Reading and Speaking Japanese Is A Bitch

From the mind of Peter Able and his Living and Teaching in Japan blog, comes a story I had to share with you all.

Peter's a great guy, from what I can tell - but who knows, though? He could be as crazed an individual as me - a seething volcano of sex and violence... sorry, I meant sax and violins.

Regardless... in a recent blog of his, he wrote about just how bloody insane it is to learn Japanese. He means speaking it, reading it, and while not in the title, he could easily have added "writing it".

I agree 100 bloody per cent with Peter. Obviously you get out what you put into it... but really... after three years there, while still a blathering idiot, I still had a difficult time being understood or understanding what was being said to me. And reading or writing? Forget it!

Hell, as a baby and then a toddler of three - I was near brilliant. Proof of which can be found in the fact that I was in Grade 1 while 4 going on 5 years of age in November. And I was successful. I could read, write and certainly speak when I was three.

Yes it was English, but that's kind of the point. Japanese is a difficult language.

Perhaps because while I was in Japan, I was constantly chasing women - much like Peter admits he wants to do.

Mayhaps the answer to it all lies in THIS blog entry written by my friend Mister Manfred Mann (I swear it's not me!) on How To Survive Women. It's slightly adult with some raw language that I do not allow on this site, though I do allow some pretty raunchy situations. Still MMM needs a plug too. 

Plug for MMM aside, please check out Peter's blog. It's a very fast read - and even if you don't get all of the words, the meaning is 100 per cent understandable. I admit I had no idea what Japanese words or phrases he was spouting at me on couple of occasions, but then again... Japanese is a freaking hard language.
     
JAPANESE TOUGH

Cheers
Andrew Joseph
Why the photo above? Read Peter's blog for the real answer, and note the following - my purely lucky answer: As I wrote the last word in the title wondering if I should swear or not, I glanced briefly at the photo and went Ohhhh. Damn I'm good (and lucky). It's not a swear word now!

New Hairy Leg Font

Upper Case hair font.

Artists - much like some blog writers - are always looking for the next big thing to copy. Others... they like to break new ground.

When challenged by her Department of Design professors at Tama Art University located in Hachioji, Tokyo to crteate a new typography font without the use of computers, Japanese design student Kanazawa Mayuko (surname first), 20, must have thought about ripping her hair out of her head.

Lower Case hair font.

Possibly saying screw 'Helvetica', 'Trebuchet' and 'Georgia', she created a font out of hair.

First off, she did not use her own hair, eschewing ego and using the leg hair from a male friend. According to Kanazawa, she was inspired after a male friend  complained to her about a pain in his leg. Her inspiration was yo use his pain for her gain and create a font by forming leg hair into the English alphabet in both the upper and lowers case.

No one is saying how she formed the letters, but one would assume a large magnifying glass and some tweezers might be involved. Possibly hair spray to make sure it stayed in place. Oh, and a camera to prove she could rise up to the school work challenge.

As part of the challenge, she used the hair font to create an ad for Adidas - not a real ad, just a mock up (see below).

While it is a cool mock-up, I think she needs to trim some of the font. There's no need for all of that gray above the letters... and perhaps she could have blended the background colors to make it appear more natural. Ah... but I nit pick... perhaps that's something I should not do with her hair font.

Will she create a katakana (72 letters), hiragana (72 letters) or if she has enough time left in her life to create a kanji (1945 to be literate, though there may be over 6,000 in total) alphabet out of the boringly named Leg Hair font?  


Japan - It's A Wonderful Rife isn't sure if she plucked a hair from her friend and then manipulated it into the desired shape and then placed or stuck it back on the friend or if she merely did so while the hair was still alive on the leg. One thing this blog will say is that despite a deft talent, Kanazawa has created a hair-raising font even I'm sure I don't want to ever see used.

Maybe.    

I wonder if she should have called it the Hairy Bella-font-A?


Somewhere daylight come and me wanna go home,
By Andrew Joseph