I found Tomoko Otake's Sept. 23 article, "Japanese: a language in a state of flux" -- about the invasion of modern Japanese by gairaigo (foreign loan words) -- very interesting. Fifteen years ago, as an education ministry scholarship student, I studied Japanese at the International Center of Keio University. It had been 10 years since I was in Tokyo when I returned this month to visit favorite places and see old friends.
What impressed me most was the increased use of gairaigo, not only in the spoken language but also in written Japanese, such as in advertisements inside trains. Even for foreigners who already have a good level of kanji knowledge, reading long katakana expressions often must be tiresome and frustrating, since simply guessing the sound of the original English word does not necessarily give you a real understanding. The argument that kanji makes it difficult to express "modern ideas" in Japan should be rejected. Modern China creates very updated expressions in kanji, without losing its extraordinary writing system!
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