I think I'm starting to get into the swing of once-a-week posts on here. What I need to do now, it convince my boss to let me start doing this from home so I can post more things when I feel like it, not just went the office tries to schedule me in.

Anyway, today I'm going to take a break from the website reviews and write about something probably every other single blogger about Japan is blogging about.



Yesterday, on April 29th, Japan entered perhaps its most famous set of holidays, Golden Week.
If you haven't heard about it, Golden Week is a one-week period between April 29th and May 5th that houses four national holidays. Yes, four. These four are:

April 29th - Shouwa no Hi (昭和の日)
May 3rd - Kenpou Kinenbi (憲法記念日)
May 4th - Midori no Hi (みどりの日)
May 5th - Kodomo no Hi (こどもの日)

This year, because May 3rd falls on a Sunday, May 6th is a Furikae Kyuujitsu (振替休日), basically an observed holiday.


While April 30th through May 2nd are not technically holidays, many businesses will close to let their employees travel. The most common destinations are major tourist spots in Japan (Kyoto, Tokyo, Okinawa), returning to your hometown, South Pacific islands, the west coast of North America, and Europe.
During this week it is nearly impossible to find flights or vacant hotels without paying through the nose. Most bullet trains and super express trains are also completely booked way in advance. The few train cars on them that are not reserved seats are usually packed like a Tokyo subway car at rush hour: like a can of sardines.

Last year I was smart enough to stay at home and not really go anywhere. My husband hadn't been in Japan for even a month yet, so I didn't want him to be turned off of Japan by the mass exodus out of the city.
However, the year before I had a former student come visit me from the US for her high school senior project. We decided to rough it out and make a trek from Gifu up to Nagano City. Oh man, was that a mistake.
The train from Gifu to Nagoya wasn't all that bad, but the 4-hour express train from Nagoya to Nagano was standing-room only in the non-reserved cars. We ended up shoving our bags into the luggage racks at the one end of a car, and sat in there for the 4 hours. The weather was quite warm as well, so the train cars, despite being air conditioned, were still quite stuffy due to the fact that everyone who got on the train was sweating from standing out in the heat on the platforms.

I know now, because of that trek, that if I am going to travel during Golden Week, I better make plans and reservations about 6 months in advanced. Well, maybe 2 months at the least....



Now, I can't find anything to back this up, but I once heard on a TV show here that the name Golden Week was originally created by travel companies and movie theaters. Basically, the long row of holidays created a surge in people going on trips and going out to movie theaters, so the PR guys for the travel companies and movie theaters decide it was a "golden" opportunity to get some business going. As such, the week was labeled "Golden Week" as not only a "golden" time to go spend time with your family in an exotic location or at the movies, but also a "golden" time to make a lot of money.
Whether this is actually true or not, I don't know. However, I do know that because of so many travel deals that are marketed for this week, many employees started taking off the whole week to travel, and eventually many businesses started shutting down for the week as well.
Even though I have class and a meeting tomorrow (out of all the teachers, I'm the only one with a class), our office is technically closed from the 1st through the 6th for Golden Week. A friend of mine is coming back home for the first time since New Year's, as Golden Week is one of only three long holidays his company in Tochigi gives him (the others being New Year's and Obon in August).


Anyway, I figure it's probably a good "work thing" if I go into a bit of detail on the holidays that make up Golden Week. While it's all easy to Wikipedia and all, at least it'll all be on the same page on my blog!



Originally, April 29th was only celebrated as the birthday of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously called Emperor Shouwa). However, upon his death, the day was made into a national holiday called Greenery Day (Midori no Hi みどりの日). This name was chosen to represent the Emperor's love of plant without specifically naming him, basically just to keep scandals away.

Wait? Midori no Hi? Didn't I type that up as being May 4th?
Well, after the Emperor's death, Japan was all afraid that there would be huge scandals and controversy and such, and decided not to name it directly after him. But, starting in about 2000, several attempts to change the name of the holiday were brought to the Japanese Diet and finally in 2005 one of them passed. Starting in 2007, the name of the day was officially changed to Shouwa no Hi.


