#i deduced eventually that it was the 緊急樓梯

[xiangqiankua]

I got a beginner book for learning Japanese from the library, 不會日語也能出走日本, which serves the purpose of getting in some Chinese reading, and also learning from a source that assumes the audience can already read 漢字. (From my perspective "對於初學者而言，最難掌握的就是日語發音" becomes not entirely accurate, though.) Having put some very mild half-assed effort into learning katakana and hiragana in the past, it was interesting to discover that while in English one simply uses the Japanese pronunciation of the Japanese word, in Mandarin it's time for:

假名 jiǎmíng / kana

平假名 píng jiǎmíng / hiragana

片假名 piàn jiǎ míng / katakana

The book's opinion on 漢字:

“而日文中另外還有 「 漢字」，用來表示漢語，為表意文字，大致上寫法和意思和中文差不多，所以對於初學日文的台灣人來説，能夠從漢字上依稀猜到單子的意思。但也會碰到學習的障礙，某些日文漢字的寫法跟中文不一樣，甚至意思也相差甚遠，這些部分要特別的注意。”

Flashback to my guesthouse in Tokyo last year:

#we've entered the Very Stage #i deduced eventually that it was the 緊急樓梯 #mandarin #chinese #traditional characters #Japanese #i just want to learn enough Japanese to order food and make a little chit chat #nothing ambitious