50 years of Shinkansen

picture from wikipedia

The first Shinkansen, also known as ‘bullet-train’ celebrated its 50th birthday in October. The Tōkaidō line opened a few days before the 1964 Olympic games in Tōkyō, and its construction took 5 years. This oldest line runs between Tōkyō and Ōsaka, and it’s the first high speed train in the world. It is 515 kms long - today, the shinkansen network between major cities in Japan add up to 2388 kms, and there are continuous plans of expansion.

Started at the ‘slow’ pace of 200 km/h, the fastest train now is about 320 km/h. The journey on a bullet train between Tōkyō and Nagoya takes 1 hour 28 minutes, but with the new line which will operate with maglev technology, speed can reach up to 500 km/h, which means the journey time between these two cities will last only 40 minutes!

Since opening in 1964, shinkansen delays are under one minute, and there have been no fatalities - with over 10 billion passengers in 50 years. Including the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami catastrophe in the Tohoku region where a few shinkansen were operating at that time. The safest, the fastest and the most punctual transportation in Japan! (Or maybe in the whole world?!) Efficient and comfortable - spacious, forward-facing seats and relatively silent cars. It is quite expensive, operated by Japan Railways (JR), but if you’re a tourist, purchase a Japan Railpass before entering the country and you’ll have a big discount on using the shinkansen! Keep an eye out, because you may need a supplementary ticket or to reserve a seat.

Most of the lines run on Honshū and there’s a line on Kyūshū. However, if you’re willing to wait until spring 2016, you’ll be able to use the bullet trains to visit Hokkaidō, as well. It’ll use the Seikan tunnel, which is very exciting and I might just have to write a post about it in the future!

What shall be the next topic?

Sources: Japanese Embassy UK and japan-guide.com

Onsen

image by photoeverywhere

Before we start on the topic of onsen, I apologise for the delay in my posts. I’ve been having some technical difficulties with my laptop recently. It’s temporarily resolved for now, but updates might be infrequent, and I’m sorry about that.

Onsen means hot spring in Japanese. There are thousands of hot springs in Japan and most of them has establishments built around them: bathhouses, resorts, ryokans, etc. Japanese people have a way of appreciating nature, and most of these buildings complement the natural pools. There are indoor and outdoor pools, and the waters have different qualities, depending on the minerals in them. They have healing powers and there is a very developed bath culture in Japan. A soak in the onsen is for relaxing purposes.

There are a few things to keep in mind if you want to visit one:

• Onsen are not for cleansing. Before you enter the pool, there’ll be an area where you can wash yourself off. Carefully wash all the soap off, too. Make sure your hair is out of the water - so tie it up if it’s long. You can bring a little tower with you, but don’t let it fall into the pool. Some people fold it and keep it on the top of their head while relaxing in the water :)
• Undress in the changing room. Yes, you go in naked. There are separate pools for men and women, but there are some mixed pools. Good to know which one you’re entering! You can ask if they have a private or a family pool, as well.
• They won’ t let you in if you have tatoos. Period.
• Enter the pool gradually, because the temperature is high. For this matter, come out before you feel faint.

If you want immersion in traditional Japanese experience, go to a ryokan which has onsen. Ryokan are hotels built in traditional Japanese style and offer many things, for example, beautifully arranged traditional Japanese style dinner.

Have you ever been to a ryokan? Would you want to try it out?

(And what topic should the next post cover? I’d love you input!)

Useful links 1.

Wow, we're already at 100 pageviews, in just a week, thank you! That makes me really happy :)

I won't have an article about Japan today, but rather, let me share a couple of things I've found very useful when I started learning Japanese.

• Learn kana practice software: you can either download or use it online. If you do download, make sure you open it in a browser (Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE, etc.)
  This little software lets you practice hiragana and katakana. Go to the top left, and you can customise which ones you want to practice. You can even switch between handwritten and typed styles! It's like a memory game, so you'll be able to read kanas in no time!
• Kanji gold freeware software: You need to download this one and install on your computer if you want to use it. It's only for windows as far as I know.
  You can choose the level of kanjis you want to practice. It shows you a kanji, and you need to pick their meaning. You can check the readings and the meaning if you want, but if you want to practice, you can tell the software not to show the meaning. If you pick the wrong meaning, it shows you the right one, before going on to the next kanji. And you will encounter the same kanji again, before the 'test' ends, because it'll remember you got it wrong the first time. Very handy software.

So these are very good for practicing reading characters, but you still need a notebook to practice writing them down with your own hands. If you ever need these links, you'll be able to find them in the menu on the right hand side.
Have fun!

