - I might have the vocab, but I can't read the kanji, or it takes me ages to associate a string of kana with the right words. Still, either way, manga kicks JBP ass!

East/West Perception

Not sure this really fits on here to be honest, but it is fascinating.

Apparently Asians see the world in a different way to Westerners, according to this article from some science website I never heard of.

In summary, Asians pay more attention to the interrelatedness of things, while Americans of European extraction(the actual subject it seems) are more interested in bold features. This extends to conscious description of an image as well as studies of eye movement. Amazing.

May have greater relevance to Learning Rocks frankly, but I like this site.

Building a Japanese Environment

Over on Learning Rocks, my "professional" blog, I have been following the "personal learning environment" thread that has been going around blogs on the same subject.

There have been a few points of view, but the settled opinion of a PLE is the space you build yourself, online in the most part, to help you learn. With Learning Rocks, extensive use of Google reader on elearning blogs, joining in on Wikis and various other bits I do every day constitute my "PLE" with regards to elearning.

However, with Japanese it is proving more difficult. What I'm keen to try to do is find a community of other learners who blog about their experience of struggling with the language. This I seem unable to do. Tony's blog is a perfect example, for although he alludes to his learning and has blogged about it explicitly, it is a small part of his oeuvre. Tae Kim, whose Guide is one of my favourite learner resources, is an intermittent writer and at a very high level anyway.

I could rejoin the forums at JPod101, but I never found them as useful - they are not a place for reflective learning; newbie questions and boasting are the norm.

So, if you know of any blogs that add to the mix and discuss the pleasures of learning Japanese, please let me know and help me build my J-PLE.

My namesake in action

You have to check out this mash-up game video, hilarious entitled "Fuck Yo Mushroom Kingdom, Nigga", created in the M.U.G.E.N engine and featuring the original bad-ass gaijin visitor with a problem communicating.

Days of the week

One of the great curios of learning Japanese, for me at least, was the similarity in the naming of the days of the week in Japanese and English:

日曜日(nichi-youbi) literally translates as sun-day
月曜日(getsu-youbi) is moon-day, or Monday
(the bi bit is the part used for sun, one sun being a day, naturally)

I couldn't understand how this might have occurred unless by Japan adopting new names for the days of the week, and presumably a western style seven day week along with all the other things it took up during Meiji.

Well, as it happens the story is more interesting. The Japanese calendar is, surprise surprise, based on the Chinese calendar. The Chinese calendar is itself the product of a Babylonian influence on pretty much the whole world. The Babylonian seven day week, probably born from the 28 day lunar cycle and the need by early agrarian societies to meet to trade, was named after the seven bodies in the sky that were visible, ie the sun, moon and five planets.

In English this got corrupted as certain days of the week were re-associated with Norse gods, for example Thursday = Thor's Day, Friday = Freya's Day; but the sun and moon remained.

In Japanese, from Chinese, the relationships for the rest of the week are:

火曜日 (ka-youbi) or fire-day = Tuesday
水曜日 (sui) or water-day = Wednesday
木曜日 (moku) or wood-day = Thursday
金曜日 (kin) or metal/gold-day = Friday
土曜日 (do) or earth-day = Saturday

The observant might spot that these relationships are like the elements, and that's about it; in Chinese mythology the planets are associated with elements - for example the planet Saturn is associated with the element earth. Which is, lo and behold, found to be doyoubi, or Saturn's Day = Saturday.

On a related note, in written form the days in Japanese usually omit the you bit of the days of the week, so 土日、日日 etc would be common. This 曜(you) bit is a little odd as while in Japanese its use is limited to the meaning discussed here, in Chinese it means 'pretty bird' or something along those lines.

NOTE: this is predominantly pieced together from Wikipedia (here and here), which as we all know is an entirely unreliable source, but as the facts seem to hold together from various entries, and bare out a logical consideration of the facts, I'm content that in this instance it seems reasonable.

On the JLPT trail (again)

It's the front half of the year still, so time to make some vague promises to myself to get JLPT3 again. That'll be four years then...

This time I have a half-assed agreement with my buddy Rach to work together to achieve this. Not a bad idea. In keeping with my way of doing these things, my study buddy is in Japan - well, she is at the moment - I think she returns soon after two years over there.

I'm going to be interested in this as she won't be living near me, but we are going to be wokring together to achieve our goal. Collaborative learning online is the sort of thing that usually gets me exercised at Learning Rocks, but it will be interesting to see if I can bring a newbie along with me - I mean, she doesn't even have a blog...

Kana or Romaji - that is the question

Tony (my muse it would seem) posits a valuable question about learning Japanese in his most recent entry.

Is it better to study wholly in the target language, using only kana and kanji, or is it more effective to rely on the prop of romaji (spelling Japanese words in Latin alphabet).

My old chum Olly, now a resident of west Tokyo, seemed to work by this rule. He worked heavily in romaji and this meant that he was often waiting for me to catch up when we studied for JLPT4.

