Any Japanese Furs? or Kemoners?
Is there any Japanese furs around?
We already knows that Japanese people are crazy about furs.
(from The Amazing 3 to Klonoa.)
And I suppose that there must be some Japanese sneak into Anthro.
Let's talk!!
I myself am Japanese and I could help for translation and so. ^^
Also, people who are interested in Japan are welcome too!!
日本の方はいらっしゃいませんかー。
You are pretty good Japanese reader, Gravitycrasher!
The kanji, or Chinese character, "方" signifies "side", "way" or "people".
In the above sentence, I said, "Is there any Japanese (people)?"
Yeah, I agree.
East Coast is too far from those Asian countries.
Probably, it is really difficult for them to attend Anthrocon...
But I still expecting some.
私は日本人じゃありませんけれども、日本の文化と歴史に興味が有ります。何卒宜しく！
According to the 2008 registration statistics, we only had 3 people join us from Japan. As popular as furry stuff is in Japanese culture, I'm surprised there isn't more interaction between the Japanese furs and western furs. It might simply be a language problem!
とても日本語がお上手ですね！こちらこそどうぞ宜しく！
A language wall between home language and second language is very tall and challenging.
Even I myself stayed in US for almost ten years, but sometimes it is difficult for me to talk with it...
So maybe as you say, they don't want to give a try,
particularly people who don't know English well...
Wow. your english is pretty good too. There's a few errors but english is a hard language to learn even for those born in america!
Thanks!
I suppose Japanese are hard language to master, but easy to start.
For example, pronunciation.
Most of the Japanese word is pair of consonant and vowel or vowel by itself.
Comparing to Chinese, which have more then twenty vowels and hundreds of consonant pair and accent, it is much easier.
Well, I already have hiragana down, and a few kanji, so I can link together a few sentences, albeit not very well.
For example: 私はジャパニ ズ言語を愛しています
I know it's bad, but I'm trying.
No no! You are doing just fine!
Only thing you have do is to change "ジャパニ ズ言語" to "日本語."
Which makes the sentence, "I love Japanese language." Thanks!!
You don't have to be ashamed by what you are learning.
The number you tryed, you'll be better learner.
And thats how I learned English 
Now a those day, there are many imported Japanese Anime.
Whatching these with English subs makes lots of change too.
That is exactly how i started learning Japanese. You should add me to your friends list. The more the marrier right?
いいえ、まだまだです。残念ですが、私は日本語を話したら、よく間違いますよね。学生の時に日本語を習いましたけど、近頃、練習出来る機会が少ないのです。
ALさんには英語が難しいなら心配しないで下さい。私でも生涯で英語を学ぶのに、まだ下手ですよ。:-)
Perhaps you could be our ambassador to all the Japanese furries. I'm sure they'd be warmly welcomed in Pittsburgh, though it would definitely be a long and expensive trip for them to make.
I'm very pleased to meet you! Please say hello on MSN if you have time.
I was born in Japan 
, sadly I dont know how to speak it only lived there til I was 1 ¬.¬
I'm half japanese, i got it from my moms side, I never really took the time to learn it while i was younger and now I am taking japanese classes in school and am hoping i will get some good results.
koregabatajyanainante
how do i put in the japanese symbols?????
Hi!
Haha, even I can't believe it's not a butter. lolol
If you are using Mac OSX, it is easy to install Japanese,
because basically, Macintosh are multilingual platform and contain
Asian languages already.
If you are using Windows XP--and probably you do--
you'll need "install CD" for XP.
Following page explains decently how to install
IME, the Japanese Input tool:
http://www.declan-software.com/japanese_ime/
Hope this information helps you!
がんばって！
hi im not japanese but an avid japanese fan im teaching myself japanese at the moument, id love to meet you at the con. =^.^=
im the image fox.
Hi!!
So you too are learning Japanese.
I'm quite surprise that there are many English speakers learning Japanese.
What motivates you to learn Japanese?
I could help a bit if you need some help!
good luck!
To be completely honest, I think the one thing that motivates americans to learn japanese the most is anime.
origionaly anime got me into the japanese culture but the culture itself kept me intrested ive studyed what i can about the culture and i can currently read days of the week months numbers and up down left and right.(i get left and right mixed up sometimes).
im the image fox.
I learned those a while back. I'm in karate and kendo, so I learned alot of terminology there. Still, It's difficult to type, I have to copy and paste what I'm trying to say. XP
Haha, Kanji is a headache for new learner. I understand.
Here are some kanjis that you may like to learn.
火=fire
水=water
土=ground
草=leaf
and
鬱=depression.
I dodn't know those last two X3. I've got a question. Maybe you can tell me. Why is the kanji for such a short word (Ai) contain so many strokes?
Well...I don't have much to say about Kanji since it is originated in China.
(So don't blame Japanese for how terribly confusing kanjis are!!)
Most of the Western languages are phonogram, which shows vocaburary with combination of vowel and consonant.
In contrast, East Asian countries uses logogram, the language that
each words have different definition.
Kanji is very complicated and most of them have many stroke,
but that is because each kanji are equivalent to vocaburary.
For instance, in Chinese
"My name is ~." are written
"我叫~。"
Comparing to English, it contain only two words,
but it contain strokes as much as English does.
Its just diffrence between whether word combination contain meaning,
or word itself contains meaning.
So something like that.
Question solved?
Woo, maybe you-all whant to know this kanji.
獣(kemono)=fur, or beast.
Question solved as much as I think it can be!
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月のカース冷夢のなかで...
(Tsuki no kaasu tsumetai yume no naka de...)
This thread is getting a little off topic, but I can't resist.
