Happy New Year to all of you! The Japanese would say, "Akemashite omedetou (gozaimasu)", literally meaning, "Congratulations for opening" (a new year, I suppose). As usual, it has been quite some (maybe too much?) time since my last attempt at communication, so I will start this email in the customary fashion, apologising for my defects in the fine art of correspondence. (You will have to forgive my long-windedness in this email as I have just finished rereading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and I have taken after the style of address of the much-esteemed Mr Collins, I am afraid.) After such apologies as prove necessary, I will endeavour to explain, in as much brevity as possible, some differences between the year-end holidays in Japan and the West. Following this, I will address (finally) the rather fervent requests that have arisen from several of you that I explain what my classes are like. In conclusion, I will let you know, in general, what I have been up to since the last communique and what my current interests and undertakings are. And now, without further adieu (or ado, depending entirely on your point of view), I present to you:
Right... how do I explain, without writing an alltogether ill-advised book, the different "reasons for the season" in Japan and the West? I certainly will not undertake this in the same style in which I recently wrote a sakubun (or, report) for my Japanese class on the same subject. While I had originally intended to save myself much work (and thus reserve my Creativity Points for some later adventure) by simply translating to English what I had written in Japanese, I have come to realise that such a manoeuvre would prove wholly uninteresting, I am afraid, for Western audiences, who probably know rather well how they pass their own holidays, thank you very much. Therefore, I shall have to go to the rather extensive effort of composing something completely different. And now for something completely different:
The first thing that you should understand (and probably do already, in fact) about Japan that it is in no way, shape, or form a Christian country, and is extremely unlikely, contrary to what Westerners would (like to?) believe, to ever become such. This being so, the entire flavour of the holiday is different. In fact, Christmas itself is not the focus of the holidays. While we Americans and Englishmen and Canadians and so on and so forth ad nauseam refer to the holidays as "Christmas Break" or "Christmas Vacation" or simply "Christmas," the Japanese (who like to be different, you see) arrogantly and quite wrongly name it "Fuyuyasumi" (Winter Vacation) or "Nenmatsu Kyuuka" (Year End Holidays) or even "Oshougatsu" (New Year's). Of course, as you will see, they have a rather good reason for this mistake, therefore rendering my earlier "arrogantly and quite wrongly" arrogant and, well, quite wrong. In fact, it is not a mistake at all, if you happen not to be born in the West. You see, having no birth of Christ to celebrate, in Japan and China, the end of the year itself is celebrated. Of course, the end of the traditional Asian year is not our (assuming We are Emperor Justinius, the namesake of Our calendar) December 31st at all, but rather sometime (forgive me for not actually knowing) in late January. However, when the Asians adopted our calendar, (meaning, of course, when the British crammed it down the throats of the Chinese and we (Americans now, not Roman emperors anymore) did the same honour to the Japanese) they transferred the traditional new year celebration to our New Year, quite amiably.
Anyway, the point of that last (and rather ridiculous, if I may be so crass as to criticise my own writing) paragraph is that the reason for the season here in the Land of the Rising Sun is Shougatsu and not Christmas at all. (Yes, there is a Japanese word for Christmas, and it is Kurisumasu. Say it, you will get the joke... I hope.) Therefore, you will all be quite saddened to learn (those of you who are reading this and are not Japanese, I mean) that people go to work, school, even (gasp) the supermarket on Christmas. On Christmas Eve, there may be a bit of excitement as the family enjoys a nice supper together (yes, otousan (Dad) comes home from work before morning at least one night a year) and then the kids go to sleep with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads (or something like that, I must confess that I do not remember exactly how The Poem goes), as the Japanese have imported the Western custom of Christmas gifts like the true Defenders of Commercialism that they are. So, the kids wake up, open the presents that have been left by their beds (see, even Santa is different here. I assume he is left sake and squid tentacles for his trouble), and then trot off to school. Wow. It blew my mind when some of my Japanese friends here had classes on the Big Day itself.
OK, here is the big to-do: Oshougatsu. (New Year's, in case you have forgotten and do not feel like scrolling up to where I first defined the word.)
