I have to work harder at teaching him [English] words, but I get the feeling he will speak more Japanese first, because there are so many easy two-syllable words for him to pronounce easily in Japanese, and most English words that I say to him are longer and harder to pronounce in comparison.

To which I responded, in a comment (I’m posting more or less verbatim, so this is a bit rough-hewn):

just my two yen of course but I wouldn’t fall for the “japanese is easier to pronouce than english” trap too quickly….i heard similar when my little one was taking his first verbal steps….just remember, your little one isn’t saying anything is difficult, his parents (and other well-meaning folk) are! for him, the concept of “difficulty” doesn’t exist.

the fact of the matter is, is that kids in an English environment, or kids in a Swahili environment (okay, i know nothing about Swahili but you get the idea), learn perfectly well how to start repeating sounds, regardless of whether the word is “difficult” to pronouce. the very concept of “difficulty” is arbitrary and tends to reflect the speaker’s point of view, not an objective fact. I mean, for most of us native English speakers, French is at the same time an incomparably beautiful and exceeding difficult to pronouce correctly language…yet the very fact that there are millions of people who can speak the language beautifully gives the lie to the idea that the language is difficult at all, for those born into that language.

I have found that if you are serious about your child learning your own language, as I trust you are, you have to view that development within your language, not via the pov of the other language. Granted, being that English is the minority language, and that the child is surrounded by Japanese almost every moment of his life, it IS an uphill battle, but that doesn’t mean you should be raising any white flags. In actual fact, there is little difference between “atta” and “there it is”, or “baba” and “grandma”, but even to acknowledge that is to worry too much about it. just teach him what you want. hell, I’d start him on “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” right now!

(of course the same applies to your [Japanese] wife wanting him to speak Japanese as a native, which means we need to try not to correct his pronunciation when he says “makudonarudo” [McDonald's in Japanese])

I’m curious what others think, especially those raising (or trying to raise) a child bilingually. I’m no expert of course, and Kaika still has a long way to go before we can hope to proclaim him bilingual, but I guess I’m natually suspicious of this idea that Japanese, which doesn’t have a lot of words longer than 2 syllables (at least not any words a toddler needs to know!), not to mention that it does have a lot of onomatopoeic words that can at times be mistaken for “baby talk”, automatically makes it easier to learn.

On the other hand, I suppose one could make the argument that the child really isn’t aware he’s repeating “words” but rather is just sounding out sounds, sounds he’s only vaguely connecting with meaning. In which case, I guess the easier to replicate sounds (or syllables) would get the advantage. I don’t know.

Well, you can see I’m no linguist, but if you have an opinion or your own experiences to share, please leave a comment.

In March of this year, Nihongo Journal, a magazine for those studying Japanese as a second language, ceased publishing. While the magazine had its faults, namely too much English translation and more furigana than I thought healthy for Kanji improvement, it was a well-put together monthly magazine complete with a CD and more stuff than one could ever hope to digest in a month’s time.

While ALC, the publisher, has added some content for Japanese learners to it’s Monthly Nihongo, a magazine geared towards teachers of Japanese, and have also recently introduced a new “free paper” monthly focused on foreigners living in Japan (J-Life), nothing has really stepped into the void created by Nihongo Journal’s demise, especially when it comes to intermediate and advanced learners.

One relatively new venture that I’m excited about is the monthly chuujoukyuu no nihongo magazine that started publishing this past summer. I recently subscribed to this at home after having used some material from past issues at the school I was attending. While it cannot hope to match the slickness of Nihongo Journal (frankly it looks more like a fanzine than a magazine), and there’s no CD, I’m finding it a very good way to maintain my reading ability as well as expand my vocabulary (a major weak point, I’m finding out).

