Learn Katakana
- Japan Signs: Ameyoko Fruit Stall
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February 16th, 2010
This was shot somewhere along the busy market streets of the famous Ameyoko in Ueno, Tokyo. There is all sorts of produce available including seafood, fruit and vegetables right through to shoes, t-shirts and jeans. The markets are always packed, which makes for an exciting place to visit when you’re next in Tokyo.
- Japan Signs: Going Overseas?
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February 9th, 2010
I took this shot of an ad hanging on a train somewhere on the Yamanote line in Tokyo. I think it’s a great real-life example of the use of Katakana for foreign city or country names.
To start you off I’ll go through the first line and then you can take it from there. We put all the first line together and get “Rondon” or London as it is known in English.
- Learn Katakana: The Starter Kit
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January 13th, 2010
Rows upon rows of laundry detergent all written in katakana – imagine the horror when your partner asks you to grab brand X and you come home with brand Y because you can’t read katakana – oh the shame!
- The Tale of the Little Tsu
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November 27th, 2009
When you’re just starting to learn Japanese and in particular hiragana and katakana, the small tsu (っ/ッ) is one of those tricky little buggers that may get you a little confused. Every time I saw something like がっこう (gakkou), I thought it was reading as が (ga) っ (tsu) こ (ko) う (u).
- WTF….$70 Grapes!
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November 25th, 2009
We came across these white grapes for sale at a large department store in Kashiwa, a northern suburb of Tokyo.
While they look very tasty, I’m not quite sure they’re worth the approx. AUD$70 they worked out to be against the Aussie dollar at the time.
- Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
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October 8th, 2009
Join me in dissecting the Japanese label of a ¥7000 bottle of 15-year-old Virgin Kentucky Bourbon.
We’ll go through and breakdown the katakana and kanji from the label and then it’s over to you to practice transcribing the rest.
- Canon debuts ground-breaking EOS 7D
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September 29th, 2009
As is always the case in the land of gadgets, a new model is always just around the corner and so it was with some sense of inevitability that the much-rumoured Canon 7D was announced recently and what an announcement it was.
The 7D has a simply amazing list of features for this price range and will bring the whole DSLR Full HD video thing to a whole new market, which is going to be great for everybody.