I hate holidays

No power means no Internet, meaning I can’t get my Japanese fix

Ah well. I’m still thundering toward fluency. Just barely. More pressing issues at hand now, like cabin fever.

Happy holidays

The Infinite Curse of the Terrible Pass Rates

Also known colloquially as “I Suck at RTK”.

It seems I don’t spend enough time getting to know the kanji. I think even after almost 3 times through, I still expect too much of the method.
But I’m gonna keep trying anyway.

I’ve hit a barrier at 1000 frames. The upside is, I know most of those under 1000 rather well. The downside is, frankly, it’s taking forever to learn those kanji that just will not stick. I definitely don’t devote enough time to my stories. I’m just not creative enough. If I was, this whole process would be infinitely easier.

And while I could skip these “leechers” (as Anki calls excessively failed cards), it needs to be noted that my failed stack is almost 200 frames tall.

Using the new RTK site I would still be able to delete certain cards and get on with it but I’m very OCD and I have to do them in the prescribed order, just because an order is prescribed.

You just wait. Maybe I don’t devote my life to learning Japanese like I should. Maybe I’m eternally lazy. Maybe I’m too afraid to violate copyright BS to use the materials I so desperately need in order to learn. Maybe I’m ashamed somewhat of my choice of hobby.

But there is no maybe in my resolve to become highly proficient in this language.

マイガール (My Girl): Your introduction to spoken television Japanese

Currently airing on TV Asahi, My Girl is a drama about a single man, who, having his girlfriend move six years prior, writes to her every day. He eventually stopped writing because it felt like a fruitless effort –he never got one reply. He then stumbles upon his daughter, Koharu, who, unbeknownst to him, was birthed by his girlfriend and taken care of for those six years. It is revealed to him that his  girlfriend died in an accident on the way to work, and he decides to raise lonely Koharu on his own. But since he has a busy job, it’s not easy work. His boss is demanding and his senile landlord has issues with him keeping a child. He is determined, however, to raise Koharu without any outside help, because as Koharu said herself, “I want to live with the person that mommy loved.”

Anyone who’s studied Japanese for a while probably has heard of the manga Yotsubato! as the best introduction to reading manga. It has short, easy sentences (for the most part), furigana, (again, mostly), and daily life situations, albeit skewed in the direction of a weird little girl. I’ve come to consider My Girl to be the Yotsubato! of television.

It’s slow, easy to understand (mostly), and involves daily life situations, and plenty of dialogue between adult and child (simplified and repeated).

And it even has Japanese subtitles available, which all the dramas released this season on D-Addicts should have as well. Because of the new TV encoding standards (or somesuch), the subtitles can be ripped directly from the original broadcast.

I’ve only watched the first two episodes but it’s mostly rather easy to follow. But since I have a low vocabulary, it’s still rather rough occasionally.

It and the subtitles are available from D-Addicts.

Tae Kim’s Japanese Guide – now sexier

I don’t read the holy grail of free Japanese learning resources anymore, but I just happened upon a link to it, and wow.

It’s changed. A lot. Can’t say I like it too much It’s harder to navigate and there’s a lot of visual noise. At least the old versions are preserved to browse.

The idea of the site is expanding as well. There’re now plans for simply a “Japanese Guide” rather than a “Japanese Guide to Japanese Grammar”, which is supposed to contain the grammar guide plus vocabulary lessons, kana, etc. I like this idea. Hopefully he can go far with it.

Its address is where it’s always been though: http://guidetojapanese.org

Re-restarting RTK1

Holy crap I can’t believe it’s been this long since I updated.

Anyway, I restarted RTK1 again a week or two ago, because even though I got finished, I started getting overwhelmed wth failed reviews. I still didn’t feel like I’d learned anything either.

I am still going at Japanese, but with not as much gusto. It kinda sucks actually, because I thought I was really getting somewhere and I got dragged away from it because I’m too much of a jack-of-all-trades. My interests waver a lot and it’s hard for me to stay focused.

We’ll make it eventually though. Let’s do RTK right this time.

