Wednesday, August 4, 2010

I hate kanji, part 298482910

I was too lazy to post this to Twitter, but my story in a nutshell:

For Americans, kanji is DIFFICULT. For example~

My "classmates" and I were reading through our yomimono, like theいい学生 that we are, and we came across the first character in the equation. None of us had ever seen it before, though we were all familiar with the radicals (the individual components that make up a character - the roof, the water splash on the left side, the katakana マ thing in the middle). The textbook didn't show us that exact character and my DS jisho didn't want to cooperate when I tried to write it, so I took to Twitter. The almost unanimous answer from my Japanese followers was, "IT'S 冷たい (tsumetai - cold to the touch) YOU NOOB."

I know the differences between Japanese fonts can sometimes make reading kanji difficult, especially with the complex ones (機械 kikai - machine is a favorite), but these were clearly different since THAT RADICAL UNDER THE ROOF IS TOTALLY NOT THE SAME. It's not even simplified, it takes three strokes to write either radical! UGH. I HATE KANJI.

Aside from looking like a total waste of space on Twitter, I got my nails done last week.


Not quite how I wanted it to look, but it's still nice. I went to Smiley Nail and they did a good job, the gel is all even and was perfect before it started to grow out, but it was about $20 more than the first salon I tried.

Also had a chat with the big cheese owner of my working place, in regard to moving up in the company. It wasn't all that productive, and the thought of not having an opportunity to live and work in Japan made me sad. I've been dragging my feet about what I want to do since I won't be returning to UH next semester - move up at my job, get another job, continue to wait for that teaching position, apply to JET again (UGH). I definitely don't want to get stuck in management (not until they pay more, which is probably never), so I guess I'll entertain the idea of getting another job and wait a little longer.

Maybe I can work in Waikiki with all the J-boys wandering around, especially now that I know the two kanji for tsumetai.

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