You may or may not know that I bought a Super Famicom recently. The nostalgia kick is immense and great childish fun. I have lots of things to say about my SuFami experiences but don’t want to clog up this blog with all that stuff. Due to having quite a lot of free time at work, I’ve made a brand new website.

I introduce to you to SuFamiThoughts.com, please come and have a look. If you want to contribute let me know.

Welcome to the May 2011 Japanese Blog Matsuri.

This month we are going to learn that kanji can be fun, interesting, insightful, beautiful and most importantly necessary to communicate in Japanese.

Having fallen in love with kanji myself I was looking forward to reading what others had to say about it and their experiences learning it. I have noticed, not only through the submitted blogs themselves but also from those commenting, that people who have taken the time to learn kanji have great fondness for it and seem to want to encourage other Japanese language learners to start learning asap.

Enjoy…

Why study kanji at all? Here we are given a compelling reason for picking up the textbooks.

One man’s story about how he came to the conclusion that studying kanji was for the best and also how it improved his live in Japan and other aspects of his Japanese learning. A experience that no doubt many people can relate to.

Interested by the mention of kanji radicals in the previous post and want to know more? JLPT Boot Camp has the answers you are looking for.

Some say a picture tells a thousand words and the picture here tells us so much. Not only does it remind us of the beauty of Japanese script but also the beginning of a fairy story. I love this.

What does the way countries were once written in Japan tell us about the Japanese view of the rest of the world? Find out in this blog.

And there you have it. A short and wonderfully sweet masturi. Unfortunately there is no host for next month matsuri listed currently. Perhaps you could put your name down for it. Find out how at the mastsuri faq page.

It is my pleasure to announce the theme for the May 2011 Japan Blog Matsuri. Before I do though, please have a look at the previous month’s over at NihongoUp. Thank you to Philip Seyfi for hosting it.

Without further ado allow to tell you that this month’s theme is “I Can-ji”.

What does that mean? Well, since I have come to Japan I have fallen in love with kanji and although my level is still pretty low I am always amazed how it adds so much to the language. Kanji has this reputation of being some kind of impossible thing and whilst I agree it does take a lot of work, it is so rewarding to learn. So I want to hear your kanji stories to show people that kanji can be fun, interesting and as a friend of mine once said, ‘Really, really sexy’.

For this month could you please write your kanji stories. It could be about anything relating of the writing of Japanese. How do you study kanji? Do you have any tips and tricks to remember things? Do you simply ignore it? Has your kanji knowledge (or lack of it) landed you in hot water or resulted in you finding interesting places? What’s your favourite kanji? Is there a kanji you loathe? Have you seen kanji used incorrectly in western things? The sky (or should that be ‘the 空’) is the limit.

Rules

The official rules for the matsuri are here. Also please add at least 1 picture to your post and and link back here.

Submission

Anyone can submit a post, you don’t have to be in Japan or even have a blog about Japan, just stick to the theme. To submit either write the link in a comment under this post or use the Blog Carnival Widget.

The deadline of submissions is 22th May and remember,

YOU can-ji!

Happy Father’s Day to all dads out there. Hope you enjoy your day (especially my dad). I’ve been watching the first series of Doctor Who again recently, the episode I watched today was titled “Father’s Day”. A happy coincidence.

Certain loyal readers to my website may have noticed that I haven’t been updated much recently. The reason for this is that until recently I have had no internet access available. Now that this situation has changed more posts should be coming soon (such as stories about how difficult it is to sort out an internet connection in Japan).

I recently discovered that pita bread is known as pita pan in Japanese. The pita bread merchandising board of Japan are missing a trick not partnering with Disney.

Peter Pan Pita Pan

Would sell like hot cakes.