kimberly ah

Once again reviving the Spending the Yen series…

I bought these hiragana* stamps two years ago in a tiny scrapbooking store near an izakaya where Naoto and I shared dinner with his family. When I bought them, I didn’t realize how frustrating they would be to use. Every time I wanted to write something, I had to ask Naoto to spell it out for me. So I put them away in the spare room and forgot about them until recently. Every once in awhile I’d see them sitting on the shelf, taunting me and the money I’d wasted. But, now that I’ve had some practice during my Japanese class, I’m using them! I’m still pretty slow, but I can usually pick the right sounds for the words and names I’m trying to write. (Though, I still have Naoto check my work to be sure!) Here’s a peek at the whole set. (Some of the characters may be upside down because I put them away haphazardly last time.) When I use them, I have my textbook open to the hiragana chart so I can refer to it as I sound out the word. (I don’t have my hiragana sounds memorized yet…) It really does remind me of learning to read as a kid. I’m slowly getting better with practice, so I’m trying to stamp a random Japanese word on outgoing mail for the rest of the month. (I’ll let you know how that goes!) I have “arigato” (“thank you”) down thanks to writing a few thank yous lately. 

*If you don’t know what hiragana is, this site does a nice job of explaining it. It’s basically the Japanese phonetic script–each “letter” represents a vowel sound or a combination consonant/vowel sound. There are forty-six sounds. In some ways, they are easier than English because each sound only makes that sound. (Unlike in English where we have the long e, the short e, the silent e…) But, the letters are difficult to decipher sometimes and very challenging to write, I think.