Wow! It is one book have many editions, isn't it?

Japanese edition's The Tomb have 3 editions. First 2 editions are now out of print.

This is new print version.

Awesome. I need to see a bigger version of those..... especially vol. 2.

You don't read Japanese? You can read! Look at the cover very carefully.

I'm afraid I'm confused.... Why is the cover text in three different languages/dialects? Is the inside a mix of those three, too? And what's the difference between Katakana and Hiragana? I don't recall ever seeing the latter. Just curious.

Blake

I'm afraid I'm confused.... Why is the cover text in three different languages/dialects? Is the inside a mix of those three, too? And what's the difference between Katakana and Hiragana? I don't recall ever seeing the latter. Just curious.

Blake

Not to tread too much on Kenji's territory, but the explanation I read when trying to learn Japanese many years ago, is that hiragana characters are used for writing some native Japanese words and word endings. They's also written in a curving, flowing style. The katakana are more angular characters. They are used mostly for writing foreign-derived words (ie. Manhattan). Kanji are Chinese characters adopted by Japan around the 5th century A.D. Kana and Kanji often appear in the same sentence.

Not to tread too much on Kenji's territory, but the explanation I read when trying to learn Japanese many years ago, is that hiragana characters are used for writing some native Japanese words and word endings. They's also written in a curving, flowing style. The katakana are more angular characters. They are used mostly for writing foreign-derived words (ie. Manhattan). Kanji are Chinese characters adopted by Japan around the 5th century A.D. Kana and Kanji often appear in the same sentence.

My territory? LOL That's okay. Your explanation is very fine.

Just FYI for Blake:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji

Just FYI for Blake:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji

Very interesting! Through those articles I also found a link to this one, which talks a bit about how all three writing systems (apparently not separate languages/dialects as I had assumed earlier) are used together.

As I said, very interesting! I didn't know any of this. I was struck by how different the three writing systems looked on the book cover, but now it makes some sense. It's still hard for a westerner like me to wrap my head around it, though! I'm trying to imagine what it would be like if English writing was represented by, say, the Roman, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.

Blake

Very interesting! Through those articles I also found a link to this one, which talks a bit about how all three writing systems (apparently not separate languages/dialects as I had assumed earlier) are used together.

As I said, very interesting! I didn't know any of this. I was struck by how different the three writing systems looked on the book cover, but now it makes some sense. It's still hard for a westerner like me to wrap my head around it, though! I'm trying to imagine what it would be like if English writing was represented by, say, the Roman, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.

Blake

Blake, I'm really glad to hear you are interested in Japanese!

I know Japanese language is difficult. But if you are interested in Japanese just now, that's no more difficult to you. Like I could learn English, you can learn Japanese. I learned English in school, during 5 years(13-18). But that was not perfect to me. So I self-learned English. Nevertheless, sometimes English is difficult to me. So when I was reading RJ books(and other FPW's books) in English, sometimes I used dictionary. Especially, medical technical words in "Sims" were difficult. But now I really like reading the books in English.