宇治の川で

This picture(写真) was taken in Uji(宇治) about 20 minutes(分) south(南) of Kyoto(京都).

From the top(上) in red Kanji(赤い漢字):

遊 - This Kanji is used in the verb 遊び（あそび）'asobi' which means 'to play'.

泳 - This Kanji is used in the verb 泳ぐ（およぐ）'oyogu' which means 'to swim'.

禁 - This Kanji is used in the verb 禁じる（きんじる）'kinjiru' which means 'to forbid'. Anytime you see this Kanji the message in its simplest form is 'Don't Do It!!' And, as my friends pointed out, looks like an elephant, which it totally does, so it's easy to spot.

止 - This Kanji is used in the verb 止まる（とまる）'tomaru' which means 'to stop'. In Japan you see this '止マレ' on the roads where people are meant to stop instead of stop signs. In Japanese there are many ways to say 'stop' using this Kanji. An incredibly popular spoken form of 'stop' is 止めて（やめて）'yamete'. This is often said when you want someone to stop what they are doing, usually physical, probably because it hurts or it's annoying. Although, woman say this in a playful manner, at times, that can be confusing as to if they really mean for you to stop or not, so its good to be conscious of their tone and expression.

All these Kanji of course can be used in may different words, the examples given here are the most popular used forms.

So when we put them all together:

遊泳禁止（ゆうえいきんし）'yuueikinshi' means 'No Swimming Allowed!'

At the bottom (下) in the yellow (黄色) hiragana:

As all these words have Kanji they could of used, but I remember reading somewhere that the Japanese will often use important words in Kana so that children can read them.

ながれ（流れ）'nagare' means 'flow'.

はやい（早い）'hayai' means 'fast'.

およぐな（泳ぐな）'oyoguna' means 'do not swim'. Now, I'm not technically familiar with adding 'na' to the end of a verb to make it a negative, but it seems to be so. With any verb add 'な' and it will become a 'don't ___' verb. This is different from the 'ない' negative form.

Let's look:

泳がない - 'Didn't swim', in the 'nai' form with う verbs you conjugate the final syllable or Kana and add 'nai' to make it mean 'didn't __'. With a るverb you drop 'ru' and add 'nai' as in 食べない 'didn't eat'.　　

およぐな - 'Don't swim' keeps the plain form of the verb and adds 'na'. This is the same with う and る verbs, as with 食べるな 'don't eat'.

Hopefully this is a clear explanation. The real difficulty is listening for the differences, but I assume if your about to put something into your mouth and your hear, "食べるな!!" you should stop, a more accurate expression would be, "止め!!　食べるな." in this situation.

Back to the translation:

All together, ながれ　はやい　およぐな, means 'Fast current. Do Not Swim!' You can kind of see the water in the picture, but for relevance the water was flowing pretty strongly and would definitely send someone down river, not to mention being in there with those scary bug eyed fish!!

Anyway, that's it.

ありがとうございます。またね。

ジョシュア