Nihongojira

Teaching hiragana to a 9 year old

2012-01-01T21:16:00.000+09:00

My son is 9 and speaks Japanese with his mum around the house and watches a fair amount of anime (mostly One Piece). The challenge we face is getting him to at least be able to relate what he hears to what he can see. In the first instance this means getting him comfortable with kana.

When I learnt it didn't take too long, just a couple of weeks. I was in Japan and basically began by learning katakana to read loan words (I knew them) then to hiragana to read the station signs on the non-JR platforms. Tomo doesn't have that immersive environment outside the house to support and reward him. He also lacks the adult intrinsic motivation that drove me to basically write out a line from the table a dozen times a day, between every lesson, until I could write the whole thing. So what do I do to create the conditions for victory?

Obviously the basis of learning this sort of thing is rote - there's no better way, but there are improved tools available. For a start we have the Nintendo DS for which we have a few games that are educational (good old Doraemon). I've managed to find a few games online that have Japanese as a context, with learning part of the game, for example this insect game from Okochama. And no surprise to see Shimajiro toward the top of the results either. If I find better ones I'll add them here too.

I'm going to need some flash cards, so these in printed and hand-written styles will be good. For the record, I won't bother with the romaji sides as that defeats my goal of making the characters natural first-language.

As an incentive I think I will use the old financial one. It has seen benefits this year in other areas of endeavour, so a simple goal to be able to write out the kana in each form for a cash reward should do the trick.

The aim will be to get recognition up first, then selection, then reproduction, controlled, then freer. Usual rules really for any learning experience. I will report back on this.

WMP NHK!? Really?

2012-01-01T18:23:00.000+09:00

NHK Radio in 2012 uses the Windows Media Player plug-in? Really? Come on NHK guys, surely somebody somewhere can let you use something a little more, well, contemporary? I'm sure the BBC would share a little iPlayer tech if you asked nicely...

Where to go for good materials?

2012-01-01T05:51:00.001+09:00

I find that watching films and TV are not good for learning Japanese - they don't suit my mindset. I like to understand what I am looking at and can't really learn "by ear". To that end I am in need of something in particular - a daily reading of a level would be good, and a good source of videos would also be good. I am going to have to explore the Internet.My goal over the coming couple of weeks then is to find a couple such resources. I'll post anything useful here.Oh, and thanks for stopping by. This place is looking pretty sad now - let's try to dust it off.

Dusting myself off

2011-10-05T04:43:00.000+09:00

久しぶり、ね。

It's been too long, eh?

I want to pick things up here and start learning again, in the peace and quiet of a semi-abandoned blog.　ちょっと廃墟見たい。ね？

Fear Japan

2010-10-18T06:42:00.000+09:00

Great article in the NYT regarding the lessons Japan offers the world - kinda like the basket case local who parents use as a bogeyman - "don't mess up your economy and going in to an economic downward spiral - or you might end up like Japan."

My experience of Japan has always been extraordinarily positive, but there are strange things that point to this kind of decay that you simply don't see around the UK (as I found when I tried to find parallel examples of this for my talk at Ignite London). Seeing photos of Tomo and Kazue's trip this summer, while much of it was as bright and exciting as ever, other parts, like the photos of the water park showed a rot that is there, in the edges. Hard to pinpoint, but a bit too rusty there, or the paint is a little more faded than you expect.

The problem is that the narrative is one that is set to the framework of the endless expansion that capitalism requires. The idea that a country could downshift en-mass is not given any credibility. But if a country that once fucked itself utter by living beyond reason (the property price bubble was truly stupendous - I mean, really) then decides to behave economically sensibly for a while, no bad thing, surely.

In fact, many of the indicators that people point to in Japan are simply the same as we are seeing elsewhere, only in sharper relief - young people are more reluctant to leave the nest in Japan than anywhere else, but it's a common problem globally. Dwellings in Japan, due to the population concentration, have always been small, but I'd say that a country with good internet connectivity and excellent public transport is probably better placed to disperse and equalise this than some others.

