Before you read this, please make sure these Japanese letters 文字化け appear. If they don’t, then let me know because in that case this story will just be gibberish.
During the cherry blossom season of 1998, I moved to Japan. I had received a scholarship from Monbusho, the Japanese Ministry of Education, and was secure in the knowledge that it is the absolute best way to tap into a culture that even a dozen years later remains somewhat impervious to Westerners. With all expenses paid and a generous salary to boot, all I had to worry my 22 year old head with for the first six months was making friends and learning the language.
Cherry blossom
The first task proved easy enough and eventually helped with the second. For while the Japanese people are notoriously shy and weary of making mistakes (and hence reluctant to speak foreign languages), they’re also extremely curious. And since I was (by Monbusho’s count) one of only about 60 Lebanese in the entire country, I must have seemed exotic (or odd) enough to young Japanese for them to want me as a friend. Soon enough, I was able to tell shampoo from laundry detergent (all labels are in Japanese) and so by my second week my hair stopped turning green and my plates stopped smelling of chamomile. And thanks to my friends, I acquired a decent command of spoken Japanese in a month.
Written Japanese, however, was another matter altogether. You see, their grammar is Verb-Object-Subject (which means that you would say “Love you I.” However, it’s actually much simpler than English (or indeed Arabic) to pick up because there’s almost no such thing as verb conjugation or even tense (“Today I love you, before last month only you love me, we both would have love tomorrow.”), no plural (“one boy, two boy, one million boy”), and no gender (“boy love girl love boy same same.”) — all of which make speaking the language a breeze. However, when it comes to writing, there’s a major stumbling block called: Kanji.
The Japanese language uses three types of letters:
- Hiragana (used for simple words like pronouns), and looks like this: あいうえお
- Katakana (for words and names of foreign origin like Internet, hamburger, Obama), and is a little more angular: アイウエオ
- Kanji (used for the vast majority of words), and looks like (yikes!): 原宿
Now it doesn’t take much to see that kanji is much scarier than the other two. Well, wait till you hear this: While the first two systems each consist of around two dozen letters, there are more than 10,000 kanji in existence. Yes, that’s 10 with three zeroes after it.
Luckily, though, the Japanese Ministry of Education (yes Monbusho again) has limited the number of kanji recommended for daily use (i.e. taught at schools, and used in newspapers and other non-specialized publications) to around 2,000. That still is quite a steep learning curve for a foreigner who must cover in a few months what Japanese children are taught over the span of their entire school education. Since back then I was a mere 22 and very hot-headed, that’s where I drew the line. While my Japanese fluency was increasing almost by the hour, I stubbornly refused to do my kanji homework. And in the kanji sections of my exams, I’d just draw smileys and other doodles in the blanks where the letters were supposed to go.
However, all that changed when I discovered the secret.
Our textbooks (and most Japanese teachers I know) refer to kanji as pictographs: letters that resemble the objects they describe. For example, the kanji for tree looks like a tree: 木. Fair enough. But what they don’t tell us is that the definition only applies to the most basic kanji. Actually, each of those complex-looking characters is really more than a simple pictograph; it is an ideogram: a nugget of meaning — no, no, much more than that: an entire story encapsulated in a single letter. Every kanji contains within it a history, an anecdote, a fact about Japanese culture. Once I realized that, I fell in love!
As you may know, cherry blossom season is a very brief and special time in Japan. For the three days that the flowers are in bloom, men and women dress up in their best clothes, leave work early and go to the park to drink and be merry under the trees as they watch the pink petals blossom and then fall off. It is a story told in a single letter: sakura 桜.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
You explain this so well! I especially adore the vacation symbol and meaning=) Thx for not keeping this secret in, makes me want to go there even more! P.S "so by my second week my hair stopped turning green and my plates stopped smelling of chamomile." LMAO
I guess the sudden urge to write this at 2 a.m. means I miss Japan!
My love for Japan and its culture began with Karate Kid and is still growing.
I have studied Japanese for a year and a half of on/off private lessons. First with a lebanese person who lived in Japan and used to work in the Japanese embassy here in Lebanon. Then by a Japanese young man who works for a japanese car company in Beirut and the Arab region. They both began with Hiragana then Katakana, and had a challenge to teach me Kanji.
My lebanese teacher was more academically skilled to give lessons. Hence I'll talk more about his lesson related to Kanji. He taught me the "tree", showed me how to write "treeS", but didn't mention "forest"! Meedo, I know that might be stupid on my behalf, maybe I should have asked about it, but I guess you are right, they do their best to keep the secret of Kanji writing.
Your blog post made me feel miss the language, well, learning it at least. And it made me adore the culture even more.
ps: Just remembered our first conversation =)
I'll never forget our historical first meeting either. I was thinking about it while writing this! Ai shiteru yo!
We should continue your Japanese education. Let's focus on that when you're done with your 20 hours of being Viktor Navorski at Atatürk Airport.
I love this! Kanji is fun to learn! It's like learning how to draw :)
I want to go to Japan!
Hai!
Sakura... <3