せんしゅう の しゅうまつ

せんしゅう　の　しゅうまつ　わたしは　Boston の　MIT へ　いきました。　どようびに　Trading Competition が　ありました。　MIT や Harvard や UPenn　の　がくせい　も　いました。　とても　たのしかった　です。　Boston　は　おもしろい　まち　です。　たくさん　がくせい　が　います。　たべもの　は　おいしい　です。

Last weekend I went to MIT in Boston.  On Saturday I had a Trading Competition.  Students from MIT, Harvard, UPenn, etc were also there. The competition was very enjoyable. Boston is an interesting city.  There are a lot of students.  The food is great.

Simon

Literary Works - Senryu

ニューヨーク、

さむいおてんき

ゆきだるま。

New York,

Cold weather

Snowmen.

This first senryu is about winter in New York. The poem alludes to the cold weather and snowmen that are typical of the image we come up with when we think of winter. "New York" is the katakana word in this poem. By placing New York as the first line of the poem, the blockiness of the katakana word clearly directs attention to New York as the topic of this poem. This lets the reader have an initial image of New York in his/her mind. The subsequent lines build upon that image of New York one layer at a time: by first adding in the cold weather and then finally adding in the snowmen. The resulting image is one of a New York winter that is blanketed with snow.

~

にほんごの

ビールのミルク...

なんですか。

Japan's

Milk of beer...

What?

This poem is about an interesting Japanese drink that I read about on the Internet. This drink is called "Bilk" and it is a drink that combines milk with beer into one. I'm not sure how this dink tastes but it sounds like a very...unique idea. The katakana in this poem are the two drinks and appears in the middle line. This usage of katakana brings attention to the focal point of the poem - the two drinks that are mixed together in a creative way. Using katakana to represent these two items also brings out the "foreignness" of this original idea.

~

おんなのこ、

ロゼとダラスが

ありません。

Girl,

Roses and dollars

I don't have.

This last senryu is about a boy who is telling a girl that he doesn't have any flowers or money to give her. By saying that he does not have any flower or money for her, he is showing that he is not trying to win her over by giving her material things. In this case, the use of katakana in this poem is a representation of something that is unneeded. The words rose and money are written in katakana and stresses the shallowness of those objects.

-Simon

Composition 2

やまださん、おげんき　ですか。わたしは　サイモン　です。コロンビアの　がくせい　です。わたしは　日本へ　ろくがつに　いきます。　日本の　せいかつが　すきです。ニューヨークは　たかいまち　ですが、　にぎやかです。　わたしは　日本の　たべものが　すきです。　おいしいですが、　たかいです。　日本へ　いきます　それから　やまださんに　いっしょに　日本の　りょりを　たべます！　どぞよろしくおねがいします。

-サイモン

Katakana Analysis

My first katakana word is ポッキ (Pocky). Pocky is the very famous asian snack that consists of a biscuit stick that is coated with chocolate or strawberry. Pocky originated in Japan, and its name is an onomatopoeia of the sound it makes when you bite into it (the snapping of the Pocky stick). For this reason, expressing the word in katakana would make the most sense since one of the uses of the writing system is to represent onomatopoetic sounds. Nowadays, however, the brand is usually written with the English alphabet version of the word (Pocky) instead of the original katakana version (ポッキ). This was probably done because English words stand out much more as a brand than a word written in any of the three Japanese alphabets.

My second katakana word is ロイヤルミルクテ (Royal Milk Tea). This is a Japanese brand of milk tea drink. Using katakana to represent the name of the drink in this way might seem like these are loan words. However, milk and tea both have native words in Japanese that are not loan words from English (ぎゅうにゅう and ちゃ). Using the phonetic representation of these words in katakana shows that it was probably used as emphasis. Katakana are more noticeable than hiragana as brands (because of their blockiness) and also shows sophistication when representing western words.

Different textbooks sometimes have different explanations for the use of katakana. I think the discreprency comes from the changes in the uses of katakana over time. Unlike hiragana and kanji, katakana is used as the writing system for words that do not fit in the uses of the other two systems. For this reason, katakana can have different purposes as new uses are invented. In my opinion, katakana is the most flexible of the three writing systems because writers can effectively use it however they see fit.

-Simon