Comments on: Snake Puking Faucets in Kanji

By: Jacqueline (Jackie)

Jacqueline (Jackie) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:04:57 +0000

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)

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 May 2007 13:27:27 +0000

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.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 May 2007 12:59:05 +0000

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…

By: harvey

harvey — Wed, 23 May 2007 23:26:14 +0000

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!

By: doc strange

doc strange — Wed, 23 May 2007 22:59:31 +0000

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.