Kanji 二番

After briefly discussing why studying Kanji (漢字) is not as bad as it seems, let me bring you back to reality with 3 typical problems you will more than likely encounter on your journey to literacy.

1. The 'I have no f&#%@* clue' problem

As kanji gets more complicated, it can become impossible to read. When you come across these indecipherable kanji, you are basically screwed. You can guess how they might sound based on the radicals, but you can never really be sure. Congratulations, you are an adult who can’t read

鬱 - I think this means 'retardedly complicated'...

2. The 'Dog+Small+Room = Dog House' problem

Problem number 1 was a worst case scenario. There are some instances where you come across compounds you have never seen before yet you might know exactly what the word means because you know the 2 or more Kanji the compound is comprised of. If you know the building blocks well enough you can guess the meaning and pronunciation. Like the example above, Inugoya (犬小屋 ) is made up of the Kanji for Dog, Small, and Room.
Or the first time I saw 住所 on a form. The first Kanji comes from 住む, to live. The second, 所, is tokoro, place. So a reasonable person would guess this is the place you live.
On the more difficult side, for Fire Alarm you have 火災報知器. From left to right the Kanji are Fire, Disaster, Report, Know, Device. Kind of sounds retarded when you put it in those terms.
This problem is kind of like knowing what a necrophiliac is and then having to guess what necrosis means. You know the elements, so you can make an educated guess. This is a unique problem because even though you know what the word means, you still can't say it.

3. The 'What’s the Kanji for 'I should know this?' problem

For most people, you learn to speak at a rate exponentially better than you learn to read, so much of Kanji studying is learning how to write words you already know. Similar to the situation above, sometimes you can almost guess what the compound will be before you even learn them. I think there is/was a game show in Japan based on a similar concept, where they give you the name of some difficult Kanji and you have to guess what the character is made up of based on the meaning. I'll post that if I ever find it.
For example, after learning what suugaku (数学) and kougaku (工学) mean, mathematics and engineering respectively, I could only assume that literature was bungaku (文学). You can pretty much put 学 after anything to make it the study of that thing.

Whats the kanji for water gate? Whats that? Water (水) and gate (門)? 水門...why didn't I think of that?

漢字

After all that ‘easy’ katakana stuff comes the real Challenge – Kanji. At first glance Kanji , Chinese characters, seem like a tough pill to swallow. They are actually not too terribly hard to learn…except there are more than 2000 in daily use…so good luck with that.

Most people just see a bunch of scribbles when they look at Kanji, but the characters are made up of some basic building blocks (basically the more difficult Kanji are made up of several simply kanji called radicals). You can even use these radicals to look up unknown kanji in the dictionary. I think this was done in an ancient time before you could write the kanji in a denshi jisho or just hold your cell phone over the character for a translation. So once you get familiar with the simpler building blocks, you can pick up new words really quickly. Then once you learn these words, you can combine them to make new words.
For example, ィ can represent a person, 木 stands for tree. Put them together, you got a man leaning on a tree,　you get 休, vacation.
女 (woman) + crown = 安, easy. I didn’t say they all made perfect sense. Take that word easy and combine it with fun (楽) and death (死) and you get euthanasia (安楽死). Tell me with a straight face that doesn’t make sense.

Okay, in case all of those half-assed examples aren’t helping, do you at least see how the building blocks help? Instead of looking at the Kanji and seeing a bunch of lines, you only have to see 2 to 5 radicals in a specific order. So when you think about it, you don’t really have to memorize 2000 kanji, just 200 radicals and how to arrange them.

Japanese have problems with Kanji too, so don’t feel terrible about knowing a measly 100 or so Kanji. With the rising popularity of computers and keitai, many Japanese are forgetting how to write these characters out. Kind of like the need to spell correctly flies out the window once you discover spell check.

If you've learned nothing else remember this kanji, 外国人, because no matter how many kanji you know, this is all you'll be.

Bad Catchy Music

One thing that doesn't seem to be exclusive to America is horrible pop music. Even Japan has their Miley Cyrus' and Kelly Clarksons, but they are called Arashi and AKB48. These little bastards account for all the top 10 singles of 2010!

Arashi are like the Backstreet Boys of Japan, so I won't go into any more detail than that.

AKB48 on the other hand, are the guilty pleasure of millions of creepy old men. They are a group from Tokyo and, much like the Pussy Cat Dolls, are just a bunch of interchangeable women with little more to offer than bangin bodies. Unfortunately, their catchy songs stay with you for days! Their songs play in convenience stores and malls ALL THE TIME! Go ahead, check it out. Or watch that whole video on mute, I won't judge....but seriously, some of those girls are like 15. Good luck figuring out which ones!

More AKB48

And now there is NMB48, a bunch of girls from Osaka that are even younger than those AKB48 chicks! I will refrain from writing any more or posting any pictures so that I don't end up on some FBI wanted list.

テレビ

I’ve bad mouthed Japanese TV quite a bit over the years. Most of it hasn’t been written down though, so here’s my chance to really stick it to these horrible shows. Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent shows (I emphasize ‘some’) and they can be entertaining, but Japan just doesn’t seem to spend the same amount of time or money on making quality TV.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing during your first few months/years in Japan, because you’re so busy soaking up all the local culture you can, you don’t have time to sit on your butt at home watching TV. The closest I came to watching TV my first few months in Japan was walking through the Yodobashi Camera TV section.

This place has a TV or two...

Have you checked out some of the links so far? Did you notice that EVERYTHING that was said was plastered across the entire screen? I guess this would be fine when you just start learning Japanese, but once you know how to speak, this is ridiculously annoying. It’s like watching TV with the closed caption on….in size 72 font. It becomes more of a distraction than anything else. The only plus is that you can learn some good kanji, but why are you trying to learn a language from the TV in the first place?

Go ahead and check out one of my favorite ladies, 大塚愛. She's pretty cute, but she's just futsuu by Japanese standards. Gotta love this country!


Ever wonder what Tommy Lee Jones would look like as a Host? Of course you haven’t, but here you go anyway. Thanks Japan!

Things Japan Does Well

Stripping

Yo-Yos

Guitar

I'll just keep this simple. Japan has a lot of talent to offer. Check out the above videos for proof.

In general, I have found that Japanese people have a lot of dedication. Many of my Japanese friends have fully dedicated themselves to one single activity, whether it is there job, dance, swimming, whatever. The result, some mad skills.

Lets Hear some Japanese

You can read about Japanese all you want, but it is absolutely necessary to hear this fantastically mathematical language. I’ve found a good video that has examples of lot’s of English Katakana and good expressions. This video has the added bonus of showing you how low budget Japanese TV is.

If you are just reading the subtitles, do you see how they use the word ‘challenge’? He is not just trying to cut various objects (and friggin succeeding at it), he is challenging himself to do something awesome.

'Super slow' is the most obvious Katakana in the video but did you also catch that 'Besuto suri-'? That's 'Best Three' if you were wondering. You can also here the surprised 'heeeeeee' after the samurai cuts everything. Use that word, it's a lot of fun.

The whole variety show concept is very reminiscent of elementary school ‘show & tell’, but I think elementary school had a better budget. Someone comes in with a skill or object (usually food) and everyone chatters away while looking at it. This may have seemed like a good idea at first, but this concept gets old, FAST. Most of the time, the guests aren't as cool as this Isao Machii Samurai either. Here, enjoy more of this dude cutting things in half, and then never watch Japanese TV again...