What I'm interested to know is if the 20 year spiral of decay could ever really be a threat if it shared across other countries. When it was just Japan, a fairly insular country at the best of times, it was not much for the rest of the world to take action on, but nor was it a genuinely large problem. When you have several countries running the same risk, then as an economic block the results could be quite different - trade within those countries is more of an option and the dynamic interplay of several nations could have quite a different effect than that of deflation in a single, isolated economic block, particularly when members of that block have considerably greater clout and stronger brands internationally.

Good article.

Cool clothing

2010-09-25T16:57:00.000+09:00

My friend Tony - a genuine "we-went-to-school-together-and-hung-out-at-each-other's-house" kinda friend - has launched a range of t-shirts aimed at articulating aspects of the gaikokujin experience from his new home in Kanazawa on the northern shores of Honshu.
Featuring punny word-play, mixed with cool graphics and playing on expectations, T-Shitsu products are crafted in Japan from superior materials. But as undeniably cool as the shirts are, they are as nothing to the sublime beauty of the website - Tony's other skills lie in brilliant web design!
Check out the range and when you inevitably buy something, let him know Dan sent ya!

Photo Tokyo

2010-05-26T00:22:00.000+09:00

Incredible visualisation of Tokyo based on the numbers of photos taken at a point. I suspect that it this is massively underestimating the number of photos because the websites providing the data (Flickr, Picasa) are American, with an Anglo-Saxon bias.

At last a pep pill?

2010-05-21T05:07:00.001+09:00

I read in The Economist that Japan's big Pharma have been on a buying spree, snatching up some juicy drug and biotech companies in the US and India. This can only be a good sign.

Today Google announced GoogleTV. This incredible manifestation of all of the crazy predictions about IPTV is built with Google's own Android OS and Chrome browser technology, making the most of Flash. At the heart of the system lurks Intel, but who have they partnered with to make the TV? SONY! The definitive example of NIH syndrome have partnered up with this upstart web company to create the most awesome looking bit of kit.*

There at last appears to be some kind of acceptance in Japan that their companies need to be looking abroad, and hopefully this will bring with it a renewed energy. It's just a shame that it's happening now, when the rest of the world will be in less of a mood to take them up on their offer, but I guess it will simply make the acquisitions cheaper, certainly if they come looking in Europe...

UPDATE: Yeah, the Indy said it better.

*I literally just saw this on a live broadcast from GoogleIO, so I haven't found any images or links to any of this just yet. Wait a day then just Google it all to see more.

Who has more phones?

2010-03-16T08:31:00.000+09:00

Well now, here's something I don't have any strong feelings about:

The UK has more phones per capita than Japan - 84 phones per 100 people versus about 62. I guess that's the risk you face when a good percentage of your domestic market were born before regular phones were widespread...

Thanks to the enraged folks at JunkCharts for bringing it to my attention.

Japan - frequently shaken, but not as often stirred.

2010-03-01T08:11:00.002+09:00

Following up the colossal and tragic earthquake in Chile this week, the Guardian Datablog have an article that summarises the deadliest earthquakes since 1970.

Japan, a place that in my head is singularly linked with earthquakes, only appears once - for the 1995 Kobe earthquake that claimed 5,502 lives. I was surprised by this initially, but then I thought about it some more. Japan is a rich country, with effective building standards and (mostly) honest construction companies. It may well have been struck by many worse earthquakes than some of those here, but it deals with it with less trauma than those affected by the seismic events recorded in the article.

As one of the comments says, "God must hate poor people." My heart goes out to those in Chile, but looking at the list it's easy to see that people in Indonesia, China and Iran have been terribly affected by earthquakes too in the same period. These are countries that are hard pressed to cope with social problems at the best of times - the misery of a natural disaster is too much.

