A better look at the original

I just got a new toy, my first ever digital camera (Japanese, of course). So I thought I'd take the opportunity to photograph the pages I'm translating right now, in case anyone wants a closer look at the original I'm working off of:

(click photo to enlarge)

Generally, I copy the original Japanese, vertically, into a graph paper notebook before doing the translation kanji by kanji. In its literary form (not in newspapers), Japanese reads top-to-bottom, right-to-left. Although reading "backwards" is a strange feeling at first, I like the appearance on the page of the vertical lines. They're like noodles or rain or perhaps dripping paint. More beautiful metaphors are welcome. This volume is only Book 1 of the Faerie Queene, which I've never seen sold in single book editions before. Like everything else in Japan, the books are also much smaller than we're used to. This one volume cost ¥1500, which is more than $15 these days--pricey! You can probably buy the whole thing in English from Amazon.com for a few dollars in a cheap Penguin Classics edition. Thanks to my friend and former student Haru for giving it to me as a going away present.

I'm off to Belize and Guatemala for a week, and then the new semester begins shortly thereafter. I will do my best to finish the second stanza by the end of January. Honestly, I'm getting faster! If only someone had gotten me that Casio EX-Word...

Here's a rare kanji, in the meantime, for vocab junkies:

證

I saw this beautiful kanji beautifully drawn on my Aikido sensei's rank certificate, and, since it was the largest one, I wondered what it means. It took me almost an hour to find the defintion, because it's not commonly used (it's a variant of 証). I almost gave up before turning to the "kanji by radicals" search function on jisho.org. It's pronounced "akashi" or "shou" in compounds and means "certificate." I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I guess something cooler than that, like "Golden Warrior Excellence" or "Supreme Thunder Force." But that's what I get for being curious: a certificate marked boldly with a gorgeous character that means "certificate." So Japanese, in a way.