わたしのらいしゅう

わたしはらいしゅうのもくようびにひこうこでAtlantaへいきます。それからともだちとあいます。わたしのともだちはAtlantaからきました。わたしもうAtlantaへいきました。Atlanta はおもしろいです、があまりにぎやかません。Atlanta のちかてつはやすいです、があまりべんりません。Atlanta のレストランはやすい、があまりおいしいくねいです(except for BBQ places).

Don't get me wrong -- I don't hate Atlanta, it's just that my Japanese skills won't allow me to express my feelings accurately. What I want to say is that Atlanta really wants to be LA, and I don't think that's a good thing to aspire to.

Hoooo!

I'm a serious artist.

わたしは２００３ねんににほんへいきました. Here are a few of my totally artistic photos:

This was sitting on top of a random sign near a bridge in Hida-Takayama. Whoever put it there was obviously an avant garde figurine-placement artist.

They have pirate ships on the lake in Hakone. Too bad it's nearly impossible to take a photo of one without a bunch of people in it. I apologize for the lack of artistic merit in this one.

If you're wondering what happened to the goth scene, go to Harajuku in Tokyo.

There's a lot of sake at Tokugawa Ieyasu's house in Nikko.

An entire table full of things I wouldn't eat. Still, it looked pretty artistic, so I took the photo. Kyoto.

A painting I liked at Himeiji Castle. I, being an artist, am totally an authority on good paintings.

Mist on the river on the way to Hida-Takayama. Please excuse the reflection from the train window, which I know detracts from the artisticness of the whole thing.

Something I ate in Hida-Takayama. I'm sure the chef went out of his way to make it look artistic. I can spot that sort of thing.

わたしはAndaman Islandsへいきます。

Pardon me for sounding like a dork. I need to practice with something that my limited Japanese skills will allow for, so I'm going to describe what I plan to do in December (go to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal) in a few different ways.

わたしはじゅうがつにじゅうにさんにちにAndaman Islandsへいきます。
わたしはともだちとAndaman Islandsへいきます。
わたしはひこうきでAndaman Islandsへいきます。
わたしはじゅうにがつにじゅうさんにちともだちとひこうきでAndaman Islandsへいきます。

によたいもり

Don't ask me why, but I was watching MTV a few weeks ago and I saw something really ridiculous. There is some show on that channel called From G's to Gents that is supposed to be a contest between 14 "gangsters" to see who can become the most refined gentleman (kind of a funny concept, right?). In one of the episodes, the guys learn about table manners, then go to a "business dinner" with three Japanese men. They go into this room where a naked woman is lying on a table covered in sushi, and the three Japanese men tell the guys that eating sushi off of a naked woman is a "Japanese tradition." They then sit around and eat sushi, discussing life and whatnot, all while trying to ignore the naked woman lying right in front of their faces. It was really bizarre.

I looked it up. It's called nyotaimori, or "female body presentation," but it's not a Japanese tradition as far as I can tell. It does seem to be becoming a reality TV trend (apparently it's been featured on several other shows), but the only information source I could find about the practice in Japan claimed only gangsters were into it.

Is it just me, or is using a naked woman as a sushi plate a little offensive/unsanitary/weird?

わたしの schedule this week

げつようび：わたしははちじにおきました、ごぜんくじからごごじゅういちまでべんきょうしました。わたしはじゅういちにねました。
かようび：わたしはななじにおきました、はちじからにじまでべんきょうしました。わたしは二次から五時まで歩きました、護持から十一時勉強しました、午後十一時半に寝ました。
すいようび：わたしははちじにおきました。わたし白磁から十一時までベンきょします、じゅういちにねます。
木曜日：わたしは八時に起きます、くじから八時までべんきょうします、ごごじゅういちじにねます。
金曜日：わたしは八時に起きます、くじからごごじゅうじべんきょうします。
Ugh.

About me

I'm studying Japanese because I'm a graduate student in pre-modern Chinese history, and a lot of scholarship on pre-modern China has been done in Japan. It's required that we take Japanese for three years so that we can read Japanese scholarship relevant to our projects. I would also like to be able to speak Japanese so that I can communicate with Japanese scholars and travel in Japan.

So far I find writing hiragana a little difficult, mainly because the characters are shaped differently from roman and Chinese characters and are difficult to write quickly.