Their Oshougatsu is more like our Christmas. Rather than doing, as any sensible Westerner would, the proper thing (that is, attempting to render as many brain cells inoperable as possible with the helping hand of our best friend, Alcohol-san), they spend the night quietly together as a family, watching the rather ridiculous spectacle of the year's most popular singers having a mock battle on television. Allow me the honour of attempting to explain this a little more clearly. You see, this television show is an all-star affair. About 20 or 30 young Japanese pop singers gather together, are divided into two teams, and try to best each other in contests of song and pure genki-ness. Genki, you see, is the Japanese word for pep or spirit, I guess. It literally means "fundamental spirit."
Anyhow, the television show goes on until midnight, I think, and upon the stroke of that hour, the Japanese turn to each other with a hearty "Akemashita omedetou" and then go to bed. I kid you not. Well, maybe I kid you just a little bit. Some adventurous families may head to the closest Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple and put in a couple of wishes for prosperity in the new year before hitting the old futon.
Levity aside, for the moment (I think that I can promise you that the moment will be brief), Oshougatsu is an important family affair to the Japanese, as important as Christmas is to us, I rather believe. And that, my dear friends, is the difference.
Continuing, I believe that I have promised to share with you the continuing joy that is my seikatsu, or everyday life. I will start at the beginning of the week, on Monday. I wake up at around 07:00 in order to take a shower, have breakfast, and two cups of coffee before my "early" class, Reading Comprehension, at 08:50. I really like the teacher a lot, as I am in another class with her, actually more of a seminar, in which we are investigating changes in the level of politness in language spoken around in house since the war, a quite interesting topic to say the least. We have just recently begun reading a book in Japanese in this class, Kitchen, by Yoshimoto Banana. It is, needless to say, a bit difficult. As a longtime ardent admirer of literature, I am very frustrated to be able to comprehend no more than the first level of meaning in a book! I can understand, with some help from my dictionaries, what she is saying, but not what she really means. Well, ganbarimashou, I guess... (this is a Japanese expression that is often used when we Westerners would say, "good luck," but it means literally, "I will try hard.") Anyway, this class is over at 10:20 and then...
I go to my next class, Japanese Language at 10:30. Amazingly enough, I have as my teacher in this class good old Kobayashi-sensei, the very same Kobayashi-sensei who taught me Japanese back at William and Mary! It would seem that it is a small world after all. Needless to say, I enjoy this class until the very end, which is, coincidentally, at 12:00 on the dot. I sometimes grab some lunch afterwards at the Gakushoku.
!!! WARNING !!! (!!!Chuui shitekudasai!!!) The below lapses into a quasi-linguistic revalation of kanji abbrevation in Japanese. It is not for the faint or heart, nor is it particularly well written, seeing as how I tried to squeeze into a single paragraph what I could fill a 50-minute lecture with! Anyway, you have been warned. I will take no offense if you choose to skim over or skip entirely the following tomfoolery.
It is actually the Gakusei Shokudou, or Student Cafeteria, but is kanji abbreviation not wonderful? What I mean by kanji abbreviation is this: the word Gakusei Shokudou consists of four kanji, or Chinese characters: gaku, to learn; sei, in this context, the one who does the previous thing (so gakusei means student, you see?); shoku, to eat; and dou, hall. Anyway, since the word Gakusei Shokudou is a little lengthy, the Japanese figured, why not shorten it to two syllables: Gakushoku? The meaning is preserved, well, sort of ("learning eating" is one translation that I could offer), and the word is shorter. Cool, eh? Here is one more example, albeit in slightly more brevity than the last. Gakusei waribiki, four kanji: our two old friends gaku and sei; wari, (technically this is a kanji used phonetically by its kunyomi (Japanese reading) for wa and the okurigana (the hiragana that follows a kanji to tell you which word it is in this case, as kanji in Japanese can have quite a few readings) ri, but the Japanese sometimes tend to drop okurigana in longer compounds, so in this case the kanji is read "wari" even though it should be only "wa" (note to self: when you have cascading parenthesis, you are probably including too much information in one sentence!)) meaning "to cut"; and biki (here I go again... see the lengthy parenthetical note above on wari, as the same applies to biki, the kanji is normally read only as "bi" (actually it is read normally as "hi," it just undergoes a phonological change here because it comes after the "ri" sound. Do not ask me when it changes and when it does not, if I were a better linguist I would know, but I do not, though that would be an interesting thing to find out...) OK, back to earth), meaning "to draw" or "to pull." Anyway, the whole thing together means, simply, "student discount." However, it can be (and often is) abbreviated to Gakuwari. Finis.
