Prefectures of Japan - puzzle game!

Walking randomly around a hyaku-yen shop called Flet's (usually open, as the door claims, 'from 9 to 25', whatever this means...), a certain item caught my eye. I got even happier when I discovered what it actually was - a jigsaw-style puzzle map of Japanese prefectures! 

I don't know about your experiences concerning the Japanese prefectures, but mine were just terrible. I remember reading zillions of books about Japan before the exams for the Japanese Studies in Poland (most of which was just a complete waste of time, as none of the 'exams' actually checked any of your knowledge on the subject anyway). These books were not only seriously dated (majority from around the seventies), but also weirdly translated or simply poorly written, with daunting newspeak of jibberish and incomprehensible terms. Most of them pouring with not explained pieces of vocabulary, as if every reader ought to know everything about Japan prior to getting the book (what an irony, almost like with the actual Japanese studies in Poland!). One of these unexplained words, and one of the most annoying, because obviously directly translated, was 'prefecture'. Whenever a place was mentioned, you had this hated 'prefektura' next to it, which didn't even explain you anything, as there was no map of Japan with prefectures provided in the book!

My next encounter with prefectures happened when I realized it would be a nice and useful way to study some weird kanji on top of the regular load. I do think it was very effective kanji-wise, but it still didn't solve the problem of not really knowing where these actually were located. Of course, the more you know about Japan and Japanese, the easier it gets, as you learn that Hokkaido is a single prefecture, Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo create ones as well (although they don't carry 県 (ken) after the name). When you read texts in the textbooks, sooner or later some character will mention Chiba, Hyougo or Gunma prefectures, as they are not that far from Tokyo, or Shiga and Nara prefectures - close to Kyoto. Then from the history books you can probably remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are the main cities of prefectures with the same names. And recently, Fukushima prefecture and its location made it to the news because of the Great Tohoku Earthquake just over a year ago. But I was looking for an effective method of seeing where each prefecture is, more or less, located in Japan. 

I couldn't find a better way than a kid's puzzle, with not onlu kanji, but also the hiragana readings and all the capital cities indicated! (Most of them share the prefecture name, but sometimes you might get a surprise :-) ) !


I thought this is too good so as not to share it - for everybody who studies Japanese, for the children of the expats, for the teachers of Japanese, or just everybody interested. I took pictures of both the map and the pieces, as close to A4 format as I could. My plan is to put each of the puzzle prefectures here, with brief description and printable version that you can print at home, should you wish to. With 1-3 prefectures a week, I should finish the cycle in about 3 months.


Anybody in for the Game of Prefectures?