Mintceres’s Weblog

my old and new love: Japan ^^

old love, because I liked it for a very long time, and new, because I start to find out so many new aspects about the country, its culture, and so on.

I really like the japanese culture for example the traditional clothing (kimono / yukata) or the comics (manga). The reason why I started to be so interested in Japan lies in my adolescence. I started to buy and read manga. Yes, it sounds stupid, but you have to consider that the “world” depicted in them made me want to “verify” that. I wanted to know, whether it was true what was written or drawn. For example if every student has to wear uniforms, if there are special clothes for sports at school. I didn’t even know that the rooms were so small in reality. And so I began to experience Japan and its culture.

Of course, if you want to get to know a new country, you will also try to understand the language. That is the reason why I have started to leran Japanese

Maybe you know already, but there are 3 types of written language: hiragana, katakana and kanji. hiragana / katakana are syllabes, kanji are more complicated. katakana is used only for foreign words (e.g. words which origin is english or french). I started to learn the syllabes by heart and to write them (its easier said than done o.O). here is an overview of the hiragana:

source: http://www.japanorama.com/images/hiragana.gif

then I found a really useful page in the internet (which I can’t qoute now, sorry), where you can print the kanji taught at elementary school in Japan. I try to learn them, but it is really difficult, but I try to keep going :]

here an example of kanji :

I really want to visit Japan at least once in my life, but it is so expensive to go there ;___; unfortunately, I am not that rich I could afford such a trip *drop*

well but, I have at least the language ^^

sore ja, mata ne (well, goodbye)