Still here (Mnemosyne, TBS Radio podcasts)

and trying to study Japanese 2 hours a day.

It's in the schedule, so I think it's possible. Of course, it's the second thing (after fiction-reading) to get cut in emergencies, but I have a new kanji stategy involving Mnemosyne, a sweet flashcard program that spaces out repetition for you so you don't have to worry about when to review. Just spend some time in the program every day and give it accurate feedback on how hard you are working to answer the questions. I can already tell the difference from just flipping through flashcards on my own, and it's only been a couple days.

Note: This does not mean you should not have awesome hard copy flash cards. I still highly recommend getting the White Rabbit Press sets because of the extremely useful list of six compounds given for each kanji. You can feed whatever you want to learn into Mnemosyne, and keep the cards handy just for when you're on the road.

That said, I wonder if there is a mobile version of this. Could you imagine how awesome it would be to have it on your iPhone or something? o_o

My other new MOAR JAPANESE tactic is TBS Radio. (Incidentally, I got both of these links from All Japanese All the Time, a website by a guy who taught himself Japanese in 18th months or something, i.e. one of those guys we all hate because we are actually bitter and disappointed with ourselves for not trying harder. Fear not, you rock and so do I. Just steal his links and kick ass however you see fit.) I haven't done too much extensive listening there yet, but it's VERY IMPORTANT to listen to people SPEAKING JAPANESE who are NOT in character for an ANIME.

Game no Vocab

Oh, hey, I can link you to my vocab blog now: ゲームの単語.

It's not the greatest thing in the world, but I'm trying to tag effectively so you can make "lesson plans" or something, and you can search the blog in English or Japanese for the word you need. That makes it at least half-way decent.

Studying on Vacation

I've found I study really well when I shouldn't really be studying. For instance, I was just in the woods for a week and even though I should've been out kayaking on the lake or swimming or at least walking down the gravel road running past our cabin, I woke up quite a few mornings and just wrote kanji for a while.

I did the same thing when I first arrived in Paris, only with Russian. We were in our hotel rooms prior to arranging actual accommodations for the 5 month study abroad and everyone was like, "Why are you studying?"

I guess I must have some elitist streak that makes me feel good about myself if no one else in their right mind would be studying ;p that and I just really like to study...

The other thing, is that in the woods I had no Internet or videogames to distract me. It comes down to what hobbies you like vs. what you find important vs. what is available and the overlaps thereof.

A month exactly

You can tell I've been busy, but I have an announcement! Finally.

Since I don't know of any good web-based vocab organizers, I'm going to start a vocab blog, yes with tags. About videogames.

That is all. I don't have a ton of time at the moment. But uh, look forward to that...maybe.

Perfume

It's like having a sweet tooth:

わあ～東京へ行くことになった！

海外出張です。GAMEPROという雑誌とウェブサイトからこのチャンスをもらった。出発は６月９と思う。父がきゅうかをとれることを手伝ってくれるといったから、楽しいバケーションになれると思う。

そのほか、オレヤちゃんからすてきなプレゼントをもらった。誕生日は７月にあるのに、彼女がシアトルヘ引っ越すから、私とパーティーなんかをすることができないだろう。WHITE　RABBITのフラッシュカードです。すご～い。これから、オレヤちゃんのを借りることはいらない。

おひさしぶり

そんなに忙しい？ブログを捨てたくないけど、仕事が多い。勉強のため時間がなちゃった。どうして？多分ＥＡへ行くときに教科書とかＤＳの教育ソフトとかもってくれば、いい。

そこの新しいバイトはすてきで、オフィスで働いているのが好きだ。

Arrrgh I don't even have time to write why I don't have time to write because I have to go catch BART before it shuts down. Yipe yipe yipe. Suffice it to say I haven't given up. I think, as I mentioned, that bringing study materials to EA would be a good thing, but then again you look all pretentious if you're studying kanji at lunch, and it might be easier to make new friends if I actually tried.

*shrug*

More mail

So I think at some point I intend to put some actual effort into a post about my new study tools, obviously, but this will serve well enough to announce that the DS software has also arrived. I've been gathering initial impressions, but probably won't have time to make the actual post until the weekend. Or never. We'll see haha

I'm pretty happy so far, though, and I had some time this evening to study.

Oleya was over last night and let me oogle her (White Rabbit) flash cards. Let me tell you, they are some awesome. The best part is the six usages listed. You can learn some super useful vocab just by making sure you recognize your kanji. It just feels really good to have a finite amount of information there. Studying out of a kanji dictionary (even a super user friendly one like mine) is stressful and overwhelming since some kanji have meanings that go on for over a page!! Here you can get a really good pertinent chunk of meaning, things you will want to use--like 万引き（まんびき shoplifting） or 九州　（きゅうしゅう　the island of Japan）Therefore, huzzah.

