During the summer months here in Japan, when it is far hotter than any self respecting place really should be, it is really refreshing to come home after a hard days work and pour yourself a nice cold beer.

Only the drink pictured above isn’t beer, it isn’t even alcoholic. It is the wonderfully titled Kodomo no Norimono (Children’s Drink).

Kodomo no Norimono is a drink designed to look like beer when it is poured into a glass but it is in fact an apple flavoured fizzy drink. It even makes a head when you pour it. I wonder what sort of reaction this kind of drink would garner if it was released in the UK. Probably some sort of Daily Mail inspired ‘won’t somebody protect our children from this evil‘ letter writing campaign.

Perhaps this kind of thing exists here because of Japan’s group drinking culture. When the entire family is tucking into a specially prepared feast, the children can pretend to act like mum and dad and drink their own ‘beer’ too. I very much doubt that this kind of thing promotes alcoholism.

What is and isn’t alcohol can be very confusing to someone just arriving in this country. Take this very popular drink as an example:

When I first saw a young boy walking down the street drinking from a bottle of it, I got one hell of a shock. His mum was next to him acting all blasé about it and I began to think this was one clear case of bad parenting. That was until I discovered that cider in Japan is just another of the many words out there for carbonated soft drink and nothing to do with something that Magners would produce.

The taste of Mitsuya Cider is very similar to something like Sprite and definitely does not contain any alcohol at all.

Unlike this:

When I first came to Japan I became obsessed with Calpis and would always try to sample all the various types of it as I came across them. Once I was on my lunch break and picked up a can of Calpis Sour, something I hadn’t seen before. As I drunk it returning to my classroom I noticed it had a bit of a strange after taste and I wasn’t too fond of it.

It wasn’t until weeks later that I realised that the strange after taste was a result of vodka being mixed in there. I can’t imagine what my students were thinking when they spied it on the table behind me. The main reason I didn’t cotton on to the alcohol present in the can was that I had never associated the word ‘sour’ with alcoholic drinks before. In Japan however it refers to a drink containing a soft drink mixed with shochu.

If you come to Japan and you are unsure if the drink you have just picked up contains alcohol, I wouldn’t go by the name of it, that may confound your expectations. Instead have a look on the packaging for this symbol: 酒. It is the kanji for alcohol and thus is a sure sign that the drink you are holding is some form of liquor.

It may also be worth knowing that sake, traditional Japanese rice wine, is not called that here either, it is known as nihonshu. Sake is the generic Japanese term for alcohol.

This post has been a submission to the July 2011 Japan Blog Matsuri hosted by Nihongo Up.

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.

One of the first things that British Japanese language learners go through is working out how to say and write their own country of origin. Is it イギリス(igirisu) or 英国(eikoku)? Which is best? Does one mean England and the other United Kingdom? Is their actually a difference?

Due to the fact that most people not from the British Isles (and many from within it too) do not understand the make up of the countries in it, everyone just thinks of the UK as ‘England’. The Japanese people are no different and the two words I wrote at the top of this article basically mean England but is used to refer to anywhere in the UK. The only difference between them is that one uses katakana and the other uses kanji when written down.

In Japanese katakana is generally used for words of foreign origin and kanji is used for words which came from Japan or China. Not only does each kanji have a phonetic value but also meaning. These days most countries are simply written phonetically in katakana. However a long time ago, probably around the time our grandfathers were born, kanji was used. Because many kanji have the same reading this lead to the situation where you had loads of different spellings for each country. I guess that is why this practice was discontinued.

So all of the countries of the world have various spellings in kanji and because each kanji has meaning, I was wondering if the kanji showed up and stereotypes of that country. Does the kanji for England mean ‘Nation of tea drinkers’, is Greece the ‘Land of plate smashers’?

Lets find out.

England: イギリス(igirisu)

The kanji used for England is 英国 (eikoku). This means ‘Superior Country’. That’ll do me.
It’s also worth pointing out another spelling 大不列頓 which was once used to refer to Great Britain (ooburehitan???) means ‘Nothing but big bad lines’. As a member of the nation that invented a whole new verb just for queuing I must protest.

Colombia: コロンビア(coronbia)

Colombia’s kanji is 哥倫比亜 (coronbia??), that could mean ‘big brother ethics ratio next rank’. Also possible is 考老比亜 (coronbia??) which I guess is ‘aged thinking ethics ratio next rank’. Both are impossible to put in coherent sentences so I’m not sure what they were trying to tell us but there must be a lot of wise old people there.

USA: アメリカ(america)

米国 (beikoku) is America’s kanji, it means ‘Rice Country’. Is there a lot of rice in America? Surely Japan has more right to be called this. Another version is 弥利堅(america), the kanji means ‘Increasingly advantage armour’, is that a reference to America’s large military presence around the world?

Germany: ドイツ(doitsu)

独逸 (doitsu) is the order of the day here. That means ‘Single Idleness’. I personally thought the Germans were a proactive group of people. Also used is 独乙 (doitsu) according to my dictionary that means ‘Single Witty’, I’d wager that whoever thought that one up had never met a German person.

Spain: スペイン(supein)

The Spanish kanji is 西班牙(supein). That means ‘West group tusk’, which has absolutely nothing to do with sleeping in the middle of the day.

As a result of this little experiment I can safely say that there is no correlation between the kanji used in the names and the countries, which is a shame. I should also point out that while I said that the kanji is no longer used, it is often used in abbreviations. For example 英 is used for Britain, 米 for USA, 西 for Spain, etc.

This post has been a submission to the May 2011 Japan Blog Matsuri hosted by Me.

Source: wikipeadia

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!