It would seem the glaze is less to do with my fundamental resistence to Japanese and more to do wiht the fact I can't even read hiragana very quickly. How do I know? Because I tested myself on here:
Hiragana game
and for those of you readers in Japan wisely boning up on your katakana, there's one for you to:
Katakana game
Apparently the record times are under a minute. I got 257s on my first go, so perhaps I need to work at this...
土曜日, 12月 30, 2006
Fuyu-yatsumi
It's been ages since I wrote on any subject at all. That's because Tomo is on holiday so I have a lot less free time. I'll be back on it again, soon.
金曜日, 12月 08, 2006
The glaze...
Am I the only one to suffer the glaze?
The glaze strikes me every time I sit down to study Japanese - my eyes pass over Japanese text as if it were nothing more than a nice pattern on the paper. Kanji entries in my text books are passed over in favour of Romaji - against the protests of my brain that wants the challenge. "NO!" my reading muscle yells, casting me down in to a world of lost meaning and competing spelling (it's shi, surely - it doesn't even sound like si!)
It takes an act of concentration of great magnitude to shift the glaze. I stare intently at the page as if trying to make sense of one of those stereograms that were on every pot smoker's bedroom wall in 1995.
But it's not limited to vision. My ears tune out Japanese TV as if it were nothing more than white noise. To me Jpod101 sounds like trying to pick up Radio Caroline on AM band radio in a winter storm - calming hum with the odd word floating out of the murk. To listen in I have to stop walking and stare in to space to rob my brain of input and free up the bandwidth.
It's hopeless...
The glaze strikes me every time I sit down to study Japanese - my eyes pass over Japanese text as if it were nothing more than a nice pattern on the paper. Kanji entries in my text books are passed over in favour of Romaji - against the protests of my brain that wants the challenge. "NO!" my reading muscle yells, casting me down in to a world of lost meaning and competing spelling (it's shi, surely - it doesn't even sound like si!)
It takes an act of concentration of great magnitude to shift the glaze. I stare intently at the page as if trying to make sense of one of those stereograms that were on every pot smoker's bedroom wall in 1995.
But it's not limited to vision. My ears tune out Japanese TV as if it were nothing more than white noise. To me Jpod101 sounds like trying to pick up Radio Caroline on AM band radio in a winter storm - calming hum with the odd word floating out of the murk. To listen in I have to stop walking and stare in to space to rob my brain of input and free up the bandwidth.
It's hopeless...
火曜日, 12月 05, 2006
Yeah Reysol!
日本で住んでいるとき千葉県の柏市で住んでいました。 あの時に柏のサッカーチームはJ1でいました。柏レソルはグレートチームでわありませんから去年J2に入りました。
始めから６週までレソルはJ2の一番でしたから私はとてもしあわせでした。１０月にはレソルのシーゾンが枯れていました。Yokohama FCもVissel古部は追い越しました。ひどかったよ。
しかし土曜日にしょなんに勝ちましたから二番目に乗りました。サイコウよ。
もう一度つぎシーズンにわJ1である。
始めから６週までレソルはJ2の一番でしたから私はとてもしあわせでした。１０月にはレソルのシーゾンが枯れていました。Yokohama FCもVissel古部は追い越しました。ひどかったよ。しかし土曜日にしょなんに勝ちましたから二番目に乗りました。サイコウよ。
もう一度つぎシーズンにわJ1である。
金曜日, 12月 01, 2006
Gimme gimme IME
In an earlier post I mentioned a couple of shortcuts for Global IME, the tool for inputting Japanese on a western version of Windows. This has so far garnered my only peice of feedback (from a friend, via SMS hence not showing here) so I felt duty bound to give my audience what it likes.
Here is a more comprehensive list of tips from the people at the brilliant Declan software house.
If you've not seen their software you are missing out. The flashcard tool is amazing - quite the most fully featured I have seen. I first used it a couple of years ago and recently downloaded the latest version on my laptop. The improvements, incremental though they are, make it indispensable now.
Here is a more comprehensive list of tips from the people at the brilliant Declan software house.
If you've not seen their software you are missing out. The flashcard tool is amazing - quite the most fully featured I have seen. I first used it a couple of years ago and recently downloaded the latest version on my laptop. The improvements, incremental though they are, make it indispensable now.
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