As we head into winter here in Japan we get some of the most beautiful clear calm days. While certainly not the warmest of autumns you will experience you will however see Japan and probably is most scenic and if you can’t tolerate the overwhelming humidity of a tropical summer I suggest late October to late November being a great time to visit Japan.

It was November -December when I first moved to Japan which as I said is a great time of year, even in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, I even had a white Christmas the first Christmas I was here which was a novelty for me. As a Melbourne born Aussie where Christmas is summer time you don’t get to experience a white Christmas. Even now there are reports of snow flakes in downtown Tokyo so with a bit of luck we will get the first serious snowfalls in central Tokyo this Christmas in a couple of years.

Also this time of year is a very special time as the sun is positioned just right to set in the crater of Mount Fuji , or as the local call it Fuji-san, written like this 富士山. It’s an interesting set of characters and 山(Yama) which is Japanese for Mountain is one of the easiest Kanji to remember. The only problem is most noobs to Japanese and Kanji make the mistake of calling it Fuji Mountain which is the direct translation. The tricky part is the most Kanji have two variations when reading, On-reading and Kun-reading.

On-reading (On-yomi) is the Chinese reading of a kanji character. It is based on the sound of the kanji character as pronounced by the Chinese at the time the character was introduced, and also from the area it was imported. That is why the On-reading might be quite different from Standard Mandarin today. The Kun-reading (Kun-yomi) is the native Japanese reading associated with the meaning of a kanji.

So for the Kanji 山(yama) the character either by itself or at the front of combined Kanji then you use the kun-reading “yama” but when combined with Kanji as the second character then you use the kun-reading, hence Fuji-san(富士山）.　Some dozen kanji don’t have Kun-readings, but most kanji have multiple reading. So for all but a few of the 80,000 Kanji characters there two pronunciations…. yes Japanese is tough to learn.

Pearl Fuji is the name given to the scene you get when the sun is just setting on top of the crater and is quite spectacular, very hard to capture correctly on a camera as you have to drop the exposure so the sun looks like a nice orb but doing this you lose detail on the surrounding areas. I have given you all a couple of nice examples of this special event and will upload the remaining photos to the photo gallery page.

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