Reading the article about the Kobe, or Great Hanshin Quake was an eye-opener: the slump in the market caused by the quake, in the Guiness Book of Records for the costliest natural disaster, has been attributed as a contributing factor in the figurative collapse of Barings Bank and, valued at 2.5% of GDP, a fairly major contribution to the recession that Japan was in the midst of at the time.

At least this fate is one that is unlikely to affect the UK when we stagger the same path shuffled along by Japan's post-bust zombie economy...

Wanna start a brewery? In Japan you can't.

2010-02-09T09:22:00.000+09:00

Monocle magazine is a hopeless load of cobblers, stuck together like some primary school craft project from whatever marketing bollocks Winkreative have been paid to puke on to a page that month - then they have the balls to charge you five quid for the privilege*1.

That said, it's the only magazine I actually buy each month and I take great delight in savouring the experience of reading it, mostly because it is the primary source of "here-is-something-interesting-about-Japan-that-is-good-and-not-technology" stories. Yes, this spout rag for metrosexual internationalists with platinum frequent flyer accounts is about the best place to find out about positive stories about Japan available anywhere on UK news-stands.

And their website, mostly horrible and clearly designed by print orientated folks, actually has a very interesting and diverse column, cheesily entitled the Monocolumn (dya see wad they did?) which this week has an intriguing piece about micro-breweries in Japan, or rather the lack of them.

I was surprised by the cost that they mention. A million dollars sounds like a lot to me - that's what? About £640k? I seem to remember watching the first steps of some little brewery in a garage in Nottingham that I used to pass on the way home from town and from the look of the place that must have been started on what they had left after 2 pints o' mild and packet of salted. Judging from the quality of the pull badges you get from some UK breweries*2 they clearly don't spend anything like that here. OK, someone like BrewDog may have done - check out their spanky metal thingies - but others like Shotover don't sound like they have.

I think that's it's a real shame that there aren't more opportunities for craft brewing in Japan, because I am absolutely confident that if there were, they would be stellar. This kind of small, dedicated artisan business is the sort of thing that I know Japan does very well - all the kind of attention-to-detail service and craft coffee experiences I have had in Japan would be expressed perfectly in beer. I can imagine that it would be exactly the sort of thing to draw folks out in to the countryside. Damn, if I didn't know nothing about beer myself, I'd be tempted to head off to a quite valley in Nagano and give it a go myself.

Right then, other reasons I find Monocle interesting are: because they have, or at least had, a monthly manga called Kita-Koga (utter rubbish); the Editor-at-large is Hidetoshi Nakata (yes, that one); their illustrator is Japanese; they feature stacks of Japanese artists on their weekly podcast*3; and when I suggested that they change the naming convention of their files for said podcast, they *4 listened and did it - brilliant! Basically it's a fun and remarkably varied read, totally devoid of celebrity*5 and I'm simply jealous that I don't have the kind of income to burn on their lifestyle.

*1 or an eye watering 2,310yen if you are in Japan.

*2 go on, I dare ya, tell me that's not a legitimate method of rating a breweries quality {ahem}

*3 now that I come to think of it, they never call it that.

*4 I wrote to tb himself - I can't imagine that it was he who actually picked it up on his Blackberry, but I like to imagine that it was - perhaps in a quite moment in a Lufthansa First Class lounge en route to Narita. It was to Japanese style YYMMDD format btw - so it appears in numerical order, instead of the other way round.

*5 unless you know fashion designers on obscure brands - and that's a fairly legit form of minor-celebdom I guess. Actually, the biggest celebs they ever mention are Japanese popstars (mega, if only in Japan) and Alain de Botton. Oh, and foreign politicians.

Holiday in Japan and don't get ripped off

2010-01-17T21:10:00.000+09:00

Sure, it's extremely easy to blow a fortune travelling around Japan. But it doesn't have to be that bad. My own experiences were of reasonably priced venues, cheaper transport options and a lot of free pavement pounding. I've always had a great time doing it and really think you get a better view of what the country is really like (I used a similar approach in the States and enjoyed that too).