Kanji

I’ve mentioned earlier that the Japanese imported the kanjis from China, but it didn’t fit Japanese language perfectly. This was because kanjis are used to write down concepts, not sounds. Chinese language doesn’t use affixes as far as I know, so these characters were excellent for communication in China.

Japan didn’t give up, and used kanji as a base  to develop its own alphabets. After the language reforms, there are about 2000 kanjis used in Japan nowadays (but more exist, and sometimes you might come across such characters). It takes years to learn all of them. Now that more than a thousand years have passed, why do we still use kanji in modern Japanese language?! That’s because Japanese language is homophone - which means that there are lots of words which sound the same, but have a different meaning. That’s why there’s so many nodding and hmmm-ing in spoken Japanese to clarify you understand the person talking. If you write them down, using kanjis, it is immediately clear what you mean.

hanabi

Kanjis are the most difficult characters. There are usually two different ways of reading them (Japanese and ‘Chinese’ way - well, Japanese kind of Chinese). It depends on if they are standing together with another kanji, or with an affix. There are kanjis with only one reading, then there are kanjis with 3 or more readings! The more you know about them, the clearer their use of readings become. It’s really interesting to see the meaning behind the words (personal favourite: firework - hanabi, which is flower + fire).

You can look up kanjis by radicals, readings, number of strokes, or using the handwriting recognition feature in your computer / electronic dictionary. Radicals are elements which can be found in different kanjis, and they’re supposed to help you.

Next week: Let's see onsens! (as always, feel free to suggest something else)

Answer to my earlier question: the blue are kanjis, the green are hiraganas, and the dark red are katakanas.

 

Personal favourite examples of homophone words: kami (hair, paper, shintō god).

Kana

Japanese language uses 2 kinds of alphabets, hiragana and katakana, which are made up of syllables instead of letters. It uses kanjis, as well (characters borrowed from Chinese). Today, we look at the alphabets; the characters are called kana. 

 

From kanji to kana

Hiragana developed from handwritten kanji, hence the curvy, flowing characters. Katakana is made up from picking out certain parts of kanjis, and they have angular shapes. Kana first appeared in writing in the early 900s, and it was called ‘women’s writing’. It was easier to learn than kanjis, and the characters were able to capture Japanese sounds, and write down affixes. Kanji were unable to do this (we’ll see why in the article about kanji), that’s why Japanese people needed to come up with a different way to write things down. 

It was quite a mess at first, with several kanas responding to the same sounds, and lots of characters could be read in more than one way. After language reforms, nowadays, kanas have only 1 possible reading, and Japan is one of the nations with the highest rate of literacy (despite the fact that it has the most difficult writing system)! 

We use 46 basic kanas and their variations (107 characters in total). There are the same amount of characters in hiragana and katakana, because they write down the same syllables. (So, 107 x 2 kanas.) 

 

But why do we need two different alphabets?

Hiragana is used for writing down Japanese words and affixes. Katakana is used for writing down foreign words (for example: chocolate, air conditioner, foreign names, etc.). You might notice, that sometimes a word that can be written in hiragana, is written in katakana, instead. That’s when you want to bring attention to it (kind of like something in all capital letters in Western languages).

 

Can you pick out which is the hiragana and the katakana in this sentence? (Careful, there are a couple of kanjis hidden there!)

 

Next: Kanjis! Or would you like to see a list of hiragana/katakana first?

Yōkoso

Greetings! I was thinking what do to with my degree in Japanese studies and had this crazy thought that I’d start a blog, where I can share interesting bits about Japanese language and culture. There are many people out there who want to know more about Japan, and I know about Japan, so let’s meet here, Japan-fans! (Lovely thing, this internet.)

I want to do short posts, a couple of times per week, about various topics. I have a long list already, but feel free to add to it, or ask about things you’re curious about by commenting on my posts, and I’ll see what I can do! Let’s see how this method works out.

Look out for the first post about Japanese language in the next few days. Sign up for my RSS feed or subscribe to the e-mail newsletter so you can read my posts as soon as they are available! Or you can do that later, just check in every now and then, to see if you like this blog.

About me: I’m Katalin, I have a BA in Japanese studies (language & culture), I currently live in London, and I think this blog-project will be fun! I like tea and have a big collection of all kinds of mugs. I don’t really collect them, they just find me. I’m a language-maniac (there are a few more I know, some on elementary level, and I have a few more on my list I want to learn), and I love to write. Mostly fiction, so this blog-project will let me exercise my non-fiction writing muscles. Just in case.

See you next week, and remember, you already know the Japanese word for greetings ;)