Kanji MADNESS!

~Now that I've learned hiragana and katakana, it's time to tackle the third Japanese writing system: KANJI! By far the most complicated and difficult of the three, kanji (which literally translates to "Chinese characters") are a form a writing that were brought to Japan by Buddhist monks from China in the 5th century. They are a form of picture-writing, where each symbol represents an entire word. Here are some examples of common kanji:

^ I know about half of these...I'm still working on the rest!

Today, there are over 50,000 kanji, but Japanese citizens are only expected to know the approximately 2,000 kanji on the "Jōyō kanji", an official list of common symbols compiled by the government. The number changes from year to year as some symbols are dropped from the list and others are added; currently, the Jōyō kanji has 1,945 symbols. Japanese students continuously study them in school and are regularly tested; by the end of high school, they are expected to know them all. As for me, I use the book 'Essential Kanji' by P.G. O'Neill, which presents the entire Jōyō kanji in a marginally-easy to learn form.

Complex kanji are derived from simpler kanji, or even hiragana and katakana symbols. This means that a person knowledgeable in kanji can often determine the meaning of the symbol by drawing upon their existing knowledge. For example, when a native English reader sees a new word, they can often deduce its basic meaning from word parts, prefixes, suffixes, etc. All kanji contain radicals, comparable to the word parts of English words. Compared to the thousands of kanji, there are "only" 214 radicals. Here's an example of a simple kanji being used as a radical in a more complex kanji:

山 --------> 岡

^On the left is 'yama', which means mountain. On the right is 'oka', which means hill. Note the small 'yama' inside of the more complex 'oka', indicating that it has something to do with mountains (there's more than one radical in 'oka', but yama is the only one that I currently recognize). Both of these kanji occur in the word" Okayama", the city that my company training took place in. 'Oka' also appears in "Nagaoka", the city that I live in.

Another way of understanding unknown kanji is a handy linguistic tool called furigana. These are small hiragana and katakana symbols that are sometimes placed above kanji to tell you how the kanji is pronounced. Here's an example of furigana:

^ dai (big) and gaku (university).

Do you see how the little symbols 'spell out' the larger ones? Newspapers are legally required to use furigana for any kanji that's outside of the 'Jōyō kanji' list; most of the kanji outside of the list are used in books aimed at older readers, or represent family names. Writing intended for younger readers uses furigana for all but the simplest of kanji. I recently picked up a copy of Weekly Shounen Jump, a weekly boys' comic book, and every kanji had furigana. Very convenient for learning!

The upshot of all this is that while kanji are very difficult to learn, they aren't arbitrary; there is a logic to them (however vague it may be). Of course, learning to read the kanji is not all there is too it; if you really want to learn Japanese, you have to learn how to write the damn things as well. Just to scare you, here's an animation of someone writing a very complex kanji:



^The kanji 'yo', meaning 'day of the week'. Note that no less than eighteen separate strokes are required to create the symbol! The truth is that writing kanji is very time-consuming; it would be a lot easier to simply write out 'yo' in hiragana ( よ ), which would have the exact same meaning. But kanji is considered more sophisticated/civilized, so it's used in almost all writing.

This is the same as how some people and writing use 'big words' that mean the same thing as smaller words, in order to convey a sense of complexity/intelligence, and to specify a more exact meaning. Kanji is the same; except that in this case, each kanji symbol has multiple meanings, depending on how it's used with other kanji. So not only do you have to learn to recognize and write 1,945 symbols, you have to learn all the different meanings for each symbol. Yikes.

This large number of different strokes required to create a complex kanji creates an interesting effect when the symbols are written out with a pen or pencil: the sound of someone writing in Japanese is very different from the sound of someone writing in English. It sounds to me like the pencil is tapping against the paper repeatedly at very high speed; a 'tap-tap-tap-tap' sound, as opposed to the 'scratch-scratch-scratch' sound of English writing. Just another weird observation from David!

As I said before, kanji literally means 'Chinese characters'. The Chinese language is written entirely in kanji; there is no hiragana or katakana on that side of the Sea of Japan. Because the symbols are written the same, the Japanese can read Chinese writing, but the pronunciation is very different. Chinese is a tonal language, where pitch and tone can change the meaning of a word. Japanese, thank the gods, is NOT tonal, and because of this it is actually easier to learn spoken Japanese than Chinese.

As you can see, the subject of kanji is too large to be contained in a single post. Expect more in the future as I make an attempt at learning some more simple kanji. ~Oyamsumi!

Underwater Pyramids

~After the August festival, I have a week of vacation. The question is, what to do, what to do? So far, there are two things that I'd like to do during my vacation: first, I'd like to climb to the top of Mount Fuji and see the sun rise, and second, I want to get in some scuba diving.