May 3rd, Kenpou Kinenbi, is an easy day to explain. Literally, it's Constitution Memorial Day. May 3rd, 1945 was the date that the new Japanese Constitution was put into effect. Japan likes to make holidays, so they commemorated the turning of a new page in Japanese history by making May 3rd a national holiday. Many news outlets use this day to talk about democracy and bring up issues in the constitution that are constantly being battled about in the Diet, mainly the issues of Article 9 (no offensive military, just defensive), and whether or not the royal line can be passed down to a princess.
The common man, however, just sees it as a day off. Nothing more, and no one really cares it seems. They're all too busy drinking fruity cocktails out of coconuts in the South Pacific.


May 4th, the current Greenery Day, was originally just a "day of rest" between two national holidays. Japan didn't like the fact that there was a holiday on the 3rd, a day of work on the 4th, then another holiday on the 5th, so someone got the bright idea to make the 4th a holiday as well and just give everyone three days off in a row.

Whoever came up with that idea, thank you. You deserve a medal.

Once April 29th was renamed to Shouwa no Hi, Greenery Day got moved to the 4th to make it an official holiday. Much rejoicing was had with, once again, fruity cocktail-filled coconuts.



May 5th is probably the most well-known and celebrated of all the holidays in Golden Week.
Originally called Tango no Sekku (端午の節句), it marked the beginning of the summer rainy season on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. (Which is total news to me. I'm learning this right along with you guys!)
This day was also used to celebrate the health and prosperity of boys born into families by the hanging of carp banners, and displaying a set of armor and arrows in the home. Some houses only display the kabuto helmet of the armor set, but there are immaculate, full-armor sets in some older homes. One of the kindergartens I teach at has a full-set from the Heian Era (794-1185).
The banners, koinobori, are kinda neat. One day I will post pictures of the set Gifu Kindergarten made last year in an event we helped out at. Basically, the banners are a family of carp: a large black one for the father, a slightly smaller red one for the mother or eldest born (depends on who you ask, it seems), and then smaller blue, green and purple carps for each subsequent son. They're pretty much giant windsocks, and are usually on a pole that has a spinny-thing on top followed by streamers.
Carps were picked because of a Chinese legend about carp becoming a dragon if they swam upstream, but you don't really hear anyone mention that anymore. There are a few songs about the carp banners and the day in general, but once again, I've never actually heard them.
On the largest, black carp, you will usually see a half-naked, red-skinned child hanging on for dear life. This is Kintarou, a character in Japanese history/myths that was known for his strength as a child. Supposedly he played around with wild animals and rode on the back of a bear, not a horse. Not sure why he's on the carp and not a bear, but I have a feeling it's to wish that the sons born into that family become strong like Kintarou was as a child. If I can find out anything more on why Kintarou is on the carp, I'll be sure to add it in. On the same note, if you know why Kintarou is on the carp, please leave a comment!

There's some controversy over Kodomo no Hi, mainly as it has traditionally be considered "Boy's Day". Though the name has changed to "Children's Day" to celebrate all children, it still focuses mainly on boys, while Girl's Day (Hinamatsuri) on March 3rd is not a national holiday. Many feminists and women's rights people have gotten their panties in a twist over this fact, but nothing has changed still. I think it would be awesome if Girl's Day became a national holiday. One more day off for me!



Once again, this blog has gone on way too long.
I need to stop writing walls-of-text. Maybe then some of you would stick around to read the whole thing.

I may or may not post from home during the holidays. Currently we have no plans to go anywhere except karaoke with my friend coming home from Tochigi. If we feel up to it, we may venture over to Inuyama Castle for a day. If we do, expect a photo post.
Not even a week has gone by since my last post, and here you guys get another!

Today, despite the rainy, dreary weather, I'm going to review what looks like it has the potential to be a very good site to learn kanji from.


Kanji-A-Day.com is just what it says it is, a different kanji is featured every day for learners. While some other places will have a word-of-the-day or a kanji-of-the-day, they are usually just a random word picked out of a dictionary, with no concern for the learner's level. I, myself, have a gadget on my iGoogle homepage that is a Japanese word-a-day thing. Today happens to be a word/kanji I did not know previously, but other days it will have words I learned 10 years ago when I first started Japanese. There's no way to customize it to different levels of study, which would make it a truly awesome feature.


