I picked up some much needed books at the store. I'm on the verge of graduating onto the next text in my Japanese studies, so I bought that. I also, finally, bought a proper Japanese/English dictionary. And I bought some Kanji flash cards. I may have mentioned before that Japanese has 3 different alphabets: Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. I am fine with the first two, but the one area of Japanese that I have yet to study at all is Kanji, which is that alphabet that consists of Chinese characters. It's really necessary though for reading many signs, and also in passing the Japanese proficiency test, which I intend to take at some point in the future. Katakana and Hiragana are phonetic alphabets, i.e. each character represents a sound. Katakana is used for writing words taken from other languages, like the names of foreign countries and people, though it can be used to write Japanese words as well. Hiragana is used when writing Japanese words. Kanji, on the other hand, is a character that contains the entire word in and of itself, if that makes sense. For example, a word may have 3 Hiragana characters, but is represented by a single Kanji character. Here's a visual for you, if you're computer doesn't turn it into wingdings. Take the word 'house,' which in Japanese is 'ie' (sounds like e-yay). In Katakana it's written イエ. In Hiragana it's written いえ. And in Kanji it's written 家. Now, I didn't know that before I consulted my handy new dictionary, and even now if I walked out of the house and saw it on a sign I probably wouldn't recognize it, let alone be able to actually write it. Reading Kanji is one thing, but writing it is a completely different undertaking, as there's a particular order in which you're supposed to apply each stroke. So that's what I'll be studying probably for the rest of my life! An interesting side note is that in this age of computers, which conveniently produce Kanji, a lot of Japanese people are forgetting how to write it. I can sympathize. There are thousands upon thousands of Kanji characters. Sigh.
After the bookstore and some other shopping, we headed down to the coast. Given my love for the voracity of mother nature, I'm a bit envious that the folks back home in the northeast are gearing up for a whopper of a nor'easter. But we had a pretty good storm system of our own in town yesterday, making for some powerful winds and impressive wave action. We went to a different beach than the one I usually go to, and it did not disappoint. This beach is much bigger, quite huge actually in terms of sand acreage, if that's a term. Note my new Beatle-esque mop top (it was just because of the wind, really). By the way if you blow up that first picture you can see a tanker cruising precariously close to shore given the conditions.
So now that I'm up and about, I'm going to head off to the gym, but not without a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood along the way, as it's quite a fine day today and I want to enjoy it a bit. Hope you're all having a good weekend.
2 comments:
Good size storm surge behind you. Does it get warm enough there to go to the beach in the summer?
yeah it gets warm enough, but you might remember seeing pics here of those giant jelly fish, as well as all the trash on the beach, so i'm not sure how much swimming i'll be doing...might stick to lakes and rivers...how was that storm for you down in south carolina?
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