We spent a great Sunday at the Sanjia Festival (Matsuri) in Asakusa. Of course we had three cameras with us so that we can share our impressions with you. Maybe Mika will be so kind and write a comment about the tradition of this kind of festival :-)
Click on the link below to see the video! Pictures will follow asap.
Matsuri in Asakusa May 24, 2007
About short skirts… May 21, 2007
We told you about skirt size in Japan, didn’t we?
Well, summer has come… definitely.
You can tell by the way japanese “hip” ladies dress up.
(But what would King Smor think about that?)
Keitai-straps May 13, 2007
In a technologically advanced country like Japan, electronic devices like music-players or cellphones are getting smaller and thinner much faster than in the rest of the world. However, these efforts sometimes collide with the habits of people. In Japan, almost all people attach at least one strap to their keitai (cellphone), most attach a whole bunch of them, and some – well some people find it funny to carry a whole composition of fluffy comic characters, hello kittys and other weird figures around with them. Proof? – Let’s look at the picture below.
Crashkurs über japanische kanji – für alle, die es noch nicht wissen May 10, 2007
Wir sind bemüht, auf diesem Blog ein Gefühl dafür zu vermitteln, was es heisst, in Japan zu leben. Wir denken, die japanische Sprache sei für viele Leute ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln. Darum wollen wir heute zeigen, wie wir vorgehen, wenn wir japanische Schriftzeichen (“kanji”) lernen. Das Kanji-System ist (neben “Hiragana” und “Katakana”) eines von drei gebräuchlichen Schriftsystemen der japanischen Sprache. Es wurde vor tausenden von Jahren aus China importiert und ursprünglich von Piktogrammen abgeleitet. Heute benutzen sowohl China wie auch Japan die Kanji – jedoch ist die Aussprache jeweils vollkommen unterschiedlich. Im folgenden findet ihr eine kleine Erklärung darüber, wie wir Kanji lernen. Schaut auch das Bild ganz unten an um einen plastischen Eindruck zu erhalten:
Schritt 1:
Lernen, wie der Kanji geschrieben wird – Jeder Kanji hat eine ganz bestimmte Reihenfolge, wie er geschrieben wird. Wenn man einen Kanji mit einem Pinsel malt, können viele Japaner erkennen, ob er in der richtigen Reihenfolge geschrieben wurde. japaner sagen, dass die Strichfolge aus der Ergonomie des Schreibens abgeleitet wurden – dennoch sind viele Regeln für uns Ausländer schwer nachvollziehbar.
Schritt 2:
Lernen, wie der Kanji gelesen wird (und dadurch verstehen, was der Kanji alles bedeuteten kann). Die meisten Kanji haben mindestens zwei Lesearten: Die eine wird benutzt, wenn der Kanji allein im Text steht. Diese Leseart wird “japanische Leseart” oder “kun-yomi” genannt. Die zweite Leseart ist die sogenannte “chinesische Leseart” oder “on-yomi” (welche allerdings mit der wirklich chinesischen Leseart praktisch überhaupt nichts gemeinsam hat… komisch). Sie wird benutzt, wenn der Kanji zusammen mit anderen Kanji einen zusammengesetzten Ausdruck bildet. Von beiden Lesearten können mehrere Varianten vorkommen.
Schritt 3:
Lernen, wie der Kanji zusammen mit anderen als Komposition verwendet wird (viele einfachere Kanji können auch als sogenannte “Radikale” in anderen Kanji vorkommen, aber lassen wir das fürs nächste Mal…). Bei Kompositionen wird wie gesagt meist die “chinesische” Schreibweise verwendet.
雲取山 2-day trip to kumotoriyama May 5, 2007
Together with Ken san, whom we met some weeks ago in a convenience restaurant, we spent two marvellous days hiking in a mountain area close to Tokyo.
For those who are interested in geography: Kumotoriyama (kumo meaning “clouds”, tori meaning something like “to reach up, fetch, etc.”, and yama meaning “mountain”) is 2017 meter high and is situated at the western tip of tokyo prefecture, its peak actually already being located in saitama prefecture.
We took one of the earliest trains leaving tokyo to the west and reached Oktama after about two hours. Since it was “golden week” in Japan (referring to a series of national holidays, de facto a week off for the majority of the Japanese population), we shared the train with a LOT of hikers. Then, we started our ascent. It took us about 6 hours to get to the top of the mountain, where we planned to spend the night at a mountain refuge. When we arrived there, we were the last three persons to get a sleeping place at the already very crowded refuge. Lucky us! The refuge was a little hut (1 room) with a wooden floor and no infrastructure – but it was free to sleep there. As soon as we ate our pre cooked “chili con carne” we hit our sleeping bags, expecting a cold night. But since we were around 20 persons in a small hut, laying next to each other, it turned out to be quite hot…
Anyway, at 4am in the morning, everybody started to get nervous – because of the sunrise. As Japan doesn’t apply “daylight saving time” the sun rises at 4.50am at the beginning of may (to become earlier in summer). So we got up as well and enjoyed some miso-soup while looking at the sunrise. At 5am the sun was up and it was bright as in the afternoon – a strange feeling.
The second day we spent with the descent from the mountain. At 11am we had walked for 5 hours already and finally arrived at our destination.Below you find some impressions of our trip.
RUBBISH May 4, 2007
There is no littering in Tokyo. It is so clean, I like to say that you could eat everywhere sitting on the floor. Streets, Metro, Stations, Toilets…It is really amazing how clean it is. Once I saw a cigarette butt on the street, if I had a camera with me this day I would have taken a picture of it.
And how absurd sounds that?
There are no public bins in Tokyo! – Since the terrorism scares also japanese…there are no such convenient public constructions anymore. So do you know what japanese people do when there is no bin nearby? They carry their garbage until they go back home and put it in their own bin. Unbelievable!
A good example was our first visit in the Movie Theater.
We watched Spiderman 3 together with our friend Mika. The screening was sold out and I was wondering how bad the Cinema will look like afterwards. You probably all know that I have some experience with cleaning up sold out Cinemas. Especially when you have only 5 minutes left until the next screening starts. And I can tell that Swiss people do have NO manners at all inside a Cinema. – Not like that in Japan.
Please convince yourself with the picture below how well educated japanese people are…and that I am this time not exaggerating at all.
PS: after the screening a crew of 7 staff people entered the room to CLEAN UP!