Each issue is about 35 pages or so, and features topical news articles, a couple of Japanese usage or kanji quizes, a comic strip highlighting different aspects of Japanese culture and language usage, a “daily life” vocabulary builder (this month’s is about the common cold), a more in-depth look at an issue in today’s Japan (this month’s is regarding the issue of a female heir to the Imperial throne), and an extended reading passage . The nice thing about the magazine is that there is no English to be found anywhere in it. When vocabulary or expressions are explained, it’s done in Japanese. And what’s more, for most of the reading passages, they have chosen not to include furigana with the main text, but rather move this to a second page or boxed off at the bottom of the article. (I find that no matter what my kanji proficiency is, if there’s furigana above or below kanji, my eye immediately gravitates there, depriving myself of a chance to improve my kanji reading skills.)

I’m not sure if any of the major bookstores are carrying this yet, but subscription information is here. However, I don’t think they’re set up as yet to take subscription requests from folks overseas, making this a Japan-only thing for now. (If you are interested in the magazine and live outside of Japan, it might be worth your while to send them an email (listed at their site) so they’re aware of the interest).

Another new resource for intermediate and up students of Japanese that I’ve discovered is Nihongo-Juku, a blog-style site which aims to improve students’ reading and listening comprehension. It does that — there are mp3 files of the reading passages that can be downloaded to your mp3 player or listened to via your browser — but even nicer, the reading passages actually discuss different aspects of accepted (and not so accepted) Japanese usage (such as appropriate ways to respond to compliments, or how to express “I” properly). The site appears to have just gotten off the ground, but what’s been posted already seems right up my alley.

Last (and definitely least), I guess I should finally get around to announcing that I have a Japanese study blog, which I’ve only sporadically been posting to. However, now that intensive studying for this year’s Japanese Language Proficiency Exam is over, I hope to be spending more time there as I look for ways to keep studying. There’s not a whole lot up there at the moment, to be honest. (Perhaps knowing a couple of folks might actually be looking at it might spur me on to continue maintaining it).

In Japanese, sitting in a circle is called kurumaza, literally, “wheel seating.” A kurumaza formation can put others off, since all they see of the people forming the circle is their backs, which seems to be saying, “The rest of you are outsiders.” To be sure, when the kurumaza is formed on the ground outdoors, a stranger standing on the outside of the circle can also see the faces of those on the far side. But the attention of those faces is riveted on the others in the circle. The stranger can be standing as little as a meter away from the ring, and still the group will pay virtually no attention. This obliviousness to others can easily be observed, for example, in the tightly packed groups of revelers that fill Ueno Park in Tokyo for flower-viewing parties under the trees during the cherry blossom season.

The above was taken from Sitting in a Circle: Thoughts on the Japanese Group Mentality, a lecture given a few years ago by Japanese poet and critic Makoto Ooka, at the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University (as part of the Soshitsu Sen Distinguished Lectures on Japanese Culture).

Ooka uses the Japanese word kurumaza (sitting in a circle) as the basis for a fascinating look at the oft-discussed “group” culture of Japan, seen not only in its systems (political, corporate) nor its cultural manifestations (karaoke, hanami), but also in its language and poetry. Ooka is most concerned with, to quote him, “how the traditional kurumaza society and the desire for solitude interact within the spirit of the poet….”

I was particularly struck by this paragraph of “poetic” etymology:

At one time I became aware of and took an interest in the major role the words au (to meet, to come together, to be in accord, to fit) and its derivative awasu (to bring together, to bring into accord) play in the Japanese language. What brought my attention to this was an observation that the Japanese language scholar Ono Susumu made during a round-table discussion in which we both took part. Ono pointed out that osafu, an old form of the verb osaeru (to restrain, to hold down), was formed as a compound of the verbs osu (to push) and afu, and earlier form of au. He gives a more precise explanation of the word in his laborious work Iwanami kogo jiten (Iwanami Dictionary of Classical Japanese): “To continue pushing, adjusting one’s force to that of the other party so as not to move the other party.” In other words, this single word—which is still in everyday use—has woven into it the awareness of a relationship in which the performer of the action senses the other person’s force and increases or decreases the amount of force applied so as to match it.

But read the whole thing. Rest assured, those tired old proverbial nails, you know the kind that stick up only to get hammered down, which are de rigueur in most articles about Japan and its group culture, aren’t mentioned.