However, when friends ask me about what they should do on a trip to JApan, I'm instinctively wary about what I recommend as I know that, no matter what I can suggest, all the evidence is that, for the holidaying visitor, it's going to cost them a LOT.

So it's a relief to see someone taking a holiday in Japan, and on a reasonable budget too. Really 10,000 yen is not a great amount when you stack it up against other holidays you might take. Nice one Guardian writer.

Ways in which UK and Japan are similiar (part 73,284)

2010-01-15T07:51:00.001+09:00

That Denmark, the UK and Japan are all so similar in their GDP doesn't surprise me - I'm sure France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Australia would be too. I'm a little amazed by just how far America is out in front.

I'm sure that certain people I know might be a little surprised that UK actually beats Japan - and we do it with considerably shorter hours in the office - is there a stat on average working hours in the two countries? I'm sure that it would make the difference more extreme if it the GDP value was compensated for the time spent in earning it.

Words you need to know in Japanese

2010-01-04T01:08:00.002+09:00

Well, according to STA Travel that is:

Curious that of all the words they suggest you might need to know, "chikan" is in there with "hai" and "delicious". In fairness, they do offer these in the spirit of "useless info", however it's hard to see how any of these, with the exception of word number three, are actually useless, unless you do indeed take their advice and use these at home.

Perhaps I'm having a sense of humour bypass, but this gets my goat. It is all part of a cumulative effect that undermines the respect that one is likely to accord to the country you are visiting.

On "rekijo" - Roland Buerk lives up to his name

2010-01-02T18:46:00.003+09:00

This piece by the BBC's Tokyo correspondent demonstrates what for me are the typical lazy approaches to Japan articles in UK press.

What is it that this shows about Japan that is actually all that unusual? Not much, I reckon.

The idea that Japan is mired in the past? You only have to look at the Tokyo skyline to realise this isn't really true, and have a brief look around the UK to see other places that are just as stymied by history. A history theme park? Isn't that what somewhere like Ironbridge is all about, only less involving and interesting? I've visited O-Edo Onsen* in O-Daiba and it offers something similar - a fun diversion that is well worth the games it plays with historical accuracy.

How about the assertion that these girls are "escaping the present" in their interest in the past? Well, surely an interest in the past as a displacement activity is an improvement on the broad disengagement with reality around one that obsessions with Strictly Come Dancing and X Factor engender?

I think the unmentioned aspect here is the cosplay that is alluded to in the final part of the clip, and we all know that if you want to have a laugh at Japan, cosplay is a safe trope for which one does not really need to work too hard. And as a final note, how likely is it that this is, as is so often the case, actually a very minor activity with a handful of exponents that is looked upon as much as a novelty by J-media, but which is presented to the world here as a mainstream development? Perhaps I'm cynical in trying to find stories to blog about.

* Wow, do you see on that link that it is open 11am to 9am? Not a misprint, it's open 22 hours, so you can head there overnight if you wish. Cool.

MSNBC Japanese law bollocks

2010-01-02T18:10:00.000+09:00

the Japanese government has imposed a waistline limit for anyone over the age of 40.

Yes, that's right, it's actually illegal to be overweight. For men, the limit is 33.5 inches and for women, 35.4.

This has to be bollocks, right? I did a cursory scan to see mention of this elsewhere, but couldn't. Please someone tell me I'm not mad.

China - the next Japan?

2009-12-30T23:14:00.005+09:00

Seems an unlikely comparison to make, but there are similarities - fast growing economy, export focus, in the Far East, er, black hair and foxy chicks? Hmm, Still, the Economist wonder if the rapid growth of China might follow a similarly spectacular path as Japan. I doubt it.

(Click on the picture to see how it pans out)

Far more likely is the stagnation of the UK economy in a Japanese fashion. Fashionable zombieism infects the UK banking sector. Hmmm.

