Japanese oldies

Here is a selection of older Japanese stamps I received recently. Quite a few of them are attractive, but two in particular make a nice pair.

Start with the red stamp which is the third stamp in the second row / middle row. It shows an airplane (a bomber, I first imagined) flying over a pagoda – perhaps symbolic of new technology emerging from traditional culture?

Then look at the first stamp in the third row / bottom row. It is another airplane (another bomber?), but this one is passing in front of a giant Buddha statue – perhaps capturing the post-War mood in Japan?

Another interesting point for me was the denomination – several of the stamps were marked in 銭 or sen, much older in use (and smaller in value) than the currently-used 円 or ￥ , yen. I don’t see the Japanese kanji character for 銭 very often these days. I used to see it every night when I went to the 銭湯 or public bath, but those are closing down all over Japan.

Please note that I used the phrase “Japanese kanji character” in this case. Almost all Japanese people will call these “Chinese characters” because the Japanese system of writing was imported from China. In a Japanese cultural context, that makes sense.

But in an English-speaking context, that is very confusing. The characters used for writing in China – 汉字 or hanzi in Chinese – are “Chinese characters” to an English speaker. Sometimes they are written the same as Japanese characters, sometimes not. There are even more differences now than in the past due to the simplification of characters on the mainland.

The Japanese character 銭 is now written as 钱 on the mainland, and it is pronounced “qian” with a rising tone. It is seen and heard commonly in the very useful Chinese phrase “多少钱?”. This is read “duo shao qian” and is used for asking how much something costs.

日本語 hints
- row = 列、横列、行列 (horizontal, or across)
- column = 列、縦列 (vertical, or up and down)
- bomber = an airplane which carries and drops bombs (爆撃機)
- pagoda = 塔 The word “pagoda” is actually a loan word from Portugeuse into English.
- symbolic = 象徴
- simplification = making things easier or simpler; 簡単化 By the way, “simplified characters” can be called 簡体字\
- mainland (China) = 大陸 , used to refer to China separate from Taiwan (Taiwan does not use simplified characters)

Hungary stamps

This began as a short writing on the boring stamps of Hungary. By chance, I came across a large number of stamps from Hungary, all issued some years ago. I sorted them by denomination as usual. There were buildings, buildings, and more buildings. This really cemented my image of Eastern European countries issuing large numbers of boring stamps, basically featuring peoples’ faces or, well, buildings.

But I found a few exceptions, such as this series of airplane stamps. Curiously, all of them are biplanes, with two sets of wings. That was about it for Hungarian stamps, so far as I knew.

On a lark, I did some googling and found that recent stamps from Hungary are much more colorful and varied in theme. A particularly interesting recent release is a stamp commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, who developed the system by which blind people can read text by passing their fingers over raised dots. The Hungarian stamp includes writing in Braille – as does a US commemorative coin to be released this year.

日本語hints:
boring – you probably know the meaning of this word (つまらない、退屈), but be sure to separate boring vs. bored. –ed adjectives (interested, overwhelmed) describe how you or I feel, while –ing adjectives (interesting, overwhelming) describe the cause or source of the feeling (the movie was interesting; the blog was boring). For example: I read a boring blog, and so I felt bored.

cement an image: “cement” can sometimes be used as a verb, meaning to solidify or to fix permanently

biplane: 複葉機, an airplane with two sets of wings (see the stamps). Yes, there is also such thing as a triplane (三葉飛行機), though I have not found any pictured on Hungarian stamps so far. But this does bring us to the exciting topic of number-related prefixes (接頭語、接頭辞). “bi” and “di” can both be used for “two” – bicycle, bilateral discussions. “tri” can be used for “three” – tricycle, triangle. There is an old George Carlin joke involving “bi” and “try”, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

“on a lark” = on a whim, just for fun, no special reason. Online dictionaries give me いたずらで or other meanings which don’t feel quite right. I think it is used more commonly as なんとなく.

commemorate: 記念する

Braille: 点字、点字法

dendrobium

Here are three stamps from The Philippines which caught my eye. The one in the center is a dendrobium. Some years back, I was teaching a person who had greatly surprised me by sharing that his hobby was gardening (on the balcony of his apartment). I expressed interest in his flowers, and he brought me a dendrobium cut from his own plant. I thought that was quite nice.

Back to the Philippines - I have recently come across a fairly large collection of older Philippines stamps, one spanning several decades. I was delighted to have so many more stamps from the Philippines, as I had very few before this. But there was one problem: how to arrange them.

Many people arrange their stamps chronologically. But I have no information about the years most of my stamps were issued (nor time to research it). So I have been arranging them in ascending order by denomination: starting with the smallest and moving to the largest.