This was part of the headline on a recent Sumo monthly magazine, which featured a picture of Yokozuna Asashoryu after he won the recent Natsu Basho. Asashoryu had upset many sumo fans, and the Japan Sumo Association, with his disrespectful and un-Yokozuna like behavior after a losing performance in one of his tournament matches. There were actually two headlines on the cover of the magazine, the other reading tsukisusumu, which means “to push forward with force or vigor.” However, the aramusha headline was in bigger font.

tanshinfunin — to commute over a long distance

An example would be living in Hokkaido but working in Tokyo, perhaps flying home on the weekends. This particular example was the plight of a student I interviewed recently, who flew home once a week to see his wife and two young children in Sapporo.

futsukayoi — hangover

It’s funny how you can study a language for the longest time and never come across certain words or expressions seemingly essential to one’s vocabulary. This is such an entry. I didn’t learn it on account of having one myself (at least recently); actually, I can’t remember the why’s and wherefore’s of how I picked this up. But I’m sure it’ll come in handy one of these days. I love the fact that a literal translation of the word would read something like “drunk on the second day.”

uwasa o sureba… — speak of the devil…

I heard a student utter this when I walked into the classroom recently. I grilled her on what she had said and what it meant, but she was unable to explain the meaning in English. But she insisted it had positive connotations. Later when looking it up I of course realized it only has positive connotations depending on what was being said before it was uttered. uwasa on its own means “rumor” or “gossip.”

suisui — swimming smoothly, unhindered
rakuraku — comfortably, easily

These were both used in an train advertisement for monorail service to Tokyo’s Haneda airport.

netto shinjuu — internet-assisted suicide

A new term, found in the “Changing Japanese” section of a recent Japan Times newspaper (each Thursday’s edition features Japanese lessons and related articles on the language). netto means “Internet,” and shinju means “double suicide” or a suicide committed with others. This term is an outgrowth of the recent spate of group suicides involving people who met through Internet sites.

fuan — anxiety, unease

I was watching one of the weekend sports shows and they had a very long segment on Japanese baseball’s Hanshin Tigers, who from the sound of it are the Chicago Cubs of Japanese baseball. In other words, they haven’t won a penant in a very long time (well, since 1985 at least). This year, at least at this point, almost halfway through the season, the Tigers lead their division by 9 games, with arch-rivals Yomiurui Giants in second. But Hanshin traditionally starts strong, and then goes into the tank in the second half of the season. They did this last year. Thus, Hanshin fans right now are full of fuan, or unease, that their lead will not hold up. fuan rendered in katakana script means “fan, ” ironically enough.

Definitions were garnered from my Canon Wordtank 3000 (which uses the New Anchor Japanese-English Dictionary), and Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC (and the Japan Times, where noted). I’m pretty much flying solo these days with respect to my language learning, so I would be ever so grateful if those with a better grasp of the language than I, could contribute, via comments, to this post. I.e., if I’ve gotten something wrong, or there are alternative ways to say the above, or additional meanings that would be relevant, etc., please add a comment so I and other learners don’t stray too far down the wrong path. Thanks!

I finally found something I was looking for, raji@, run by a company called Advanced Internet Integration (AII) (even more digital media content at their site). Every weeknight from 11:30pm – 2:00am, which also happens to be my prime computer usage time slot, there are 4 or 5 programs on topics like computers, gaming, music, movies, etc. Tonight, the program from Mikaka featured a discussion on blogging, and online community, which then morphed into a discussion of jisatsu buumu (“suicide boom”) and web sites that offer advice to folks contemplating suicide, which have been in the news a lot recently.

If others out there know of other resources out there like this one with which to improve my Japanese listening skills, well, I’m all ears.

Anyone who’s studied Japanese for some time eventually comes up against the fact that when counting things, it’s not enough to be able to count to a hundred (or more). This will only get you so far. Fo you see, for different objects, one must also attach a unique “counter,” which varies depending on the object you’re counting. Even beginning students will soon encounter this, as they learn how to count days, or bottles of beer, or sheets of paper, etc. But there are a lot more where this came from. In fact, this page lists 509 counters, for everything from flower petals to poems to rosary beads! Chances are there even more out there that native Japanese speakers aren’t even aware of.

