Nakano Broadway

This is the Nakano Broadway mall. Even from the outside it looks like a dark tunnel leading to the underworld.



Here we find the Jesus card trading shop. They are just normal cards, sports and comic types, whatever made them think Jesus was a cool or appropriate name is beyond me. Jesus is on the third floor.



This is the coolest shop we found. It's a shop that only sells things that people left behind on trains. Apparently they auction off all that stuff after a couple of months. As you can see, people leave a lot of bags and coats on the train. There were a few ratty paperbacks and dirty manga, one called Bastard. You can see a lot of beanies, scarves and gloves. Inside were rows of jewellery and weird purses and wallets. Whilst umbrellas are the most lost item on the subway, they didn't really sell these as everyone has about ten of them in their closet. You can buy umbrellas for about three dollars, so whenever it rains and you get caught out, you just buy another one.



Junkworld is a store full of used electrical equipment.

Nakano Broadway is mostly full of used toy and manga shops, with the occasional music store thrown in. On the top level there were some yo-yo players outside the yo-yo shop doing whack tricks with their mad skills. My watch doesn't show the date so I was unable to helpfully point out to them that it was no longer 1983.

There were also a few cosplay stores featuring the latest in crime fighting spandex and faux weaponry. At first it's quite shocking to see a shop full of guns in Japan, but you soon realise that they are either replicas or just shoot those little plastic pellets. One of these weaponry stores was going for the World Record for Poor Synergy, as it only sold knives and fossilised trilobites.

Some of the toys on display were more for clutching at poutily than for having a tea party with. These were being sold at the Gothic Lolita supply stores located well away from the high traffic areas. Goth lolis dress kind of like little Bo Peep after she got addicted to heroin and started cutting herself. It's all corsets, braids, tartan and bows but cutesy anime style. Also they buy thousand dollar old-fashioned porcelain dolls which they dress up to resemble themselves.

Another strange sight was a video game tournament being fully commentated by a seriously into it guy. Even other Japanese people were laughing and pointing. Next to their little grotto were some of those vending machines that kids get toys out of, like the old gum ball machines. Alice was clawing at one of them, so we went to put our coins in only to notice what we were potentially buying. They were tiny men dressed as babies, for the diaper fetishists amongst you. I was all for them, she doesn't know a man from a baby anyway, however it was not to be.

Kanji

I haven't been posting much lately because I have been trying to learn kanji. These are the Chinese characters that are in use in Japan, and once a Japanese person has left high school they are supposed to have learnt a select 1945, although there are many more. These kanji are the most commonly used and are usually taught in order of difficulty. It takes six years, I think, to learn them all and the main method is copying them out hundreds and thousands of times.

Suffice to say I don't have six years to spend trying to get literate. I think most Japanese learners initially think to themselves that they can just learn the speaking part, or at the very least the two alphabets which are used in conjunction with kanji, hiragana and katakana. However, it seems apparent that to read anything at all you need to learn them. All of them. They are mostly used in combinations of two or more, meaning learning individual ones now and then won't help much.

So I found a method, and am studying hard. I know it sounds surprising, but I think anything done on a computer is enjoyable, so it seems not so bad.

I am using this book, Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig, and his method is to learn them all at once, by making up an imaginative story containing the smaller constituent radicals in the kanji. The characters are often made up of combinations of other kanji, and through these you can invent a mnemonic. This is quite normal and common, I think, however he also advises not to learn the Japanese readings at first, but just to link it to one single English word, which contains at least one of the meanings the kanji conveys. To learn everything about one kanji is too difficult, so you kind of break the work down into meaning and reading.

So, I'm almost there, amazingly. I've learnt how to write 1400 kanji, and learnt one single meaning in English for each one, and it only took six weeks. I'm giving myself until March to learn the other 600. However, just using this method with pen and paper would be almost impossible, so this website comes into play; Reviewing the Kanji uses a Leitner flashcard system, which tests you on the keywords in progressively longer and longer intervals. This means that cards you are good at don't get tested often, saving time, whereas those which you have trouble with seem to come up very often.

Right, so what good is that, I still can't read. Well now I will have something to hang the sound of a kanji on, namely a story and a meaning. Kanji won't be a tangle of unrecognisable line and dots anymore. Also I'll be able to guess the meaning of words using the individual kanji, and I can write them too. So the job won't be done quite yet. Soon I'll have to read a lot of manga and train ads, etc. and learn how the kanjis sound.

At least it won't take six years. Fingers crossed, only six months, because that's all I have.

Cabbage

I didn't think cabbages grew on trees, but I stand corrected.

Sandwich

I had heard about this delicacy but only today got to try one. It tasted like strawberries and cream. I was going to dump all over this in usual fashion, but I used to make potato chip sandwiches, and cheese and Vegemite is also somewhat unusual.

Shinagawa Station

I actually think Foodium is a good effort. At least you can guess its meaning.

Necessities

All Japanese toilets need to be plugged in. However, you can't pay for stuff with a credit card. I don't get it at all.

Yokohama Signs

Reminds me of my students wanting to 'level-up'.



It was indeed. Very yaki. Japanese doughnuts aren't fried, they are just cakes, but round. Also they are really dry. Sorry Japan.



This sign was in Yokohama's waterfront park. I suppose they mean stuff like lemonade stands and dog walking businesses.



I didn't take this recommendation.

Sky Cafe

We went to Yokohama for a bit of a year end break. It's a nice place, but it was so cold. They have the tallest building in Japan, the Landmark tower, there. At the top is a cafe with an unfortunate name, and signage.

Combo

A hamburger made with pancakes, rather than a bun. More nausea can be induced by noticing the shrimp and mayonnaise pizza at the top left. From the America House restaurant in Yokohama.