Archive | 8:05 pm

Kyoto trip

7 Sep

My 二女 (second daughter) went to 京都 (Kyoto, Japan) and 奈良 (Nara, Japan) with her junior high school class for a three-day field trip.

She just returned a few hours ago.

Of course she had a great time. And she took many photos…but almost all of them have her and/or her friends in them, so I can only post here the few photos that don’t show my daughter or her friends.

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東大寺 (Toudaiji Temple)

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東大寺大仏 (Great Buddah of Toudaiji)

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平安神宮 (Heian Grand Shrine)

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A vending that sells only お茶 (green-tea).

A vending that sells only お茶 (green-tea).

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Hir@gana Times

7 Sep

About ten years ago or so, I used to buy a monthly magazine called “Hir@gana Times“.

hir@gana-times

It’s a monthly magazine that used to cost ¥390 (about US$4) when I bought it.
I bought it to study Japanese. That’s the main purpose of the magazine. All of the articles are written in English and Japanese. The Japanese kanji characters everywhere in the articles have the ふりがな reading over them to assist people learning to read Japanese (my blog, BTW, also has ふりがな for all of the kanji. Hold your mouse over the kanji on this blog and it’ll pop up.)

I quit buying the magazine years ago but I thought about it today for some reason.
I decided to see if the magazine has a website…and of course it does.

It’s seems that the price of the magazine has gone up to ¥450 per issue…and most of their website is only available to paying members!
But it does have some free sections…and just like their print magazine, all of the kanji on the website has ふりがな. But their website does the ふりがな differently than I do on my blog…they have the ふりがな characters printed above the kanji just like in their magazine (and Japanese children’s books). I put the ふりがな on my blog as small pop-ups because I think that’s a better way to remember the kanji.

Anyways, if you want to see their website, it’s here.

And here’s an article from their site:

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(Click to enlarge)

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(Click to enlarge)