The Tokyo Traveler

If you want to learn more about the Japanese Language then take some time to read through the submissions for this months Japan Blog Matsuri.  Tae Kim at Guide to Japanese has pulled together an interesting series of posts on “The Language of Japan“.  Here are a couple of the submissions:
Liv wrote a piece about why sometimes it’s easier to pretend that you don’t understand Japanese in Someone’s Knocking at the Door.
Nick tell’s us about the struggles of having a foreign name in Japan in What’s my name?
Jaimapanese talks about his strategy to learn Japanese with a combination of …read more

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When you visit Tokyo you will find that there is a lot of bilingual signage around the city and that is very a good thing because it’s one thing to know a few Japanese phrases and another when it comes to reading the Kanji that is one of the three scripts used in written Japanese.
To be able to read or write Japanese you would need to be able to identify more that 2,000 Kanji!  Learning the language of Japan is an overwhelming proposition for the traveler and something that is not very practical for tourists.  With that in mind, I …read more

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This years summer solstice will be on June 20th in the Northern Hemisphere.  When I asked “What do YOU want to know about Tokyo?”, Chandra from The Boston Traveler asked me to share some “incredibly beautiful” Kanji, the characters used in the Japanese Language.  Your wish is my command, Chandra! 
In honor of the summer solstice here the Kanji for summer or natsu:.   
The three hallmarks of summer in Japan are the yukata (summer kimono), furin (wind chimes), and hanabi (fireworks). 
Check out some more beautiful interpretations of the natsu kanji and others at Kanju-4u.
Photo Credit:  Flickr, Natsu

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Tokyo is the capital of Japan but that wasn’t always the case and the city wasn’t always known as Tokyo either. Over 400 years ago the city was named Edo and the capital of Japan was Kyoto (capital city). Edo stared as a village in 1603 and was the center of the government and culture with a population of over a million people by the end of the 18th century. In 1868 the city was renamed Tokyo (eastern capital) and succeeded Kyoto as the capital of Japan.
Interesting Facts:

The image on the right is the Kanji (Japanese script) …read more

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