Anyway... where was I? Oh yes, sometimes I go to the Gakushoku for lunch, and sometimes I go directly to home, do not pass Go, and do not collect $200, or improve my pattern recognition techniques whatsoever! (Sorry, the previous sentence was a not-so-clever pun on Monopoly and the Japanese strategy "board" game, Go, in which the best players become dominant not simply by planning, Deep Blue like, the next 200,000,000 possible moves in their head, but rather by switching off their targeting computers and "using the force" to view the cosmic energy swirling about in the form of white and black stones on the game board. See, I told you that it was not a clever pun at all...)
Right... eventually I will continue this narrative, I hope.
Yes, so (ir)regardless (ha ha ha) of whether I eat and then go home or just go home, I reach "home" sooner or later. You see, wherever you go, there you are. (Augh! I did it again. I promise, just writing now.) "Home" (quoted for your protection? pleasure?) is actually the Kokusaikouryuukaikan, a name so unreasonably hard to remember and/or pronounce that we simply call it the Kaikan. The long word means "International Crosscultural Meeting House," and the short one simply, "Meeting House." You see, in Japanese, just like German, you can make a ridiculously long and specific word by scrunching (yes, that is the scientific term) other words together. In Japanese, this is done with kanji, which can be combined with regard to meaning, not reading. The resulting word can be quite a mess, as in the above case. Sometimes when you are reading Japanese, you suddenly encounter a string of about 15 or 20 kanji in a row and think you are reading Chinese!
The Kaikan has been described, I think, previously, so I will leave it at that. Also, there are some pictures that I took of my little room when I first arrived here somewhere on this website. I might find them and link them here, but I will probably forget, knowing me.
Since I have no afternoon classes on Monday, I usually kick back and relax... for approximately 10 minutes before I start preparing for my Hell Day, Tuesday. I have, you see, on Tuesday, at the rather ungodly hour of 08:50 (I say this now, but next year I will be back at William and Mary, trying to convince my reluctant body that I really do want to go to class at 08:00 in the bloody morning), Japanese language class, then Kanji at 10:30, a short lunch break (12:00 - 12:45 ), then Shodou (calligraphy, literally "the way of writing," sounds like a martial art, doesn't it) at 12:50 then finally one of my three Nikkensei (some abbreviation for the real name of my program, which neither I nor anyone else aside from the program coordinator remembers, meaning "Japan Research Student") core classes. This one involves forming groups with other Nikkensei and some actual Japanese college students (more on them later, I promise) for the glorious purpose of (imagine some sinister timpani thumping here, please) making happyou. The dreaded H-word (it should be four letters!) means "presentation," in our unfortunate case, oral presentation. In Japanese. I know, I know, "that is what I am here for," and all that horse radish, but it is pretty hard to prepare for and then present something interesting in a language that was not yours from birth. I am such a whiner, I know. ;)
My first happyou was a misguided attempt to try to explain, using historical evidence to support my claims, the Japanese attitude toward gaijin (a word, maybe, which a lot of you already know, it means "foreigner". It is actually gaikokujin, literally "outside country person," but it has been abbreviated to "outsider," interestingly enough). I say misguided, even though it may sound scholarly enough, because, a) My Japanese is really not good enough to talk about such a difficult and possibly even offensive to some Japanese people (hey, no-one likes having instances of their racism as a people thrust into their face, imagine hearing a talk by some fresh-off-the-boat Eastern European who cannot really speak English on the oppression of blacks in America), and b) It turned out that I had only five minutes! to cover this! Unbelievable. Anyway, it was a complete sham, but at least no-one was paying attention, so they were not offended.
