Certificate of Eligibility

Our "Certificates of Eligibility" arrived on Wednesday, and I went to pick it up today. Actually, I went on Wednesday but they weren't expecting me so soon, but that's by-the-by. It's quite a pretty document, and I can recognise some of the kanji now, thanks to the aforementioned book I bought.

The certificate doesn't let me get into Japan however: I now need to go to the Japanese embassy in London to get my visa. Supposedly this can cost between £6 and £20 depending on citzenship, whatever that means. Hopefully, it'll be more towards the lesser value! And I need another bloody passport photo.

Professor Sato

St. Anne's college had the big opening of its new "Ruth Deech Building" today. Since the domestic bursar has been organising both the building and the Japan scholarship, the five of us were asked to attend and help out meeting important guests. People of note who attended include Sir Roger Bannister (he ran the first sub four minute mile) and Chris Patten (the last British Govenor of Hong Kong, and now the Chancellor of the University of Oxford).

It was very hot today, and we had to wear suits (the boys did at least) and our Oxford gowns. On top of that we sat in the glaring heat during the opening ceremony, though we did have our own named seats, which was nice. I didn't manage to find any free alcohol either, nor were we invited to dinner.

We were expecting to be introduced to Chancellor Tsusuki, who donated a large sum of money towards the new building, but above all he is the man who owns the university at which we shall be staying. Unfortunately he wasn't able to come, but Professor Sato (who is in charge of Daiichi) came instead to represent him, and we were all introduced, although rather briefly. I wonder if he will remember us?

Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji

Brendan forwarded us all an email from Chris who was in Japan on the schlarship last year. In it he pointed out a few things he'd have liked to have known before arriving. He also suggests that we teach ourselves the hiragana and katakana in the holidays, since we'll have to teach ourselves in the first week before lessons anyway. Now that I have finished my finals (yay!) I have set to work trying to memorise them.

Japanese script uses three alphabets: hiragana, katakana, and the kanji. There are 46 each of the hiragana and katakana, and they act a lot like our own alphabet, each having it's own fixes pronounciation and not meaning anything on their own. Hiragana are normally used to modify nouns and verbs, and also to provide the pronounciations of lesser known kanji (to which I shall get in a moment). Katakana are used to write foreign, imported words (of which there are quite a good few) and to write foreign names.

As of today, I pretty much know all the hiragana and have started on the katakana. I've been learning from the site www.japanese-name-translation.com, which provides a useful Flash animation that illustrates how to draw each character.

The kanji are probably what most people associate with Japanese (and moreso with Chinese). They are little pictures, each representing a word, and can be combined to produce more and different words. Supposedly, there are about 5,000 different kanji in existence, or which an average Japanese person will know about 3,500. The everyday, or jouyou kanji, are comprised of 1,942 symbols and are taught in the Japanese education system over nine years.

I'm planning to get ahead on my kanji during the holidays, and to this extent I bought another book today: "Beginner's Japanese Script" by Helen Gilhooly.