Oh, and happy Halloween

Finally more New JLPT information

More kanji.koohii goodness:

The official JLPT site has been updated and now offers PDFs of the New JLPT’s testing guidebook and sample questions and answers from each level.

Check it out here. (Japanese)

After nosing through the questions I find my current level to be somewhere between N4 and N3. I don’t plan to take the JLPT before these changes take effect, so this is good info to have.

Learning Japan’s prefectures..fairly painlessly

I have managed now to learn to read (but not write..even though I did go through RTK) all the names of the prefectures of Japan. I can also place most of them on a map.

“But how man, how?”, you may ask.

I pretty much learned them through osmosis. There were basically only three things I did to focus my study:

1) I set a map from a site for..maps of Japan as my wallpaper. I found one with all the prefectures on it with no English. It’s available here.

2) I played this prefecture matching game. A lot. It gets really addictive. I did get something out of it though: I went from getting 10 or less right to knocking out at least 20 every time.

3) When I couldn’t read a prefecture’s name in the game, I’d go to the Japanese Wikipedia page for 都道府県 and look up how to read it. That is, if I didn’t feel lazy. Doing this did get pretty tedious.

Oh, and I also got my jam on with this video. Vocaloids teaching prefectures in song form ftw.

Woo! I think I can now prattle off the 都道府県 (given enough time). Go me.

Japanese indie music

I hereby declare Pod the Music to be the best podcast ever.

It’s a Japanese podcast that, well, plays Japan’s up-and-coming indie music. There are four songs per podcast and there’s a new podcast every other Tuesday.

I’d advise you to download and keep the episodes because the next-oldest one is deleted when a new one is posted (usually only two or three are available at any one time), obviously for reasons of copyright, etc.

I’ve been subscribed to it since episode 146. Episode 158 came out today (Japan has a time difference of 13 hours to me ), so I’ve been a fan for a while. It’s a great way to discover some music niches you may not know you had interest in.

And, I have to thank Tobberoth from the kanji.koohii forums for being the shiz for introducing this podcast in the forums.

オススメ！

(Oh, and a bit of a secret: The episodes from 146 up to now are still available even though the links are gone. Click on a live one and change the number. There’s a song in 146  (スーパーマン by コルクス) that I fell in love with.)

Frustrated

I am in Chapter 14 of An Integrated Approach, and, it’s pretty difficult. I think the best thing for me to do now is go back to earlier chapters and recap, recap, recap.

I’ve noticed now that a lot of my problem stems from two root causes: a lack of vocabulary and an understanding of grammar that’s too shallow. I didn’t used to have the vocabulary problem because all the words up ’til now in the book were mostly ones I recognize (says something for immersion), but definitely not all of them. The grammar problem is purely my fault. I don’t study it closely enough, nor do I pay enough attention to the details of similar but different grammar points.

My regime now is to try to squeeze out the last two chapters of AIA, and continue reviewing and modifying stories on RevTK until I can get more of them solidified in the fourth review stack. I’m going to use Read the Kanji as well to boost my reading ability a bit. It’s not much, but it has helped me. I’m really proud of my stats.

And I’m almost through the book too

You know what’s frustrating?

Besides this blog being dead to everyone but me?

Whenever I attempt to finish some of the exercises in the Intermediate Japanese workbook, I start to realize how much I still don’t know.

It’s, well, I can passively understand a few things but trying to actively produce it is maddening, especially since the workbook doesn’t have an answer key. Perhaps I should’ve picked a different book..

The problem I have with the textbook and the workbook is a lack of examples. The grammar explanations are short — which is fine, except the workbook asks for more than the textbook teaches. For someone like me who doesn’t really think outside the patterns too much, this is pretty hard to decipher.

It feels like I don’t have a solid-enough foundation. I can’t form causative or passive verbs; I don’t know the sound differences between on- and kun-yomi; I lack a lot of what I should’ve had before I jumped into this book. It feels like I need to start fresh.

You know, I think I might still be a beginner after all. Now that’s frustrating.