Kanji

Tonight was Japanese class for me, and my tutor noticed for the first time that my book has been teaching me a few symbols in kanji. I think it's a good thing that the book has started. My katakana and hiragana are not perfect, but I think I'm pretty good at them. Now the problem is 1) I'm slow with them. It's like sounding out every word. 2) I don't really have the vocabulary to know what the word is even after I've produced it, and 3) most everything is written with some kanji thrown in, so it was time to move on.
I don't know how many of you may have had that teacher in elementary school who insisted there was one way to write each letter and would watch you over and over until you wrote it correctly, but apparently every Japanese student had that teacher, and every one of them stands by that concept. The character may look exactly the same as the one on the page when you're done, but unless you wrote the strokes in the right order, it's not right. I knew this from writing katakana, and I actually use the right order may be 80 percent of the time, so my tutor lets the mistakes slide... usually.
Up to this point with the kanji, though, she hadn't seen me writing. Instead, I'd made the flash cards I'm using (go ahead, light up the dork sign) and answered the questions at home. I'd been using the general rules I'd learned for katakana as a guide and figuring if it looked right I was happy. As it turns out, the general rules for stroke order in katakana are completely different from those for kanji (go figure). So tonight, I spent the last half hour of class writing and numbering the 40-some kanji I've learned so far. (Remember, there are 2000 of them total, so I might get to all of them before I leave... may be...) While this process can be frustrating, it was also a cultural experience.
Every kanji is a picture of something. Knowing what the picture is can help you remember them sometimes. Tree (ki) for example, looks like the trunk of a tree with the ground and some roots underneath. In other cases, though, it's just a matter of memorization. I will probably never see anything to connect the kanji for red (aka) with the idea of red, but we'll pretend. I wouldn't know how to make a symbol for it, either. On a side note, the Americans around here tend to use kanji like inkblot tests. One guy, for example, looks at the symbols for Fukuoka and sees "lady pushing boxes towards a swing." It helps him remember, so why not?
The thing is, since Japanese don't use all the kanji that originally existed in Chinese, some of these symbols serve for up to five different pronunciations depending on the situation. The kanji for foot and leg, for example, is also used in the word for field trip. Therefore, I if I know that the kanji for foot is in the word, I might be able to guess that the word relates to walking or something like that. I've learned three for the box with the line through it. It's main meaning is hi (hee), which is sun. It sort of looks like a sun without the rays, I suppose. It also stands for nichi (neechee) (one of the days of the week) and bi (bee) which is day. Knowing that the picture means sun helps me to remember that the symbol means day. One day is one sun, right? Wednesday is written with two symbols: water and sun. So it's water day in my head now. Thursday is tree day. It's something to keep them straight.
The symbol for "male" has the symbol for power in it. As my tutor said, "men have power." It's right there in the written word. I also learned that the two symbols for teacher (sensei) literally translated are "ahead birth." So, if you go way back to the roots, a teacher is someone who is born before you. It says something about the respect for age here. So it's been an interesting night. I'm looking forward to learning more.
Miscelaneous news of the day: I got to sub in the high school. The kids here are just like in the States. In a sick and twisted way, hearing them gripe about being punished for taking a "senior skip day" makes me homesick. Also, Zack is back in the middle of the ocean, away from any good way to contact anyone for awhile. But other than that, he seems to be doing well.