Hiragana was developed from Chinese characters but aren't literally Chinese script like Kanji. When Hiragana was first developed, it was not completely accepted by Japanese society. In fact, the elite members and men in general preferred Kanji while women used Hiragana. Eventually, male authors came to use Hiragana in writing literature, and Hiragana was adopted in writing traditional Japanese.
Katakana was developed in the early Heian period (AD 794 - 1185) by Buddhist monks from Chinese characters as a form of shorthand. In modern Japan, Katakana is used to write out "foreign words." For example, it's used to write out American names:
ブライアン
Bu-ra-i-a-n'
Also, in writing Japanese, there are no spaces between words. You just know how different words are spelled out. One last fact about Japanese writing is that "Romaji" is used to write the language in Roman letters:
Domo arigato gozaimashita.
Anyways, I'm not blogging just to give a short history of Japanese script. I just wanted to share my still brief experience with learning how to write Japanese. April pointed out to me that it should only take a couple of days to learn both Katakana and Hiragana and that it just takes practice to really remember both sets of characters. So I took it upon myself and learned both these sets in the past week. I find myself walking around Iwaki suddenly being able to understand certain things like "ドラグストル(do-ra-gu su-to-ru)" or "Drug Store," which is a term borrowed from English. Of course, if I read something in Hiragana I still don't know what it means because it's a Japanese word, but it's still cool knowing I can read some Japanese.
In addition to learning Japanese, I've also just learned so much about the culture and life-related things. Last Thursday, a couple of our friends came over and we made takoyaki while we watched a documentary called "Ending Note." The documentary was very sad as it centered around a dying man whose daughter was filming him preparing for his eventual death from a cancer too late to treat. I definitely recommend watching it, but you better stock up on that Kleenex before doing so. If you don't already know, takoyaki is a sort of breadball traditionally filled with "tako" or "octopus," ginger, and green onion. We expanded this filling to include other types of seafood, cheese, Japanese sausage, and even chocolate.
First batch was squishy because we had twice as much water than we needed =X
Ingredients
Our friend Ayumi cutting tako
Happy tako-making friends
Every batch starting with the second batch produced these beauties
Takoyaki is usually topped with mayo, tako sauce, and dried fish flakes.
A couple of days later, we went to Sendai for a mini weekend vacation. You may recognize this city name because it was all over the news 2 years ago as being the epicenter of the Great Tohoku Earthquake. It is called the city of trees in Japan and is also a sprawling metropolis almost on par with Tokyo IMHO.
Tree
Dat phonebooth
Trees... Trees everywhere
Sendai offers a city tour where you board this bus at the central station and it drives around in a loop. Interestingly enough, the tour bus is called "The Loople." It stops at 15 different locations and buses come every 20 minutes. And it only cost ¥600 (~$6). At one of the sites, these real-life anime characters stopped to greet us. Okay, they were in traditional Japanese garb but they were quite silly.
Yay!
The site is famous because a castle once stood there. It also offered a great view of the city:
Metropolis!
We also ate the famous local cuisine: Cow tongue. It was quite tender and just tasted like softer cow meat.
In stew form, served with barley rice, salad, and soup.
In a steamed bun form.
Well, it's slightly colder in Matsushima than it is in Berkeley.
Matsushima is famous for its seafood and rightfully so, I had ramen... with Oyster.
Other spots we explored in Matsushima included a wooden doll-making shop, a cafe where they served coffee in bowls and melonpan, a nice stroll through a woodsy area, and lots and lots of snow.
Dolls
Melonpan (Crispy on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside)
Coffee in bowls
Cool Woodsy Area
Best friends :)
Snow
Snow+April
It was such a fun trip and an amazing experience, compounded by what happened when we tried to go home. It was snowing pretty much all day Sunday and I guess it was all leading up to small blizzard. This cancelled our bus home and forced us to take the Shinkansen, the expensive high-speed bullet train. We actually had to take the Shink to another city (Koriyama) and then take another local train home. The Shinkansen experience was actually quite fun: it was a quiet ride and we were going so fast that the water streaks on the window were completely horizontal (the shink's top speed is apparently 186 mph). While it was much more expensive than the bus trip (~$65 vs. ~$20 each), I think it was worth it timewise: 35 minute train ride vs. 1.5 hour bus ride to Koriyama. This was a crazy learning experience because it was really stressful trying to figure out how to get home. Everyone and their mom was in the Shinkansen ticket line because of all the bus cancellations. In the end, I figured we were part of the lucky few that were able to travel home because buses that weren't cancelled got stuck in heavy traffic and other people were completely snowed in. I think the experience served as a testament to Japan's public transportation system as there are so many options and so many different ways to go anywhere.
Life is an adventure, especially when you get stuck somewhere because of water (albeit solid water).
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