JapanesePod101.com Blog

Emily is busy working on a secret project, so I (Ben) get to do another blog. This last weekend I climbed 富士山 (Mt. Fuji). Last Friday night, my girlfriend and I left Shinjuku on a 7:50pm bus bound for the Kawaguchiko 5th Station. The bus trip took a little over 2 hours, getting us to the trailhead a little after 10:00pm.

We came rather prepared. Alisa (my girlfriend / hiking partner) spent a good part of the day running Fuji preparation errands. She made 14 おにぎり (onigiri) with her grandma, bought Soyjoys and Powerbars, and since we planned on hiking in the dark, she also bought two headlamps. We each were packing rain coats and heavier clothes (since it gets below freezing at the top). I carried our fluid supply of 4 liters of water and 2 liters of Aquarius (a popular Japanese sports drink). We checked our equipment, used the bathrooms (¥50), and started our ascent.

We got out our headlamps, and Alisa put hers on, but I was thinking to myself カッコ悪い, so I just tied mine to my backpack strap. The first half hour of our hike was below the treeline. We got to the 6th Station after not too long, but from then on, the hike was a seemingly endless succession of switchbacks. The trail grew steeper, the wind picked up, the air got colder, and the traffic became denser. On top of that, the toilet price went up: ¥100. I started out in a T-shirt and shorts. I made it to 8th Station before putting on a long-sleeve shirt. It really doesn’t feel that cold as long as you keep moving, but because we stopped for short breaks every once in a while, the cold started to get to me. So, we kept climbing, and we both were feeling the cold and the altitude.

Around the 9th Station we started to see the sky getting lighter. Worried that we wouldn’t make it to the top in time to see the sunrise, we weaved through the traffic as much as we could. I was amazed by how many people were climbing the mountain. From the 8th Station until the top, the trail was as packed as Tokyo’s rush hour trains. The pace was painstakingly slow–a twenty second wait between every two or three steps. What should have been a forty minute portion of the hike, took about three hours. Fortunately we made it to the top in time.

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In the last blog, we saw this word:

身長順 (shinchōjun: in order of height)     body + length + order

I love all the sharp geometry in these kanji—the way a few diagonals offset the neat horizontals and verticals. But aside from that, here’s what jumped out at me when I found this word in the dictionary:

順 (JUN: sequence, compliance)

I’d never seen this kanji before. And I was intrigued that river (川) + head (頁) could mean “order.” There’s order at the head of the river?

The Etymology of 順 …

The Meaning of 頁 …

If you want to put things in order, then 順 is your kanji. This character isn’t sexy or mysterious. Rather, it’s as practical and sensible as a pair of oxford shoes. But if you’re the sort of person who gets excited at the Container Store (as I am, I must admit!) or whose idea of a good vacation is to reorganize closets and drawers (me again), then you’re going to love this kanji.

OK, I heard some of you walk out and slam the door behind you! But I don’t think I’m overselling when I say that 順 can help you make sense of things. Look over the following terms, and see if you aren’t thinking more clearly at the end:

筆順 (hitsujun: stroke order)     brush + order

Another way to write “stroke order” is 書き順 (kakijun: to write + order). Now we can talk with native speakers about stroke order. That’s so important! I may be able to discuss a variety of subjects in Japanese, but when I want to talk to native speakers about radicals, components, stroke order, and such, I often don’t know the vocabulary. How frustrating that is! By the way, as long as we’re on the topic, the way to refer to actual kanji strokes is 画 (KAKU). Check out the sample sentence with 画.

Sample Sentence About Strokes …

大きい順 (ōkiijun: decreasing order, largest first)     big + order

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Hello JapanesePod101.com Community! My name is Ben Jensen, and I’m interning here at the JapanesePod101.com offices in Tokyo. Emily is a pretty busy person, so I get to make a blog appearance today.

About two weeks ago, my girlfriend’s grandmother Mama-chan, who lives here in Tokyo, offered me a ticket to go see Noh. I’ve studied a little about Japanese culture, and I had always heard that Noh is hard to understand—even for Japanese people—and that there is very little action and very few props. Apparently it’s pretty common for audience members to fall asleep. In any case, I thought it would be worth seeing at least once, and it would be a rare opportunity, so I graciously accepted the offer.

