Cultural goodness
Origami, the art of paper folding, originated sometime in the 17th century. Models are made only by folding the paper. No cuts or tears are made, and no glue is used. In recent years it has become somewhat of a science. Mathematics and the progression of technology allow for origami designs to become rather... insane. What's really impressive about some of the following models is that most of them only use one sheet of paper.

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Each Star you see is a different piece of paper

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This is composed of (probably) thousands of square pieces folded into triangles and fit together to form the dragon. Individual pieces are identical. Not difficult to fold, hard to put together, brutally time consuming.

Now for pretty awesome single sheet
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Everyone knows the classic origami crane. Making one this small is certainly a challenge.

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Kawasaki Rose. The green petals are another piece of paper, but the rose is really the main attraction. The first design (I think) to utilize a circular folding technique. Named after the creator.

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I don't really know anything about these, but it is one piece!

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One square. One massive square. Dimensions are meters by meters. One side is longer than the creator is tall, iirc.

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平仮名 Hiragana

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The pronunciation of each character is written underneath in romaji (Phonetic spelling of characters using the Roman alphabet). The stroke order of each character is denoted by the blue numbered arrows. ゐ and ゑ are no longer used and will be skipped

Most of the remaining Hiragana use a single consonant sound followed by the vowel sounds learned above, with just a few exceptions that will be noted when we come across them.

Today we'll be looking at さ through と

Pronunciation: All of these begin with a typical S sound as in, sake or say, followed by the vowel sounds we already know, with one exception
さ → sa
し → shi - The exception. し is pronounced with an SH sound, and sounds just like the word “she”
す → su
せ --> se
そ --> so

Stroke order
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Pronunciation
The た column uses the T consonant, like in the words “tape” “together,” followed by the vowel. Two exceptions.
た → ta
ち → chi - Pronounce exactly as it is in “tai chi”
つ → tsu - This is like an articulated “su” to stress the presence of the t. It might be easier to think of it like beatboxing a high hat. The articulation used for a high hat rhythm is similar to making the sound for つ (could be wrong, I’m not a beatboxer

). Listen to the video multiple times and compare it to す. The two should not sound the same. If you pronounce them the same way you will not be understood.
て → te
と → to

Stroke Order
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Vocabulary introduced in this lesson (not really important at this point): Kana (Kanji) - Meaning
あせ　（汗） - sweat
いす　- chair
いと　（糸） - thread
うし　（牛） - cow
うそ　（嘘） - lie; fib
かさ　（傘） - umbrella
かてい　（家庭） - home; household
くち　（口） - mouth (yep, it’s a square)
さけ　（酒） - alcohol (In English “sake” refers to a specific type in alcohol, but in Japan “sake” is used to refer to alcohol in general)
さち　（幸） - good luck; fortune; happiness
しお　（塩） - salt
すし　（寿司） - sushi
せき　（咳） - cough
そこ　- over there
たけ　（竹） - bamboo
たこ　- octopus
ちいさい　（小さい） - small; little
ちかてつ　（地下鉄） - subway (not the restaurant)
つち　（土） - earth; soil; dirt
て　（手） - hand
とけい　（時計） - watch; clock

Please practice writing! I’ve written a fairly decent amount of Japanese and my friends tell me that my handwriting still looks like a child’s! It will also help later if you choose to correspond with someone via snail mail. Learning to write all the characters will make it much easier to read them. Especially when it comes to kanji!

Feedback over the course of these entries will be much appreciated, and I will try to tweak future lessons to everyone’s liking.

520

United States2822 Posts

May 06 2013 17:46 GMT

I don't think you covered long vowels in the previous lesson (in particular, えい being pronounced as ええ when in an 音読み reading and おう being pronounced as おお in the same manner).

Just making a note because you have 家庭 and 時計 in your vocabulary list.

Stratos

Czech Republic6104 Posts

May 06 2013 20:07 GMT

thanks for the lesson, I was hoping to see a new one today <3
and yeah writing helps :D
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btw. isn't it that your handwriting looks childlike because you try too hard?
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I wonder if the upper line is closer to the ultimate goal? I know korean handwriting is madness too.

520

United States2822 Posts

May 06 2013 21:05 GMT

On May 07 2013 05:07 Stratos wrote:
thanks for the lesson, I was hoping to see a new one today <3
and yeah writing helps :D
+ Show Spoiler +

btw. isn't it that your handwriting looks childlike because you try too hard?
[image loading]

I wonder if the upper line is closer to the ultimate goal? I know korean handwriting is madness too.

Depends. Somewhere between 1 and 2 would be good. For example, I would never write 令 the way it shows up in computer type, so in that case, it would always look like 1. Personally, I think 1 looks a bit too messy for my tastes (I aim for something neater than that) but it's legible.

docvoc

United States5491 Posts

May 07 2013 00:20 GMT

I'm gonna enjoy learning some rudimentary japanese with these, please continue these

Marimokkori

United States306 Posts

May 07 2013 03:58 GMT

On May 07 2013 02:46 scintilliaSD wrote:
I don't think you covered long vowels in the previous lesson (in particular, えい being pronounced as ええ when in an 音読み reading and おう being pronounced as おお in the same manner).

Just making a note because you have 家庭 and 時計 in your vocabulary list.

Oh, I was just compiling a list of the vocabulary introduced by the japanesepod101 videos. That's a good point though. It was mentioned in the comments at some point, but never fully discussed. I wonder if it would be OK to do it early with another ten hiragana characters. I don't want to provide an overwhelming amount of information at one time. On the same note it's not like I'm cranking these out on a daily basis, so I don't know.

On May 07 2013 05:07 Stratos wrote:
thanks for the lesson, I was hoping to see a new one today <3
and yeah writing helps :D
+ Show Spoiler +

btw. isn't it that your handwriting looks childlike because you try too hard?
[image loading]

I wonder if the upper line is closer to the ultimate goal? I know korean handwriting is madness too.

I like the photo. The only thing that looks too far off is い. Specifically in いす and いと. The left line looks like し. Don't make the hane too long, and it needs to be a crisp, sharp angle.

Your ほも also looks like しまも for the same reason, as well as your spacing on ほ. The right segment is too far away because you make the hane too large.

Each character gets the same amount of space. Japanese learn to write on paper that has squares on it so they learn how to keep everything the same size. You may want to print off something like this:
practice paper
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Graph paper works, too

My hand writing is by no means perfect but hopefully this helps illustrate my point
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EDIT:
Also, don't freak out about the connection on き and さ. It's OK to keep it one solid stroke. I forgot to point that out after adding the video. I don't know why she says it's necessary to leave the gap. Do whatever is more comfortable/what you think looks better

Stratos

Czech Republic6104 Posts

May 07 2013 14:09 GMT

aaha! thanks 先生 ^^ now that makes sense. I had trouble writing the hane shorter because of the angle, should work better with a sharp one. Should've payed more attention to the gifs. Although clearly my handwriting is awful even when it comes to romaji lol.

futility

Japan134 Posts

May 08 2013 01:47 GMT

Interesting idea! One suggestion I have is going a bit into the history of how and why the writing system came to be as it is today. Although japanese is not a derivative of chinese as you said earlier, it has been influenced very heavily by chinese and the writing system is adapted entirely from chinese. In addition to providing some interesting history I think understanding that makes the writing system seem much more logical and thus easier to deal with. If you want any help with this or anything else japanese related feel free to message me

That goes for everyone learning as well!