Wasabi

Shuppatsu

Okay, this is it. I leave tomorrow from Narita Airport (NRT) to Hong Kong for three weeks. I'm not sure what kind of access i will have there so this may be my last chance to write for quite a while. Have a Merry Chirstmas and Happy New Year. jyoigin!

Reflections on Tokyo

I have been to Tokyo at this point more times than i can count. You can hear a lot of negative things said about Tokyo (especially when you live in Kansai), but i think that anyone who has ever spent any good amount of time there has to admit there is something really special and unique about Tokyo that i have yet to see replicated in any other city in the world. I tried to capture some of this magic over the years using various digital cameras (thankyou Jundai)

Yabai

These are my friends Aaron (exchange student from Georgia State University) and Akane (KUFS student). They told me nothing was going on, but i like to think that a picture tells a thousand words.

Mmm, that makes this about 6 thousand then?

Around Town

Here are some other random photos from around Kyoto (and a couple from Osaka) that i have collected over the last 8 months or so that i have been here.

Hanabi Taikai

Hanabi, is Japanese for Fireworks, and "Taikai" translates to something like big meet. Basically it's just a big Fireworks Festival. They are very popular in Summer and you can see lots of Japanese people (especially girls) dressed up in Bright Summer colored Yukata. There are also lots of Yatai (outdoor shops), and, of course, a huge fireworks show. This particular one took place in Uji, which is famous for making Japanese Green tea. It's still in Kyoto Prefecture, but it's a big towards the south.

Tests Suck

So the Japanese Standarized test is coming up this Sunday. I am taking "Nikyuu" (second level) the second most difficult one. I am 80% certain i will fail. (><)

This is not for lack of trying however. As i am learning, the Japanese spoken language and the Japanese written language don't bare very much in common. The interesting thing though is that you can't really communicate anything terribly complicated in the spoken language because there are no Kanji when you speak. Now, you can of course use those complicated "Kango" (kanji based words of Chinese origin) but since they all sounds alike it's hard to tell what the hell people are talking about without explaining which kanji are in the words you are using. Which brings whatever sort of point you are trying to discuss to an untimely halt. This is my new theory as to why Japanese people don't like to debate or talk about difficult issues in normal conversation.

Although, a few years back, the everpopular "Beat" Takeshi had a TV show which featured a panel of fluent foreigners and then a panel (or some group of Japanese people) that would debate a touchy topic. The ironic thing, and perhaps the reason why the show disappeared, is that most of the time the foriegners beat the crap out of the Japanese panel, even though Japanese is not the native language. (Particularly some of the Africans were incredibly well versed). Japanese people like it when you can squak out some poorly pronouced badly formed sentences, but they really don't like it when you can speak natively. Some sort of, nervous behavior seams to come out. Hmmm..