Kanji-A-Day.com, on the other hand, does allow for customization, to a point. Visitors to the site can choose whether they want to see the kanji-of-the-day for any of the four levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. This is great because then beginners don't get bombarded with kanji way out of the league, and more proficient users don't have to deal with the same kanji they've known for years. By creating a login for the site, you can even make the site more personalized, and you can store your own vocab/kanji lists for further study later.


Okay, more in depth on this site, what does it offer besides kanji-a-day?

Well, for starters, there's a handy-dandy Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary lookup right at the top of the site. It takes romaji or kana for the Japanese lookup, which makes it more useful than using a translate site like Google Translate or Babelfish.

Now, for the actual kanji-a-day part, it not only gives you the kanji and English translation, but also the kunyomi and onyomi readings. Underneath all of the readings and definitions, most kanji (sadly not all) have an animated GIF showing the stroke order of the kanji, followed by a step-by-step diagram of the strokes. The thing I like about this GIF and stroke order diagram is not only do they know the order of strokes, but also the beginning of each stroke is orange so you know where each line starts! I don't think I've ever seen that anywhere before. Books and charts will usually have an arrow showing the direction of the strokes, or nothing at all as you learn the basic rules for stroke order. For those with no real knowledge of stroke order, this is pretty useful. Following stroke order makes you characters look so much better.

Under the diagrams gives you a button to add the kanji to your study list, if you happened to be logged in, then offers several useful combinations. The cool thing about these combinations is, every time I flip through the different levels, the combinations change! Occasionally there's even a "more" link at the bottom right so you can see more combinations. And just like with the kanji itself, there are checkboxes next to each combination so you can add them to a vocab list if you so please.


Another nifty thing the site offers is a kanji-a-day e-mail, once again tailored to the four levels of the JLPT. There's also a vocab-a-day if you want to learn regular vocab as well. Both of these are offered as "trials", which seem to be a month or so of free e-mails. If you'd like to continue, you have to sign up and pay for "premium" which offers not only the daily e-mails, but also quizzes and other study resources to help you study at your own pace, at your own level. The "premium" program costs only $9.99 and it seems they customizable with the kanji/vocab lists you make on the site, ad-free, and are unlimited. They're also working on adding in customizable feeds and a kanji-by-radical dictionary. Not bad for only $10 a year. That's less than a dollar a month, which is affordable for just about anyone.
If you like your XML Feeds, they also offer daily feeds for each of the four levels. You can get your kanji fix just about anywhere with this site!

For true beginners, the site also recommends two workbooks for learning hiragana and katakana, as well as a kanji-a-day practice calendar-pad-thing, which actually looks quite intriguing. There are also pages with hiragana and katakana charts that contain very brief introduction to both scripts. But, as it is a page concentrating on kanji, there isn't much other than that.

Another interesting thing the site offers is a list of the 100 most use kanji on the Internet! Each one is a clickable link to a dictionary page that offers readings, stroke order diagrams, and combinations. It's actually a cool feature I haven't seen before, and is probably very useful to people who browse Japanese websites and blogs regularly.

The site also offers a decent list of textbooks and workbooks to help you learn hiragana, katakana and kanji on your own. The lists consists of books and study materials that appeal to all different types of learners, which is great. You can choose a book that fits to your study style.

Under the textbook link is a very useful link to information about the JLPT. It outlines the point breakdown of the test, and gives a useful like to applying for the test in the US. There's also links to kanji and vocab lists for all four levels, which is really helpful. From the lists you can even add in kanji and vocab to your personalized lists, if you stumble upon some kanji you didn't know.


Oh wow, I know this is late, but I just totally noticed the kanji dictionary field on the upper right corner of the site! You can look up kanji by either the English, reading, copy-pasting the kanji itself, or even the stroke count! That's actually kind of nifty. There aren't many sites that allow kanji lookup by just stroke count.




Overall, I have to say this is the best site I've found yet. It's simple, easy-to-use, and offers a lot of different features. Reading back through my review, I don't think I found a single thing wrong, but then again I haven't browsed through all of the kanji to check for mistakes. I think this site could be very useful to anyone looking for a supplement to their kanji learning, or even looking for a place to start learning kanji on their own.
I think this in combination with the Anki flashcard program I talked about a few posts ago would definitely prepare anyone for the writing-vocabulary and reading sections of the JLPT.
If I had to rate on a scale of 1-10, I'd say a solid 8, possibly a 9 considering how well organized and how easy-to-use the site on a whole is. One day I'll have to create a login and check out how well the personalized kanji/vocab lists work, and check out their forums. This site could very well be a 10 if there aren't too many bugs.
It's been about a week and a half since my last massive posting spree, so I guess I owe you guys a post!