Hosho Nogakudo viewed from the outside.

So last Friday, I left work just before 5:00pm and rode the Tokyo Metro to Suidobashi Station. From the station, it was a quick walk to the theater, 宝生能楽堂 (Hosho Nogakudo). The doors opened at 5:30, I went in, and found my seat right away. I asked a lady nearby if she knew whether or not pictures were OK. Side note: when you ask a Japanese person a question, if they don’t know the answer, they’ll likely go find an answer for you. So, I unintentionally sent her on an errand to find out if pictures are allowed during Noh. The answer? No. I was a little disappointed, but I was permitted to take pictures of the stage prior to the performance.
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Long time no see! Speaking of length, last time we looked at 長 (CHŌ, naga), which usually means “long” or “chief.” In that discussion, we encountered the following word:

足長 (ashinaga: long-leggedness)     legs + long

And we saw how this compound puts the long legs in daddy longlegs:

足長おじさん (ashinaga-ojisan: daddy longlegs)

Although people usually write ojisan (uncle) in hiragana, you can also represent this word with 叔父さん, which breaks down as uncle + father.

On Daddy Longlegs (the Spiders) …

Other Animals with Length to Them …

Something Really Odd …

What happens if we take those long legs and turn them on their head? That is, what if we invert the compound? We get this:

長足 (chōsoku: rapid or giant strides)     long + legs

Everything changes: the yomi (from kun-kun to on-on) and the meaning. The idea of “strides” makes me imagine that the spider itself could still be in the picture. In fact, I want to say this:

足長おじさんが長足で歩きます。
Ashinaga ojisan ga chōsoku de arukimasu.
The daddy longlegs walks with great strides.

歩 (aru(ku): to walk)

But in fact, the “great strides” more often turn out to be a metaphorical way of referring to progress.
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Hello Readers!

It is with excitement and sadness that I’ve made it through SurvivalPhrases.com Japanese and JapanesePod101.com survival phrases! I’m excited that I’ve completed all of the lessons and have learned a ton of Japanese in the process, yet I’m sad that this is the end of the line for my survival phrase blogs. It’s been a rapid pace, perhaps faster than what I would have done otherwise, but I was excited to get these blogs out to you, the readers, so I worked hard to learn and reflect, to help you out and keep you more informed. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading along as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing my experience with you. If nothing else, hopefully you learned something about Japanese culture that you hadn’t known before.

Jumping for joy, SurvivalPhrases.com Japanese and JapanesePod101.com survival phrases helped me navigate as a regular here in Tokyo! [Photo by Alex Montalvo]

Today, I completed lessons 51-60 in SurvivalPhrases.com and lesson 50 in JapanesePod101.com. The topics covered included talking about what you like and don’t like, a list of adjectives, talking about time for the opening and closing of businesses each day, saying congratulations, or “omedeto gozaimasu“, and more!

Instead of writing in response to these categories as I usually do, I thought I would instead address some of the key phrases and words taken from the lessons as a whole. In other words, these are the ones, in my opinion, that you absolutely must know before you get here! Hopefully this will be of good assistance to you.

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Hi Readers!

I’m nearing the end of my survival phrase Japanese training. Today I did lessons 46-50 on SurvivalPhrases.com Japanese, and 32 and 33 on JapanesePod101.com survival phrases. A lot of today’s lessons dealt with allergies and being sick. I can speak about a few things related to this.

These photos were taken at Tokyo Disney Sea. It poured all day! With weather like this, it’s important to try to keep from getting sick! [Photos courtesy of Alex Montalvo]

Fortunately, I have not been sick in Japan to the point that I have needed to take any drugs (prescription or over-the-counter), so I cannot tell you about any experiences spent in a doctor’s office or pharmacy. I can however say something that has interested me and the group I’ve traveled here with.

If you’ve been to Japan, you may already know about this, and if not, you may have seen it on TV, but not understood it. Often, walking around the streets of Tokyo, I see men and women wearing face masks, like the ones you see dentists wearing. At first I didn’t understand why, and thought maybe they didn’t want to be around the public catching things from other people. I thought it acted like a shield to stay healthy. I later found out that the opposite is true.

