Monthly Archives: May 2010
Adventures in a 3rd Language – German
I’ve mentioned off-hand a couple of times I’m learning German. Perhaps my experience as a beginner again can help you. There will be somethings that won’t work so well, since I’m doing my best to ladder from Japanese as I go.
My biggest problem? Overthinking everything. I’ve spent God knows how many times poring over words only [...]
Posted in Learning German 13 Comments
Independence is Everything
The title of my guest post over at Lexiophiles. Check it out.
I’ll add some more over here for you guys as well as the Lexiophiles coming over for more. The trends I’m speaking of are actually probably going to be even more true for Japan, not less. The fall of GEOS and NOVA have signaled [...]
Trick of the Evening: Anniversary
Today is our fourth year anniversary. So we did the things all couples do. We decided to go out and get some food at a nice restaurant, then we went to a movie.
That movie was the Trick! 劇場版, and it was pretty sweet. I’ve been following the show for a little while now, and I [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Fun Stuff 6 Comments
The Japanese Japanese don’t Know
Are you ready to get meta?
Let’s read a book in Japanese about a Japanese teacher teaching Japanese to her students learning Japanese (And sadly, this joke doesn’t really translate real well into Japanese, since there isn’t the double entendres).
I really enjoyed 日本人の知らない日本語 by Umino Nagiko (For the record, it seems that she has a blog as [...]
Posted in Book Reviews 36 Comments
Some Light Hotel Reading
I found this right under the Gideon Bible in my hotel room.
I was a philosophy major in college with minors in religious studies and East Asian studies, so guess which one I started reading.
Amazingly enough, it was incredibly easy to read.
At least as soon as I ignored the English translation.
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Posted in Fun Stuff 30 Comments
Beware of Crocodile!
I happen to know the kanji for “crocodile.”
鰐
This is a fun conversational piece when talking about learning Japanese. Especially with Japanese people. I often describe it to them (if they don’t know it) as “fish” and “signal,” but with two ”mouths” instead of one.
Of course, then they say that I won’t need to write it ever.
. . [...]
Posted in Fun Stuff, Language, Motivation 13 Comments
Chances aren’t Provided, they are Made
I’m still thinking about the study abroad presentation by Darcy de Lint about students’ study abroad experiences. One of the things we discussed afterwards was how Japanese in particular are usually waiting to be communicated with and often do not create speaking opportunities.
In the English speaking world, children are quickly left to their own devices, [...]
Posted in Language, Learning 6 Comments
Thought Patterns that Just Don’t Work
I just got back from Osaka last night after attending the JALT conference over there. Good times were had and I saw some interesting presentations.
One presentation by Darcy de Lint, which was about students keeping journals of conversational strategies that worked and that didn’t work while studying abroad, turned out to be interesting.
In general, the [...]
Posted in Motivation 5 Comments
Maybe Travel Works Better than I Thought
So my SO and I have this argument.
. . . I’m sure you can’t wait to hear, can you? I’d question your interest in my love life, but I suppose I’m to blame for bringing the topic up. Basically this is how it breaks down. In Japan you basically have to two choices of transportation [...]
Posted in Uncategorized 11 Comments
Back to German – Day #1