But on the stamps from the Philippines, I found several denominations: "cents", "s", "p", "centavos", and the word "koreo". I emailed a friend and got a quick response: "koreo" means "postage stamp" in Tagalog. "P" is for "pesos", which are larger than centavos / cents / "s".

More Philppines stamp photos to come...

日本語 hints:
dendrobium: a type of orchid or 欄
catch someone's eye: get one's attention
balcony = ベランダ
to span several decades: a decade = 10 years, so this collection has about 30 years' worth of stamps
chronological: in order by year, from oldest to most recent (年代順?)
in ascending order: from smallest to largest
denomination: 種類 or 単位、金額
tagalog: one of the main languages used in the Philippines

Russian memories

40 years back, the Russians launched this stamp, not long after I had appeared on the planet. Can you feel the Socialist glory with all those shades and hues of red?

This stamp came to me a couple weeks back, the lone Russian stamp in a pile of stamps from (mostly) Southeast Asian countries. How it got into the pile, I will never know. But it took me back to my junior high school days.

I was the penultimate geek, the introverted smart kid with no social skills whatsoever. Over the years, I naturally bonded with others who did not fit in. One of my good friends was YS, whose family had just arrived from Russia. This would have been the late 70s, I think, not a time known for the open-mindedness of middle school students in Texas.

He was a smart kid and well-motivated but had no friends besides me. We rode the bus together and one day a bunch of local rednecks-in-the-making were trying to start trouble with him as we got off the bus. This was a couple years before I would dive into Gandhi, MLK Jr., and Thoreau, but I knew something was wrong and that I needed to do something.

I stood next to my friend and interposed my body between him and those who would taunt or strike him. I have no idea why they didn't try to attack me at that point. Neither of us said anything back to them. He just kept walking and I kept shielding him with my body. Finally they got bored and left us alone.

We never talked about that incident. There were much more important things to talk about, such as classes in school and the stamps he had smuggled out of Russia. Hard to believe today, but apparently it was a big deal at that time. Still, it can be tough to separate a boy from his stamps.

He gave me a couple and they briefly rekindled my interest in stamp collecting, which had fizzled by the time I moved from Nebraska to Texas. These were classic Russian space program stamps, unusual in size and a rarity for me.

They lie buried somewhere in a mountain of books and papers and other debris in my father's basement in Nebraska. Seeing this stamp, I need to get back to Nebraska and dig those others out.

two more from Africa

Zambia this time, not one of the usual places I get stamps from. Both are self-reflexive, stamps about stamp collecting, which is a first for me. It would be really fitting to get the actual stamps shown on these stamps, and put them all together. And then if there were a stamp of the stamps OF the stamps...doubly self-reflexive?

it seems there was a kind of stamp collectors' gathering in London in 1990 (almost two decades ago...) - I can't imagine whether it would have been exciting or dreary.

日本語 hints:
self-reflexive: 自己を映し出す (maybe self-referential is better: 文字／作品が自己に言及した - from Canon dictionary

decade = ten years. Note other deca / deci / 10 -related words like decathlon (Olympic sport with 10 events), deciliter. By the way, when my wife was 10 months pregnant, she wore デカパン. So deca- or deci- is a prefix (接頭語、接頭辞) related to the number ten.

dreary = dull and boring

two from Africa

I have only a handful of stamps from African nations, but just ran across several at once. Here is a pair from Ghana. And an unusual pair at that - the Queen of England together with a fertility doll?? It was random chance, how they came to me.

日本語 hints
only a handful = a very small number of
run across = find by accident; and unplanned discovery
fertility doll....someone help me here. I find things like 生産力 and 豊穣 in the dictionary, but that doesn't feel right.

Also, notice that "pair", even though it contains two items, is treated as singular for grammar purposes: This pair of stamps IS from Ghana.

more Chinese birds

Here are a couple more bird stamps from China which caught my eye lately. I don't have a regular source for Chinese stamps yet, so they come in on a highly irregular basis. When I lived in China in 1999, lots of people were collecting stamps. I sometimes brought stamps over from Japan and everybody wanted them. Now when I ask my Chinese friends if they know anyone who wants to trade stamps with me, the answer is always the same: no.

日本語 hints:

Today's vocabulary is not too tough. Only one thing stands out: the prices of the stamps, 1.6 元 and 2 元. Almost all Japanese people give　元 a Japanese reading, "gen", even when speaking English. But no English speaker would ever understand this. It would be better (no, correct) to use the Chinese "yuan", which is spoken in a rising, second tone. It sounds a bit like the English word "you" and the letter "n" but spoken quickly: you-en. Or, more simply, it would also be correct to use "RMB", the internationally known abbreviation for 人民币, or ren min bi, another way to express the currency in China.

There, now we have two nice vocabulary words:
abbreviation = 頭文字
currency = 通貨, the unit of money used in a country. The currency in Japan is the yen.