Comments on: Destination: Namba City (Osaka, Japan)

By: Chris import

Chris import — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:38:59 +0000

@Wintersweet: Most bookstores have a decent to wide variety of English language books. There might be more English textbooks or learning books, but a few are fairly well-known for finding Dan Brown's latest novel – Bandi and Luni's at the COEX mall, the Kyobo bookstore in Gwanghwamun (heart of downtown), and What the Book is entirely English books in Itaewon.

By: Wintersweet

Wintersweet — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:09:30 +0000

(Technically, David is also wrong–katakana is a syllabary, not an alphabet. 😉 Each katakana–and each hiragana–represents a syllable, such as /ta/, /no/, /e/, /ri/, /tsu/, etc. You can't detach the consonants. Hangul is an alphabet.)

By: Wintersweet

Wintersweet — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:06:37 +0000

Janku-do and Kinokuniya are the kinds of stores that carry a wide variety of English books. Not every bookstore chain does. Is Korea different in that respect? Must be nice if so.

I actually took Chris' use of "languages" to be metaphorical in the original post, haha. :)

By: Chris import

Chris import — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:56:05 +0000

Ah, David, your editor credentials are definitely well-earned. Japanese seems to have more forms of writing a given word than almost any other language on the planet - and I'll admit to being quite unfamiliar with all of them.

With all that said, I've edited the post to reflect a small change. Cheers.

By: David

David — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:33:51 +0000

Nice post, Chris. Osaka is definitely one of my favorite destinations in Japan.

This is a bit nit-picky, but I had a quibble with the following clause:

"if katakana and kanji aren't languages you can read..."

Katakana is an alphabet, and kanji is a character set...they're both ways of writing the Japanese language. Just thought you might want to clarify that they aren't separate languages.

Keep up the good work!
David
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