The image above was clipped from a sales insert distributed by the home-delivery grocery service we use, Co-op, and illustrates just some of the counters involved with food items. It’s for parents to use to review with their children (osarai means “review”). As it says, one can always get by using the catch-all hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu… counter, but wouldn’t it be better to learn the actual counters. Click on the image above for a larger one (it is large, 205K).

Some of the thoughts that went into the name:

kai (umi) — both Naoko and I grew up on islands, surrounded by the sea. Naoko crossed an ocean once to meet me, and kept crossing it to pursue me. We fell in love, and crossed the same ocean together to start our life and family in Japan.

ka (uta) — given in the hope that our son will be a creator, a performer, a builder, an expresser. The names of Japanese artists Utamaro and Utagawa Hiroshige were the inspiration.

When I was young, on the beaches of Hawaii my brother Kimo and I would look for seashells with my mother. When we found the big ones, my mother would tell us to cup it around our ear. She told us that no matter where you were, if you listened to the seashell, you would be able to hear the song of the ocean. kai (using a different Chinese character) is Japanese for shellfish. kaigara is seashell.

Other considerations: Kaika is derived from the Hawaiian name Ikaika, meaning strong. kai in Hawaiian also means the sea. Naoko and I had decided early on that if it was a boy, we would give it a Hawaiian name (or close to it).

And lastly, the idea for the name first came to me while I was creating some Kanji flashcards. While learning the kanji for akeru (to open), I came upon the kanji combination word kaika, a pairing of the kanji for akeru and hana (flower). Written with these kanji, kaika means “flowering” or “blooming,” in both the literal and figurative senses of those words. I liked the idea of that, as Kaika would be born at the time of Spring that cherry blossoms are making their blooming march across the Japan archipelago from south to north (called sakurazensen).

But the distant memory popped its head up today, when I received (finally!) via the post notification from the AIEJ (Association of International Education, Japan) about how I did. In short, I PASSED! (Sorry for screaming). Now, mind you, I only took the Level 3 test, which depending on how you look at it is either third level down from the top, or second level up for the bottom (there are only 4 levels in all). So no great shakes. But it’s a start, and considering that in actuality the test was quite a bit above the Japanese proficiency level I was at when I applied to take it 3 months prior, I’m proud of how I did.

I also passed by a respectable margin, which makes me happy. For Level 3, one need only get 60% or higher to pass, and I felt that just squeaking by with a low-60′s percentage would be a bit disappointing, so I was pleased to score 81% overall. As I expected, the Listening section was my poorest section, although even there I managed to pass. (Not surprisingly, I did best in the Kanji and Vocabulary section — 90%).

As with most tests of this type, how well one can speak Japanese in real-life situations is not tested, so I’m not kidding myself that I’m in any way, shape, or form proficient in this all-important regard. But I do feel that putting in the work I needed to in order to get to this level has given me a great foundation from which to build myself up conversationally, and for this reason I would recommend the test to any Japanese learner, even at Levels 3 and 4.

Where to from here? Well, Level 2 looms large and intimidatingly on the horizon, though I’m beginning to accept the fact that it’s highly unlikely I’ll be ready for this year’s test in 10 short months time (it’s quite a jump from 3 to 2 — for example, one needs to know roughly 1,000 kanji characters for Level 2, as opposed to only 300 or so for Level 3). 10 years time is probably a more reasonable expectation. Either way, I will get there however, someday.

ADDENDUM: Here are some useful links for anyone interested in taking the test in the future:

Association of International Education, Japan JLPT page
Japan Foundation site for the JLPT
The JapanesePage.com’s “About the JLPT” page
Ed Jacob’s Japanese Language Proficiency Test First and Second Grade Study Guide
Joe’s JLPT Page
Meguro Language Center’s JLPT free downloadables page

This kanji, kaeru, meaning return, was recently selected as the “Kanji of the Year” for 2002 by over 60,000 voters in a “Sign of the Times” poll sponsored by the Japan Kanji Proficiency Testing Foundation. The reasons for its top ranking in the survey are obvious to anyone living in Japan, as surely 2002 will always be remembered here as the year that 5 Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970′s returned home to Japan. This event also accounts for kita (north) and ra (the first character in ratchi (abduction)) coming in 2nd and 3rd respectively. The placement of the ra character so high is interesting in that it is not one of the 1,945 general-use kanji (called jouyou kanji) “approved” by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry (formerly Ministry of Education).

