#kanji talk

[yodaprod]

Macintosh Kanji Talk 7.5 (1995)

Macintosh 漢字Talk 7.5 (1995年)  

[taison]

Why Kanji?

The first question I think all of us had on the topic of kanji was “but why does Japanese use this clunky alphabet” literally why, there’s thousands of these characters and they look like a pain to write. And movements has come and gone on wheter or not to keep kanji, some of these movements have even been ideologically motivated. Jay Rubin in his book Making Sense of Japanese was rather dismissive of Kanji and by making the bold statement that he thinks “kanji have nothing to do with grammar or sentence structure or thought patterns or the Japanese world view, and they are certainly not the Japanese language” he made a fair reason to why he wouldn’t set aside time to explain it. And I’m not going to argue with him too hard here, because doesn’t he have a point? A child will be perfectly decent fluent masters of the language before they even learn kanji, so if you’re primarily learning through spoken conversation or through listening then kanji will probably be low on your priority list because you’re already efficiently learning! So what’s the point?

Researching arguments on why kanji should stay or be abolished I can say I’m kinda left at a 50/50 because yeah, everything kanji supposedly exists to clear up you will have no problem conveying when speaking. But mostly I find learners discussing this topic to be kind of trite because most of the learner arguments for abolismnent come from people who seem to be making points that are convenient and logical from their linguistic and cultural (or personal) perspective. Like both native chinese speakers and Japanese speakers have historically felt similarly that chinese characters can be more complicated than they need to be which led to the invention of kana in japan hundreds of years ago and huge simplifying overhauls of the alphabet both in China and Japan in recent history, Korea has even mostly done away with their usage of chinese characters! And in practice speakers of Japanese will freely pick and choose when to even use them!

It can also go deeper when discussing the thought of no more kanji we have to remember this writing system is steeped into the culture, by phasing out Kanji completely won’t that put the written cultural heritage in risk of becoming inaccessible? This is not something I will claim to be qualified to speak on so instead I will get into what persoanlly made me a believer: it comes back to how this system just makes sense when you get used to it. It conveys information at a glance, when you reach a certain level then skimming through text is unbelievably easy, from a literary perspective its so playful in a way languages utilizing the roman alphabet wishes it could be. Rather than an obstacle imagine its the longest flight of stairs you will ever climb and on the way up you will notice the ways everyone makes it as convenient to climb as possible. Like kanji has a free for all usage hingeing on things like efficiency (being able to cram as much information as possible in the least amount of space, or at a glance), an aesthetic one (simply saying “I just don’t like how that word looks written with kanji” is reasonable grounds to just write it in kana), to remove ambiguity (japanese is a homonym maze), and maybe u just want to make puns (japanese being a homonym maze makes it the dad joke dream!) Basically kanji usage is kinda related to convenience, and in the age of computers and predictive text writing kanji (and looking them up) is easier than ever so why make the added effort to get rid of it? And I haven’t even gotten into how for us learners it makes learning and remembering vocabulary easier down the road!

At the end of the day I don’t think there is a right answer to “should kanji stay” because first of all: not our (the learner’s) call to make, and second of all the reasons why its stuck are really good, the more kanji you know the more you will probably find yourself leaning into the “kanji is pretty handy, it should stay” camp. And don’t use this debate to wiggle your way out of the that fact that you need to be open to learn kanji to learn japanese. Especially if your reason to learn involves the need to be literate. Its as simple as that at the end of the day. But don’t take this as me not being sympathetic to the kanji struggle, I know the sensation of hitting a passage with more than 2 kanji I’ve never seen before in my life and my eyes glazing over as i close whatever I was reading way too well.

Further reading: this interesting thread in a linguistics forum, a quick tofugu piece on why kanji is necessary, and a japanjunky piece on a bit of history and why even when just traveling knowing some kanji will be invaluable aaand an obligatory Cure Dolly video

[gftales]

Trip to the Ward Office

Still catching up with posts from a couple of days ago, so the tense is still off (today, tomorrow, etc.). Today I woke up early (as seems to be the case nowadays) and went to the Ward office to register my residence. It’s a Japanese law to register your residence at the nearest Ward Office within 14 days of being in your permanent address. I had a paper given by my dorm/apartment which had directions about the train line and station to get off at, a vague map with landmarks and an arrow, and a note that the office was on the second floor of the ward building. Turns out the map in front of the station exit and the map on the paper weren’t oriented the same way, so since I couldn’t see streets on The Vague Map, I ended up climbing up a super steep slope before realizing that I was going the wrong way… “I thought this was the way to get to the opposite side of the station… but the station is on my right and I don’t see a crossing and that’s a mountain in front of me...” I backtracked, took a left at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, and found the right street to go down. The ward office building was easy to find from there.

