Study Break

今晩は！　皆さん元気ですか？　今アイスクリームを食べて、日本語を勉強します。　3級漢字を勉強します。　ちょっと難しいです、でも頑張ります！

Having trouble reading that? Don't have Japanese text support on your computer? Well allow me to translate:
Konbanwa! Minna-san genki desu ka? Ima aisu kuriimu wo tabete, nihongo wo benkyou shimasu. San kyuu kanji wo benkyou shimasu. Chotto muzukashii desu, demo ganbarimasu!

Does that make it any easier? No? Okay, how about this:

Good evening! How is everyone? Right now, I'm eating ice cream and studying Japanese. I'm studying 3-kyuu kanji. It's somewhat difficult, but I'll do my best!

Now let me explain a little about what I'm studying here. First off, I'll start with explaining kanji. Kanji are the characters the Japanese language borrowed from the Chinese. They're easily identified because they are the most complicated-looking of Japan's 3 alphabets. Kanji are used to make up... most words in their language and roughly 2000 of them are used in your basic Japanese newspaper.

There are two other alphabets the Japanese use: hiragana - the curvy, rounder characters that mainly make up grammatical words/particles, and katakana/kana - the boxy, but simplistic characters mainly used for writing words borrowed from other languages (like "ice cream"). Of these two alphabets, there are about 46 characters each and they are the easiest to learn.

If the text I wrote up top looks like a bunch of squares to you, here's a picture to illustrate what I'm talking about:

(That sentence says "I drink coffee," by the way. I don't actually drink coffee, but that's beside the point.)

Okay, now that you know what kanji are, let me explain what "3-kyuu" means.

For the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (henceforth known as the JLPT), there are 4 levels, with 4 being the lowest or easiest and 1 being the most difficult, considered incredibly difficult for all but the most fluent speakers. Each level of the JLPT has a set of kanji that it tests you on (amongst other things like listening, reading and grammar). Here's (roughly) the breakdown:

• JLPT 4: 103 kanji
• JLPT 3: 284 kanji
• JLPT 2: 1023 kanji
• JLPT 1: 1926 kanji

I'm currently trying my luck with the 3-kyuu (or level 3) kanji. There are some I know, some I can recognize but can't remember the meaning of, and some I don't even think I've seen before. It's a good challenge~

Now that you're probably completely bored, I guess I'll update you on how the trip planning is coming along.

Well today I helped Cinnamon register for a race. ...I think. It was pretty tricky, since the whole page was in Japanese, but I'm pretty sure we got it, haha! I believe it's the 48th annual Tamagawa River "health marathon" commemorating the opening of the "Gasu" bridge. It's an 8k and is taking place June 15th at 10am. She'll probably drag me out of bed to go watch her run and take pictures, but she gets a t-shirt for it and that's really all she wanted. So wish her luck!

Other than that, I do believe maybe tomorrow I'll - or rather we'll - finally purchase our JR passes, since the dollar's up a bit against the yen (currently at 103). There's not much else left to do aside from book some hostels and rent a phone. And thank god, because we've only got 45 days left to go! Woo~

Itinerary

I went and took a picture of all the books and whatnot we've been consulting in planning this trip, which encompasses everything from basic travel guides to language books and train timetables and pamphlets and notebooks I've written things in and scrawled itineraries on. If I could put all the websites I've gotten information from in this picture, it would be gigantic.

So on that note, after all the research we've done, here's a list of the places we intend to visit while we're in the country. We'll be spending 8 of our 10 weeks in Tokyo, but for two weeks, we plan on traveling about to see (possibly in this order):

• Kyoto
• Kobe
• Hiroshima
• Miyajima Island
• Fukuoka
• Nagasaki
• Beppu
• Himeji Castle
• Osaka
• Sapporo
• Daisetsu-zan National Park

Also, I think we're making a day trip to Nikko too. And we plan on climbing Mt. Fuji. (If nothing else, we're ambitious, hahaha!) It's a lot of places and we'll spend quite a bit of time on the train (especially to get to Sapporo, which takes about 13 hours on an overnight train!) but I know it'll totally be worth it.

One interesting little footnote: Miyajima Island is considered sacred and as such, no one is allowed to die or give birth on the island. Felling trees is also prohibited. Ever see this red torii gate on the water? That's on Miyajima Island at Itsukushima Shrine. Pretty, isn't it?

Still Planning!

So~ it's 3am (I know, I know, guys) and I just finished fancying up my new blog here so you guys can check up on me and Cinnamon while we're in Japan. But right now, as we're still 53 days away from leaving, I don't really think I have anything interesting to say, nor any pictures to post.

We have our plane tickets and our reservations are set for where we'll be staying (Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo), but we still need to finalize the dates we'll be leaving Tokyo to explore other areas of the country, book some hostels and buy our JR passes. (JR stands for Japan Railways and is the company that provides high speed "bullet" train service between cities in Japan. They also run a lot of local trains, too, and this pass will keep us from having to pay any train fares on JR lines for a period of 2 weeks.)

All in all, we don't have a whole lot left to do, but it's best to get it out of the way early, I suppose. I'll be sure to keep you updated on that, since it's oh so interesting. For now, it's bedtime~