According to some, it was at the insistence of the Americans during the post-World War II Occupation that the then Japanese Ministry of Education decided to limit the number of kanji students were required to learn, and it began to weed out rarely used characters. At that time, there were some 4,000 characters that one needed to know in order to effectively read newspapers or magazines, and some dictionaries listed as many as 50,000 characters. Initially the Ministry decided upon 1,850 characters, a number that was increased in 1981 to the current 1,945. As this article points out, however, while Japanese learners such as myself thankfully don’t have to contend with learning 4,000 characters (to say nothing of 50,000!), there are still plenty of non-jouyou characters out there to give me fits and ensure that I will never get close enough to be burned by the proverbial light at the end of the kanji-learning tunnel.

In other language news I never got around to blogging, last December Japanese publisher Jiyukokuminsha published their 2003 Encyclopedia of Contemporary Words, a huge tome I’ve salivated over in the bookstore (but sadly, can’t read, so haven’t bought). In conjunction with the book’s publication, Jiyukokuminsha formed a committee and they came up with a top 10 list of new and popular words to enter the Japanese language in the last year. tamachan and waarudokappu (nakatsuemura) were chosen as the top 2 from this list. tamachan was coined by Fuji Television reporter Yuko Kurozumi to describe the seal that was discovered in the Tama river on August 7th of last year. waarudokappu (nakatsuemura) is for the small village in Oita prefecture that hosted the Cameroon team during the World Cup, an undertaking which quickly thrust the tiny village into the national spotlight.

(Kanji poll link found at Sydney Notes.)

Part of this problem derives from my recent studying for the Nihongo Nouryoku Shiken, or Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Level 3). The JLPT has no kanji writing component, so in the interest of having more time to devote to preparing for the grammar sections, I didn’t bother with kanji writing, but rather only with recognizing them and being able to produce their various readings (kun-yomi and on-yomi). In retrospect, knowing how to write the kanji I studied would have helped me deal with the many trick questions the kanji reading section throws at you (including some fake kanji characters). (Oh well, all water under the bridge….)

The other problem, which Japanese themselves are all too familiar with, is that with the advent of PC’s and now cellphones, as long as one can read kanji, one doesn’t really need to know how to write the characters, for the most part. Input the hiragana for the word, and then choose the correct kanji from the pop-up. The software does the bulk of the work. So I can type out an email dense with kanji, but I can’t write even a basic sentence with pen and paper to save my life. (I should just add that despite the above, writing emails in Japanese has done wonders for my reading skills).

At any rate, I’m determined now to learn how to write kanji as well as read it, which has necessitated a kind of going back to basics approach. This means having to create kanji flashcards for such basic words like hana (flower), gaku (learning), and tama (gem, sphere), and to spend a lot of time writing them over and over again in a notebook, and then testing myself that I can write them from memory. Frankly, it’s all a bit humbling, but necessary.

To keep myself from going insane, however, I’ve also been creating flashcards for new kanji characters I’ve never learnt before, from within the 1006 kanji that every Japanese is supposed to know by the time they finish 6th grade (and which I need to know if I have any hope of passing the 2nd level of next year’s Japanese Proficiency Test). In the process, I’ve stumbled onto a new method of study (new to me, at any rate), which I thought I would share.

