By Raven Bluford

In the third chapter of Geek in Japan, the topic I found most interesting was the section about the importance of humility in Japan. The Japanese language holds many forms of honorifics to show respect, which in retrospect is different to English because it doesn’t have any honorifics and the language only really holds informal dialogue. The Japanese also show humility by not taking credit, even if they worked hard, because it shows that they respect the people around them who in some way had a contribution to their success. This is quite different from America, because we usually don’t acknowledge other people in our success unless it is a big accomplishment, in which case we thank our families but no one else.

By Raven Bluford

Learning Katakana proved to be quite difficult because almost none of the symbols looked the same and those that looked the same proved difficult to distinguish. One thing that really helped me was to relate the symbol to an action in English that made the same sound or a very similar sound.

For example, for “su,” the action I had for that symbol was a person opening their mouth to eat soup and the soup had gone down the mouth. The sound sou in “soup” sounds the same as “su,” so that is how I remembered it. I remembered another symbol in relation to this concept for the symbol for “nu.” The action I had for “nu” was someone with their mouth open eating a noodle and the noodle was on its way down the mouth. The sound noo in “noodle” sounds the same as “nu” and that is how I remembered this symbol.