No job, but at least the mail comes

まあ、日本へ戻るのはまだ出来ない。英会話の会社のめんせつにしっぱいしちゃった。でもそれはあまり悪くない、いまの仕事が大好きだから。問題はお金だけ。

今日GTAIVで彼女を急に殺しちゃった。たいへんだった！車のばくはつ前におれ（ニコ）が自分を辛うじて助けたけど、彼女はまだ中に入ったんだ。あとで「病院へむかえにきてくれる？」と電話で言ったから、なんとかいきぬいた、ゲームが「ミシェールが殺された」と言ったのに。

もうおそい。いつも夜中に書いているね。ね～むい！

でも面白いニューズがある！けっきょくすごい勉強のための本を郵便でもらったんだ。あてでさいぶをとどける、ぜったいに！

Words I looked up or double checked or don't have a good enough handle on the kanji despite deciding to use it (if I really don't know it, I usually won't use it):

戻る to return　もどる
面接　interview めんせつ
問題　problem　もんだい
殺す to kill　ころす
辛うじて barely, narrowly, just managed to do something　かろうじて
郵便　mail/postal service　ゆうびん
細部　details　さいぶ

24 is not enough

I should be sleeping, but instead I'm going to pop in here to say that I'm ridiculously busy. Partially, though, because I'm interviewing for Amity on Saturday. Maybe I'll get to go to Japan! My clothes are already being dry cleaned, so...now I just need to come up with a half hour lesson plan and be creative, etc. I think I can, I think I can...

In the meantime, I know you've seen this before if you read my other blogs, but check out ケロログ for voice blogs by Japanese people. I've half a mind to start one myself (in all sorts of bilingual glory...ooooorrrrr something haha) but it'll have to wait.

明日多分日本語を話すチャンスがあるんだ。日本から来たルームメートと彼のお父さんといっしょうに朝ごはんを食べるはずだ。眠そうな顔を消さなくちゃいけないよ。もう午前１時４０だけど、もう少し仕事したほうがいいかな。。。

Today I met a cool girl

in J-town. Her name is Akiko, and we ate a mixed berry tart while discussing life etc. This week we did English, but next time I told her I will be brave and speak some Japanese, too. I'm feeling pretty energized after meeting her. Also, her English is awesome. She's been here for five years.

Anyways, I guess I don't have much to add. Just noting that I now have a serious conversation partner. If only I can just find something to talk about!

No other study news...

: /

and in fact you'll notice I broke every rule. I didn't mean to take the weekend off and I'm too tired to put any useful Japanese in here. If I just go to bed now so I can get up and be productive tomorrow that will be enough!

Logistics

ロジスティクス*　-- interestingly, the original Japanese word, 兵站学　(へいたんがく), is the kanji for "army," "halt," and "learning." The middle one isn't general use. Maybe that is why they use English now? I sort of wonder how the change comes about.

logistics: the aspect of military science dealing with the procurement, maintenance, and transportation of military matériel, facilities, and personnel; the handling of the details of an operation

From those kanji, I wonder if they use it for the second meaning or not. Or maybe the English word is used exclusively for the second meaning? Now I'm sort of curious...

Ah well. The point is...this is going to be one of those posts that falls under the logistics category. I will point out features of the blog! Hurrah!

Not like it's so different from other blogs.

"Study Buddies" are websites you should go to. "Break it down" is going to be my attempt at tagging this thing. Tagging is not my strength. I'm going to try not to add too many more categories besides what is there.

logistics - Stuff like this.
grammar - Concerned with...grammar. Like sentence patterns and things.
vocab - Probably a list of words.
shopping - Stores to buy things from, things I've bought, books, etc.

Possible future tags include: audio, video, translation, ...Japanese?

Who knows? The...bandwidth...is the limit!






*Note the cheap cop-out involved in translating the titles of entries. This is a devious loop-hole for rule one. Of course, now that we recognize it as such we'll have to make sure it isn't abused.

Down the rabbit hole

I've posted about this elsewhere already, but...

WHITE RABBIT PRESS

Can't really say it enough. I have also already commented on my first purchase, which hasn't arrived yet. That and my latest gamble on kanji software should arrive around the same time. And impressions will be here. I fully expect to be completely satisfied, especially with the readers.

Oleya, best friend and study mate, has acquired the first set of flashcards, but I haven't been able to examine them yet.

I literally quiver with anticipation.

But yeah, they're not only about flashcards (as the top half of the main page seems to indicate); in fact, as long as you give them a detailed request, they will ship you anything you ask for.

I wonder if they are hiring.