Before being too disheartened, gentle readers, allow me to relate a more successful attempt at happyou. I had to present a happyou just last Wednesday (you will understand why in the next paragraph) on some topic related to Kotoba, a word meaning "word," but in this case referring to the Japanese language. Linguistics being an interest of mine, this inspired me a lot more than the previous topics, so I decided to explain a little about something that I called Bushigo, a very clever pun indeed in Japanese, as it turns out. Allow me to explain. Bushi is another word for a more familier one (to us Westerners, at least), samurai. You may have also heard the word bushidou before (usually spelled bushido, I add the "u" at the end in "my" system of romanisation to show that the /do/ is actually a long vowel (pronounced /dough/ instead of /doe/, if that helps) in the context of samurai culture. Bushidou means "the way of the warrior," and refers to the code by which samurai pledged to live. Some people compare this to chivalry, but I prefer not to, as it is very different, take my word for it. Anyway, bushigo, my made up word, exchanges the "dou" kanji, meaning "way," for the "go" kanji, meaning language. There you have it, bushigo means "the language of the warrior." I'm a right clever one, aren't I?
Now that I am done tooting my own horn, so to speak, I shall tell you what my happyou was actually about! You see, samurai had not only their adherence to the tenets of bushidou to set them apart from the peasant hordes, but also a special style of speach. I gave some examples, explained some derivations and grammatical shape changing, and generally provided some introductory information on samurai speach. Not only did I enjoy doing it, but the teacher was (I would like to believe) impressed, and got up when I was done to talk for about 15 minutes more on the subject.
Skipping back to Monday for a moment, I usually play football (soccer, I mean) from 19:30 to about 21:30 with a bunch of Japanese graduate students. We play (get this) under the gym! You see, there are two dirt fields right under the indoor basketball courts that are lighted and surrounded on two sides by walls and the other two sides by nets. It is pretty cold in the winter, but you know my football addiction. Playing with them has been great, because not only are they better at football than I (who isn't?), but I can also practise Japanese with them.
OK, I have covered Monday and Tuesday, albeit in a somewhat strange progression. On to Wednesday. On Wednesday, I can finally sleep in a little. My first class is at 12:50, but it is the first class in the dreaded Double Period of Doom, also known as the other two Nikkensei core classes. In these two periods, a guest lecturer (a different one each class, for a total of two different lecturers every week) treats us to an hour and a half on his specialty. We have experienced some interesting things so far, from how ceramics are made to the trees of Japan to... well, more than you can imagine. Three hours in a row (we have a ten-minute break in between, but it is just not enough when you know you have to go back for another dose any minute) of this is a little overwhelming. The Japanese is usually well over my head, as in I can understand usually the topic of the lecture, but little else, so I pay attention for as long as possible (usually 15 minutes or so), and then whip out some homework and get it out of the way. My theory is, little by little, some of the Japanese that is going in one ear and out the other now with eventually stick somewhere in between.
After that, I often eat supper (ban gohan, if you must know) at the good old Gakushoku, so let me now tell you a little about the wonders that it holds.
When you first walk in, you must immediately decide whether you want to eat something from the main line or the secondary line (AKA the soup line). In the soup line, they have such things as udon (think the kind of noodles that one would find in chicken noodle soup, and you almost have it), soba (buckwheat noodles), or curry rice. In the main line, you can find all sorts of fish and chicken dishes, as well as hamburger! Well, not really. The Japanese have hamburgers, but they are really meatloaf. Anyway, after you pick up your main dish(es), you proceed to the rice and miso shiru (miso is some concoction involving fermented soybeans) counter. I almost always grab a "gohan S saizu" (gohan is rice, say "S saizu" to yourself a few times, you should get it) and a bowl of miso soup. Moving along, you can grab a drink before you pay at the cash register, but as they have water and hot and cold ocha (green tea) for free in the eating area, I usually choose to give the drinks a miss. Anyway, you move to the register, they ring you up, you pay... you know the drill. My meals usually come in about Y420 or so (~$4.20US, isn't that easy!?).
Of course, food at the Gakushoku is not all that great. It actually tastes fairly good, but it tends to be cold, which really irritates me. I like my food piping hot! Therefore, I often cook in my room with my girlfriend. As she is from Bulgaria, she knows how to make some food that is very new to me, and I have been able to impress her with such culinary delights as grilled cheese sandwiches, hanmburgers, fried rice, and the quintessensial Egg in a Window! Seriously, I would love some suggestions from my readers. Here is my setup: one gas burner. Ugh. That means that if it cannot be made in a frying pan or a pot, it cannot be made by me. This is an unfortunate limitation. If I only had an oven! I could do some serious cooking, like quiche and pretzels and... you get the picture. Anyway, if any of you readers know some tasty things that are fairly easy to make and conform to my kitchen's specifications, please email them to me.