Since none of my three posts on the third were reviews of websites, I think it's about time I got back to the reviews!


Today I want to talk about easyjapanese.org, a site I mentioned last post for its kanji flashcards.
It's a very simply set -up website, but some helpful resources. Once you get past the occasional English spelling mistakes and Japanese mistakes.

The thing that appeals to me about this site right off the bat is the fact that the Writing page offers a concise explanation of the development of hiragana and katakana. I don't think any of the other pages I've reviewed so far have had this. From here you can choose to see either a simple explanation/chart of either hiragana or katakana, and from that chart see a "full" chart. I put "full" in quotations as the chart isn't completely full. But before I get into that, let me just say that they set up their chart in an odd manner. Most places set their charts with the vowels aligned, like this chart from Wikipedia:

<- The right-most column has the vowels in order A, I, U, E, O Every column left of that keeps the same vowel order, just shoves on a consonant sound before it, in the order of K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W. So if you were to read the chart like you read the alphabet, you'd say "A, I, U, E, O, KA, KI, KU, KE, KO, SA, SHI, SU, SE, SO..." Turn it vertical, and still the same. Just gotta make sure the "A" line is to the right and work your way left to "O". easyjapanese.org has theirs running across, left-to-right, AND connects two lines. The vowel line and the "K" line end up running together, the "S" line and the "T" line as well, and so on down the chart. While not necessarily wrong, I find that it could be confusing for learners. The reason hiragana and katakana charts are set up the way they are is so learners (both Japanese children and foreigners) can more easily identify kana that end with the same vowel sound. It's also useful to have charts in this manner when learning to conjugate verbs later on.
Also, this set-up creates a problem when showing kana with diacritical marks. The "G" line, which is created by adding two marks to the upper-right of "K" line kana, appears under the vowel line, not the "K" line for easier identification. It does have all of the diacritical kana, which is a good thing, but I believe it could be set-up in a manner that's easier to understand at first glance.
Now the reason I say the charts aren't completely "full" is the chart is missing two characters. "Chi"(ち) and "Tsu"(つ) can both have diacritical marks added to them to change into "Ji"(ぢ) and "Zu/Dzu"(づ), but have been left out and turned to "S" line characters (じ and ず).
Also, when the charts list character combinations (kana ending in "I" plus a small "Y" line character), it's missing all "Mi" combinations and "Ji" combinations.

Wait, "Ji" combinations? But I see "Ja", "Ju", "Jo" right there!

Those "Ji" combinations are the most commonly seen combinations for "Ji", using "Shi" with diacritical marks. As I mentioned, this chart lacks "Chi" with diacritical marks. This is a major mistake, because despite being rarely used, it found in certain verb conjugations. It's also common for younger women and high school girls to substitute "Chi" for "Shi" when writing "Ji" in their emails and text messages. Messes me up all the time when my friends do it.


Other than those two complaints about their "full" kana charts, easyjapanese.org has one of the easiest-to-understand kana pages yet. They even offer a flash-based kana quizzes where you can test yourself. Further down the left-side navigation bar is a link to flash-based katakana memory game, a kana "Space Invaders"-inspired flash game, and a flash-based hiragana chart that lets you click on individual hiragana and see their particlar stroke orders. For beginners really looking to get a hang of hiragana, this is the site for you! The "Kana Invaders Game" is actually kind of challenging, as it gets faster as you destroy the target kana.

If you need a break from blowing up kana meteroids, there's a small page with basic useful phrases. It has your basic greetings, as well as useful phrases such as "thank you", "please", "I'm sorry", "I don't understand", etc. Under the greetings sections there's even a brief explanation of pronunciation. It's not to the extent of other websites (listing out how each of the vowels are pronounced), but it does bring up the point of the "u" sound on words ending in "su" is usually omitted, and explains elongated vowel sounds.

