I seem to have one very dedicated (or possibly deranged) follower who is disappointed with my lack of posting, so here you go Chiyoi, this one’s for you…
Nothing much has changed on the Japan front, although I have bought myself about a tonne of Japanese language books and audio courses to add to the kind gifts from other people. So far, I can read and write hiragana (slowly) and say “My camera is over there” (Watashi no kamera wa soko desu). I also know the words for “chicken” (chikiin), “duck” (duku), “coffee” (kohee) and “telephone” (terefon*).
For those of you not yet in the know, Japanese has two syllabaries, each with 68 characters, which can be used to spell any word. Not that they use them all the time, most of the time they write in kanji. In order to be considered literate in Japanese you need to know about 2000 kanji, there are many, many more than 2000 in total. To make matters even more complicated, many kanji have multiple “readings”, a bit like pronunciations, but they often sound nothing like each other. Fortunately it’s a lot easier to learn to speak Japanese than to read and write it, so hopefully I can pick up enough to get by.
I’m in a bit of a slump with learning the language at the moment, but I spent a while in The Japan Centre in Piccadilly yesterday, so I’m hoping that will have given me the shove I need to get back on with it again. There are a few other practical things that I could do with a shove to get me to do (confirming the date for moving out of my house, booking my flight, that sort of thing), but maybe now I have watched all three seasons of “Avatar: The Last Air Bender ” I can get back on with my life. She said ‘bender’, hur hur hur.
Right, longer than usual, you can blame Chiyoi for that, so I’m off to bed now. With my pyjamas tucked snugly into my bed socks**, jiminy it’s cold tonight.
*I gotcha! Actually, telephone is “denwa”; the others are all true though.
**Nope, I’m not kidding. I really do have my pyjamas tucked into my bed socks. If I were any cooler you could ski down me.
