Archive for the ‘Japanese kanji (Chinese characters)’ Category

10 best things to impress people with when you go home

1. Being able to read people’s kanji tattoos (it might not be what they intended!)
2. T shirts with strange English messages on them
3. Useless hi tech stuff, e.g. a mobile phone that can interpret your dog
4. Being able to eat chicken wings with chopsticks
5. Marshall arts skills
6. Debunking at least 25 myths about the Japanese they might have (although sometimes it easier just to not even start on this one)
7. Serving products with weird names at your housewarming party- Colon chocolates (brown inside!), Pocari Sweat sports drink, Cow piss soda (well, Calpis actually, but sounds the same)
8. Reading weird manga in Japanese on the London underground
9. Writing people’s name in Kanji
10. Being able to live in a flat the size of a walk in closet without getting claustrophobic (useful with present London property prices)

Why are adults quite happy to been seen in public reading manga comics?

First of all, the vast majority of Japanese adults would in fact be highly embarrased to be caught reading a manga, let alone a pornographic one, in public. The salarymen you seeing reading dodgy comics and magazines on trains are the same who slurp their pasta, spit on the ground etc. in ways that well mannered Japanese never would. Manga does remain more popular amongst adults than in other countries, though. Amongst the salaryman population, this is because they hardly have the energy to read anything more demanding, especially as reading difficult kanji can put a strain on even strong readers. There is also no social pressure to spend your free time productively and an acceptance of reading manga etc. for nostalgic reasons.

See http://japanexplained.wordpress.com for much more of the same

The rainy season (tsuyu) is completely screwed this year. In fact, every year since I got to Japan I’ve been told that “The weather this year is strange”, same as “The cherry blossom this year is early/late”. This may well be true, but I think it is much more a case of the Japanese wanting the weather to be as predictable as the train timetable. At times the whole country seems set up to make sure there are no surprises- I wonder how many Japanese people would be able to tell that Radiohead are being sarcastic in the “No Surprises” song (but then again, how many Americans thought The One I Love by REM was a love song??)

And the same most assuredly goes for lessons. With anything less than a year of careful learner training, skipping around in the textbook is likely to cause something between a mild flurry and complete panic depending on the age of the students.

Primary school students are generally fine for the first few years, taking surprises and new stuff as all part of the fun. Then the Japanese education system gets to work and the idea of skipping reading the instructions and just doing what your teacher says brings on increasing incomprehension and stress. One theory has it that the Japanese establishment has decided to keep kanji (Chinese characters) mainly because learning it means learning this unquestioning approach. The good news is that as my teenage college students are learning to cope with all this new and unexpected stuff in class, I really think I am teaching them a skill they are going to need when they get to Australia, NZ and the UK.