Kanji | Kanji
Mar.23.2012
Because kanji appeals to people around the world, there's a good chance you're not from the United States. If that's the case, you may not know how crazy things have become here politically. In some circles, politicians are trying to score points by coming out against birth control and by calling...
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Mar.16.2012
I told you last week that I had an uplifting talk with Len Brackett. A hero of mine, he lived in Japan for seven years, learning the fine art of temple carpentry. He now builds Japanese-style houses in California, infusing them with all that he learned as an apprentice in Kyoto.
"Yes,...
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Mar.09.2012
Just about the only downside to all my kanji writing is that I have little human contact these days. I do find tremendous amounts of stimulation when I immerse myself in each character, but there's something about the unpredictability of talking to another person that can't be equaled.
Ah, the...
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Mar.02.2012
A Facebook friend posted that he has gone running for 425 days straight, logging in a whopping 4,463 miles. In response, his Japanese friend wrote this comment:
素晴らしい継続力ですね。Wonderful ability to stick to it!
素晴らしい (すばらしい: wonderful); 継続力 (けいぞくりょく: stick-to-it-ness)
The word 継続力 arrested me, and...
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Feb.24.2012
Nearly every time I start writing a kanji essay, I feel stuck, and I see no way out. I'm armed with a collection of compounds to cover, several of them fascinating in their own right. But when I take them as a whole, they sometimes seem flat and lifeless on the page. Over and over I ask myself,...
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Feb.18.2012
Last weekend my husband and I had a houseguest, an American who has lived in rural Japan for 20 years (in a valley filled with monkeys!).
I barely knew anything about Richard before he arrived. He's a friend of a friend on Facebook, and I've had little contact with the person who connects us. But...
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Feb.10.2012
Knowing that Jack Halpern is a whiz with a unicycle, I was amused to find this listing in his Kanji Learner's Dictionary under 歴:
一輪車歴 (いちりんしゃれき: one's experience as a unicyclist)
unicycle (1st 3 kanji) + experience
He must have...
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Feb.07.2012
If you sought kanji with which to make gender distinctions, what would you use? My mind would naturally go to these two:
男 (54: male, man)
女 (35: female, woman)
These characters can indeed serve that purpose, but they don't always mean what you might think. Moreover, some other pairs of...
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Feb.03.2012
I've just posted essay 1513 on 双 (pair), which will have you seeing double, given its focus on two-of-a-kind things. Here's one example:
Photo Credit: Sui Feng
Osaka schoolgirls.
If seeing double excites you, how about kanji "triples"? On page 53 of my 2009 book ...
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Jan.31.2012
In my last JOK Notebook entry I presented 樹雨 (きさめ: precipitation resulting from thick fog condensing on leaves). That word begins with 樹 (888: tree, timber tree, stand of trees), a kanji I've recently encountered an eerie number of times.
For instance, I've been...
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