Okay I’ll get it out of the way early – I’m an Apple fanboy and have been for a very long time.

So the news this week that the iPad will debut in the US on April 3 was pretty exciting.

What’s more exciting however, is that the iPad will also be available in Australia (where I live) and Japan (where I want to live) plus Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

While we have to wait a little longer, those of us outside the US will get to choose from all models at once and will also have the luxury of a month worth of user feedback from sales in the US.

I can’t wait to try one out and I am especially excited about the Japanese learning apps that will hopefully be released for the iPad in the coming months. The huge touchscreen will make for an awesome kanji stroke practice pad!

I’m leaning towards the 64GB Wi-Fi model – how about you?

iPad TV Ad

US Pricing

iPad will be available in Wi-Fi models on April 3 in the US for a suggested retail price of US$499 for 16GB, US$599 for 32GB, US$699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available for a suggested retail price of US$629 for 16GB, US$729 for 32GB and US$829 for 64GB.

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If you like your J-Rock hard and played by guys who can actually play (the bassist is amazing), make sure you check out – Nothing’s Carved In Stone.

Find out more at myspace, last.fm and at their own website plus a short background at Wikipedia.

Nothing’s Carved In Stone – Isolation

Nothing’s Carved In Stone – November 15th

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This was shot on a busy Sunday afternoon on Jingu Bridge in Harajuku, Tokyo.

The area was packed with locals and tourists alike trying to get a glimpse of the Harajuku girls and guys, which would have numbered over fifty.

This girl kept herself fairly separate from the others and spent a countless amount of time carefully preening every inch of herself. She looked stunning with the ginger hair against her fair complexion.

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I shot this image of one of the market stalls littering the Ameyoko; a busy street market that runs along the main railway line in Ueno, Tokyo.

If you’re ever in Japan, as well as some other Asian countries, you’ll see people, both old and young, wearing masks out in public places. It’s not something I have ever seen in Australia, the US or Europe.

The markets feature plenty of different products on sale ranging from fresh seaweed, octopus, dried shrimp (the pink piles on the stall) plus your standard meat and vegetables.

Alongside the produce, there are also many shops with the latest t-shirts, jeans and shoes – pretty much anything you can think of is available in the area.

Ameyoko, Ueno: Photo Location

View Japan Images: Masked Ameyoko Lady in a larger map

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I found this sign in the grounds of Ueno Zoo, which is just 10 minutes north of central Tokyo by train. We visited there when we stayed in Ueno and apart from it being the coldest and wettest day of our trip, it was definitely worth the visit. There’s plenty to see and do for everyone.

There’s a fair bit going on in this sign but don’t worry as I’m going to break it all down and we’ll go though the kanji and katakana one at a time.

Go West

Starting from the left side of the top sign we see 西園, which indicates the West section of the park (zoo). The two kanji work separately here so 西 means West and 園 is garden or park, this is not a kanji compound. If you’re in Japan for any length of time you’ll more than likely see the kanji for park (園) in a lot of public places in the following format – 公園. This a kanji compound – public (公) and park (園).

Children’s Zoo

Next is the top line of the first sign, which is 子供動物園 (Children’s Zoo) and there are two kanji compounds at work here – 子供 (こども) and 動物園 (どうぶつえん). The first one translates as “Children” with the first character 子 meaning child (こ). The second part of that line is 動物園 (どうぶつえん), which means zoo.

Breaking that down even further we get 動物 (animal) and 園 (garden or park), which of course gives us zoo (animal park).

Kirin…But Not The Beer

On the bottom line of the first sign there are three katakana words – キリん, カバ and サイ, which translate to kirin (Giraffe), kaba (Hippopotamus) and sai (Rhinoceros). Katakana is normally used only for loan words, meaning words from other countries. I would suggest these are only written in Katakana here so that smaller children are able to read the sign. I have included the kanji for each of them in the table below.

Keep Your Hands In Your Pockets

In the second sign we come across a few kanji that you might be seeing for the first time: 両生爬虫類館

The breakdown of the kanji compounds in this sentence are 両生 (りょうせい – Amphibian) and 爬虫類 (はちゅうるい – Reptiles) followed by 館, which translates as house, hall or building.

We end up with a sign that roughly means Amphibious Reptile Building eg an area of the zoo that holds the likes of crocodiles or alligators.

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I was taking photos around the Center-Gai area of Shibuya in Tokyo and this guy walked right in front of me.

I was momentarily cursing him before I realised it made for a great photo opportunity and then all was forgiven ^_^

Shibuya: Photo Location

View Shibuya: Photographing The Photographer in a larger map

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I use YouTube to improve my Japanese in 3 simple ways: Listen and Learn, Watch and Read and finally – Watch, Listen and Learn.

A great way to improve your comprehension is by listening to native Japanese speakers rather than the dumbed down recordings you may get in a CD at the back of your textbook.

A lot of those audio files are spoken by non-natives and more often than not riddled with phrases that you would never hear anyone say in a real Japanese conversation.

