Japanese Language...

Today (Wed 11/11) was our first day of language classes at Kyoto University. We enrolled in both a Kanji class and a language class. Both classes had already met for one month, so we figured we'd have some catching up to do. It turns out there is a lot to learn for us to be even somewhat functional here.

Kanji: The wonder (and horror) of the written word!
Our Kanji class started at the painful hour of 8:45am. (Yes, I am getting spoiled sleeping in these days.) I really like the idea that Kanji are pictures to represent ideas, especially when the character bears resemblance to the idea. However, each Kanji character has multiple readings and most characters really cannot be likened to a picture. Jim and I really worried when we learned that the sign for man and woman, when put together was not couple or love, or family, but then must be read through the Chinese translation!(?) Yikes. Considering there are 2000 Kanji characters, I truly don't know how we can learn Kanji reasonably well in seven months.

I was okay following the book and learning the Kanji characters the lesson was introducing. In fact, it felt pretty good! That is until we got to the exercise that said, “Write the following Kanji in Hiragana.” Gulp. It is interesting that Jim and I thought that we would really just focus on oral language for communicating while we were here and figured that written language was more than we'd tackle. However, so few signs, bank letters, food labels, etc are translated to Romaji (the English alphabet) that it really is necessary to learn Hiragana and Katakana and at least some Kanji.

Japanese class...
Following the Kanji class we attended three hours of a beginning Japanese language class. Fortunately there was a lunch break in the middle, so the time passed surprisingly quickly. We expected to be completely lost since the class had already met for four sessions. Walking in we were given a paper to complete on which we had to translate into Hiragana. Gulp again. Further confirmation that I need to learn Hiragana! I wasn't sure if this was a quiz, but since it was our first day I didn't think we'd be graded. I saw another woman (with a head scarf—surely she was morally correct) looking at the Hiragana syllabary, so I opened my book and did the same. Of course, this action caused Jim to accuse me of cheating...Grrr. Anyway, it turns out that the class had focused on Hiragana and not speaking, so we are not behind in speaking. In fact, the Pimsleur language CDs we've been listening to daily mean we are actually quite a bit ahead in speaking. :) (Thanks for those CDs, Ross!)
I'm not sure if we'll go back to the class since it mostly consisted of the instructor saying words and having the class of 40 people say them back. It may not actually be worth the time, so we'll see what we decide next week.

It's not an alphabet!
Hiragana and Katana (collectively called “kana”) are syllabaries, not alphabets. This basically means that each symbol represents a syllable (usually 2-3 letters) rather than a single letter. This is fine with words that can directly translate. For example, there is a symbol for “sa” and one for “ra”, so my first name can be represented just fine with either kana. However, there is no “m” by itself, so Jim's name ends up being written as “ji” “mu”. (I guess that last vowel isn't pronounced, so it turns out okay.) The real problem is “Stapleton”. Double consonants are an issue in Japanese, so the name “Stapleton” is very problematic. In fact, when we finally got our cell phones this week, the poor guy helping us had no idea how to write “Stapleton” in kana. We gave him permission to make something up. I think the result is something like: “su” “te” “pu” “re” “to” “n”. Hee, hee. No wonder Japanese have trouble pronouncing our surname...