# Spice Girls Album Sticker



## kewongjapan

Hello all, as you know Japan gets many 'special edition' music albums with the obi strips & stickers. I was rummaging through my old stuff and came across an embarrassing album from Japan  However, I am interested in the Japanese words on the sticker stuck onto the case. 

Would anyone be kind to type all the Japanese text in _hiragana_? The text on white background, grey background and inside that red box... I realize it's quite a bit... Thank you for reading


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## kewongjapan

Hi HotTuna! Thanks so much for taking the time... I did start trying to write it, but my japanese is not as fluent. Anyway, I have a question, the text in the excel sheet you sent seems to be different from the text on the sticker. Like you used すぱいす・がーるず instead of スパイス・ガールズ... or is it because _hiragana _is different, because i thought the sticker was written in hiragana

and yes... my secret is out... don't stone me 



hottuna said:


> I've got too much time on my hands...
> More importantly, it takes a big man (or woman) to admit s/he bought this album.
> Your secret's out...


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## hottuna

kewongjapan said:


> the text in the excel sheet you sent seems to be different from the text on the sticker. Like you used すぱいす・がーるず instead of スパイス・ガールズ... or is it because _hiragana _is different, because i thought the sticker was written in hiragana


スパイス・ガールズ is katakana.
すぱいす・がーるず is hiragana (which is what you requested).

And no, I won't stone you because I believe people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks.
I recently started listinening to Vanessa Carlton and to my surprise, I found myself liking it...


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## kewongjapan

I see... lol, then I'm stupid cause i meant to request katakana.... Gosh, I really should learn the difference


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## kewongjapan

Oh wow! I really did not expect you to convert it over for me. Thank you thank you... Hmm, I guess I prefer katakana over hiragana because the characters are more 'straight' then curly. Hiragana reminds me of some super girly font like "Curlz" heh heh Thanks again


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## hottuna

I thought you just wanted to be able to read it.
I didn't know you were concerned with how it "looks".
You're not considering getting this tattooed on your body, are you?


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## kewongjapan

lol... no. i think my body would run out of space for the whole thing... actually not a tatoo, i'm just into caligraphy and so i have a strange 'hobby' whereby I get something with japanese text on it and write it out in microsoft word using the handwritten text input method. I find it soothing, except the sticker I have the smaller words were hard to read, and some larger words I couldn't get the stroke count right (still can't) So far I had this:

*スパイス**が**ぃる**限**り**、女の予の**友情**は「氷速」です*
*スパイス**・**ガ**ー**ルズ**FOREVER*
*女ｘとして、ヴォーカリストとして、**「成長」、した**4**ｘの**SPICE**が再び**結*
*ｘして、**SPICE* GIRLSは*「*進化*」した―**3**年ｘリの**3rd**アルバムで、またスバイスが界の**POP STANDARD**になる**!*

I was going to copy your text and enlarge it so I could see the characters bigger and try to figure out how to write it... Looking over your text, is the text on the sticker a mixture of hiragana and katakana? On the red 'square' the second line of text, what I've written so far is:


*XX**の**3rdアルバム* - Havent figured out the XX
In your katakana its


*タイボウﾉ**3rdアルバム*
and hiragana version its


*たいぼうの**3rdあるばむ*
**


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## hottuna

Digital calligraphy...So 21st century!
You should get a Nintendo DS (if you don't already own one, since everyone and their uncle has it).
There's some software for it that teaches users to write kanji.
It uses the touch sensitive input screen to recognize your handwriting and it does a very good job of it.
If all you want to do is practice writing your katakana, you don't even have to buy any software for it; there a free utility included in the DS called pictochat where you can draw and write anything you want and send it to other DS users within a certain range.



kewongjapan said:


> Looking over your text, is the text on the sticker a mixture of hiragana and katakana? On the red 'square' the second line of text, what I've written so far is:
> 
> 
> *XX**の**3rdアルバム* - Havent figured out the XX
> In your katakana its
> 
> 
> *タイボウﾉ**3rdアルバム*
> and hiragana version its
> 
> 
> *たいぼうの**3rdあるばむ*


It says 待望の3rdアルバム
「の」is hiragana and 「アルバム」is katakana, so to answer your question, yes both kana styles are represented here.
「待望」is kanij of course.


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## kewongjapan

I'd rather buy a Wii or PS3 with the money instead of a DS  

So last question now; is most japanese publications, like posters, books, menus etc written in Kanji? It seems strange you have 3 ways to write something, as you could write the whole sticker into katakana, kanji and hiragana. Why the difference in writing?


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## Eso

Ah, that question could be answered with a 5 paragraph essay!

Basically, hiragana and katakana are the basic "alphabets" of Japanese. Each symbol you see represents a sound, usually a constanant and a vowel. Hiragana is used most of the time and katakana is used to write out foreign loan words, or to express something boldly, or to write out onomatopoeia.
Kanji are Chinese characters which represent an idea. The tricky thing with Kanji is that there is no fixed number of hiragana that "composes" it. One kanji may have 1 sound composing it, another may have 3. Kanji is something that everybody has to memorize.

The reason why there is kanji is because it would be really hard to read an entire paragraph written in just hiragana and katakana. There's no spacing between words like in Western script. Plus, kanji also has this feature where it can convey a meaning otherwise lost in just hiragana/katakana writing.

Hope that clears things up somewhat.


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## kewongjapan

Yea, I think you did a better job of explaining than wiki. Easier to understand. Makes sense then why there's a hiragana "keyboard" in my text input software, because that is actually the vowel sounds not necessarily whole words. But having three 'styles' does make things unnecassarily difficult...


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## Eso

Well, it's not really a "style" of writing. All 3 are needed in everyday reading, save for children's books.


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