For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to visit Asia. China, Japan, Korea…something. Cynthia has always wrinkled her nose and frowned at the idea so I wasn’t holding out much hope.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved the trips we have taken and I figured I’d be fine never going east.
Still, whenever the opportunity presented itself I’d revisit the subject. When a travel show would come on we’d watch it or I would mention that someone I knew just went or came back from somewhere.
Sometime earlier this year Cynthia caught a show on one of the learning/history/travel channels about life in Japan and something clicked. All of a sudden she was very interested in the idea of going there. We bought some books and she’s done her research and now it in the pipeline. If we can afford it, we’re planning for spring of 2010.
Cynthia’s also decided she would also like to learn Japanese and has signed up for language lessons. She in a beginner course and it remains to be seen how far she’ll take it.
She’s made flash cards of the first 40 Katakana characters she has to learn this week. I’m rooting her on the best I can and who knows, I might learn something myself along the way. I now know what the Japanese language is composed of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji characters. That’s more than I knew last week.
In college, I took one semester of Japanese and then another semester of Japanese language structure. I love the language and how the rules and structures for it make sense. There just aren’t a lot of irregularities or confusing spellings which is nice.
I think the hardest part for me was that the translation seemed to take three steps – recognizing the character, then translating that to its Roman alphabet equivalent, and translating that into English.
I know some people that have spent time in Japan, including my dad and a few of my friends, and everyone’s loved it. I hope I can go too one of these days.
This sounds like a fun new project for you and Cynthia. Good luck with the language learning!
Feel for her. I am just starting to try to learn Tibetan. I will take a class, but for right now, I am working on the writing and pronunciation (pretty much how I approached opera when I was singing)
makes my brain itch.
You should get Cynthia together with TxTamz and her husband. He is Japanese and she met him over there. Cynthia could practice on them!
Toire wa doko desu ka?
Hmmm, think that might help? Anyway, knowing your liking of floral photography and Cynthia’s crafty-ness you might be interested in ikebana (note iris arrangement at this wiki)
Oh, and check out cafe in Kyoto called Ask a Giraffe
I love the flash cards that Cynthia made, great idea.
I started learning Japanese at highschool which was going a few years back now and recently learned more online. I’ve found the fact that Japanese sounds are very consistent and always sound the way they are written makes it much easier to grasp, kanji can be a little tougher,
Anyway, all the best!