Hi Everyone!
Now that I am back in the US I had a couple items I wanted to give away to readers:
These are Japanese omamori charms in the form of 5-sided pencils. The joke here is 5-corners is gokaku (五角) in Japanese, while the word gōkaku (合格) means to pass an exam. So they’re kind of good-luck pencils for passing an exam or studying.
I got these at Narita airport and they were blessed by the nearby Narita-san Temple, which is pretty famous in Japan, despite its remote location. Both charms are identical.
Anyhow, I know a lot of people out there are diligently studying things like Japanese language, the JLPT, Korean language, Buddhism, whatever. So if you would like one of these charms leave a post and tell what you hope to achieve.
I’ll pick two winners who leave the best answers and will notify them outside the blog, as well as ask for a mailing address. International readers are fine. 
Due date is 9am Friday 21st, Pacific time.
Good luck!
P.S. I got a set of pencils too, but at Tokyo Betsuin when I did the Ajikan meditation.
Good afternoon. I am in the midst of a study of Pure Land Buddism in order to establish an informal Sangha here in Anchorage AK. I think that having the pencils would be….well, very cool.
Namu Amida Butsu
Carole Myoshin Panduren
Sent from my iPad
Wah, I\’ve only seen charms in manga and anime, haven\’t got my hands on one xD
Since I started self-studying Korean, I realized that I\’d love to give bigger portion of my life to languages. So with the precious little spare time that I have, I have been trying several attempts, some didn\’t work (I didn\’t get the scholarship for a translation studies program in Korea), some works (I\’m on my first fiction translation project (English to Indonesian) for one of the publisher in Indonesia, while keeping my full time job). I hope that I can enjoy the journey to wherever all these lead me to and I can stay motivated to learn Korean.
Thank you and have a nice day~!
Oops, sorry for the badly formatted comment. I copy paste the comment text and didn’t check it when the first submit didn’t work. -_-
I hope to (and WILL!!) achieve the almighty Fluency!
And it’s kinda ironic that I do this by copying kanji and watching Dragon Ball…lots of “good” words to be learned from there…:))
I’m not seriously learning Korean at the moment. soo what I really want to achieve are good grades for my graduate certificate this semester so I can do my postgrad studies next year. And keep on carrying on ’til masters until I’m a full fledged psychologist. Yay!
Hi Elfira,
Don’t worry about the formatting. I understood what you meant to say.
I went to University of Maryland, and worked my tail off for my Bachelor’s in Japanese. I even lived in Japan for a year for study abroad. (which I loved!) Then I graduated…and got a job at the board of elections, doing nothing with my degree. I have since been thinking about going back to school and furthering my education….definitely studying more Japanese, possibly starting Korean, but I was definitely thinking of applying to enter a Linguistics Phd program. The whole thing intimidates me, mainly because of money, and because I haven’t been a student for over 2 years now. But I am hoping if I do this, I can finally get a career I really want. That’s my goal.
I need a lucky, math-doing pencil! Could I have one?
Sent from my iPhone