Smoke Some Kanj

In the last week or so I've begun the never ending task of learning Japanese's most dreaded system of writing: Kanji. I've referred to Kanji here numerous times before, mostly alluding to the fact that I've been here for 3 years and still don't really know much of it. In short, it's the most prevalent writing system here, to the point where you need at least a rudimentary understanding (several hundred characters) to read common street signs, signs in train stations, and restaurant menus. If you plan on reading a newspaper, you'd better know a lot more.

Why, you may wonder, or perhaps how, have I lived in Japan for this long and not picked up more Kanji? The answer is simple: I rely WAY to much on my lovely wife to read me restaurant menus, train station signs, and any other Kanji that get in my way. But oh, that's about to change. Yes it is. Slowly.

The first problem with learning Kanji is actually figuring out how to write it. Kanji are defined by the number of strokes it takes to write them (I kind of pulled this sentence out of my ass). Simple Kanji can be written in 2 or 3 strokes, whereas super fancy ones run the stroke count upwards of 30 (I pulled that factoid out of Chieko's...brain). Here, examples: the Kanji for the number '1' is literally one stroke, as easy as it gets: 一. On the other hand, 'depression' comes in at a depressing 29 strokes and the reputation as being one of the hardest Kanji to write: 鬱.

At the other end of the spectrum, I an working your more basic Kanji, like numbers. The common way to learn yourself some Kanji is to get a Kanji book which shows how to write the characters, i.e. the order of strokes, along with giving the various meanings of Kanji. I bought a Kanji book a good 6 months ago and promptly put it in my closet. Kanji are a pain in the butt. Not only are they friggin hard to write, but they often have several meanings. So, this book also (sort of) covers the different meanings of a single character. The definitions and order of strokes are of course helpful, but there seems to be this common downfall of all the Kanji books I've seen (two) to try and provide pictographs for all the Kanji. This isn't freakin Egyptian, so I'm not sure why they do it. There are indeed a few Kanji that do look like the things they represent. For instance 'mountain' sort of looks like a mountain: 山; ;'river' sort of looks like running water: 川; 'tree' definitely looks like a tree: 木; 'rain' even looks a bit like rain, plus umbrella: 雨. But eventually you get to these Kanji that look nothing like the things they represent, yet these books continue to try and show how the human mind morphed the physical 'thing' into its Kanjified representation. For example, for some reason we (humans, specifically Chinese humans) found it appropriate to take two definitely round objects, the sun and the moon, and render them square in Kanji. But my book, as you can see, makes the transformation completely clear.


The next necessary step after buying the book is actually using it, which requires you to buy another, much cheaper book. Much like English speaking kids buy notebooks with those big fat lines to practice the alphabet, Japanese kiddies and goofy foreigners buy similar books. But instead of lines, there are individual boxes with similar dotted lines in which to practice writing Kanji. I'm quite into it at the moment. There's something satisfying about trying to write something over and over and over again. It's an activity that can occupy me for hours, which is just the kind of activity I need on Sunday, when I'll make the always long journey back to Massachusetts. It's kind of nice to be studying an element of Japanese that I don't necessarily need a teacher to understand. It's also something that can keep me engaged with Japanese while I'm home, if I actually end up doing any of it while I'm there.


So those are my lengthy musings for the night. Hope those of you not in Japan were not totally lost, and those of you who are here sympathize, a little.