The one section of this site that I do have a bit of a problem with is the basic grammar page. While it does give a pretty decent basic explanation for several of the more commonly-used particles, the top section on pronouns has some mistakes. Mainly, this paragraph:
For "you" males can say "kimi", informally. But "kimi" is not dependent on the gender of the person to whom it relates, but on the gender of the one who talks. Only men can say that! It's a very specific feature of the Japanese language too.
While "kimi" is used mainly by men, it is not a male-only pronoun. Maybe in olden times it was, but I hear women left and right using it nowadays. "kimi" is a form of "you" that is used to address children informally, and also to address others rudely. The best rule when dealing with saying "you" in Japanese is, if you know the person's name, use that instead of "anata" or "kimi". It's more polite. The Japanese don't actually like using pronouns, and many women will talk about themselves in third person rather than use a form of "I".

Another major mistake with their pronouns is their translation and explanation for "they". "They" can be written four ways in Japanese:
Karetachi  彼たち
Kanojotachi 彼女たち
Karera 彼ら
Kanajora 彼女ら
The two ending in "tachi" are formal, while the last two are informal and casual. "Karetachi" and "Karera" are used if there is at least one male in the "they" group, much like "Ils" is used in French for "they". However, it's not as black and white as French is. If 80% of the group is female, you're still safe using "Kanojotachi" or "Kanojora", despite males being in the group.
This site doesn't mention "Kanojora" at all, and misspells "Kanojotachi" as "Kanojochi".


Moving on to Lesson 01, we're presented with a flash-based interactive lesson.
The girl on the screen talks to you in Japanese (romaji, then kana, then English translation all in the same speech bubble), and you pick the correct response from the three given to you.
First thing I notice?

They have how you introduce yourself wrong.

After submitting your name, the girl greets you with the usual "Hajimemashite", but puts a weird space in the hiragana translation of it. It's all one word! Don't need a space in there! Once you click the right answer, she introduces herself as "Mitsuko". Both the romaji and the English have it correct (except they keep the English in the same word order as Japanese), but the hiragana adds in a "san" to her name. And in the answers, they add a "san" to your name in both the hiragana and English!



You NEVER add "san" onto your own name. Never never never. It makes you seem very full of yourself, and just isn't proper.
Small children will occasionally add "chan" or "kun" onto their own names, but quickly learn that it's not proper and by the time their 5 or 6 years of age, completely drop it off of their names.

The next screen isn't bad, but then Mitsuko tells us she's Japanese, and we have to respond back with "You are Japanese". However, you just don't do this in Japanese. Seriously. I have never heard a conversation go this way. And you most certainly try not to call someone you just met "anata", especially if you just learned their name. That's just rude.

Then the lesson ends. Leaving me with a "WTF?!" feeling. There's nowhere on the site that gives you any of the vocabulary, other than the greetings.


Looking at this "mini lesson" makes my head hurt, and makes me afraid to glance at the Numbers page. However, this isn't as bad as I expected. The numbers are presented quite well, at least up to nine. After nine, they just list out ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, and one hundred million. AFTER that, they finally tell you how to form numbers after ten. Personally, I would have listed numbers 1-20 first, to show how numbers 11-19 just add 1-9 to the end of 10, and how 20 is "two tens". They do it a bit more mathmatically, and actually give equations for numbers above 10.
Underneath the chart of 10 though 100,000,000 they state "It can be noticed that the Japanese counting is not based on the power of thousands (million, billion, trillion), but on the power of hundreds." I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with that. I think in English we tend to count by power of hundreds, which is why we can't have "one thousand millions". In Japanese, they tend to count in the thousands.
For example, let me write out how the different places are. Remember when you'd learn big numbers in elementary school and you're start at the "ones" place and counts "tens, hundreds, thousands, 10 thousands, etc"? Same thing.
Ones->1
Tens->10
Hundreds->100
Thousands->1,000
10 Thousands->10,000
100 Thousands->100,000
Millions->1,000,000
10 Millions->10,000,000
100 Millions->100,000,000

See a pattern? In English we change the counter for every 100. Now let's look at Japanese:
Ichi->1
Juu->10
Hyaku->100
Sen->1,000
Ichi man->10,000
Juu man->100,000
Hyaku man->1,000,000
Sen man->10,000,000
Ichi oku->100,000,000

In Japanese, they tend to change the counter every thousand, not every hundred like English does. 10 thousand has it's own special name, "man", that must be preceeded by "ichi". The words for 100 and 1,000 both do not need "ichi" in front of them. It's just assumed that if you don't add 2-9 in front of "hyaku" or "sen", you're only talking about one "hyaku" or one "sen".
After you reach "ichi man", you start counting 10 "man" (ten ten-thousands), 100 "man"(one hundred ten-thousands), 1000 "man", then switch from "man" to "oku" and repeat the process.
I think because of this, easyjapanese.org's explanation that the Japanese count in powers of 100 is not correct. It's actually the opposite.



