response 1 of 15:

Mar 11 08:11 UTC 1994

I stayed in a ryokan in Japan which had a curtain on the doorway leading to
the baths which said "Pubric Bass."

response 3 of 15:

Mar 11 18:27 UTC 1994

Was that a name ripoff, or an error?  (:

response 5 of 15:

Mar 12 00:12 UTC 1994

Part of their fascination may be the strangeness. Japanese is written
using three different scripts, and none are similar to an alphabet.

(1) "Kanji" is the Japanese way of writing Chinese Characters. They borrowed
this scheme (ideaographs) and most of the characters from the Chinese.
Before that their Mongol-derived language had no written form.
(2) "hiragana" is a syllabary. In other words, one symbol for each syllable.
This is very different from an alphabet, with a symbol per sound.
It consists of grossly simplified kanji actually, but the meanings
are lost and they are valid only for their sounds.
These are needed because the Japanese language is inflected and thus has
verb endings and the like. Chinese does not, so when they borrowed from
Chinese they came up short, and needed to invent this.
(3) "katakana" is a separate syllabary. It expresses the same set of
syllables, but looks quite different. It is used primarily for words that
have no ideographs, rather than for inflections like hiragana.
Katakana is always used for writing borrowed foreign words.
Hiragana and katakana are collectively referred to as kana (opposed to kanji).

(whew)

response 7 of 15:

Mar 12 07:27 UTC 1994

Hiragana is absolutely essential to the Japanese language at all levels.
It is used to inflect verbs and also for helper verbs like "masu" "desu"
"imasu" etc. It is also used for postpositions.

In the schools, when the youngsters first learn to write, they do it
phonetically at first, using only hiragana, but once they are able to
master the chinese characters (kanji) these kanji replace the hiragana
for all of the stems. There is no way to use anything but hiragana for
inflections, though. 

Sometimes in elementary readers you will see kanji with small hiragana
written below it or on the side (depending on the direction of the
script). This is to help determine what reading to use, as most kanji have
multiple "readings" or pronunciations - just to make things difficult.
In adult writing, the correct reading is always determined by context.

response 9 of 15:

Mar 13 07:04 UTC 1994

thanks, srw.  other, that's no way to travel.  in 10 days, we spent 2 weekends
at ryokan- one in Nikko and one down on the Izu peninsula.  The rest of the
time was day trips to temples and shrines, shopping, kabuki, etc.  We stayed
with my best friend, who had a great house in Tokyo and had finished her class
work early so we could have time together.  Wish we could get back some time.

response 11 of 15:

Mar 13 22:05 UTC 1994

My knowledge of Japanese is now being pushed a bit, however...
I could not find "kawase" per se in the dictionary, but I found the verb
"kawaru" from which one might for "kawase". The entry appeared under at least
two kanji in my Nelson's Character Dictionary as 

ka(waru) "replace, relieve" 

If this was the word you are thinking of, then the fact that the ka appears
outside the parentheses in the definition indicates that the kanji is used
to represent that syllable and the meaning, and the ending (in this case,
"wase") would be written as two hiragana.

This is a very feeble ascii art attempt to show it.
 /  | \   
/|--+--    |      |  |
 |  |     -=--   -+--+-
 |   \    /|  )   | \|
 |    \,  L| /    |___ 

 kanji    two hiragana
(read ka) (wa      se)

This kanji is number 364 in Nelson. It has about 5 different ways to be read,
which is typical for an important character like this one is.
It is known as "DAI" meaning "period, age, generation" in its "On Yomi"
reading, which means that "DAI" is what the Japanese perceived the Chinese
pronunciation to be when they borrowed the character.

The use to form "kawase" is called a "Kun yomi" reading, as the sounds are
taken from the original spoken Japanese. In modern usage, most kanji
have both On and Kun readings which are used. Usually one On and multiple Kun.

That's part of what makes Japanese so difficult.

response 13 of 15:

Mar 14 06:41 UTC 1994

I studied Japanese for a year, and amazingly remembered some of it. I
could never speak it well enough to be understood, or understand anything
spoken. I spent two weeks over there in 1974, and as long as I had my
character dictionary with me, I could figure out how to ride the trains.
that was an interesting challenge.

As far as the ascii art goes - I was having a slow day.
foo - it wasn't very good art either.
BTW I didn't just remember all that stuff, I read a lot of it out of a
dictionary. It's impressive, but deceptive. 

response 15 of 15:

May 7 00:18 UTC 2000

The method of writing in Japanese using our alphabet is called "romanji" ie
Roman Writing