Not sure who exactly you are addressing in your comment, but I never said that you should not know the meaning of radicals. They are a great way to get the essence of what a character means, especially when you are not familiar with it. However, I stand by my opinion that the best way to learn kanji characters properly is by writing them out. People may not write as much by hand anymore but that is not the point.

They look great! Congratulations on making it work! ^_^

One more thing is...I'm a Japanese person who is not that fond of hoshigaki... ^_^; (I prefer the fresh kind, Jiro-gaki is my favorite type)

I hate to uh, rain on your parade, but my mother tried here in Yokohama where the winters are rather balmy (rarely going much under zero C) and they molded like ew. I saw tons of them hanging everywhere up in the Tohoku region last week, where it was already cold and dry and rather windy. I wish you luck!

Does this look like a food blog to you? You are an idiot.

No.

Well, Paris Syndrome is just another word for culture shock really. It's supposedly experienced the most by young, idealistic Japanese women who grew up in upper-middle-class homes, who have these fantasies about la belle Paris from the media and movies, and move there only to discover it's a big old messy city! I suppose that culture shock is suffered by anyone who travels to a foreign country, especially if they had unrealistic expectations prior to going there, regardless of the destination or ones origins. Go to any online expat community, and you see plenty of culture shock/homesick victims....

U in roma-ji (Japanese phonetically spelled with Latin characters) is always pronounced 'ooo' (or um, 'uh')

The term probably originated in Hotaru no hikari (in the original manga on which the TV series is based), where the main character Hotaru likes to have a late night tipple (banshaku) on her own, sake in one hand and picking at a himono with another - both considered very old-man sorts of things to do. So a himono onnna is not just rather dry and tough, she also does rather unfeminine things in her daily life - and doesn't care what people think about it.

Not necessarily. It can also be a positive thing, where a woman is no longer worrying about pleasing others but rather living for herself. I guess it all depends on the indivual!

Clotilde and everyone, I think I will restart this blog eventually, here or somewhere else (partly due to the response I've gotten) - I'm just too busy with other things for the next 2 months or so though ^_^; There are a lot of sites that have cultural vignettes, though not as far as I know with language notes, but one of my favorites is Watashi to Tokyo, written by a young Japanese woman called Mari. The J-List Sideblog has some language notes with his observations of life in Japan. There's Japan Probe and other sites too that give insight into life in Japan, albeit from a non-Japanese point of view.

Hmm, I am not sure about the story about the UK TV programme showing miso soup with sugar. If that did indeed happen, it must have been a long time ago, or misunderstood by the viewer. Nowadays British people seem to know quite a lot about Japanese food. (お砂糖入りのお味噌汁の話はちょっと嘘っぽいです　^_^)

yoko: those Saturday school were horrible, weren't they? I'm sure a lot of kids have bad memories of them... :/

The first Matt: JBox.com has a lot of study aids for Japanese learners, and their site is all in English. Check out the list in the sidebar for their top sellers for example. Their prices are more than at Amazon JP but I guess that is the price to pay for English customer service from Japan :P

1945 makes sense, if you add the elementary school + junior high level kanji. (Keeping in mind that mandatory education in Japan ends at 15, or the 3rd year of junior high/middle school, though the vast majority of people go on to finish high school or or an equivalent vocational school at minimum.)

I don't know if such a list exists - I haven't found it online. It would not be a formal list, unlike the educational ones I've linked to. Generally speaking though, a general news item can be read with the kanji learned up to grade 6, supplemented by some specialized terminology kanji for, for instance the Nikkei Shimbun (for business and economics etc.) For all general reading the 1016 characters learned in grade school should be in anyone's kanji vocabulary.

I think that things that 癒す are a bit different from mind candy, which implies something that is sort of useless but diverting. But they can be used for similar things.

Well, grammatically you could be 癒される　by a person...but it takes on sexual implications, if you know what I mean (to be eh, comforted by...) so I'd recommend you don't use it in relation to a person, unless you mean it that way ^_^;

> 私は　コーヒーに　いやされます yes that's correct :)

Yes, the Ayumi Hamasaki version is a cover...and not nearly as good as the original versions.

@sarah: would that be 気まぐれな空の癖がついたから ? That would make slightly more sense. (also, it's read 'kuse', not 'ki') Anyway, based on that that sentence would mean "(I) always have a folding umbrella, even when it's sunny, because I've gotten into the habit of dealing with a fickle sky." (I am guessing these are song lyrics, because it's not really a normal sentence) @Thorsten: Generally German people have a very positive image in Japan. I may use that in a future post :) @Andrew: I honestly didn't know the term 'wapanese' until a week or so ago. I don't believe it's a known term in Japan at all. What do Japanese people feel about non-Japanese people who are fans of Japanese things? I guess, mixed (depending on who you talk to) @thesouthstar: Well, unfortunately the U.S. is dangerous compared to most other so-called advanced nations, statistically speaking. Also, incidents like the shooting of Yoshihiro Hattori have left a very deep impression on most Japanese people's minds. I remember when it happened, a number of parents of some Japanese friends of mine who were living in the U.S.(the kids, not the parents - some were students, some were working) told their kids to come home ASAP before they got shot by mistake. Over reaction, maybe, but such impressions are hard to erase. And yes I know there are many other stereotypes applied to Americans in particular and 'gaijin' in general in Japan, but since this is primarily a language blog I was just tying together the ones starting with 大 (big) here.

No that was a plain and simply typo. Corrected now!

It's not that there is a fixed happy place, it's that the yen has gotten so expensive vs. the dollar so fast that's the problem. I believe it was in the 110 yen to a dollar range for most of last year.

@Matt: the の　is possessive. So 部下の　is '(the) subordinate's' .