The World According to Nils » Japan

Nanking

Nils — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:36:47 +0000

When people in Europe think about World War II they think about Hitler the Holocaust. When Americans think about World War II they think about Pearl Harbor and about Hitler and the Holocaust. But there was just as much evil and suffering going on in East Asia.

Nanking fell to Japanese troops on December 13th, 1937. For the next seven weeks, the Japanese conducted countless atrocities against the Chinese population of the city. It is something that people in Europe and America, who have lived in comfort and relative peace for the past 60 years, can’t fully appreciate.

Princeton has a photo gallery about the crimes. Some Japanese still deny that anything happened here, but, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. A warning: Many of these images are extremely violent and disturbing. Proceed at your own risk.

I hope that people will understand that wars, no matter where and for what cause, always cause great suffering to people who have done nothing to deserve it. That was the case hundreds of years ago, it was the case in 1937, and it is still the case today.

I am Mr. Jeppe

Nils — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:18:28 +0000

Watashi wa Jeppe-san desu.

And, no, I cannot write that in (any of the) Japanese script yet. But I must admit that I am enjoying my [Japanese lessons](/2007/09/19/first-japanese-lesson/) quite a lot. Yesterday, during the second lesson, our teacher (Kreutzer-sensai, heh) taught us the first actual bits of grammar, using a few sentences. As you probably guessed the first topic is “introductions”. It already feels a little less daunting.

Of course, with next Wednesday being a national holiday and the two weeks afterwards being school holidays, the third lesson will only be in three weeks. I wonder if I will manage to actually learn all the vocabulary we had so far.

Funny tidbits: An “engineer” is “enjiniaa” in Japanese. And Kreutzer-sensai (as she likes to be called) is obviously married to a [Cyberpunk 2020 geek](http://www.arasaka.de/). But for some reason she doesn’t even have her own email address. I shan’t speculate about any of that; it’d be too easy.

First Japanese Lesson

Nils — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:42:04 +0000

My first [Japanese](/2007/09/19/japanese/) lesson came and went. I actually like it a lot – it is something completely new, the teacher (Kreutzer-sensei, heh) seems nice enough, and the people who sit around me all are either very quiet, or rather likable. A far cry from the unpleasant folks who were in the Spanish class I took some years ago. A possible exception was the old, balding, guy who looked like he’s had a beer to many in his lifetime, who thought he had to try to pick up a girl twenty years his junior.

But anyway.

I have big problems with the pronunciations, I can’t really remember the words well, and don’t even get me started about [Hiragana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana). I feel like I am in first grade again, knowing nothing at all. I am illiterate all over again. It’s an interesting phenomenon. I felt very much reminded of my trip to Japan way back in 2001.

I’ll be a good student, do my homework and make sure I get lots of practice until next lesson. I am quite motivated to learn Japanese. And if I am motivated and it’s fun, then what could possibly go wrong?

Photos from Japan 2001

Nils — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:46:17 +0000

1154I don’t have many [photos from my voyage to Japan in 2001](http://www.geektravel.info/v/japan2001/). In fact, when I asked my ex-girlfriend to send me the albums, there were only about a dozen or so photos from the time I stayed there, and of these only 3 are of the land itself – without us travellers. Still, I didn’t want to keep them from you; so here they are in all their “glory”, five years later and for the first time ever.