Snow, Costco, and にほんご

And even more snow last night. It was forecast and we wondered all day when it would arrive. At about 7pm last night we looked out the window and saw that it was finally snowing. It only snowed for a couple of hours - heavy enough to settle, but it was gone by morning.

Yesterday we signed up at Costco in Kawasaki - a huge store, with the same sorts of things we were able to buy in Canada and the UK. The biggest problem will be the distance to get there from the apartment. If we do the train, we take the subway two stops, then switch to the JR train line for two stops, then back to a local subway line for another four stops. Then about a 15 minute walk to the shop. To get from one train to another takes about 10 minuets walk in one of the changeovers. All in all it takes around 45 minutes travelling. Then you have to carry things back with you. I think we will end up trying to catch a taxi back to the apartment at least one time - see how much it costs. If we end up being here longer and getting a car, it will of course become much, much easier!

Sushi (すし) for lunch today at a restaurant close to the apartment. One of the places with a train that runs around the restaurant. This is not so common - most places that we've been so far make it in front of you and only to order (i.e. you ask for two salmon sushi and they make it for you, before you order your next pieces). We managed to get through 15 plates today, with two pieces per plate. Very nice... We will be looking for somewhere with quality sushi in Auckland when we are back.

I've started to learn to read and write Japanese. There are three character systems, and to be literate you need to know all three.

First is Hiragana (ひらがな), which has about 50 symbols representing the basic sounds (5 vowels plus consonant combinations).

Then you need to know another 50 symbols for Katakana (カタカナ). Katakana is used for any foreign words. For example my name written in katakana is アンデリユー, which when you sound it out sounds something like my English name. Actually more like "ah-in-der-y-ew".

Finally there is kanjii, which are the chinese characters. Each character needs to be memorised, and can be used in multiple different combinations to make different words. The sound for a character varies depending on the position of the character in a word! They tell me you need to learn about 200 basic kanjii for it to be useful.

Luckily, when using a keyboard to write in hiragana or katakana, you actually type the sounds using roman characters. The computer is kind enough to translate for you! So in order to say "thankyou" (arigatou gozaimasu), you need to type the sounds for "ah", "ri", "ga", "to", "u", "go", "za", "i", "ma", "su". The pc translates this to ありがとうございます. Easy!

However if you're trying to learn to read it, you need to memorise the characters and link them to the sounds. Not so easy...