ダニエルの冒険

I’m definitely back on top. New Approach Chapter 10 is much kinder to me. Check out these results from this week’s tests. 13/13, 14/14, 16/16. By the way, circle means “good” in Japan, so they use them instead of ticks on homework. A big swirly circle is really good. A circle with petals coming out of it (花丸, “hana-maru”, “flower-circle”) is really really good. I did not get a hana-maru but I did get 「すばらしい」 (“subarashii”) written, which means “wonderful”. The red stamp at the top right is a “hanko” (判子, also known as an 印鑑 “inkan”) I got made recently. In Japan, when you buy a house or get married or do anything else important that requires contracts to be signed, you use an registered inkan. Mine is not registered though, and is just a simple personal one that I use for homework and anywhere else that needs a signature.

You can buy these pretty cheaply at 100 yen shops such as Daiso (that’s a Pound Shop or Euro Shop to you) but those don’t have western names on them. When I ordered mine, they took my name and called me after three days or so to let me know that it was done. They sell Hello Kitty ones at the same shop, with Hello Kitty cases.

The characters in mine are, from the top down, ダニエル, which are da-ni-e-ru, respectively. With the exception of “n”, all sounds in Japanese end in a vowel, and “u” is the least imposing sound so as a compromise, that’s used as the vowel to end my name. As I’m sure you’ve seen in films, Japanese people are very bad at separating their Rs from their Ls. Ever seen Mickey Rooney’s offensive performance as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? “Miss Gorightly” indeed. In fact, since I’ve been embedding so many videos recently, here’s a video of the performance:

And here are some photos of my hanko.