I lived in Fukuoka, Japan on the southern island of Kyushu for a couple of years, traveled all over the beautiful country several times, and learned Japanese while living in the economy itself, after about a year I was already dreaming in Japanese...
Yes, the Katagana was easy to learn and almost necessary since most all the public signs and street signs were in Katagana... I loved Japan, I didn't really want to leave, I enjoyed spending time in Shikano Shima which is a small southern fishing island off the tip of the island of Kyushu not far from where I stayed and connected to the main island with a roadway, I spent my weekends and much vacation time there in the small fishing villages just watching the fishermen net their fish, I actually almost bought a fishing boat since I thought they looked so seaworthy and I love boating...
Sometimes at night, a few of us would go shrimp fishing, myself and a few of my Japanese friends, using lanterns to attract the shrimp, we would wade into the water in the Shichiriga Bank and the shrimp would be attracted to the light of the lantern, we could just grab them and put them into our basket... one time we saw a fisherman in a boat at night, he had about 6 cormorants with cord tied to their necks... he would place them into the water and these birds would dive and catch fish and then surface... the fisherman would remove the fish from the bird's mouth and then send it back to catch another fish... he had several lanterns along both sides of his boat to attract the fish to the light... I was truly amazed at the ingenuity of that fisherman...
GZ |
