As A Foreigner In Japan, How Was The Japan Kanji Museum And Library?

Japanese can be written in Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

_{Screenshots from Shirabe Jisho app}

The basic ones are learning Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji comes from Chinese characters and is somewhat deep and complicated. If you're Chinese, sure, it's easy for you to learn Kanji but for a Filipino like me which doesn't know any Chinese, it's a rough start.

Well, later on, I fell in love with Kanji.

Don't get me wrong. Even though I like Kanji, there are so many Kanji out there that I can't understand or read. The simple ones, sure, but as you dig deeper and deeper into the world of Kanji, you'll realized you are digging too deep already.

When I visited Kyoto for a day last Winter, my friends and I were just roaming around Gion and noticed an establishment that seems like out of place. I suggested we go and explore it and there, the Kanji Museum and Library that I have been looking for for years is in front of me. Luckily my friends were so convinced to go inside and check it out.

The museum is located at the end of the main road in Gion, just across the street from the Yasaka Shrine.

The clerk will warn you that there won't be a guarantee of an English translation so we had to understand everything in Japanese. It's alright, it's so hard to translate every Kanji into English so I completely understand.

Upon entering the museum, I mean after paying, you would see the display of the kanji of the last year. Last year's kanji is 金, read as kin which means gold or money.

The kanji points to the gold medals of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, which proceeded this July after being postponed for a year and then held without spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the fourth year that the kanji character for gold has been chosen. The previous years were 2000, 2012 and 2016.

_{source: The Japan Times}

There were only a few people when we went there. At first, we watched a documentary though we didn't understand a thing, we were still amazed.

Kanji has evolved over time. That's for sure. The writings we know today have matured from the writings of the past.

After we paid the entrance fee, we were given a paper and each part of it, we needed to accomplish. It was a fun exercise you could do with friends. This fun exercise is about knowing the ancient kanji.

The first part of the paper was all about Oracle Bone Script Fortune Telling. After rubbing the yellow part, our fortune for today will be revealed. Mine's kanji is 美, from utsuko of utsukoshii (美しい) which means beauty.

My fortune says 美しい何かに出会えるよ which means I will be encountering something beautiful that day. Now that I recalled, I didn't remember any beautiful encounters that day except meeting my friends who lived in Osaka who were with me in the museum and maybe encountering Kiyomizu-dera, the temple I wanted to visit that day in Kyoto.

And yeah, there's another fortune something but sorry, I didn't understand what it meant even until today. 😂 If you know, please tell me.

Part 2 (テーブル２) means to stamp the 金 (kin) kanji. Remember the kanji of the year? If you stamp it, this will be the result - 5 characters. It has a long history dating back to 1957.

Of course, we used our names in katakana for Part 4 and 5. All of these can be done on the first floor. If you know your name in hiragana/katakana, you would be able to see this exercise as fun.

So in the first table we stumbled upon, we needed to write our name in Manyogana. Actually, before that, we needed to write our name but we didn't have pen and we didn't see any pen so the first column of our paper's a blank. That's where our names should be written.

Man'yōgana (万葉仮名, Japanese pronunciation: [maɰ̃joꜜːɡana] or [maɰ̃joːɡana]) is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically.

_{source: Wikipedia}

We also wrote our names in 「もとの字」 which means the old writings of Hiragana and Katakana. Yes, we were still using the stamp. It's located in Part 4 of the paper.

The last exercise was to find out the kanji of the countries. I am not familiar with flags of the world so I hope I got everything right. 🤞

And so, we're done!

But that's not everything..

That's only one way to know the ancient writings. In the museum there were so many things there too, of course still related to the Japanese writing.

The pillar in the middle was covered with a lot of kanji so if it's so fun to stay there and just look for the characters that you know.

It seems like a good background for a photo so we took snaps of ourselves there.

What do you think? Are you able to recognize some characters? If you know, let me know in the comments and maybe I'll tip you a pizza.

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In the upper floor, you'll find a library and tons of interactive games related to kanji. They are mostly designed for kids but we do looked like one. 😅

The library had a lot of books, not only about learning kanji but storybooks too. If we had more time, we would be staying there for a long time. The library's mostly for students though, not for adults like us. There were kids there and they were staring at us for being in the library. 😂 Maybe they're looking at some kind of rare species

And of course, the interactive games! It was so fun because we're still kids in terms of our kanji level. There's a booth to make your own kanji. Here's mine.

I call my very Kanji creation as Amabyouken which means strong rain, inspired by the kanji characters of cat, dog and rain. Can you understand me now? It's from the famous idiom it's raining cats and dogs.

I hope our kanji creation will be accepted as official kanji. 😅

Have you noticed that all the characters have 魚 in them? They are all types of fish and yes, 魚 read as sakana means fish. I don't memorize them all though.

I love sushi but I suck at this game. I don't know the kanji of the fishes! I don't know even fish names! 😂

We needed to match the ancient kanji and the body parts. Well, we did a not so terrible job at it. 😂

There were many fun things to do there. I think you could also take the Kanji Kentei or the Japan Kanji Aptitude Test there. I remembered my previous coworker took the exam in Kyoto so I believe it's in this place. Maybe in the future, I'll take the exam too just for fun.

My favorite area was seeing the Kanji Of The Year exhibit. In the museum, they already displayed the kanji of the year on the first floor but for the previous years, it's here too!

Did you know that they started doing the Kanji Of The Year from 1995? I actually believed that it started way older. To know the full list (because I don't have a photo of everything), you can check this out in Wikipedia. It also contains the events of that year, which prompt the kanji for that year.

According to what I understood, the Kanji Of The Year will be written by the head priest of Kiyomizu-dera. I found a short footage when the head priest wrote last year's Kanji.

I actually want to learn calligraphy so I can write kanji with style but to do that, I should learn a lot of kanji first. 😅

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We were there in the museum for almost 2 hours and we still couldn't get enough of the place. It was really enjoyable, even as a foreigner in Japan, still trying to learn more Kanji.

If you have time, I suggest you visit them the next time you come to Kyoto! Of course, it's fun to be with friends who have the same Kanji level as you, or at least a friend who knows Kanji. It may be not fun if you don't know Kanji and you visit the place.

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Thanks for reading!
See you around! じゃあ、またね！

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^{All photos are taken using my phone and my friend's phone (with permission) unless stated otherwise.}