One of the problems with studying kanji, for me that is, is that there’s usually very little context to the studying in the beginning. You simply have to plow through the characters, using rote memorization (and a lot of testing!) to build up the supply of kanji you can read (and hopefully write as well). But as any Japanese learner knows, what makes up the bulk of Japanese vocabulary are not individual kanji characters, but rather kanji compounds, that is words which are made up of two, three, etc. kanji characters. So, as part of my current self-study, I’ve been concentrating more on not just a single character, but rather as many words as possible that use that character. So, in a day of studying, while I might be learning only 3 or 4 new characters, I’m actually learning anywhere between 15 to 20 new words using those characters in combination with other characters I already know. Let’s look at an illustration which might help to explain what I mean:

In the center is the kanji for shin (believe; message), which is used to form shinjiru (to believe; to place trust in), and surrounding it are some other words that use the shin character in combination with other characters. So while studying shin and hopefully committing it to memory, I’m also looking around for other words that use this kanji. Among those other words, I look for those where shin‘s partner(s) — so to speak — are other kanji I’ve already learned, and these combinations I also commit to flashcards (all the compounds surrounding shin above, for example). If I find a partner kanji I’m unfamiliar with but think the word is important to know at this stage of my learning, I then make the effort to learn that particular kanji. And with that kanji, I repeat the whole entire process I just described. So you can see that in very short order, just by learning only 2 or 3 single characters, my vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds.

Of course, creating flashcards doesn’t really get you anywhere near mastering kanji. One needs to review these endlessly before they seep into the brain, and it’s important to not get a false sense of mastery if you can flip through the cards and seamlesslessly recall each character or compound and it’s reading. Turn those cards over (if you’ve written the readings on the back like I do), and test yourself to now write all those characters from memory, based on the reading. Until I can do that, I don’t consider the character (or compound) mastered.

In a little over two weeks of my project, I’ve already created at least a couple hundred flashcards. I’m now at the point where I need a “system” so that the kanji I mastered last week doesn’t fly away from my brain this week. M-san of Nippon Daze and Hajimemashou has what sounds like a good method (admittedly I have yet to put it into practice myself).

I’m using several books at the moment to assist me in my Kanji “project,” including:

* Doraemon kokugo omoshiro kouryaku utatte kakeru shougaku kanji 1006 (published by Shogakukan), which displays all the 1006 kanji Japanese youth need to learn in grade school, organized by grade. There are several books of this type readily available at any Japanese bookstore (and perhaps overseas at Kinokuniya stores and the like?). I find this one, aside from being irresistably kawaii (cute), to have good tips on how to write each kanji (focusing on stroke order, balance, and using the correct stroke endings — eg. does the stroke employ a little flourish at the end (hane) or come to a complete stop (tome)), and it also provides the all important list of select words using each kanji.

* The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary edited by Jack Halpern. This book covers all 1,945 Joyo kanji, plus the 285 characters in the official Jinmei Kanji (for names). I love this book, in no small part due to it’s very attractive design. The SKIP method it employs for kanji look-up is somewhat laborious to get used to, but once that is overcome it makes looking up kanji a very quick process (it also expediates stroke counting and becoming familiar with the main radicals). Theres a wealth of information on each kanji (I particularly like the frequency index, which is based on a year’s worth of Japanese newspapers), but what really is useful is that most entries are loaded with examples of other words that employ the character, which helps me and my “project” immensely. About the only drawback I can think of with respect to this dictionary is that it uses romanized Japanese throughout.

* Shin Nihongo no Kiso Japanese Kanji Workbook II. This is just a workbook I selected pretty much at random, and there are others out there (Bojinsha’s Basic Kanji series is one). Each two pages the book introduces 7 or 8 individual characters, with another two pages testing one’s reading and writing of these (and other) characters. I didn’t really want to proceed with my kanji learning in a straight line (eg. from Grade 1 to Grade 6, in that order), but jump around, and make connections on my own. The above workbook serves that trick quite nicely.

One of my teachers described me as a kanji otaku, or kanji freak. This post may make that sound like a true statement, but I don’t really think I am. I do however find kanji to probably be the most appealing aspect of the language to me (and the most frustrating, to be sure), which probably relates to my art background, and back to my first Japanese learning experience, in 9th grade, where we used sumi-e to draw out various characters. But what keeps me motivated beyond proficiency exams is the hope that one day I may be able to read Soseki Natsume or Oe Kenzaburo novels in the original, or peruse the various Shukan Weeklies that line Japan’s convience store shelves. At that point I might then be able to say “I’ve arrived.”