hana-kotoba the hard way
Jan. 15th, 2009 11:14 amFound a little book entirely devoted to Japanese flower symbolism. However, it is almost entirely in Japanese. *headdesk*
At the moment, am slowly transliterating the individual flower names onto paper. They're all indexed in katakana regardless of etymology; I still deeply suck at recognizing katakana, and so am limping back and forth between the book and my handy kana ref chart. Some of them are obvious loanwords from the English flower names, throwing doubt on the traditionality of those particular flowers, but all of the species names are also provided in romaji, which should help with the final identification later. Each entry also seems to start with a brief summary of the meaning (I haven't started any kanji lookups yet), so hopefully I won't have to translate the full paragraphs of text that follow.
Still flailing through Okami; stalled on some of the timed minigames, some of which are supposedly optional but really aren't if you want any hope of being able to deal with certain beasties in normal combat without using up inventory items. OTOH the "thief's glove" makes it possible to generate goodies at will, though not by specific selection.
At the moment, am slowly transliterating the individual flower names onto paper. They're all indexed in katakana regardless of etymology; I still deeply suck at recognizing katakana, and so am limping back and forth between the book and my handy kana ref chart. Some of them are obvious loanwords from the English flower names, throwing doubt on the traditionality of those particular flowers, but all of the species names are also provided in romaji, which should help with the final identification later. Each entry also seems to start with a brief summary of the meaning (I haven't started any kanji lookups yet), so hopefully I won't have to translate the full paragraphs of text that follow.
Still flailing through Okami; stalled on some of the timed minigames, some of which are supposedly optional but really aren't if you want any hope of being able to deal with certain beasties in normal combat without using up inventory items. OTOH the "thief's glove" makes it possible to generate goodies at will, though not by specific selection.