All in all, easyjapanese.org offers some really useful resources. The games and quizzes to learn kana can be real useful for anyone trying to pick up the basics. The kanji flashcards I mentioned in my previous post are great for those of a more intermediate level, and need practice with kanji.
Outside of that, the site disappoints. The flash-based mini lesson has several mistakes, explanations for pronouns have mistakes or are wrong, and the number page and kana charts are just confusing.

If I had to score this site on a scale of 1 to 10 (which I should start doing for my reviews), I'd give it a 4. If it fixes the mistakes, I think I'd rate it a solid 6 or 7, but for now, it's subpar.
Now that I have two fun posts up, and I'm running out of time at the office, I need to put up that resource post I was talking about earlier.


For those of you studying Japanese on your own, or even though a class, one of the best ways to study on your own is with flashcards.
Random vocab for those learning Japanese, vocabulary flashcards are usually called 単語帳, tangochou, in Japanese.
However, in today's world, printing out or writing out your own paper flashcards can be a waste of time and paper, especially if you put a lot of effort into making them, then never use them.


If you do not want to waste the paper and time making flashcards because you aren't sure you'll use them, or if you just don't have the time to commit to making your own, let me introduce you to several sites that offer online flashcards!

Kanaflash - For those still trying to pick up the basics of kana, Kanaflash is a great Flash-based hiragana and katakana flashcard site. Just hitting the "Launch it!" button opens up a pop-up where you can choose if you want hiragana, katakana or both. You can also check off if you want just the basic characters, or if you'd like those with diacritical marks and compounds (small ya/yu/yo) added in as well. While it doesn't teach how to write, it's great for remembering which character is which.

Chez Schei Flashcards - While I cannot get the main site to load, Chez Schei offers a very simple browser-based flashcard program. However, it seems to be more for vocab and remembering proverbs than really learning kana or kanji. Users can set what cards they'd like to study, and choose Japanese-to-English or English-to-Japanese flashcards. Users can also choose "Auto-pilot", which automatically loads the answer after a few seconds, rather than pushing the "answer" button.

Easy Japanese.org - The website easyjapanese.org offers a flash-based kanji flashcard page. The cards list the kanji, the different readings, how many strokes, the grade level, the radical and meaning. Next to the meaning, there is a little green checkmark that you can click on to change to a red "X", which puts the cards into "test mode". Test mode blanks out the meaning, so you can quiz yourself on what each kanji means. You check your answers by pressing the mark two more times to see the English translation.
While the mark is a red "X", you can click a third time to turn it into a gray stop watch. This is called "test mode with instant verification" and grants you several seconds to guess the English meaning before the answer is shown to you. Personally, I'd use this one plus Kanaflash to practice my own kanji.

Anki - Anki is not a web-based flashcard program, but actually one that is downloaded onto your computer. It is a fully-customizable program. You can use it to study just about anything you want, be it kana, kanji, or even a language that is not Japanese! I personally have used this to study for my Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), as it comes with a pre-loaded set of flashcards for the kanji portion of the 2nd level of the JLPT. As you go through the cards you choose how difficult it was for you to recall the meaning or Japanese translation of each card. The easier the card was for you, the longer it will be before that card comes up again. The harder the card was, the more often the card pops up. You can chose if you want Japanese-to-English or English-to-Japanese, and you can even create your own flashcard decks. If you want to study kana and kanji and vocab, this is the best flashcard program to use, in my advice. I need to redownload this onto my new harddrive so I can study for my 1st level JLPT that I have this winter.


