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

嵐

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

外

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.