This is a sign that is quite common especially in the busier areas of big cities like Tokyo.

There are certain places where you are not allowed to cross, and the arrow indicates the next part of the street where you are allowed to cross the road safely.

Kanji Breakdown

横断 (おう-だん) – Crossing
禁止 (きん-し) – Prohibit/Ban/Forbib

This is a good example of where just knowing one basic kanji eg 止 (stop) can come in very handy. Don’t be bothered about not knowing the other three kanji just yet as they are N2 and N3 level so you’ll get those later if you’re just starting off.

You might look at the sign and get confused by the four kanji in its entirety but break it down one by one until you identify the kanji you know and take it from there.

Obviously this sign is fairly obvious in its meaning but at least if you know (止) then you will know to stop and follow the arrow.

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A series that I have found useful is ふぁんた時間. The site provides free, high quality readings of Japanese stories (and others) that can be streamed online or downloaded as an mp3 and played anywhere.

On the main audio page you’ll find a bunch of Japanese stories.

Each of the different stories has a few coloured buttons – the blue iTunes button links to a paid interactive storybook app (iPhone, iPad and Android), the green button links to a short Youtube video digest of the story and the yellow button links directly to the mp3 file.

All the files used to be available to subscribe to as a podcast but unfortunately that seems to be no longer around. If you use iTunes (or any other mp3 app), just download each mp3 and add them in to iTunes as you normally would with your music. I play them in the background while I am working to make sure I am listening to Japanese as much as I can.

In the menu on the left of the page are several coloured stars, which will take you to more audio and video stories. The green star has fairytales from around the world including Peter Rabbit and Little Red Riding Hood.

Here’s an example video to get you started. The rest of the videos are available to watch here

BTW – If these are too fast for you – search on Google for “slow down mp3″ and you’ll find heaps of apps where you can load up mp3′s that can then be played back at half or three-quarter speeds. These work great for when you are shadowing too.

Have fun!

ふぁんた時間　ごんぎつね　ダイジェスト版

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Click here for a full size image →

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If you have any interest in Japan or just the perfection of one’s chosen craft then I urge you to watch Jiro Dreams Of Sushi.

The DVD and Blu-Ray are available at Amazon or check your local retailer.

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi Trailer

About The Film

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi is the story of 85-year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world’s greatest sushi chef.

He is the proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, sushi-only restaurant inauspiciously located in a Tokyo subway station.

Despite its humble appearances, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a prestigious three-star Michelin Guide rating, and sushi lovers from around the globe make repeated pilgrimage, calling months in advance and shelling out top dollar for a coveted seat at Jiro’s sushi bar.

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family, and the art of perfection, chronicling Jiro’s life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world and as a loving yet complicated father.

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The film was released in Japan on July 16, 2011 and became the highest-grossing Japanese film of the year. It will hit theatres in the US in early 2013.

The DVD and Blu-Ray was released in Japan last month so check out sites such as JList, YesAsia and Amazon Japan to get your hands on the DVD or Blu-Ray early.

I got the Blu-Ray version and it looks amazing! Hope you enjoy the movie as much as I did.

Official Plot

The story is set in 1963 in Yokohama.

Kokuriko Manor sits on a hill overlooking the harbour. A 16 year-old girl, Umi, lives in that house. Every morning she raises a signal flag facing the sea. The flag means “I pray for safe voyages”. A 17 year-old boy, Shun, always sees this flag from the sea as he rides a tugboat to school.

In preparation for next year’s Tokyo Olympics, people are destroying the old and believing only in the magnificence of the new. In that time, at a high school in Yokohama, a small struggle occurred. The building of the Culture Club, nicknamed Quartier Latin, is old but full of history and memories.

Should it be destroyed or preserved? In the middle of this, Umi and Shun meet. Shun appeals to the students who want to protect the building. Umi suggests a big clean up of the building to show its good parts.

Gradually the pair are drawn to each other but they are faced with a sudden trial. They may be siblings. Even so, they keep going without running from reality. Then, in the middle of the battle and the aftermath, they come to know how their parents met, loved and lived.

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More about Geta from Wikipedia:

Geta (木屐/下駄) are a form of traditional Japanese footwear that resemble both clogs and flip-flops. They are a kind of sandal with an elevated wooden base held onto the foot with a fabric thong to keep the foot well above the ground. They are worn with traditional Japanese clothing such as kimono or yukata, but (in Japan) also with Western clothing during the summer months.

