(1) When inflection is being added onto a root word (for example to make a verb, adjective, etc.)
(2) When a word is native to Japanese and no Kanji have been borrowed for it
(3) When a word is native to Japanese and the borrowed Kanji are less popular (trends vary from hour to hour and house to house)
(4) When furigana are being written together with formal writing, in order to show or confirm the pronunciation
(5) When the writer doesn’t know the correct Kanji and knows that they don’t know the correct Kanji
(6) When the writer expects the reader not to understand the Kanji
(7) When the writer chooses to be weird for things like political advertisements, restaurant menus, or other weird things.

Guess which two cases are most relevant in these notes?

Now, Kanji up to some level are taught in order in school. Students whose names come early learn to write their names early. Students whose names are more difficult might still be stuck writing their names in hiragana years after their classmates are writing their names in Kanji. Adults get to show off by writing documents using difficult Kanji, but primary school students suffer a correspondingly excruciating level of embarrassment.

I have no personal experience to draw from, but I find it hard to believe that parents and kids might not give some special attention to the characters used for their own name, such that they learn them before they come up in the normal course of study. Anthony’s Japanese name – 晏人 – consists of one character learned in first grade, and another learned in ninth, but I suspect he’ll be able to write both before second grade. This is just a hunch… check in again in April 2010 to see whether I am correct. —Jeffrey

Congratulations. But I am not surprised. Kids differ a lot at the time of expressing their inner-learnt abilities (lazy perhaps !). Probably he had inferred the writing method long ago but did not bother to show it.

What SURPRISES me is that he attends a quality (!) school in Japan (I do not know the Japanese educational system – I am European – but I believe it should be very good) and the school (even at the pre-school level, just a bit before entering normal school at 6 years old) did not try to teach him to write his name (or even a few letters).

The preschool he goes to specifically does none of that kind of education. They figure – and we agree – that it’s much more important at this age to learn how to be a member of society…. about how to be good friends, how to get along, and how to make up after a fight. How to decide things for themselves, and how to decide things when a member of a group.

Your post also made me search a bit about the Japanese language and if Hiragana is the alphabet of use (just 80 characters if I am not wrong) then I will not try to learn chinese as I intended and will dabble into Japanese a bit. Your blog also was a great introduction into Japan for me (and I thought Japan was very crouded !!, where is all that empty space filled with trees and ….). Could you please recommend me a basic book (basic please) in learning Japanese ? and also what magazine written in easy language should I subscribe in order to practice ? (I prefer magazines about cars, photography and computers).

Japan uses four different alphabets regularly: Hiragana and Katakana are small phonetic alphabets. Kanji (“Chinese Characters”) has thousands. The fourth is “roma-ji”, the same letters as in English. I can’t really recommend anything for learning, since it’s been so long since I looked at any of that stuff. I was a pretty bad student, anyway, so you probably wouldn’t want my recommendation even if I had it. —Jeffrey

Congratulations also for the tasty “titling” and “photo commenting” of your posts.

I must confess I am a bit jealous of you in that you have a lot of time to pass together with your son, who by the way is a good poser for photography. I have two kids and I have missed a lot of their growth due to work .. (of course, even though I have a very easy and shortened work schedule), not to say that they have revolted (!) and not pose so easily anymore. So, best wishes for your family.

Hahahah, thanks, fixed —Jeffrey

なし —Jeffrey