Ramen & Language Class

If you haven't had ramen in Japan, you have never had ramen. Last night Kenn and I had a sober ramen eating experience. It was at a place in our neighborhood that actually Kenn went with Charles when he was visiting. I had never been and we were looking for a quick place to eat after Japanese class that wouldn't be too harsh on the stomach - Kenn had a bout of some food poisoning or something this week. (not surprising in my opinion with all the weird stuff he tries to eat here).

Anyway, the ramen was delicious! Might be our new ramen place and it's a bit closer to home than the other one we go to. The one we had had this wonderful thick soup, not sure if you can tell from the pic. mmmmmmmm.....



On another note, Japanese class #2 was good. Again it focused on hiragana which Kenn and I are stuggling to memorize. His computer has been at the repair shop all week though so he has been a good boy studying at home. We rather be learning to speak more Japanese but we do feel like we are learning something and I can make out quite a few words now when in context. We are supposed to learn Katakana on our own as homework and I think next week we'll move on to other things.

FYI, so you get a sense of the complexity here: Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji (chinese characters). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each symbol represents one unit of sound. Each kana is either a vowel, a consonant followed by a vowel, or a nasal sonorant (which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng). Hiragana are used for words for which there are no kanji, including particles and suffixes. Hiragana are also used in words for which the kanji form is not known to the writer. Katakana is primarily used for borrowed English words.

Take a look at what we are trying to memorize:
Hiragana


Katakana