Of course, having to cook for myself means that I have to hit the grocery store at least once a week. And what a grocery store we have! It is about a 20 minute walk from the campus, and it is the closest thing! I am stranded in the bloody wilderness here! Anyway, after the 20 minute walk (yes, you can take the bus, but for a hefty Y170, which is a little much for a five minute, two kilometer bus ride), one finds himself (I guess I should say herself to avoid lawsuits for discrimination, right) before the gates of the mighty JASCO. JASCO, I am told, stands for JApan Store COrporation. It is akin to Wal-Mart, of all places, but it is so much better. First of all, before you even enter the store, the bank in which all our accounts lie is situated right next to JASCO. It is a conspiracy, I tell you, to make us spend all our money there. Needless to say, it works, but that is not such a bad thing, as you are about to see.
JASCO is two floors of pure shopping bliss. And I am talking two BIG floors! We have clothing, a pharmacy/drugstore, a food court (not just a McDonalds, mind you), a grocery store the size of Kroger / Food Lion / Giant (choose one), a mobile phone shop, an arcade... and that is just the first floor! On the second, we have the housewares, electronics, books, stationary and school supplies, toys, CDs and videos, and the hyaku en (100 yen) section! The hundred yen section is literally a dollar store, but not in the mode of American dollar stores. First of all, the quality of the merchandise is much higher. Anyway, the coolest thing about the second floor is they have an area where kids may play while (or after) their parents are shopping. This section is filled with the coolest kids toys! It also contains not one but three Nintendo 64s! I am tempted to stop in there from time to time and play a little Super Mario Tennis! Of course, I never do (as far as you know!).
So that is JASCO, and that is pretty much my week. I have one class on Thursday, in the morning, and another at 14:30, and then I am done for the weekend. That is right, no Friday classes, every college student's dream!
On Friday morning, as everyone else has classes, I try to do some isshoukenmei benkyou (hardcore studying). At 16:00, when the kids get out of school, three of us make the mystical journey to the video store.
So, on Friday, Matthew (a Canadian), Kohler (an American named Chris Kohler, actually, but we call him "Kohler" so as not to confuse him with "Chris," or Chris Hitzel, the other guy here from good ol' William and Mary, loved of old, hark upon the gale, ad infinitum) and I go to the video rental store, where we get an average of four movies for the weekend and the following week. To give you an example of the kinds of things we rent, this week, we got "Predator 2" (for the guys), Mel Brooks's "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," "Lolita" (the remake, we got Kubrick's original last week), and "Tampopo," a Japanese comedy about food (containing a great sex scene involving a raw egg... you really must see the movie!). Of course, we have been known to rent such things as "Star Wars: Episode IV" (the one made in 1979, not the one made last year) dubbed into Japanese (that was a blast, let me tell you, as Japanese voice actors are simply amazing), "Full Metal Jacket," "Apocalypse Now," "Goodfellas," "The Godfather" (Parts I and II so far), "Mulan" (one of the favourites, believe it or not), and, of course, the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs. Kenshin is one of our (meaning here myself, Matthew, Nathan Loda, and Ota) favourite anime, or Japanese animation, series, and the OVAs are Original Video Animation (or movies based on the TV show, which in turn was based on the manga, or comic book version, that is how things work in Japan). Anyway, while I am on the subject of Kenshin:
NOTE: This paragraph may interest only Nate and Ota.
My girlfriend gave me the OVAs for Christmas, on DVD. I also have the entire Kenshin manga set as well as a Kenshin novel! I am cleaning up here! :)
Back to Friday. Anyway, after the trip to the video rental store, we usually swing around to the used video games / music / video / manga store for a little shopping. Let me explain two things here: used stores in Japan and comic books in Japan. First of all, it is actually illegal in Japan to sell used music and video games for sure, and probably also videos and manga. Why? Remember when Japan's economy was in a really big slump, about three years ago? Well, the government decided that if people stopped buying so much used stuff, they would buy the new stuff, for more money, and thus get more spending going. They also (get this!) distributed vouchers worth Y1000 ($10) to school children that could be used anywhere! Right. To stimulate an economy, pump money into it. I'll take my ten bucks now!