There were multiple buildings and multiple entrances, so I dawdled a bit in the square between the buildings before entering through some doors-- turns out I entered into a hallway of a hospital section?? I saw the kanji for child (kodomo 子供) and hospital (byouin 病院) amongst other kanji on the map, mothers coming in with infants on their backs, a mom picking up her kid a little ways down the hall, a poster of a pair of doctors, and the unmistakable smell of antiseptic. So, I exited and picked another door which led to a more business-looking reception area. Right up the stairs there was the sign for Residency Registration. It looked like at a hospital or the Department of Motor Vehicles (or Department of Public Safety)-- counters, and waiting chairs, neutral grey-ish colors and an island for paperwork. There was a counter with the word “English Information,” and another counter which had a ticket number machine (the ones where you draw a number and go up to the counter once they call your number), so I kind of wandered between the area and a lady came up to me. She correctly guessed that I was a study abroad student (ryuugakusei 留学生) and patiently walked me through the paperwork--pointing out what to put on each line and saying where to write my name in katakana and where to write the formal kanji for America (B country* 米国). I could do both, but those who don’t know much (or any) Japanese shouldn’t freak out because I’m pretty sure if you say you can’t write it when they ask, they’ll do it for you (also, the kanji for your country is on your residency card or if you only have your passport they’ll probably write it for you). I also filled out a sheet for a Jouminhodou (copy of residency) and, after pulling a ticket number from this island paperwork counter we were at, she pointed me to the couch-ish chairs saying that they would call me up and I should give the papers to the cubicle worker.

The cubicle worker translated my English-written address into Japanese kanji and asked me where I was for the first day before I was in my residence (I wrote that I started living in Hiyoshi on Sept. 10, but my residency card issued at the airport says I arrived on the 9th).  “Hotel” was enough of an answer luckily because I didn’t have the address of the hotel written down with me-- although I suppose the e-mail on my phone would be enough if I needed it. So far he was speaking to me in Japanese and I was able to understand, but then he asked me if I needed National Health Insurance, and I forgot that word, so I could only awkwardly duck my head in a bow and apologize because 分かりません(I don’t understand). And I was doing so well, too…

He explained “National Health Insurance…” so after responding “yes, I need it” in Japanese (はい、いります), he did a flurry of paper-lifting, copy checking, and pointed me over to that first counter I saw with the ticket-number machine. He said in English that “there would be printed on the back of card” and pointed me to the counter at the end of the row of cubicles for (presumably) picking up the residency paperwork and card.

Another lady caught me stupidly staring at the ticket number machine (“do I need to type anything into that screen? What are those buttons? Do I just take a ticket--no fancy procedure?) and pulled a ticket for me (“Oh, that’s it. No fancy procedure, wow I feel dumb.”). She was just barely explaining that I would go up when called, when I was called and she passed me to the young guy behind the counter with the word “Ryuugakusei.”

Apparently it would have saved time if I brought my passport, but that copy of the info I filled out was enough. Part way through him typing up stuff, I pulled out the handy paper Keio provided (with phrases in English and Japanese like “I would like to request a copy of my residency paperwork…” and “I moved to Japan in September... a Keio University student...blah blah need National Health Insurance… no income in previous year, so I would like to apply for a special premium discount blah blah etc.”) and he immediately understood and typed more stuff in. He gave me the information packet for the NHI in both English and Japanese and explained in English that the NHI card would be sent out on Monday, so I should have it on Tuesday or Wednesday. It only took maybe 5 minutes tops.

I wandered a bit more (a common theme already) and another lady came up to me and asked if I bought a stamp--apparently you don’t pay cash for the Residency paper copy, you buy a stamp worth the 300 yen and present that at the counter. She walked me through which buttons to press and then explained that my number would be displayed on a screen instead of over a cubicle like previously. A little more waiting, a bit of confusion over what counter was the right one (“The one where those other girls went before? The one with the lady? People are always a safe bet--let’s go with the lady--sorry Gladys”), and I received my original Residency Card along with an envelope containing my Residency Registration paper, and a copy of the paper. The back of my Residency Card now has my address printed on it, so that’s pretty cool-- I’ll need that to get a cellphone plan/SIM card/new cellphone and a bank account.

*The thing about America= B country in formal kanji might need a bit of explaining. Before katakana was widely used to transliterated foreign words into Japanese-approximated pronunciation, Japan used kanji with similar sounds to make the word. I can't remember the full kanji writing for "America," but basically it’s shortened to just 米国 (pronounced in modern Japanese as Bei kuni) or "uncooked rice country." There's no real reason behind the choice of kanji used for its sound, so the meaning's irrelevant.  

Next: Part II: getting the student’s PASSMO card, orientation #2, and adventures around Tokyo and Hiyoshi

A.K.A “Reasonably expensive…” “Fun classroom activities” “Where are we?” “Let’s eat Ramen!” and “I don’t remember seeing this river near our dorm…”