Snake Puking Faucets in Kanji

May 23, 2007 on 5:23 pm | In Language | | Email This Post

Kanji makes sense.

The Kanji for “faucet”. Like… a sink faucet, is 「蛇口」pronounced “jyaguchi”.

The first character is the character for “snake”. The kind that slithers.

The second character is the character for “mouth”. The kind that I’m speaking to you now with (not really though).

Snake + Mouth = Faucet

The neck of a faucet kinda looks like a snake right?

This is kinda sorta the way that the book “Remembering the Kanji” teaches you to remember how to write the characters, but on a individual level.

- Harvey

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  1. Gravatar

    I was checking it out, as I was thinking it must be a great way of refreshing my kanji (not currently living in Japan, I can still talk Japanese with friends, but not much kanji lying around) but on Amazon its listed for $200? even UK is about £60 which is quite a lot of money for a 500 page book. Heading back to Japan this summer, so I was wondering how much it costs there and if it’s worth waiting?

    Comment by Anders — May 23, 2007 #

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    Yeah, I’d heard that this book had gone out of print recently, though I can’t imagine why — it’s pretty well-known — I’d assume a new edition will be released soon. It’s not listed in amazon.co.jp either.
    FWIW, the list price on mine (4th edition, about 2 years old)is US$42 / Y4000.
    I think it’s probably most suitable as a learning-from-scratch kind of thing, to be read from start-to-finish without knowing too many kanji beforehand. If you haven’t seen it, the first 125 pages are available free from the publisher, so you can get a feel for it:
    http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RK4/RK4-00.pdf

    Comment by bingobangoboy — May 24, 2007 #

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    Anders, it’s been printed again and is coming back into stock as we speak. Check Amazon again in a few days and you should see it listed for considerably less than $200. If you don’t want to wait, you could order it direct from Nanzan University, where Heisig is a research fellow and professor. The second book is also being reprinted and will presumably be out before long.

    Comment by Michael — May 24, 2007 #

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    According to nearly every japanese speaking gaijin I’ve spoken to that has read the book, the price is worth it. So I looked for it a while ago and had a hard time finding it, but when I did, I gladly paid the cash. I don’t remember $200, I seem to remember something closer to $100, but I bought my in Kinokuniya bookstore in New York.

    Comment by doc strange — May 24, 2007 #

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    BTW the way I described the faucet is really not the way that Hesig works, but, sorta kinda similar.

    Rather then showing the entire “snake” as a picture of one individual kanji, Hesig would have you say, remember the left part of snake as maybe “bug” 虫 and the right side as maybe a couple of other things, and everytime you see a kanji with the same sections you recognize them as the same thing, but have a unique story to go with it to remember how the parts go together.

    Hard to explain, but yeah check out the sample pages.

    I didn’t know the books were so expensive! I plan to do it though after I finish the school program I am in now.

    I have just forgotten to write too many kanji for my liking!

    Comment by harvey — May 24, 2007 #

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    Well, Amazon US now has the first book listed for $21.12 new, with a 3 to 4 week shipping time. Anazon Japan has it for ￥ 4,076. (Though one guy wants you to buy an old copy for ￥ 68,273!) Man, I really ought to buy a whole bunch of these at the $21.12 price and save them until the book goes out of print again. Then I’ll make a killing on the secondhand market charging major bucks for them. Hehehe…

    Comment by Michael — May 24, 2007 #

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    By the way, I forgot to mention that an occasionally useful reference when one doesn’t have money or time to be ordering books is Google Books. You can search inside quite a few Japanese instruction books as long as you use rōmaji. For instance, need more information on でも? You could search for “de mo” in Naoko Chino’s All About Particles for explanations and examples of the different usages. You can only read a few pages before Google decides you’ve done sufficient previewing, but that might be enough to come in handy. If nothing else, like Amazon’s Look Inside This Book feature, it can help you decide whether you want to buy a book or not.

    Comment by Michael — May 24, 2007 #

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    Hi Harvey! This is funny. In Chinese, “faucet” is literally “dragon’s head!” I find the Japanese version of faucet quite similar! Interesting!
    ~Jackie
    (your online friend teaching english in china–you once wrote me an email)

    Comment by Jacqueline (Jackie) — June 14, 2007 #

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