On the other hand, Nigel, a friend from Japan (I met him there - obviously with a name like that he isn't actually from Japan), swears blind that you should work wholly in kana if you want to make the breakthrough.

On a personal level, I feel it is hard working with kana. Counter-intuitively, it became much easier for me once I started learning enough kanji. Kanji allow you to make sense of a sentence far more quickly than is possible in kana. Consider this simple line:

私は英国人です。
わたしはえいこくじんです。
Watashi wa Eikokujin desu.
(I am British)

The top line, with its kanji, has some shape and texture, and with a little familiarity with the few kanji are instantly recognisable. The second line is all very samey and this problem is accentuated by the fact Japanese doesn't have spaces between words (though often they are when using kana).

Below the kana the romaji interpretation on the other hand is instantly recognisable - three decades of decoding the characters means I don't have to think for one second what is being said. The act of reading does not present a barrier for me.

But does it help me "get in the Japanese frame of mind"? Moreover, would relying on the romaji slow up my development of the ability to read effectively in Japanese. I think the answer to this second question would overwhelmingly have to be yes - but it depends very much on what you are trying to achieve.

Nigel studied Japanese at university. His aim was academic attainment and he would be tested on his written as well as spoken ability. It was imperative that he develop his skills on all fronts. Olly, by contrast, had little need for written language skills - he needed the language to speak to his wife, or more importantly to his in-laws.

My situation, much as I fantasise about being able to take up a bilingual position in a Japanese company, is much closer to Olly's. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of his book (he is, after all, a PhD) and ditch the kana and kanji and focus on building the vocab the easy way.

I look forward to following Tony's progress and seeing how he does and how he begins to benefit from the intermediate boost when you start being able to apply more kanji. Maybe in a few weeks (at the rate he is learning) we'll see. I'm curious to find out.

A true challenge

I struggle with Japanese. Not so much the language itself, it's fairly logical, though I'd be the first to suggest I'm not so good at it.

No, I struggle to make the time for the study it requires. I labour and tussle with my time and never seem to make time for what is arguably the most important change I could make to my domestic arrangements. In this I suffer in learning the vital parts of the language that I need to be able to communicate - my vocabulary is terrible and without it, for all my understanding of the various tenses and conjugations, I understand very little of it.

In all my time (about six years now) I have only achieved the very modest level of JLPT4. Pathetic.

So it is some admiration that I look at my friend Tony of Englishman in Japan fame who is just now embarking on a crash course in Japanese at university in Kanazawa. He is expected to reach JLPT2 this year. A chum from my time in Japan, Nigel, struggled to get 2-kyuu after a year of living there, and four years of study at university here in the UK, so I appreciate it is one hell of a challenge that Tony has had thrown at him.

I'll be watching his progress closely.

Try a Japanese second life!

One of the great ways to learn a language is to emmerse yourself in it, spend time amongst the natives and soak it up.

Easier said than done when your language of choice is Japanese and you live in the UK. So rather than give up, here's a way to do it: www.splume.com.

This is an emmersive online world much like Second Life, but aimed at the Japanese market and, apparently, following a somewhat different design philosophy. Whatever, I'm sure it would be fun.

Facing the challenge!

Okay, so I need an external motivator to get me to study. How about this one?

I've signed up for the free san-kyuu kanji email service from the Japanesepage.com, - this will operate as my external force - and I am entering them in to my brilliant kanji drilling tool from Declan (see Nihongojira passim).

This will force me to at least get exposure to the basic kanji, without my own useless sense of study gold-plating ("can't move on till I understand, dammit!") interfering to block my progress. In fact, as I signed up to the list a few weeks ago, I will have to more than keep up! I need to go faster to catch up!

The sad truth

Inspired by the fact that I noticed that I hadn't posted for several days (well, you can count it in weeks actually), I thought to do a quick check on exactly how much Japanese learning I actually do. After all, this blog is supposed to be about helping me study Japanese, right? So why wasn't I learning anything, or at least, why wasn't I learning anything worth posting about?

Well, a week and a bit on, I think I have found the root cause. I'm not studying.

I have been keeping a record of how much learning (any subject), running (for my 10k in April) and writing (of any sort) I am doing*. Well, I didn't really even need to make the cursory glance that I did make to reveal the cold hard fact that I spent NO time engaged in Japanese study at all. In fact, without much flexing of the old grey matter, I can safely say there has been no casual study at all in a month or so, and no serious, books out study since, well, probably last autumn.

Sad really.

*these, sadly, are the goals I must set myself in order to feel successful.

The glaze under scrutiny

It would seem the glaze is less to do with my fundamental resistence to Japanese and more to do wiht the fact I can't even read hiragana very quickly. How do I know? Because I tested myself on here:
Hiragana game

and for those of you readers in Japan wisely boning up on your katakana, there's one for you to:

Katakana game

Apparently the record times are under a minute. I got 257s on my first go, so perhaps I need to work at this...

Fuyu-yatsumi

It's been ages since I wrote on any subject at all. That's because Tomo is on holiday so I have a lot less free time. I'll be back on it again, soon.