Japan is not exactly the first place that comes to mind in the world's top diving destinations. Thanks to ocean currents, the surrounding waters are quite cold. They're also populated by a variety of dangerous marine lifeforms.

However, there are a few good places to go diving. The first one I've found is Sado, the nearby island that I visited a couple of months ago. The second place, which would be even better, is Okinawa, a chain of small islands south of the four main Japanese islands. Okinawa is mostly known for "hosting" tens of thousands of American marines, and the island inhabitants who do everything they can to get rid of them. But off the coast of one island in the Okinawa chain, there is a dive site that ranks among the most incredible and interesting on the entire planet. I refer, of course, to the legendary underwater pyramid of Okinawa.

What's that? You mean to tell me that you've never even heard that there's a gigantic stone pyramid submerged in the ocean near Japan? To be honest, I'm not surprised; strangely, very few people have heard of this fascinating discovery. In this post, I aim to rectify that and enlighten you regarding the pyramid, regardless of whether or not I actually go diving there.

There are eight recorded 'anomalous' underwater sites around Okinawa, making it one of the more interesting places in the world for underwater archaeology. Off of Yonaguni Island, the farthest-south island in the Okinawa chain, lies the pyramid. An enigmatic structure first discovered by local divers in 1985, it measures ~131 x 394 feet, located in water ranging from 60 to 100 feet deep.


There are natural formations in the world that seem to be artificial, but there is a strong case that this structure and the other sites around Okinawa are man-made. Since 1997, systematic research on this site and others has been carried out by the University of the Ryukus under the direction of geology Professor Masaaki Kimura. It shows definite presence of human alteration, including the presence of drilled holes, carved lines, and even a road encircling the structure.

Conservative estimates (don't let that term scare you, Dan!) of the site's age run from 6,000 to 10,000 years old. By comparison, most Egyptian pyramids were constructed during the Old Kingdom, around 3,500 years ago, and the oldest reliably-dated stone structures are located in Malta, and are around 5,000 years old.

So why haven't people in America heard of this? After the university research of the site began in 1997, the pyramid became HUGE news in Japan, and provided regular front-page headlines for upwards of a year before interest died off. BBC News and The London Times ran cover stories. Strangely, the only report of this discovery in the United States was a single obscure report on CNN. I guess massive archaeological discoveries that could potentially rewrite the history of human civilization just can't compete with the latest celebrity gossip and ongoing Presidential efforts to veto stem-cell research.

I'd really like to dive this site for myself. If anyone is up for a (presumably) once-in-a-lifetime adventure to see ancient megalithic structures on the other side of the planet, please drop me a line. My vacation starts in the second week of August! ~Oyasumi.

Dance Dance Daveolution!

~After another gruelling week, I've made it to the weekend. Today, after my weekly Japanese class at the city Civics Center, I participated in group practice for the upcoming August festival. Together with around thirty people, I practiced two dances: the "Fireworks Dance" and the "Samurai Dance".

This is my second time practicing these dances; I learned them last week, but didn't have a chance to take pictures. In my ongoing quest to keep you, my loyal readers, informed about What's Happening in Japan, I present:















The "Fireworks Dance" involves a lot of arm waving and spinning around to look like fireworks exploding. Then we get some disco-like action by pointing into the sky with each arm and stepping backwards! We practiced for about an hour, which was very good exercise.















I found it quite easy to remember and execute the dance steps, because I practiced martial arts for over a decade. One of the major components of karate and tae kwon do is the 'kata' or 'form', a pattern of movements, attacks, and blocks that's exactly like a dance (a violent dance).

'Kata', of course, is your Word of the Post (kanji = 型 or 形, katakana = かた ). Note that the word 'katakana' has the word 'kata' in it; I think this is because 'kata' roughly translates to 'model', and katakana is a method of modelling foreign words. I could be wrong, but that seems logical, right?

Having had to memorize dozens of katas over the years, the relatively short "Fireworks Dance", with around twenty steps, was a piece of cake. Well, remembering it was easy; actually performing it a dozen times in a row was not!

^ I managed to get a picture taken of me and the instructor (the man on the right). He's hilarious, even though I can't understand a word he says! Like many other Japanese, the instructor and these girls jumped at the chance to have their picture taken.

Finally, here's something experimental: a video I took of the dance practice. This should work for most of you, but if it dosen't run, you need the Flash Player. Please CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW to play the video.



^Remember, this is just the practice. The real thing takes place on August 1st, at around 7 pm. I'll try to get some pictures during the event, so stay tuned to David Does Japan! ~Oyasumi.

[P.S. If you enjoyed the 'video blog', let me know with a comment or email, and I'll put up more videos in the future.]