If you're interested in kanji etymology, I strongly recommend Kenneth G. Henshall's book, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. It provides explanations of the origins of all 1,945 Jouyou kanji, and provides best guesses in the cases where the exact origin is unknown. A must for any serious Japanese learner (or language geek). The book is in English and very accessible to anyone with an interest in the topic. Also rather useful for Chinese students if they don't mind the Japanese focus. It's really helpful because it takes the mystery out of the kanji and helps you understand how the entire language fits together.
When you asked about "Ai," I assume you mean the character for love 愛 . (There are other characters with the same pronunciation.) The most likely explanation is that the center components represent an encircled/enveloped heart. The upper component is a hand reaching down while the bottom is "stop and start," but these two are most likely fairly recent (and misleading) graphic simplifications. The original elements shown in old forms of the character showed opposed feet (moving around a central point), and lent a meaning of "all around." Thus, the original meaning, "that which completely envelops the heart." I.e., love.
Incidentally, Ai has only 13 strokes. If you study Japanese or Chinese for a few more years, you'll look back on it with fondness at how simple a character it is. 
Bringing this at least somewhat back on topic, I'll explain 獣 (kemono). (You might want to increase your font size so you can read the kanji more easily.)
A slightly older form of the character (still used in Traditional Chinese) looks like this: 獸
The component on the right side 犬 is dog.
The upper left components are probably an abbreviation of the character for "simple" 単 , but in kemono, these components are used for their sound and not for their meaning. Phonetically, it means to guard or protect, probably in part because the original meaning of 単 was "forked weapon" and it was only at a later point in history that it was borrowed to express the word "simple."
The lower left component means mouth, but it's not clear what the purpose of it is. It's possible that the entire left side of kemono is related to an uncommon Chinese-only character 嘽 , which originally meant "snort." Thus, the character for kemono may have come from the idea of a snorting/snarling dog, emphasizing its fearsomeness and effectiveness as a guard dog.
The ideas of dogs and beasts have long overlapped conceptually, so probably by extension, the meaning of "kemono" evolved from that of a snarling dog to "beast" (especially in this case since it's not merely a dog, but a snarling and fierce one).
And there you have it! Credit goes to Henshall for the explanations (which I have simplified somewhat).
I'll shut up now.
anime...mostly. I just love the way it sounds. It's such a beautiful-sounding language, and it's very succinct, more so than English can manage to be. In Japanese, you can express in 3 words what takes 5 or more in English. However, I'm afraid I don't know all that much Japanese. I know a dozen or so words and phrases, and can sing (badly) a couple of the opening themes from anime I like, but that's about it. The DEATH NOTE opening, in particular keeps getting stuck in my head.
lol watashiwabakabutadesu
;0
I've always been interested in the Japanese culture.I love the language,lifestyle,music,and so on.My step-dad told me many things about it,since japanese is his heritage
Thank you!
Yeah, Japanese cultures are so particular.
I wonder why it is so different from other Asian countries.
(Probably because it is island andseparated from other countries.)
Your step-dad was in Japan?
He was born here in the U.S.Though his mom and dad were both born in Tokyo,I believe.I plan on visiting Japan next year.
That's nice:)
So, are you familiar with Japanese too?
Probably, one thing you might notice is a food.
Its so dellisious and diverse!
However at same time, its so tiny. (´･ω･`)
I'm trying to teach myself Japanese,although it isn't going so well. :[
He makes a lot of foods with rice,and it's rather good.
So much interest here in the Japanese language and culture. Perhaps enough for you to host a panel of some type? If not a presentation, perhaps just a chat session? Japanese language? Japanese Furry Fandom? You would certainly get to meet many people to talk with that way.
Oh, and on this page you can see some pics of me and Kiki in our Kimonos.
http://www.jovinamask.com/furry/Conventions/Anthrocon_2007/saturday01.htm
Jovina
Umm, good idea!
I'm looking forward to provide something!
By the way, is there any place I could place it?
(Yeah, it is my first Anthrocon.
I totally newbee.)
if you want to hold a panel contact arrow he can point you in the right direction if you want to host a panel. [im hosting one on foxes=]]
im the image fox.
This is where you bring it up:
http://www.anthrocon.org/suggest-a-panel
Keeping to a topic that is about Japanese culture AND furry relevent will increase the chances of it being accepted. For example, a panel on animal spirits would have a better chance of being added to the schedule than one that is on the japanese language. Of course, in an open forum, the topic being discussed can go anywhere!
How about some topic suggestions from the people here?
Jovina
I'd submitted suggestion.
But unfortunatelly, programming submission for this year was already been closed. 
But if someone still want to have some kind of chat session, I'm more than welcome to do that!
(I don't know how it going to be done though...)
If you are interested, please give me idea!
Thanks!
You could try this:
Look for a spot on the schedule that is convenient and doesn't have a lot of competition.
Announce that you will be in the den at that time and some means of identifying you, and invite people to join you for conversation. Alternatively, there may be a room available at some time that they will let you use, look for empty spots on the schedule in early morning and late evening.
Post the time, location, and means of finding you both here, and on the bulletin board at Anthrocon.
or.......
If you can make your room secure enough to invite strangers in, you could have a room party and post in on the party board. Be warned, it could turn into something big!
Jovina
Nihon no...wa iraasha ima senka. Something like that. I'm not japanese but I love the language. I'm trying to learn it. How's my reading? Also, what's the kanji 方? I probably sound dumb but I'm really trying.
I doubt you'll find many japanese furs. From my experience they're mostly white, with a couple African Americans.
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月のカース冷夢のなかで