日記帳１番

2009-08-18T07:19:00.003+09:00

今日、昼ごはん時に急がしすぎましたが日記帳を書きませんでした。　今から１２月６日まで、毎日日本語を勉強したい。

Hmm, it's kinda a late and I want to go to sleep, so that will have to do.

One new word mind you, or at least one new version of a word I thought I knew. 日記帳（にっきちょう） means 'diary'. No new grammar point as I have not had a chance to look at one today.

Does anyone know anything about 　オードリー?

2009-08-15T19:21:00.003+09:00

I mean, what are these guys about? What is their humour based on? Weird.

Here's a typically inane clip.

オードリー春日の嫁オーディション
Uploaded by angelbabycupid - Sitcom, sketch, and standup comedy videos.

Anki updates

2009-03-05T16:30:00.002+09:00

Exciting news from Anki, the excellent Leitner-derived spaced repetition system.

It creeps ever closer to the magic v1.0, now at v0.9.9.6, but along the way it has been seeing ports across to an ever increasing number of platforms, beyond the usual desktop varieties of Windows, Mac, Ubuntu and Fedora. You can now run Anki on:

vanilla iPod/iPhone
hacked Maemo iPhone
Maemo N770
Windows Mobile

and for me, most excitingly, in the pipeline there is

Android

This will be the shift that really makes SRS the ultra-powerful tool that evidence suggests it can be.

DS Language learning

2009-01-28T08:19:00.002+09:00

Not sure there's anyone out there any more, but worth mentioning this to see the response...

Just seen that there are two Japanese learning games on the DS here in the UK

Not sure how good these are, but one reviewer rated the first of these (MYL isn't out until next month)...

If you already have a DS and are serious about learning Japanese, you should get this game to help along your study, particularly if you are not fortunate enough to have a Japanese speaker giving you regular lessons.

So this may not be much use for me and the boy, but I'm interested as it would help my visual learning bias. There is one pretty major grip about kanji stroke order, which could be really annoying, but as a tool for learning - imagine having a DS version of fb's KanjiBox app (v2 in beta now!). How cool would that be?

The same reviewer also mentions a couple of Japanese titles:

I've purchased some Japanese games for the DS recently, which have been useful for Kanji and Kana learning (Kanji Sonomama DS Rakubikjiten and Tadashii Kanji Kakitori kun - both available from Amazon Japan).

Anyone used any of these? Let me know and I may try getting hold of them.

JLPT RIP?

2008-11-06T04:15:00.005+09:00

It appears that the venerable Japanese Language Proficiency Test is to be no more!

Well, actually it has another year of life left (2009 will be the last one) before it is rippped up, burnt and replaced with... the revised JLPT.

Big deal I hear you cry. Well, there is a significant change afoot - the revised JLPT, which will still only test receptive skills but will get a funky new prefix to distinguish it from the old one, will be available in 5, count 'em (five) levels; again numbered from hardest to easiest; N1 (the hardest) will come in slightly tougher than the current JLPT 1-kyuu. At the easier end of the spectrum, N5 will be a direct, like-for-like replacement of the current 4-kyuu.

Well, plus ca change - the difference comes in the middle. Right in the middle actually. The new N3 will be an intermediate level, bridging the gulf between the current 2-kyuu and 3-kyuu.

For many students this leap is quite a challenge - the step up requires a three-fold expansion of kanji knowledge and requires an awareness of four times as much vocabulary. After the fairly moderate increase from 4-kyuu to 3-kyuu (ha! get me, I haven't managed yet have I?) this can present quite a daunting challenge unless you are in country (I know a few people who have tried and failed 2-kyuu here in the UK) though that's not to lessen the achievement of those who do manage it in Japan - it's still the same exam, after all.

Which brings us to the other change that will occur at the same time: biannual testing. Yes, for those who do fluff either of the harder level (N1, N2) exams, the opportunity will be there for a retest in July, though only for those in Japan, or its neighbours Korea, China and Taiwan.

