Her bag is packed and she is ready to go
she had a good time in Tokyo
she hung out in temples in Kyoto
she lets her home fans see via a skype call that she can now clap hands
Monday, July 21
Amelia Grace Goes to Japan
Her bag is packed and she is ready to goshe had a good time in Tokyo
she hung out in temples in Kyoto
she lets her home fans see via a skype call that she can now clap hands
Amelia Grace had a triumphant tour
We learned the word KawaIEE ('very cute')- that's the greeting that AGO'D got everywhere she went. KawaIEE sounds like Kawai which means scary - this makes sense of course - Japanese Cute can be very scary indeed.
Amelia and her Dad just blend in with the Japanese - always taking photos
Ameila flys over Shinjuku
Friday, May 23
Shinjuku - let me count the ways: 2/Two
Golden Gai is a warren of alleys that contains a precious grid of tightly wedged low 2-storey buildings - each and every one of them is a small or tiny bar. Golden Gai opens for business after nightfall. The premises may or may not be indicated by a small square neon sign. The bar might be big enough to seat five at the counter, or there may be standing room for twelve. Stairs as steep as those on a small boat take you the bars overhead. Customers and the bartender are more intimate than family, they laugh together as friends.
Golden Gai is an odd island: to land there you have to navigate your way down tall Shinjuku blocks with a nose for where the district might lie and you must keep a sharp eye out for an unmarked narrow alley that will take you in on the west or via another on the south side. Or you might wander through the eerie darkness of the large Hanazono Shrine, its avenue of red Tori gates, random altars, its balcony of steps and various statues of foxes, (revered as kami - divine spirits), will gaze at your trespass. If you can keep the faith and cross through the compound you might be able to stumble on the alley that runs down the east of Golden Gai.
Once you are there you will be almost surrounded by the cliffs of the backs of tall city blocks but you will be free to patrol up and down the cocoon of alleys and wonder what it would be like to belong to one of the bars.
Golden Gai is an odd island: to land there you have to navigate your way down tall Shinjuku blocks with a nose for where the district might lie and you must keep a sharp eye out for an unmarked narrow alley that will take you in on the west or via another on the south side. Or you might wander through the eerie darkness of the large Hanazono Shrine, its avenue of red Tori gates, random altars, its balcony of steps and various statues of foxes, (revered as kami - divine spirits), will gaze at your trespass. If you can keep the faith and cross through the compound you might be able to stumble on the alley that runs down the east of Golden Gai.
Once you are there you will be almost surrounded by the cliffs of the backs of tall city blocks but you will be free to patrol up and down the cocoon of alleys and wonder what it would be like to belong to one of the bars.
Monday, May 12
Learning Japanese: Word/World Power
The day did not start out well. I had gone to the bookstore to pick up my Hanko - my official Japanese name stamp. I need it to verify all official documents and I have to have it in order to set up a bank account. My Hanko looked cool - a neat and slender black lacquer stamp. I also bought the mandatory red ink pad - in a small black case - I had a little black drawstring bag to carry them. I went to my office and tried out my new Hanko - marking a page with neat red squares containing my name in Katakana script.
Katakana is one of 3 Japanese scripts - it is used exclusively to spell out foreign words. Kanji is their highest order script - it's a system of pictorial ideograms used to symbolise words and concepts, you need to know at least 4,000 of these symbols to make sense of a Japanese newspaper. A basic Japanese education involves learning 20,000 Kanji. Hiragana is the Japanese script that is used to modify Kanji in various ways - it is syllabic - more like our idea of an alphabet.
I slowly worked out what the Katakana symbols of my Hanko spelt: o - ton -ru: it dawned on me that my lovely O'Donnell surname had been rendered -o-ton-ru. I was surprised how disappointed I was. Jonathan Swift knew about Japan (largely from enjoying the outrageous travel writings of a bogus fraud) and I suspect he had a good swipe at the Kanji system in Gulliver's Travels - where fellows carry ever-expanding loads of symbols that they pull out from backpacks in order to make themselves understood. It's always a bad day for me when I feel an affinity with Swift. I could feel a curious indignant pitch rise in me - call it tribal - I wished I had let whoever had done this know that they might have forgotten Katakana and given me Kanji symbols - O'Donnell is from Domhan Ail - picture World Power please.
Katakana is one of 3 Japanese scripts - it is used exclusively to spell out foreign words. Kanji is their highest order script - it's a system of pictorial ideograms used to symbolise words and concepts, you need to know at least 4,000 of these symbols to make sense of a Japanese newspaper. A basic Japanese education involves learning 20,000 Kanji. Hiragana is the Japanese script that is used to modify Kanji in various ways - it is syllabic - more like our idea of an alphabet.
I slowly worked out what the Katakana symbols of my Hanko spelt: o - ton -ru: it dawned on me that my lovely O'Donnell surname had been rendered -o-ton-ru. I was surprised how disappointed I was. Jonathan Swift knew about Japan (largely from enjoying the outrageous travel writings of a bogus fraud) and I suspect he had a good swipe at the Kanji system in Gulliver's Travels - where fellows carry ever-expanding loads of symbols that they pull out from backpacks in order to make themselves understood. It's always a bad day for me when I feel an affinity with Swift. I could feel a curious indignant pitch rise in me - call it tribal - I wished I had let whoever had done this know that they might have forgotten Katakana and given me Kanji symbols - O'Donnell is from Domhan Ail - picture World Power please.
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