{"id":62,"date":"2008-05-27T16:58:10","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T23:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=62"},"modified":"2008-06-02T15:32:31","modified_gmt":"2008-06-02T22:32:31","slug":"kochi-kame-%e3%81%93%e3%81%a1%e4%ba%80-or-%e3%81%93%e3%81%a1%e3%81%8b%e3%82%81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/kochi-kame-%e3%81%93%e3%81%a1%e4%ba%80-or-%e3%81%93%e3%81%a1%e3%81%8b%e3%82%81\/","title":{"rendered":"Kochi-Kame (\u3053\u3061\u4e80 or \u3053\u3061\u304b\u3081)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kanji<\/a>About a month ago, I decided to upgrade my previously mentioned<\/a>\u00a0\u306a\u305e\u3063\u3066\u304a\u307c\u3048\u308b\u5927\u4eba\u306e\u6f22\u5b57\u7df4\u7fd2 for the Nintendo DS<\/a> to the new version<\/a> called Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan<\/em> (\u306a\u305e\u3063\u3066\u304a\u307c\u3048\u308b\u5927\u4eba\u306e\u6f22\u5b57\u7df4\u7fd2\u5b8c\u5168\u7248). The new version has about 300 more kanji<\/em> and some other nice new features. For only a few dollars more than what I could sell my old version for on ebay, I figured it was worth it (and have been very happy with that decision since the arrival of the “game”).<\/p>\n

\"kochi<\/a>Anyway, since YesAsia<\/a> offers free shipping I decided to grab a manga<\/em> while I was at their site since the only manga<\/em> I can obtain locally are all in English, and that’s no fun. So I rather randomly selected this Kochi Kame<\/em> one<\/a>. (The full title is a mouthful, Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari K\u014den Mae Hashutsujo<\/em> or \u3053\u3061\u3089\u845b\u98fe\u533a\u4e80\u6709\u516c\u5712\u524d\u6d3e\u51fa\u6240.) My selection wasn’t totally random as I figured my kids would like it given the cover (which turns out to be quite different from all of the other Kochi Kame<\/em> covers).<\/p>\n

For under $10 I wasn’t expecting much. To my surprise, it’s almost 200 pages in length. I started reading it this past weekend, and the content has exceeded my expectations as well. I laughed out loud several times. Apparently this series has been running for decades. I didn’t encounter it when I lived in Japan in the 80s, but I didn’t actively read, seek out, or purchase manga<\/em> then either.<\/p>\n

About the only manga<\/em> I read in the 80s were a few books given to me. One was What’s Michael?<\/a><\/em> (\u30db\u30ef\u30c3\u30c4 \u30de\u30a4\u30b1\u30eb?). Another was Osamu Tezuka’s (\u624b\u585a\u6cbb\u866b) Buddha<\/a><\/em> (\u30d6\u30c3\u30c0). And then I also had one or two Doraemon<\/a><\/em> (\u30c9\u30e9\u3048\u3082\u3093) books that I think I found. Kochi Kame<\/em> is actually the first one I ever purchased.<\/p>\n

\"kochikame<\/a>I was happy to find furigana<\/em> next to every kanji<\/em> which made for easy reading. I only had to look up, on average, the meaning for about one word a page. Kochi Kame<\/em> stars Ryotsu (\u4e21\u6d25) who, although sometimes in his police uniform, has yet to do anything police related in the four episodes I read this past weekend. Instead, he has some money-making scheme in each that always ends in disaster and\/or failure. Although the first few installments began to seem somewhat Scooby Dooish in their predictable outcomes, I can’t imagine becoming bored by them anytime soon, and the fifth episode (that I read today) had a completely different storyline that wasn’t formulaic.<\/p>\n

My son finished learning hiragana<\/em> this past weekend so he was very proud to be able to read real manga<\/em> in real Japanese for the first time too. Now I just have to help him understand what the sounds coming out of his mouth mean. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, I decided to upgrade my previously mentioned\u00a0\u306a\u305e\u3063\u3066\u304a\u307c\u3048\u308b\u5927\u4eba\u306e\u6f22\u5b57\u7df4\u7fd2 for the Nintendo DS to the new version called Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan (\u306a\u305e\u3063\u3066\u304a\u307c\u3048\u308b\u5927\u4eba\u306e\u6f22\u5b57\u7df4\u7fd2\u5b8c\u5168\u7248). The new version has about 300 more kanji and some other nice new features. For only a few dollars more than what I could sell my old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[66,56,44,62,94,64,65,57,58,60,61,63,67,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}