Thrilling stuff. Let's just hope that I'm in a position to apply for N3 by 2010, the inaugral year...

Got Anki?

2008-10-15T20:51:00.006+09:00

Ooh, joy of joys, another Anki update! As it creeps its way inexorably toward a v1 release, here is what Anki looks like 0.0.1.7 of its development to go:I'm a big fan. After years of trying to learn vocab and failing, Anki REALLY, finally, seems to be making a bit of a difference. As I spend more time trying - hopelessly for the most part - to chat in Japanese at home, I snatch bits of language and stuff them in to Anki. Slowly I'm getting to the point where I remember those bits the next time I need to use them. Knee. 膝。ひざ。See? Working already.

Why is Anki so good? Because it is based on spaced repetition - probably one of the most significant points of research supported understanding in learning theory, and yet one of the most under used.

As my son gets older I'm going to be encouraging him to use one to support his learning (perhaps I should work out about the sounds now). Who knows, he may even get to work with version one!

N700系　「のぞみ」

2008-10-02T06:34:00.007+09:00

Well, for some time I've been meaning to do a series on the shinkansen, or 'bullet' trains, in my son's スーパーのりものシリーズ (super vehicles)　book, しんかんせん. So today we start with the first and foremost, the mightly N700.

東京えき～博多駅（福岡）の間を走っています。最高速度は時速３００ｋｍ。お客さんを乗せて、日本で一番速いスピードで走れるのが自慢の新幹線です。カーブを曲がる時でもスピードを落とさず、少ない揺れで上手に曲がることができます。

Right then, what does this mean? Here's what I think...

The train runs between Tokyo and Hakata in Fukuoka Prefecture. Its top speed is 300km/h. [Gets a bit trickier now, but something like...]Customers can take pride in riding the fastest bullet train in Japan. The train leans in to corners so it doesn't have to slow down, [and I'm paraphrasing the next bit] it corners without wobbling.

Of course, I may well (ie am) some way off with this translation, so feel free to correct me or add anything you think may be useful.

Key words :

走っている (はしっている）= running - literally "running", just like with a pair of Nikes. Odd that it is the same turn of phrase in Japanese as it is in English - speakers of many European would screw up their faces if you used that, after all, trains don't have legs.
最高速度　（さいこうそくど）= top speed - that phrase again "さいこう"(in romaji, "saikou"), meaning top, best, excellent.
落とさず　（おとさず） = is, I think, something like "without reducing", but I can't be sure since I can't find it in my books. However, the root verb 落ちる is also useful in the sense of dropping (a ball for example) or failing (a language exam for example).

About the train
This bizarre looking duck faced train is the quickest in Japan, and for some time was the fasted in the world. It is a 'nozomi' which is the fastest, least stoppingest type of shinkansen around. Inside the seats are in groups of three, either side of the wide aisle, which makes this train very much wider than a UK train.

Coming soon:スーパーのりものシリーズしんかんせん

2008-10-01T09:01:00.002+09:00

I've found a great book about one of Japan's best features - its trains. I'm going to share it with you, but first, here's a taster of what to expect...

N700形　のぞみ
東京駅～博多駅（福岡）の間を走っています。最高速度は時速３００ｋｍ。お客さんを乗せて、日本で一番速いスピードで走れるのが自慢の新幹線です。

Thrilling stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

Funky housing - I want one

2008-08-10T23:02:00.004+09:00

With the housing market in the UK in freefall, domestic energy prices surging through the roof and there being something of a shortage of affordable housing, what the country needs is something cheap, quick to build, cost effective to heat and frankly different to the myriad of dull city apartment blocks.

How about these?

Okay, these incredible polystyrene domes from the aptly named International Dome Houses company of Japan don't quite meet the ideal requirements for housing density that would be the most perfect "green" solution (ground level living is, I'm afraid, inherently un-environmentally friendly in a small, crowded place like Southern England), but they check the box on just about every other score.

