Nicholas' Journey to Japan

こんにちは！ I find it very interesting that Japanese borrows so many words from other languages. In many cases, it is possible to guess what a word will be in Japanese by just thinking of the pronunciation in terms of katakana. For example, bus is simply バス, instant coffee is インスタントコーヒー, and Kit-kat is キットカット. Although Kanji still seems necessary to fully understand written Japanese, knowing katakana is a major help.  When walking through Tokyo, I noticed that katakana was used significantly more often than hiragana on buildings and signs. In fact, even English seemed more common than hiragana. This makes sense as katakana is typically used for company names, especially for foreign companies.

 こんにちは! For spring break, I traveled with Andrew and our other roommate to Japan. We spent 3 days in Tokyo, 3 days in Kyoto, and did a day trip to Hakone and Mt. Fuji. Although most people seemed to understand English, I enjoyed practicing my Japanese when at restaurants or shopping. Andrew and I got some funny reactions when we went beyond the normal こんいちは and あっりがとございます. At first, Tokyo looked like any other major city. However, a few things quickly stood out to us. First, the streets were perfectly clean. It was interesting walking down busy streets that had no litter anywhere. Also, the streets and especially the public transportation were very quiet. No one would talk on the subways and buses, so we were constantly paying attention to our volume and correcting each other. Even though we were careful to follow all of the social etiquette, such as no eating or drinking while walking and no jaywalking, we still had people staring and watching us which we are not used to. We also ...