Lastly, I would like to introduce possibly the internet's best kanji dictionary.
Jim Breen's WWWJDIC - This has been my one constant resource since I first started Japanese back in high school. This dictionary looks up just about ANYTHING. Kanji, English-to-Japanese, Japanese-to-English, Japanese-to-seven other languages, jargon for different fields, etc. It even has a kanji look up by radical, which is what I use the most. You just check off the box for each of the different parts of the kanji you want to look up, hit "find" and it finds all the kanji that contain those radicals. Want to know what 語 is? Check the boxes for 言, 五, and 口, press "find" and there you go! Gives you all the readings (both Chinese and Japanese), as well as the English pronunciation!
Seriously, the best online dictionary I know of.



And while I would much rather like to list some more, I need to move on out for my next class for today.
I'll try to get a blog up sometime in the next two weeks, but if not, I guarantee a post on the 20th at some point, since that's when the office has me scheduled to blog next.

Until next time!
As I mentioned in my post back in January, Gifu houses one of the oldest sakura cherry trees in Japan, 薄墨桜 (Usuzumi-zakura). Usuzumi-zakura is supposedly 1500 years old, only be upstaged by Jindai-zakura in Yamanashi Prefecture which is about 2000 years old. According to legend, it was planted in 467 during the reign of Emperor Yuryaku who was the 21st emperor of Japan. There is some speculation on this, as some websites I've found on it say the year 487.

This particular type of sakura is known for it's pale pink petals that fade to white as they reach full bloom, then fade to a light gray as they fall. The name usuzumi-zakura literally translates to "light Chinese ink cherry tree". This name was given due to the fact that the petals do turn a light gray that is very similar to watered down traditional Chinese ink used in calligraphy and painting.


The tree itself is huge compared to the average size of a sakura tree. According to the official website (Japanese only), it is 16.3m (about 53.5ft) tall and 9.91m (about 32.5ft) around it's trunk. The thing is absolutely massive.

Instead of me just typing away about it, how about some pictures to look at?
You can click on them to see them bigger.
Later, once I go through all that I took, I will upload more to my deviantArt site, which is linked to the "Photo" button up top of this blog.

Look how massive that is!

Better look at the supports holding up the massive branches

The blossoms look pink from far away but...

When you get right up to them you notice they're actually white.

Except when the setting sun hits them.

We found a random old footbridge across a dried up river on the far end of the park.

The bridge led through a campsite, up a hill, and to a small little shrine.
The post date for my last entry tells me it's been almost a month since my last post.
And I had promised a post the week after my last one!


All I can say is:
I'm sorry for the wait.

What exactly kept me from posting a new entry?
Well, to put it bluntly, life happened.
The ups and downs that come with life happened to be mostly downs last month, and kept me far away from the computer.


However I am back, and bringing you two new posts today! This post will be a quick recap of several events that have happened in the last month, and the next will be a list of various online resources useful when learning Japanese. Not specifically sites to learn Japanese from, but sites that are good to use as supplements to your learning.


Now, on to the main event! Photos and stories galore!
Those with slow internet connections may want to go get a cup of coffee or go file their taxes while all the photos load up.



First things first, I sadly do not have any awesome pictures of my awesome fiber optic internet line getting installed. The landlord refused permission to have NTT install the line through the wall, so we had to have it brought in through our window. Sadly, it wasn't as awesome of an install as I thought it would be. However, it is relatively faster than my last connection, which is awesome. No lag time in World of Warcraft in the mornings!



In the place of fiber optic installation pictures, I will add to the thousands of photos online of a very peculiar spring festival.

Every March the city of Komaki in Aichi Prefecture, the neighboring prefecture of Gifu who's capital is Nagoya, has a set of shrines that put on a harvest/fertility festival, known as a hounensai (豊年際). These shrines are Oogata Shrine (大縣神社) and Tagata Shrine (田縣神社). Tagata Shrine always has their festival on the 15th, while Oogata Shrine has theirs on the previous Sunday. Oogata Shrine's festival is relatively small and unknown, even though it occurs on a weekend. An image search on Google only brings up 149 hits, very few of which are actually of the shrine. Tagata Shrine, however, brings up 2650 hits. Nearly every single hit is an image of the festival.

I will warn you now. If you are at your place of work, or have young children/immature adults around you, please do not Google search this festival, nor scroll down past here.