Just ten years ago, you really had very little choice of learning materials. You either used what resources they had at the local bookstore and library or flew to Japan, the latter being an expensive way to master the language. ^_^

Fast forward to 2010 and one of the many resources brought to us via the rise of the interwebs is YouTube, which recently announced that they serve up a staggering 1 billion videos a day. Making up part of that incomprehensible figure is a huge array of Japanese videos covering everything from learning the language to anime, cooking, sports and news.

So to get started with learning Japanese on YouTube, I’ve listed several Japanese TV stations below that have a regularly updated YouTube channel. The quality isn’t perfect on some of these and none are streamed in high definition but the content is 100% genuine Japanese and served up (almost) daily for free.

• TVAsahi
• ANN News
• NHK Online

The great thing about Japanese TV is that almost everything they broadcast has a boatload of onscreen graphics across it. This gives us an ideal opportunity to watch YouTube videos and study the language at the same time – win-win!

I use YouTube videos to learn Japanese in three simple ways.

Listen and Learn

Play the video online but don’t look at the actual visuals. Listen to just the audio and try to write down any of the words you recognise.

Of course, this can be either rewarding or somewhat demoralising depending on your level of Japanese but it gives you a good idea as to what you know and what you need to work on.

Even if you only recognise one word, it’s a start and after another week or two you may be able to pick out another few words. Stick with it and your listening comprehension will vastly improve.

Make sure you bookmark the video and then come back to it every month or two and see if you have improved.

Watch and Read

Watch the video without the audio and concentrate solely on reading the onscreen graphics.

Just as you did in the “Listen and Learn” section above, write down as many kanji, hiragana or katakana that you recognise. You’ll notice fairly quickly that most Japanese news videos look like CNN on steroids with graphics all over the screen.

I would suggest if you’re at the JLPT4/N5 level, then make liberal use of the pause and play buttons otherwise everything is going to be a blur.

If you know how to use the screenshot system on your OS or you are okay with using a program like Skitch or Jing then feel free to take screenshots of certain frames of the video and save them for later.

Here’s a screenshot below as an example.

View the video on YouTube

In the top right hand corner you might recognise the kanji for Tokyo (東京) or 見, which means “see”.

At the bottom of the screen is a ton of hiragana mixed in with two kanji – 外 (outside) and 囲 (surround). There’s plenty of Japanese to learn even in a short video.

Watch, Listen and Learn

And of course the final step is to watch the video as you normally would and see what you can absorb in real-time.

My suggestion is to work on just one video at a time and use steps 1 and 2 over the course of a week or month and then come back to it again for step 3.

In one month, you may not make huge leaps in you listening comprehension but you will most certainly recognise more kanji onscreen and hopefully without the need to constantly pause.

If you’re stuck with any words or kanji, make sure you visit www.tangorin.com and use their excellent online dictionary and multi-radical kanji search.

There are literally tens of thousands of Japanese videos available on YouTube so there’s plenty of opportunity to increase your listening comprehension.

Good luck with your YouTube Japanese study and please leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback.

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I hate to drag up a photo from warmer days while those of you in the northern hemisphere are still freezing cold but here we go anyway ^_^

This was shot somewhere along the busy market streets of the famous Ameyoko in Ueno, Tokyo.

There is all sorts of produce available for sale 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.

The fruit on a stick sells from just ¥100, which is a bargain I reckon, especially in Japan.

Almost all of the fruit in the signs are listed in Katakana so this is a great exercise to sharpen those skills if you’re just starting out with Japanese or getting rusty.

Here’s a few to get you started.

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目 (eye) and 自 (oneself) are separated by just one small stroke and as such prove to be tricky for beginners to remember. Both kanji are part of the JLPT3 and are taught in grade one and two at Japanese schools respectively.

My visual clue (or mnemonic) for remembering the kanji for eye (目) is to imagine an “eye” looking through open wooden blinds – the blinds being represented by the horizontal lines in the kanji.

So the horizontal lines in 目 are the wooden parts of the blind going across your window and you use one “eye” to look out through them.

For oneself (自) I imagine the top vertical stroke as a hand that is stuck up in the air when you are asked to identify yourself. So if you are in class and the teacher calls out your name and you stick your hand in the air, then your are identifying yourself or “oneself”.

Remember that as crazy as some of these mnemonics sound, they really work.

Example Usage

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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.

You may have noticed that the Japanese can’t pronounce “L” very well, and with good reason, as that letter/sound doesn’t exist in the Japanese language as is most often substituted with an “r” syllable like ra, ri, ru, re, ro.

To approximate the way the Japanese pronounce the “r” sound you need to think of a tone halfway between and the English R and L.

Those of you that are very new to Katakana will probably be wondering what that extra syllable that looks like a dash (ー) in the Katakana for Singapore (シンガポール). I’ve written about this extender in another article that will explain it for you.

Need help with Katakana? Check out my Katakana Starter Kit with a full explanation of Katakana and a worksheet to download.

As an exercise to use your newly found Katakana powers, why not find the Katakana for the following countries. Good luck!

Try Canada, Cuba, Peru, Egypt, France and of course we better not forget Australia ^_^

Once you have done that without peeking, take a look at this comprehensive country name listing from Jim Breen.

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