Moving On Up

Alright.  Last time we talked, I was looking at this picture.  These books were going to be the backbone of my study material over the course of my summer vacation while the students are off doing their thing.

For those of you who can read here, you can gather that I’m probably taking a bit of a fancy to learning programming.  I’m also trying to get Ubuntu on one of my computers (which I’ve tried man times now, and have failed pretty epically at each time.  I’m trying to run it and Windows on one computer).

Of course, in addition to all the fun creating computer programs parts, I’m also interested in getting a basic understanding of how Japanese law works.  This is going to be important because . . . well, I live here.  It’s important.  I have a fairly good grasp of some individual laws, but Japanese civics itself is still generally lost to me.  Knowing what is theoretically possible as well as the general current state of the law, in addition to the Japanese legal tradition, is kind of important to me.

The Newsweek magazine is supposed to be something that would satisfy the following conditions:

• Serial
• Relatively easy, but filling, good content (No fast food info, which I secretly loathe)
• Something with local and international stories (where local refers to Japan/America for me)
• News without the social commentary that makes me consider the health of human society (news organizations, I’m looking at you, just because social media is possible doesn’t mean we should do it).

The end goal, of course, is to get an even deeper knowledge, in both Japanese and English, of:

• The general workings of the world.
• The inner workings of Japanese civics in particular.
• A new skill set for fun and profit.

How long will it take me?  I’m hoping I can see some progress in a year.  I’d love to be able to learn a programming language or two by that point, and I wouldn’t mind developing simple programs that could help me do things like textual analysis in texts for potential research purposes in the future.  In the meantime, I’d love to learn more about Japanese law, civics, and particularly business law, since I have some interest in how that all works as well.

Now that I have basic fluency and can carry myself well enough, I think it’s time to take it to the next level.  I’m not sure how this will balance with German, but since my reading speed in Japanese is fairly fast now, it should be almost comparable to my English reading speed. 

Finding uncharted territory is hard, and even now it’s pretty scary.  But the growth is there in the difference, and I’ve got nothing else to do instead. 

. . . But first things first.  I’ve got finals to grade.