This year the two festivals ran together, which I did not know, so I missed out on Oogata Shrine's festival. I dragged my husband to Tagata Shrine early in the morning, hoping to miss the crowd. However, I was dead wrong in my timing.


At only 10am, nearly 3 hours before the actual main events of the festival would start, the temple was already packed.
From the first glance, this looked like any other shrine you'd see in Japan. Typical styled shrine buildings, large stone torii out front, gardens everywhere.
The always-a-must food booths for festivals were also everywhere you looked. We made sure to pick up some yummy Hida Beef ka-bobs, and chocolate-filled taiyaki.



It wasn't until you got further into the shrine grounds, past the taiko drummers, that you notice this is not your typical shrine.
Every where you look are rocks that are phallic shaped. Either naturally shaped or carved by hand, every corner hides several small phalluses. Next thing you know, there are vendor tables selling phallic-shaped candies, ashtrays, incense burners and keychains.




They had phallic candy in several flavors
As well as many different phallic-shaped objects for gifts to take home with you.




As my husband described it, it seemed we had walked into the world's largest sausage fest. But what was the point of all of these phalluses?
Turns out, the deity of Tagata Shrine is a female harvest and fertility deity, and all of the phallic stones, carvings, candy, etc. were gifts and offerings to the deity in hopes for a bountiful harvest and healthy children. Oogata Shrine, the one we didn't get two, houses a male harvest and fertility deity and gets gifts and offerings of female genitalia.



Around 2pm, a parade from the nearby Kumanosha Shrine (熊野社) starts that brings three mikoshi floats to the main shrine of Tagata Shrine. One is an offering float, one is the male deity from Oogata Shrine, and one...I'm not sure what it is, to be honest with you. The offering float contains a newly-carved phallus, made from a single cypress tree. The thing is huge, and sticks out from both sides. There were two or three teams of men, all aged 42 (an unlucky age for men despite being the answer to the ultimate question), who take turns carrying the offering.







The other two floats are a red float, that looks much like a shrine itself, and a elaborate float. The red float, pictured on the left here, carries a statue of Takeinadene-no-mikoto, the deity of Oogata Shrine. Legend has it he was a warrior who married a girl from the village where Komaki now stands. The girl is the deity enshrined in Tagata Shrine, Tamahime-no-mikoto. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the figure inside of this, as much as I wanted to.
The little torii gate in front of the float did make me giggle, though. The Japanese can be very detailed with these things.






The last float, the really elaborate one held this guy:
No clue who he is. Neither the English pamphlet that I bought for 100 yen nor the informational website I found mentions it. My guess is either it's a second image of Takeinadene-no-mikoto, or the deity of Kumanosha Shrine. If anyone can find any information, I'd love to know!







For all three of these floats, as well as several groups of shinto priests and a group of 36-year-old women holding freshly-carved wooden phalluses (36 is unlucky for women), it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to make the 1.5 kilometer walk between shrines.
Once the mikoshi have made it to Tagata Shrine, the offering mikoshi is brought inside the main shrine, where it will rest for a year until the next hounensai brings a new offering.
Around 4pm there is a mochinage, or rice cake-throwing, where a bunch of the priests and special guests lob lucky rice cakes at the crowd. This is QUITE dangerous, and several times they warned that the elderly, pregnant women, people with kids, and people with eyeglasses should refrain from joining in as the shrine is not responsible for any injuries received while trying to catch a rice cake.

Overall, it was a unique experience, and both my husband and I were glad we went. The festival has gained a lot of popularity with foreign tourists, and a good 30% of the visitors to the festival were not of Japanese decent. There was also a random Japanese man dressed up in full cowboy gear, except for chaps. He also had a guitar case with him, which prompted my husband and I to stay far away from him, in case the guitar case held a machine gun, like the movie Desperato.

If anyone ever comes visit the Nagoya area in March, I completely suggest this festival. I think it's about 700 yen from Nagoya's Meitetsu train station to Tagata Shrine, which makes it a very affordable day trip.
Next year, my husband and I will definitely make plans to go to Oogata Shrine's festival, so I hope this blog sticks around so I have somewhere to post pictures!


Now, there is still one more thing to talk about.
However, I believe this post is long enough, so I will stop here and start a new one. So I guess you guys are lucky and get three posts today!