Japanese for beginners!

Meet Helen, a fellow member of my book club and, rather impressively I think, a translator of Japanese and German into English.

Today was 'Japan Day' at Wallasey library and Helen gave a talk this afternoon about the basics of written Japanese so I hopped on my bike and pedalled along to see what I could learn.

I discovered that there was no written Japanese language until the 5th century; that although written Japanese is based on characters borrowed from Chinese there is no similarity at all between the two languages and that, over time, Japanese evolved using three different scripts which each tend to be used for specific grammatical purposes. Easy it ain't!

The characters on the board here relate to trees, forests and resting and the characters on the card mean (I think...) 'stamp' in Japanese but 'cut hand' in Chinese. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I've got any of that wrong!

Fascinating stuff.

All this and a complimentary cup of barley tea! Thanks Helen!