regeneration

Chugging along on the kanji. I’m at frame 134, and I think some generous soul just purchased Remembering The Kanji for me, which I think I will have by this weekend, so I will be able to keep on going! Praise God!

As far as the kanji study goes, I think things are going well overall, but I just have to be careful to pick vivid imagery to remember some kanji that have been tripping me up. Most notably among these are 別, which is the kanji for ’separate’. The imagery that Heisig (the author) provides is a samurai that’s been tied up, and he’s yelling loudly because he has been separated from his saber on the right. That’s vivid imagery, for certain, but I just have to associate the word with the kanji better than I have before.

I’m having a larger problem with 専, which means ’specialty’, such as a carpenter or contractor’s specialty. The primitives, from top to bottom (you might want to make your fonts larger so you can see it!) mean ‘ten’, ‘rice fields’, and ‘glue’. Heisig suggests:

Now if we made a simple sentence out of these elements, we get: “Ten rice fields glued together.” A specialty, of course, refers to one’s special ‘field’ of endeavor or competence. In fact, few people remain content with a single specialty and usually extend themselves in other fields as well. This is how we come to get the picture of ten fields glued together to represent a specialty.

I’m going to have to think about that a little bit more. I was thinking that ‘ten rice fields glued together’ would indicate that one’s specialty is a rice farmer, but I don’t want to remember the kanji as ‘rice farmer’. I’ll review it a few more days, and if the imagery still doesn’t stick, I’ll ask the folks at the Reviewing The Kanji forums for some help.

In other news, I am embracing better eating habits, little by little. For several years now, I have had symptoms similar to hypoglycemia or a minor case of diabetes, feeling faint whenever I don’t eat something for a little while. This was making me have to eat almost constantly during the day, and while I was eating healthy things, the fact that I am bound to a desk for 8+ hours a day with very little exercise means that I have packed on the pounds, and of course with the added weight, this has gotten worse. I have started exercising on my lunch breaks, taking a walk whether I feel like it or not. This helps, but it still doesn’t really give me the kind of cardiovascular workout I need. I weigh too much to run without seriously hurting my feet and knees (trust me, I’ve tried, and limped for several days afterwards), so I have to stick with walking at a fast pace. I don’t know how I’m going to get more exercise, but I do have to work on my eating habits.

On the way to work this morning, I was contemplating the Japanese bentō, and realized that with the smaller portion and (generally) healthier content, this might be a good solution for my eating habits. I looked at the huge lunch I normally take every day, looked at some bento boxes, and realized that probably the reason I’m so much overweight is…duh…I’m eating too much! This might be a fun way to control my portions. I’m going to check the prices on bento boxes, and if a nice, sturdy one is inexpensive, I might invest in a few with birthday money. I have to do something to get rid of this weight, and this seems like a fun way to start.

* In marginally related news, I just found out that the design for the IBM ThinkPad was based on that of a bento box. How cool is that?