If you’ve been following the blog, I hope that I’ve done a good job thus far telling you just how polite and caring the Japanese people are, wearing the face mask is only an exemplification of this. The reverse is true in that the face masks are worn when the wearer is sick. Instead of spreading his or her sickness throughout, they try to keep it contained by wearing a cotton mask. While this isn’t necessarily related to sickness, it probably also helps that before every meal here in Tokyo, a warm hand towel is given to the diner to wipe his or her hands clean.

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Thanks for stopping by again readers!

Today I did lessons 44 and 45 from SurvivalPhrases.com Japanese and lessons 46 and 47 from JapanesePod101.com survival phrases. The JapanesePod101 lessons dealt mainly with currency exchange. Since, I’ve already written a blog talking about money here in Japan, instead I’m going to blog with reference to the SurvivalPhrases lessons. They dealt with eating habits.

This photo is of two guys in my group eating Korean food. In this setting, everything was cooked in the pot in front of them. This is one example of the many varieties of ways to eat the different foods here in Tokyo. [Photo by Emily Carsch]

In Japan, fish and meat are staple items in the diet. This is no different than in most countries, but in the US for example, many people are choosing to become vegetarians. This is virtually unknown here in Japan, making it difficult for a bejitarian, or vegetarian, to get around. It seems to me that a lot of Japanese don’t fully understand the concept of being a saishoku shugi sha, also vegetarian. If one were to order a vegetarian dish, he or she would likely still see something not appropriate for that lifestyle on their plate.

In today’s SurvivalPhrases lessons, I learned how to say things like, “niku wa tabemasen“, I don’t eat meat. I personally love meat, but I have friends on my trip here in Japan with me that do not eat it, so I can fortunately teach them how to communicate that at restaurants now. As more and more people are taking a vegetarian approach to dishes (or so it seems), this lesson has become increasingly relevant, and is a great one to check out if you’re a vegetarian!

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Konichiwa Readers!

Today I did a bunch of lessons from JapanesePod101.com survival phrases and SurvivalPhrases.com Japanese. Respectively, lessons covered 41-45 and lessons 39-43. The lessons while teaching new phrases and words, covered much of the same areas I’ve already blogged on (restaurants, shopping, etc.). One of the lessons that was different however was one about going to the movie theater.

At the top is a photo of Mori Tower, the center structure of the Roppongi Hills development. Below is an area on the observation deck, floor 53, of Mori Tower. The seats are able to detect how close you’re sitting to the person next to you. The closer, the warmer the color. The further away, the cooler the color. They really are love seats. [Photos by Emily Carsch]

Here in Tokyo, going to the movies is very expensive. I have not been yet, but have heard it is around 2000 yen just for a ticket. When I’ve inquired about it with locals, many say that they rarely go to the theaters for this reason. I can’t imagine how much concessions cost if a ticket is already 2000 yen. Needless to say, I have yet to attend a movie here in Japan.

Last night I walked by the movie theater in Roppongi Hills and saw that most of the movies playing were ones produced in the US. One of the current large features playing is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls (2008). Its release date here in Tokyo was June 21st. It opened in the United States on May 30th. This movie, that has a lot of international recognition, was released a month later here than in the US.

Ironman (2008 ) on the other hand, another summer blockbuster that was released in the US in early May, is not opening here in Tokyo until the end of September. Most all of the movies to my knowledge are shown in English and are given Japanese subtitles. With that said, I’m not sure what the deal with international release dates is; there is clearly a discrepancy between these two examples.

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Welcome to summer! With the longest days upon us, it seems fitting to take a look at the character for “long”:

長 (CHŌ, naga(i): long)

This kanji can also mean “chief, head, leader,” but today, for the most part, I’m only interested in its length. I love how 長 elongates the following things in the most charming of ways:

穴   (ana: hole)		長穴   (naga-ana: slot)
円   (en or maru: circle)		長円   (chōen: ellipse, oval)
靴   (kutsu: shoes)		長靴   (nagagutsu: boots)
椅子   (isu: chair)		長椅子   (nagaisu: couch)

The compound 椅子 (isu: chair) breaks down as chair + noun suffix relating to objects such as furniture. Wow, that breakdown was long even without 長 there to elongate it!

Here’s my favorite 長 transformation:

芋     (imo: potato)

長芋             (nagaimo: yam)

Yes, that’s true! A yam is longer than a potato! I’d never thought about it before.
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