Anyway, because of the new laws, some high-profile stores in Tokyo had to re-think their business models, but other than that, people just choose to conveniently ignore the laws. So, because of this, my friends and I can get our used cheap products weekly.
Now, on to manga. Using the English translation, comic books, may be a bit misleading for Americans. Manga certainly can be Marvel superheroes running around and beating the living persnickety out of their opponents, but it is not limited to this. Everybody, their brothers, sisters, and mothers, not to mention aunts, uncles, and grandparents (you get the picture: EVERYONE!), reads manga, this is not for kids only. The subject of manga is just as broad as the audience. They have high school romance stories for girls, cool samurai cutting up the undead for young men and boys (and me, nothing is cooler than some undead bushido action!), manga cookbooks for the ladies (that is not sexist in Japan, you see, most men (with the exception of "Cooking Papa," a recent manga about nothing other than a father who cooks) simply do not cook), manga teaching you how to fly a plane or fuel one for the military, etc. You would not believe it. Just take my word that everybody reads manga. They even have hentai, or pornographic manga, for dirty old men!
Right... so back to the used store. It is called "Video Land," as it also rents videos, however, due to their smaller selection and higher prices, we go elsewhere for our rentals. However, in the back of the store is Paradise. Used everything for everybody. I never go there without adding to one of my three collections:
Of course, I am also collecting Shousetsu, or novels, but as Video City does not sell them (the nerve!), I did not mention them in the above list. I have so far a Kenshin novel, three Sangokushi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) novels, and the first Record of Lodoss War novel. I am picking them up used as well, in preparation for when I return to America and I cannot just walk down the street to get some new Japanese reading.
After we leave the bright lights of Video City, we usually proceed to this restaurant called "Pow-Wow." It is a buffet with an American West theme! Amazing! So, you walk in, they charge you about Y1000 a head, and hand you a card for your table. At this point, the clock is ticking! You have 90 minutes to hurt their food supplies and your digestive system. They literally ask you to leave after 90 minutes, that is the deal! Of course, as any red-blooded American knows, the purpose of a buffet is not to have a good meal, but to get more that your money's worth. I would like to think that the place is on the verge of bankruptcy every time we stagger out, clutching our ill-used stomachs! :)
Moving on, we stop at another used book and manga store on the way back to JUSCO. Yes, we buy everything used here. Even our food. (Not really, sorry.) From here, we hit JUSCO for groceries, and then the neighbouring Yamaya ("Mountain Store," maybe, I have never seen the kanji, if they even have kanji for their name), which is an "Foods of all Nations and Their Alcoholic Beverages Too" store. I usually buy cereal and beer here and then lug everything back to the dorm. Let me tell you, that 20 minute walk back from Yamaya is the longest 20 minute walk you will ever take. Think on this: you have walked about five kilometers (three miles) already, have two more in front of you (a little over a mile, I guess), your stomach is full beyond all reasonable limits, AND you have 50 kilos (105 pounds) of groceries, beer, CDs, manga, etc, on your back, AND you have to walk UPHILL! It is just too much! :)
So, when we get back, we usually unwind with a little video game action for about half an hour, then throw on a movie in the Common Room, which is usually watched by half a dozen to two dozen people, then some of us (me, usually) retire to bed, and others might hit the town or the Fifth Floor for some drinking. "Fifth Floor" to iu no ha, Nihongo de, (the Fifth Floor is called, in Japanese) Go kai, so some clever person came up with a name for these Fifth Floor boozers: "Nomikai on the Go kai." It means, literally, "drinking party on the fifth floor," and it rhymes in Japanese. Cool, huh!?
On Saturday, I either spend the day with my nose in my books or go out with Matthew and Kohler again to do some exploring of the city. Saturday night is usually a repeat of Friday night, and then Sunday is the Study Day for everyone. I have enough work to occupy Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so I have no complaints. So, that is my seikatsu (daily life) in a nutshell (TM O'Reilly, all rights reserved, do not worry if you do not get the joke, it is a computer geek joke).
On then, to recent happenings. Sorry this email is so long, but I have been long in writing.
