Japan is the home of super cute & crazy, so it should be no big shock that they made a cat head of a train station. Tama had been living in a grocery store near the station where the owner Toshiko Koyama fed her & other stray cats. The store owner was the station master until the train line switched to unmanned stations in April 2006 to cut costs. With no where else to go Tama stayed at the station anyway.

In January 2007, railway officials decided to officially name Tama the station master. As station master her primary duty is to greet passengers. The position comes with a stationmaster’s hat; in lieu of a salary, the railway provides Tama with free cat food. Word got out about the new station master, and tourists now flock to Kinokawa to see Tama in her uniform, thus helping the financial crisis of the Kishigawa Line.
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This lesson will cover the na & ha lines, but if you need a review of a-ka, or sa-ta, they’re always available.

Something I’ve noticed as my class has been getting into katakana more is that when using foreign words, vowels tend to be stretched.

The word Hamburger in Katakana is
ハ ン バー ガー
ha n baa gaa
My initial thought was to put ア (a) in there (like ハンバアガア), but that is incorrect even though it’d be pronounced very similarly if not the same way.
Coffee is the same way:
コーヒー
ko- hi-
I keep feeling like I should put the extra letter in there, but it’s not necessary. The ー covers it nicely. It doesn’t appear to be as common in Hiragana, at least from what I’ve seen. It does happen though.

On with the show!

ナ ニ ヌ ネ ノ
na ni nu ne no

ハ ヒ フ ヘ ホ
ha hi fu* he ho

These are all said the same as in Hiragana.

**Don’t forget that fu is still irregular.

When I was cramming for my quiz, I had a good thought on how to remember

ホ.  When ho is drawn, you draw the part that looks like a cross 1st. I thought to myself that a cross gives HOpe to alot of people.

But that’s it for now! Practice hard! http://www.realkana.com/katakana/

がんばって ください - Please try your best!