Typing

I was looking at the language selection for my mac laptop; however, I can't seem to find the Hiragana option. Does anybody have a powerBook G4? And are you able to type in Hiragana with it?

Kiku

I went to the Kiku exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden this weekend for my Japanese Civilization cultural report and it was definitely an eye opener! "Kiku" is Japanese for chrysanthemums and is the insignia of the Imperial family. At first, chrysanthemums were grown for medicinal purposes and are associated with muths of long life and health.

At the exhibition, the chrysanthemums came in all different varieties. There was “Ozukuri” (Thousand Bloom):




And “Ogiku” (Single Stem):



The final type of chrysanthemums at the exhibition was “Kengai” (Cascade):


This trip to the garden was an opportunity to appreciate the beauty of the Japanese cultivation of chrysanthemums, which were made possible by the long months of dedicated hard work of the horticulturists.

On an ending note, I would like to include my favorite photograph from the exhibition. This close up of a ozukuri blossom is already the wallpaper for my computer:

Composition

はじめまして．Veronica です。よろしく　おねがいします。わたしは　Columbia の　だいがくせ　です。あめりかじん　です。日本わ　きれい　です。　

Itadakimasu!

So over this weekend I was watching a Chinese cooking show, which invited a Japanese chef to cook. This Japanese chef was fluent in Cantonese and he was showing several fusion dishes. Anyways, before he sat down to try his own cooking, he sat down and clapped his hands and said "Itadakimasu"! And I was happy...

Learning Japanese through Korean and Chinese

Considering that they're all Asian languages, many people would say that knowing Korean and Chinese facilitates the learning process of Japanese. Certainly, some similarities between the languages do exist. For example, the Japanese days of the week, which are named by the Five Elements, are surprisingly similar to the Korean names for weekdays. Then, certain Japanese words, such as "toshokan", "taishikan", and "denwa", are pronounced in a manner similar to Cantonese.

However, Japanese is still incredibly different from Korean and Chinese. Although Hiragana actually evolved from traditional Chinese characters, Japanese writing has evolved over such a long period of time. As a result, the form and sound of Japanese Hiragana no longer bear apparent similarities to their corresponding Chinese origins. This makes the Japanese writing system difficult to learn, not only for people of other foreign descent, but also for people of Asian descent.

Learning Hiragana

Here's a series of Youtube videos that I found particularly helpful in memorizing Hiragana. Repetition really makes me learn the alphabet...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=us1B1RlDGmE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MzycYCEGfkQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8Z0BmoKgt_k
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tE3TvI-XFlg

Hope they help!

Writing Japanese

I'm trying to learn the Hiragana alphabet right now...and it's definitely a challenge! Although some of the words are derived from Chinese characters, Hiragana has evolved so much over the centuries that it makes it difficult to remember the strokes. But Japanese has the concept of phonetically building a word with letters. Hopefully, as long as I memorize the letters in the alphabet, I'll be able to write any sentence in Japanese!