We had, as of the beginning of this writing, a whole meter of snow on the ground (a yard, OK, three feet!) and more falling. Kanazawa is known for its heavy snows, and Japan got an especially heavy snow two weeks ago. I enjoyed it very much, as I love snow, but some people did not enjoy it so much. Then again, some people had never seen snow before either, and were simply amazed. Especially poor Toma, from Hawaii!
During the Winter Break, which ended a week and a half ago, I got some serious reading and Final Fantasy I playing done. Unfortunately, I did not get as much studying done! Oh well, the break was fun. I finished both Pride and Prejudice (which I had previously read) and Sense and Sensibility (which I had not), both by Jane Austin, and also Shakespeare's "The Tempest." I also played quite a bit of Parasite Eve, a RPG for the Playstation, which taught me quite a few new words and kanji. See, video games are educational! :)
The only other report is that my good friend Mari, who was an exchnage student at William and Mary last year, finished up her thesis and moved back to Wakayama with her parents to relax until she has to start studying for graduate school entrance exams again.
Speaking of entrance exams, let me explain the Japanese educational system simply. Shougakko (elementary school, the kanji mean literally "little school") is a lot of work, as poor little Japanese kids have to learn how to read and write their language, a task that takes all five years of shougakko and then some. Next comes Chuugaku (get ready for this, literally, "middle school"), where the kids continue to learn kanji and new "educated" (or Chinese) words and are generally prepared for the three to four years of torture that is Koukou (high school, and the kanji mean just that). Now, let me explain why I put "Chinese" in parenthesis after "educated words" just a sentence ago.
Back in the day, (which is how I like to translate the Japanese word mukashi, which, coincidentally, is the first word of Japanese fairy tales (or mukashi banashi, a great kanji compound consisting of "mukashi" ("back in the day," or "long ago") and "hanashi," (story) which then accepts a phonetic change to conform to the Japanese rule that kunyomi compounds (words consisting of two or more kanji that are read with the Japanese reading, not the Chinese one) must be read in the "cutest" (yes, that is the technical term!) way possible) (good thing I am using emacs, or I would not have known that I was still in my original parentheses; I have to stop nesting these things!), and the second word (doubling a kanji in Japanese conveys the meaning of a lot of what ever the kanji is). So, fairy tales start, "Mukashi mukashi, nantoka nantoka ha arimashita," meaning, "A long time ago, there was / were something." The phrase "nantoka nantoka" in Japanese means literally "something something." I love it.) Right, now that my paragraph of nested parentheses has come to an end, let me start a new one to explain my original point.
Back in the day, the Japanese were living in simple dwellings and hunting and farming and what not, and their neighbours across the South China Sea, China, were developing paper and gunpowder and a written language and so on. Anyway, the Chinese decided to drop in on the Japanese one day, who were so impressed with Chinese civilisation, that they decided to "borrow" some things. Now, let me briefly explain that I do not think the Japanese ripped off Chinese culture. I think they were influenced by it, but kept the sense of Japanese-ness that makes them so different from even the other peoples of Asia, not to mention Westerners. Being this as it may, they definately sent some smart guys back to China to learn how to write. These guys brought back that knowledge, and Buddhism to boot. (I am overly simplifying things, but they did happen in more or less this fashion.) So, now the Japanese had a written language: Chinese.
The problem that arose before long was, the Japanese did not SPEAK Chinese, so it was a pain to translate spoken things to Chinese and then write them down. So, little by little, scribes begun coming up with ways to represent the spoken Japanese language using Chinese characters. Why make up a new group of symbols when you already have some? Why use four digits for the date when you already use two? (Sorry, that was uncalled for.) Now, the Japanese spoken language was and is based on syllables, which are the smallest unit. One "letter" in today's writing system equals a consonant vowel combination or just a vowel, but is a separate syllable. There is one exception, "n," which used to be used to mark the end of a syllable. The same scribes who knew Chinese characters had previously taken the sounds from Chinese and transliterated them into the Japanese sound system. So, each kanji had a reading associated with it. The scribes started writing down the Japanese spoken language phonetically, using one kanji per syllable, with no regard to the actual meaning of the character.