Sometimes geta are worn in rain or snow to keep the feet dry, due to their extra height and impermeability compared to other footwear such as zōri. They make a smilar noise to Flip-flops slapping against the heel whilst walking, but the disadvantage of flip-flops when worn on wet or dirt is that they will flip the dirt or water up the back of the legs. This does not tend to happen with the heavier Japanese Geta.

There are several different styles of geta. The most familiar style in the West consists of an unfinished wooden board called a dai (台, stand) that the foot is set upon, with a cloth thong (鼻緒, hanao) that passes between the big toe and second toe. As geta are usually worn only with yukata or other informal Japanese clothes or Western clothes, there is no need to wear socks. Ordinary people wear at least slightly more formal zōri when wearing special toe socks called tabi. Apprentice geisha, also called “maiko”, wear their special geta (see below) with tabi to accommodate the hanao.

The two supporting pieces below the base board, called teeth (歯 ha), are also made of wood, usually very light-weight kiri (桐, paulownia) and make a distinctive “clacking” sound while walking: カランコロン or karankoron. This is sometimes mentioned as one of the sounds that older Japanese miss most in modern life.

A traditional saying in Japanese translates as “You don’t know until you have worn geta.” This means roughly, “you can’t tell the results until the game is over.” Long before the 1970s and before platform shoes, Japanese women wore Geta sandals or clogs.

The reason for wearing these very high platform shoes were not for fashion, but for very practical reasons. If you are wearing a very expensive kimono that hangs all the way to your feet, you do not want to get mud on it when you walk outside. Geta are made of one piece of solid wood forming the sole and two wooden blocks underneath. These blocks may have a metal plate on the section that touches the ground in order to lengthen the life span of the Geta. A V-shaped thong of cloth forms the upper part of the sandal.

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Taken with a Sony NEX-5N and Voigtlander Ultron 28mm.

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Imagine getting all your Lego and putting it in the dryer and turning on the heat. Boom, an hour later, your Lego is now the size of nanoblocks. These things are seriously small!

When I was last in Japan, I bought the Tokyo Skytree and the Electric Guitar.

The guitar is so much easier to put together but the Skytree is one heck of a nice looking building and rather than stretching 634 metres (2,080 ft) into the air, this version stands at a handy 27cm and will fit nicely on your desk.

I’ve included a few shots from my Tokyo Skytree nanoblocks package below plus a video I found of someone putting it all together.

Check out more nanoblocks on Amazon or ask around your local toy retailers – someone should have them in stock in most major cities.

nanoblock Tokyo Skytree

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It’s important to note that there is no perfect way – if you can learn and retain 2000 kanji, who cares how you did it!

Kanji Pictographix – Front Cover

Kanji Pict-O-Graphix focusses on a method that involves the use of mnemonics – short stories about each kanji that you attach to each kanji in your memory and then recall them as needed. Read my article on mnemonics here →.

There is no particular order to the kanji as per the JLPT but they are logically grouped by chapters such as World, Food, Animals, People and Body. Within a chapter such as Body, the kanji are further divided in to sub-groups including Body, Flesh and Bone, Skin, Heart, Love, Eye.

Alongside mnemonics, the book also makes use of pictographs.

As described in the introduction of the book, kanji originally developed from pictures used by the Chinese several thousand years ago to represent the world around them. Some types of kanji have retained their pictographic forms and look very much like the objects they represent.

Kanji such as 川 (River), 山 (Mountain), 門 (Gate) and 木 (Tree) are perfect examples of kanji that mirror their physical meaning in appearance.

You can read more about kanji pictographs in Ken Henshall’s excellent “A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters” – find it Amazon or at your local bookstore.

The type of learning featured in Kanji Pict-O-Graphix is not for everyone – reviews of the book are often polarised for this reason.

It makes complete sense to me and has served me well but some people find the stories and pictures just don’t cut it for them.

In this case, rote learning (e.g. simple repetition) may work better for you. However, I suggest giving it a good try and not giving up too quickly as I am sure you will find this method very useful in memorising the kanji.

Below is a selection of images that give an overview of how the book looks inside – check out Amazon for more about the book and customer reviews.

Kanji Pictographix Gallery

Includes a short Kana mnemonics section

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