Some useful grammar words

This seems to be a very huge guide to Japanese grammar with Japanese vocab included. (Although I still recommend Tae Kim's guide as a more friendly comprehensive look.) Well, I can't learn it all at once. It's nice to be able to ask questions that you'll have to ask often (Is this a -ru verb?) in Japanese.

The 文法用語 section is particularly useful. It actually goes further in depth than non-linguists probably need. Some of the words don't have translations for whatever reason, but many of them can be found in my favorite online dictionary.

So then once you start looking up words like 一段活用　(ru verb conjugation いちだんかつよう), you can look find different words made with 活用 (which is, itself a する　verb) like 活用語 (conjugated word　かつようご),　活用形　(conjugated form かつようけい), and　活用語尾　(conjugative suffix かつようごび--i.e. the part that you actual mix 'n match to come up with tenses, etc.)

代名詞　means "pronoun," and it's pronounced だいめいし, which makes you want to think "big noun." Instead, maybe think "noun for the ages" or something lol

I'm going to reproduce a bunch of things because doing so will help me CONCENTRATE and maybe I'll remember more. These are important words!

主語　subject　しゅご
目的語　object　もくてきご
名詞　noun　めいし
代名詞　pronoun　だいめいし
形容詞　ii adjective　けいようし
形容動詞　na adjective　けいようどうし
一段活用動詞　ru verb　いちだんかつようどうし
五段活用動詞　u verb　ごだんかつようどうし
不規則動詞　irregular verb　ふきそくどうし
副詞　adverb　ふくし
接続詞　conjuction　せつぞくし
過去形　past tense　かこけい
現在形　present tense　げんざいかえい
常体　plain　じょうたい
敬体　polite　けいたい
敬語　honorifics　けいご
肯定　affirmative　こうてい
否定　negative　ひてい

I guess this is enough for now. I'd sort of like to learn some other verb words (transitive, intransitive, volitional, that...other thing...causative, passive, yadda). I bet I can find them easier in my textbooks, although most of them are on that page.

Here is a good tip: LEARN THIS STUFF WHILE YOU'RE ACTUALLY LEARNING THIS STUFF. Don't just skip over the headings of your elementary Japanese book just because they are in Japanese and you don't speak it yet. If your book doesn't have them, ask your teacher. If you learn these words in the context of grasping the concepts, it's probably so much easier to get them to stick.

Rules are meant to be broken ;D

Ok, it's still Tuesday right now. No matter what time I finish writing. It's still Tuesday riiiiiiight...now!

実は今日あまり勉強しなかったけど、友達とアニメを見たから、日本語をちょっと聞いた。

Well, blah, I was going to work on a vocabulary list, because I'd like to learn grammatical terms in Japanese. I know some already like 名詞 and 動詞, but I need to learn more. Subject, object, adverb... That can be my project for next time. And I'd like to take a look at Famitsu soon, as well. Hmm. And play more Mother 2.

I thought I had learned a new word from Descendents of Darkness today, but I couldn't find it in the dictionary. That doesn't necessarily mean anything except that I can't really find the kanji...

I suck at Japanese!

This is the first step to not sucking at Japanese. Admit it, you suck! I suck! We try and try, but we are un-near to fluency. We are far. Knowing you don't know is much better than assuming you do. You can say まだまだ行きます and keep on plugging away.

Do you like videogames and anime and manga and all that crazy J-stuff even though it doesn't seem to help you learn anything? Me, too. Are you embarrassed because you started learning Japanese in high school after you saw a subbed episode of Slayers and though it was the greatest sounding language ever? Me, too. You can be a geek (or even *shudder* an OTAKU) and still be serious student of Japanese. Let's prove it!

I'm writing this post as a corny introduction to HOW TO NOT SUCK AT JAPANESE, which is my new study blog. I will post Japanese things here not ALWAYS related to studying, but I will try to somehow create studying out of them, if they are unrelated. I kinda hate posts like these because usually blogs that have them stop after like three entries, you know? If that happens, I promise I will just get rid of the blog and not leave it up here taunting people who thought it might have potential, and then cry when they see it hasn't been updated since 2004.

I think I will make some rules, because introductory posts deserve at least one, maybe:

Every post will have Japanese characters in it, and they will not simply say こんにちはor すごい. They will say things that maybe I haven't heard before, or maybe I need to review, or maybe I just learned. Maybe sometimes I will inflict whole paragraphs of horrible Japanese on you, or maybe I will translate game manuals...WHO KNOWS?

The other rule is that I will update at least every other day, and this I am SO not joking about. I would say everyday, but there needs to be an extenuating circumstances rule.

Also, I am late, so I need to leave. TO BE FREAKING CONTINUED!