Sooner or later, of course, this started rubbing some people the wrong way. Why ignore the meaning? Luckily for these dissenters, the process of transcribing Japanese using Chinese characters was bothersome, as kanji can have many strokes. Women then made an enormous contribution to the writing system. Being ignorant of Chinese and how to write kanji, they starting writing letters to each other, and dropping or ignoring strokes! This inadvertent simplification became what is now hiragana, one of the two Japanese "alphabets." Independently of this, men, in the course of their educations, were attending lectures on Buddhism and technology and so on, and they were faced with the challenge of taking notes as fast as the lecturer spoke. They did the only wise thing: they cheated. A shorthand system developed that is now known as katakana, the second "alphabet." Of course, at first, only women used hiragana, and only men used katakana. Luckily for the sanity of the Japanese people as a whole, after some passage of time, both shorthand systems were adopted: the beautiful, curvy writing of the women and the angular, powerful writing of the men. These were added to the system of Chinese characters that were already being used, resulting in the modern system of writing, which is:
A lot of kanji used both by meaning and sound, though the latter category is a lot less frequent. Compounds are usually words of Chinese origin (like gakusei), and hence read using the transliterated "Chinese" reading, or onyomi. These are almost always grammatically nouns or so-called "na adjectives," meaning that the adjective ends with "na" as opposed to "i" and behaves very much like a noun. However, Japanese verbs (especially) and other words are also written using kanji, but by their meaning, using the Japanese word. Here is an example:
The character "gaku," meaning "learning." It appears in compounds with its Chinese reading, like "gakusei" and "chuugaku." It is used also for the Japanese verb "manabu," which means "to learn." However, when it is used here, it requires some "okurigana", hiragana that is written after the character so that the reader can tell which word it is. In the case of "gaku," this is so that you do not read the characters "chuugaku" when they are really meant, "chuu manabu," referring to someone learning in a period of time, not middle school. It is even more important when a single kanji is used for both the transitive (an action is occurring) verb and the intransitive (more like a state) verb that goes with it. Example: the kanji meaning "open." In compounds, it is read in the Chinese fashion, "kai," for instance "kaihatsu," to be invented (an idea is "opened" ("kai") and the the product is "produced" ("hatsu")). With the hiragana "keru" after the kanji, it becomes the transitive "akeru," as in, "Ore ha mado wo akeru," "I open the window." However, with only "ku" after the character, it is the intransitive "aku," as in "Mado ha aku," or "The window opens."
So, hiragana are used in three ways:
Katakana is used for:
Again, back from my side trip into the Japanese written language, which I must ask you to excuse, I really wish I could just give simple explanations!
The result of the Chinese writing system being superimposed on the Japanese language when the Japanese language itself was still pretty simple (the Japanese were not civilised then, remember) is that for a thousand years, people at court used Chinese, and they were the educated people. So, even now, to sound educated, people tend to use kanji compounds of Chinese origin rather than a simpler Japanese origin word. Like "choushoku" instead of "asa gohan," for example (they both mean "breakfast").
Now, most Westerners know something about Japanese high schools. The goal of every Japanese parent is to see their kid get into a top university so they can get a good job. That is simply how it works in Japan. Unless you go to a great university, you are not getting that Mitsubishi job. So, Japanese kids work like hell in high school, and they are also expected to take on several extracurricular activities, sports, et al. After this, they have the pleasure of "entrance exam study hell," the period of time after high school and before university entrance exams, which coincidentally happened last weekend. If they do not pass the exam, which is reputedly very difficult, they do not get in to their university. Often, it is not possible to take entrance exams for more than one school, so people who fail have to wait a full year before they can try again. Amusingly, such failed students are known as "rounin," a word that really refers to a samurai who has lost his master. Needless to say, parents of rounin are probably not too pleased with their son or daughter, and will see to it that they study hard for the whole year, maybe even sending them to "cram schools," schools that are dedicated to preparing students for the entrance exams, where they will have to study 10-12 hours a day (I think).
So, because of all this, once a Japanese kid makes it into college, he wants to make up for lost time. University is very easy in comparison to high school or university in most other countries, so it is possible to sleep through class or chat with your friends or check your email and browse the web on your keitai (mobile phone) and so on, and so most Japanese university students take this opportunity to be lazy and enjoy life for four years before they must become adults. I cannot say that I blame them.
Well, that is all for this installment. Until next time, I remain:
-Josh Glover