Ichigo Yama…

YUM! They grow wild in the bush / forest / hills…. you can just pick and eat them with no fear of poisonous sprays being on them. They’re a cross between a raspberry and a strawberry, but they’re tiny in size… If you want to make some jam you’d have to pick them all day to get enough for a good batch.

Here’s Ben with some in his hand on a recent (christmas day) hike near Lake Biwa.

Something that has blown my mind lately as I have been learning Japanese, is their counting system…In English when we count, it’s 3 banana’s, 3 trucks, 3 people – no matter what the object is, we count it in pretty much the same way.

But… In Japanese there are many different ways of counting things according to their size or group.

English:

How many are there?     3

Japanese:

Things – ikutsu desu ka?    mi-tsu

People – Nan nin desu ka?    san nin

Order – Nan ban desu ka?     san ban

Thin and Flat things – Nan mai desu ka?    san mai

Machines and Vehicles – Nan dai desu ka?     san dai

Age – Nan sai desu ka?    san sai

Books – Nan satsu desu ka?   san satsu

Clothes – Nan chyuku desu ka?     san chyuku

Floors of a building – Nan gai desu ka?     san gai

Thin and long things – Nan bon desu ka?     san bon

Drinks – Nan pai desu ka?     san pai

Small animals, fish and insects – Nan biki desu ka?     san biki

Houses – Nan gen desu ka?     san gen

Shoes and Socks – Nan zoku desu ka?     san zoku

Small things – Nan ko desu ka?     san ko

Frequency – Nan kai desu ka?   san kai

So…. there you have it!! Confusing huh? But also interesting….the question n my head is ‘WHY?’ and when I ask my japanese teachers that question they say ‘…because… that’s Japanese language….’

So I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that. Language is language and I can’t change that, I just need to keep plugging away until it starts to make sense to me.