A to Z Challenge 2015: N - Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Welcome to the second half of the Challenge!

How many of you are left? I have come across a lot of blogs who have given up or who never even started!

Don't forget: if you don't keep your posts up to date, you will eventually be deleted from the list.

Anyway, today's story is my third Hayao Miyazaki film! In case you couldn't tell, I can't get enough of Mayazaki movies. This one is technically pre Studio Ghibli, but it's been re-released by now.

Today's 2015 April A to Z Blogging Challenge story for the letter N:

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

This one was actually a Manga first, also written by Miyazaki-san, and was then adapted into an animated feature film. Not his first film ever, but probably considered by most to be his breakthrough.

Here is the summary from IMDB:

Warrior/pacifist Princess Nausicaä desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet.

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Writers: Hayao Miyazaki (manga), Hayao Miyazaki (screenplay)
Stars: Sumi Shimamoto, Mahito Tsujimura, Hisako Kyôda

That's it! Please come back tomorrow.

A to Z Challenge: N - Ninja

Ninja

That "image" to the left, which is really just a picture of text, is something I've been seeing on Facebook lately. It's kind of funny, but it also makes perfect sense, logically.

Because Ninja, like Katana, is originally a Japanese word that has only been adopted into English because it has been used so often. Probably because of TMNT. The point here, though, is that Ninja, like all Japanese words, does not add an "S" to the end to become plural. Many Ninja are spelled the same as one Ninja. So that's probably how the Ninja were hiding from the thesaurus so well. LOL.

nin·ja [nin-jə] n. pl. a member of a class of 14th-century Japanese mercenary agents who were trained in the martial arts and hired for covert operations such as assassination and sabotage

Synonyms: there are no direct synonyms for this word, but some related words are: ninpo, ninjitsu, Kunoichi, Shinobi, monomi

Etymology: Ninja is an on'yomi (Early Middle Chinese-influenced) reading of the two kanji "忍者". In the native kun'yomi kanji reading, it is pronounced shinobi, a shortened form of the transcription shinobi-no-mono (忍の者). These two systems of pronouncing kanji create words (ninja/ninsha or shinobi-no-mono) with similar meanings.