It’s April and I have enrolled in a Japanese language class. My goal? To memorize 30 kanji a day. As an old idiom goes, though, 口では大阪の城も建つ (kuchi de wa Ōsaka no shiro mo tatsu). That literally means “even castles in Osaka can be built by mouth” but was traditionally used to convey the idea of something being “easier said than done.”
Perhaps settling for another goal would be a better decision. In that case, I might actually try visiting 大阪城 (Ōsaka-jō, Osaka Castle) and the other two 城 (shiro, castles) — 姫路城 (Himeji-jō, Himeji Castle) and 名古屋城 (Nagoya-jō, Nagoya Castle) — that make up Japan’s 三名城 (sanmeijō, top three castles).
You see, while I was waiting for Japan to open its borders to foreign students again, I satiated my desire to be in the country by doing a bit of reading on Japanese 城, pronounced “shiro” when standing alone and “jō” when tacked on to the end of a name.