Friday, December 02, 2005

互嵐外

I bet you are all wondering what the heck all those crazy symbol things in the title are. Well welcome to my everyday life! But these actually have a special meaning. Sort of. After an intense comittee meeting consisting of myself and my coworker Eiko this is what we came up with for my Hanko.

Being that Kanji is a pain in the butt to write, or for other deeper reasons, rather than sign documents Japanese use a stamp, or Hanko, with their name. You can get along ok without it, but really for official documents people living here need to get one. Since I finally have my registration card, a Hanko is the last thing I need in order to get a bank account, which will be a very nice thing to have. But if you want a Hanko, you need a name in Kanji, and therin lies the tricky details.

Obviously "Grant" is not exactly a Japanese name, and so we had to break it down and see what Kanji we could use. I picked them for both meaning and looking cool. So lets look at my new name.


We start with Gu, with a meaning of "mutually, reciprocally, together" (Source Kanji a day http://www.kanji-a-day.com/level1/index.php)



Next is Ran meaning "storm, tempest" Same as the movie? I don't know but it would make sense.




And finally is To, meaning "outside"


So there we go, GuRanTo. Uh, sort of Grant. Eh, its not perfect, but it is pretty cool! So I should have that by early next week, and I can run around stamping things. "This is mine, and this is mine..." Note: I apologize for any blatent mistakes in my Japanese. I blame them all on a combination of general stupidity and the fact that it is way past my bedtime.


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