Food and kanji

Recently my experiences of eating out have been uniformly positive. I've tried many new foods that I've enjoyed very much.

Last night, alas, was another one of the Evil Izakayas. There were a few tasty dishes, like kimchi pizza, and a kind of sizzling chicken and mushroom dish, but some others were simply unmentionable.

For example, one plate had lots of tiny, bite-sized pieces of fried chicken (well, it kind of looked like KFC - deep-fried batter). Yum, I thought. Then I bit into them. I don't know what part of the chicken it was, but I'm certain that at least 50% of it was cartilage again. It was very crunchy, in an 'oops, I shouldn't be eating this part of the animal' kind of way.

Another dish featured spicy intestine pieces with cream cheese. I hate cream cheese, and I can confidently say that I also hate intestine. (It kind of doesn't need to be said, does it?) Imagine putting a nice, wobbling, transparent piece of fat in your mouth, and chewing for five minutes trying to swallow it.

Another downer was the natto omelette. I'm sorry, but fermented soybeans are just not for me. The omelette was enough to enable me eat all my serving. I even said I liked it. (This was not true.) I don't want to seem like the fussy foreigner; I don't mind disliking one dish, but three or four... hahah... the worst part is that Jim seems to like pretty well every weird and horrible food item you can imagine!

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Because I am an incredibly sad person and language nerd, one thing I enjoy doing is looking up kanji.

Kanji are the Chinese-style characters used in the Japanese language. There are around 2000 of them in everyday use, and some of them are very complicated, with 10, 15, even 20 pen strokes in a single character...

Unlike English letters, kanji represent an idea rather than a sound. So you can have characters in Japanese that are spoken differently depending on what word they are in (for example there is a character, meaning 'great', which can be pronounced as 'dai', 'tai' or 'o', depending on the context). Also, a sound can be represented by many different kanji - for example the sound 'dai' could be represented by at least 14 different kanji...

So at first glance Japanese writing seemed completely impenetrable, something that would never, never mean anything to me. But very, very slowly I'm beginning to learn new kanji and recognise them. Today [aka, when I wrote this] on my train ride I amused myself looking up the kanji which make up place names.

For example:

'Omori' is made up of the characters for 'big' and 'forest'. (And the character 'forest' is made of a group of three of the character for tree!)

Tokyo is made up of the characters 'to' for 'east' (which is the same character as 'higashi' in 'Higashi-Kanagawa' - 'higashi' also means 'east') and 'kyo' for capital. So, Tokyo means 'eastern capital'. And the 'kyo' ('capital') in 'Tokyo' is the same character as the 'kyo' in 'Kyoto'. (the 'to' in 'Kyoto' also means 'capital', or 'metropolis'.) And Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan before Tokyo. Isn't that interesting? Well, I thought so...

It's interesting looking up the kanji sounds in a dictionary to see what other words they appear in. (And yes, as I said, I realise this makes me a very sad person...)

I looked up 'me', which means 'eye'. There are lots of other words that start with that kanji 'me', most of them directly or indirectly related to seeing (eg 'me o tousu' - 'look over')

Then I saw 'meshita', which means 'subordinate'. It's made of the characters for 'eye' and 'under' - someone below your gaze... likewise, 'meue' ('superior' or 'senior') is made of the kanji 'eye' and 'over' - someone above your eye level!

The word 'jidousha' ('car') is made up of the three kanji for 'oneself', 'move' and 'vehicle'. A vehicle you can move by yourself. It's a car!

The word 'otona' ('adult') is made up of two kanji - 'big' and 'person'. A big person - an adult!

Then, sometimes the design of the kanji themselves is interesting. More complex kanji will often incorporate other characters in themselves. For example:

'Calm' uses the character for 'woman' under some strokes that look like a roof. So 'calm' is represented by 'a woman under the home roof'.

The kanji for 'bright' is represented by the kanji for sun and moon.

The kanji for 'ask' or 'question', features the characters for 'mouth' and 'gate' - a mouth at the 'gate', asking a question...

Totemo omoshiroi desu ne? (So interesting, isn't it? Incidentally, the 'shiro' in 'omoshiroi' (interesting) is the same 'shiro' that means 'white'...)

When I first came to Japan I always wanted to learn Japanese - actually I've wanted to learn Japanese for years but lacked motivation, since I didn't think I'd ever use it - but never thought I would even try to learn kanji. No, since reading was impossible, I'd just focus on learning to speak and listen.

But now I think it would be stupid to limit myself and think 'I can't do it'. Okay, I know it would take years to learn all the 'everyday use' kanji. That doesn't mean I can't start now and learn what words I can in the time I do have. Plus, if I learn all the elements together, they complement each other. I can learn new vocabulary when I learn writing, for example. I can remind myself of words I learned every time I see those kanji, for example on the train.