Monday, December 8, 2008

Reading Rainbow

I've self-tagged myself after reading D's book post.

Here are the rules:
Go to your nearest bookshelf. On the top shelf (or highest shelf with books) what book is fifth from the right and why did you love it? Now go to the bottom shelf (or lowest shelf with books). Tell us about the fifth book from the left.

Kanji StarterKanji Starter
by Daiki Kusuya

I think this is the first book I ever bought to help me try and understand Japanese. It's small and easy to understand. Each page has one or two kanji and takes it from the picture the kanji represents to the Chinese character. It's good for visual learners, and flipping through it once or twice helped me recognize a bunch of kanji. The drawback is it doesn't really help you memorize how to say each kanji in Japanese, even though it's written below the English. It's good if you wanna learn 山 equals "mountain" and simple stuff like that.

My Voice Is Sexy When You Close Your Eyes or, Whatever Happened To That Guy Kevin!?
by Kelly Froh

This was a bonus insert in Kelly's mini-comic Slither #5. I've read a bunch of her stuff and I recommend it highly. She's been kind enough to send her comics to me with the promise that one day I'll send her mine(...). This particular story is about this guy she meets on the internet, and I guess in the days before one knew any better, agrees to meet him after only seeing a tiny 72 dpi thumbnail photo. Classic coming-of-age story in the days where social networking was too (you know, 2005).
I found it hilarious and relatable, way too honest and embarrassing, which how I like me comic.

Obviously, as was done before me, I'm not tagging anyone, cause people hate that shit.

2 comments:

d said...

nicely done. i'm glad you didn't tag anyone, 'cause people do hate that shit.

love the new (is it new? i read all blogs in my reader so haven't seen mastheads in a while.) masthead.

Catnapping said...

because of kanji, i am able to understand an eensy bit of chinese (when written).

my first years were in japan. moved there when i was 3 months old...and we came back to the states when i was six. i was fluent in japanese, and preferred it to english (so goes the family mythology, at any rate.)

i really only know about 1500 kanji, these days...but i've found that sometimes i am able to glean the meaning of small parts chinese text because of that. and rarely, reading it in context...i've gotten the gist of a few entries on chinese blogs...(tested myself with babelfish for fun.)

all because of what the kanji means in english...i mean, i have no clue what the chinese words are!

i envy you there in japan. i envy you those japanese books, japanese silk, japanese lacquer, the tancho...your proximity to 北海道. i would give anything to live on 北海道