Lexicon of Love

At this time I want to take a breather, and share with you four books which were invaluable to me while in Japan.

The first one is the Romanized English - Japanese Dictionary. This book allows you to look up English words and get the Japanese equivalent. As far as I know, it never got me into trouble. It allowed me to have three years worth of conversations with Kanemaru-san, one of my two bosses at the OBOE (Ohtawara Board of Education). You can tell this book was very well used!

This next book is the reverse... a Romanized Japanese - English Dictionary for times when you hear a Japanese word and want to know what the heck it means. Kanemaru-san had a Japanese version of this allowing him to try and speak English words. It`s how he told me a joke in that first day I met him - one looked-up word after another. What a great guy!
By the way.... no dictionary is perfect... in looking up the Japanese term: mushi atsui - which is supposed to mean humid, the dictionary says it means sultry. Hot and wet, but not the type they mean.  

The third book is Teach Yourself Japanese - well, no one else is. Although I`m sure it`s a great book, I was not a great student of Japanese... I was more interested in learning about its culture - you lucky readers, you!

Kanji & Kana - it shows the proper way to write all 1,945 basic Japanese Kanji characters (the ones that physically look like Chinese letters). Apparently all Japanese students must learn these characters, how to write them, and the character`s definitions by the time they graduate Grade 12. I had over 700 memorized before I gave up after six months. Bad student, indeed.

And lastly, one of my favourite books: The Japanese-English Dictionary for Conversation about Japan... it`s not just a dry definition of things, it provides a conversational explanation of places, events, people, history, myths and actions. A truly wonderful book.     

Should you find yourself in Japan, I`d suggest picking up the books pictured, or at the very least similar styled books.

Somewhere it`s so sultry outside,
Andrew Joseph
PS: Today`s title is NOT a song... it is however, the name of the debut album of ABC. You can read more about them HERE.
PPS: Sorry... I`m out of time... I`m going to sleep early because I have to get up for a 4:15AM MRI on my knee. A nice blog on telephone cards tomorrow, followed by a real life story of me chasing a Japanese girl.
PPPS: So why rush out a blog? Well... I notice that there are a lot of people from around the world reading this starting almost as soon as I publish it every night at midnight... people from South Korea, Burundi, Philippines, China, New Zealand... how cool is that... I do this for them... just make sure you come back next day for a good one.