They cost around £15-20,000 in Japan, then you'd have to pay import duty, but that's not bad. A variety of pieces mean you can come up with variations on the dome theme too. And how damn cool are they to look at?

Image nicked from the unknowing, but quite skilled Erika Snyder. Story spotted on OtakuInternational.

Take an idea - make it smaller

2008-08-07T06:46:00.003+09:00

For many years it the received wisdom about Japanese industrial "innovation" that really all Japan was any good at was taking Western products and making them smaller (and later rather better) than their Western rivals. It was true of their bikes, consumer electronics and even cars.

That was a long time ago now, and genuine innovation in many areas (hybrid vehicles, Wii and BrainTraining), and remarkable abilities to miss entire markets repeatedly (can ANY Japanese manufacturer manage an MP3 player that isn't a dull "me-too" clone?) have buried that notion.

So its a breathtaking return to form that sees Toyota, in cahoots with Sony, produce these fantastic mini-Segways.

For me, the problem with Segways was always that the massive bulky shape of the chic uber-scooter was clearly the product of a mind that was oblivious to public transport.

Imagine trying to use a Segway to cruise three miles up hill and down dale across a city like Bristol. In late Autumn. In the rain. Not going to happen for so many reasons.

But if I could throw it in the luggage rack on the train, or as long as I could be sure no nutters would sit next to me, on the bus, then use it just at either end - exactly as the designers at Toyota would no doubt be thinking, then we have a winner. Brilliant.

Thanks to Mari for bringing this one to my attention.

Green village on Shikoku

2008-08-05T15:26:00.004+09:00

Just flitting through a bunch of tabs on my reader I found this interesting photo story about Kamikatsu, a small village in the hills of Shikoku that is attempting to go entirely sustainable - eliminating the need for landfill and recycling or reusing everything.

This is serious recycling - none of that "we don't take anything other than type 1 or 2 plastics and you deal with your own plastic bags" attitude here. There are 34 categories to sort your stuff in to!

This kind of initiative seems to the sort of thing that the village structure of Japan can facilitate. From what I read they seem to be much more self-governing, still running on models that Edo-era villagers would recognise. By contrast, my own experience of a village in Shropshire, in the rural hinterland of the English/Welsh border was of a place where you knew one or two families with kids your own age and no-one else had anything to do with each other. You'd never rustle up this kind of cooperation there.

Time to buckle down (127 days to go)

2008-08-02T16:57:00.006+09:00

The season for JLPT applications is nearly upon us. The notification on my phone to alert me on the first day that SOAS are ready to receive my carefully completed, practised and triplicated exercise in bureaucracy is just itching to send my ケイタイ in to frenzy of eager buzzing and ringing. (Seriously, check that first link - never has the JLPT looked so forbidding and sexy in one go!)

Having faffed and fiddled so much that I failed to get my MSc off the ground this year, I'm left with a yawning chasm in my learnability so I am prepared to send this this exercise properly this year.

So it was that I came back to Anki, the marvellous little app that earlier this year did so much for my vocab. And boy, was it keen to seen me. I've had a little session just now, but you can see from the graph how much I've had to make up, and I will still have to make up over the next couple of weeks, just to get things back to where they were...My lapsed time has left me with a mountain of cards to climb over. All the cards shown to the left of the spike are ones that have been missed - some by more than three weeks! Still, it is easy enough to put a couple of sessions a day to pick this up. Answering them once isn't the end of it of course, some will be postponed quite a distance, but I will fail a fair percentage of these and they will then reappear early in the cycle, making things quite heavy going for at least a couple of weeks.

My future profile at present makes for fun viewing...
The gradient shows a steep relearning curve. The line shows how many cards I would have on that day if I didn't study until then. Despite my efforts this morning, if I don't log on again until Thursday I would quickly be back at 150 cards. Better not slack this time.

Japan Tourism - Battleship Island

2008-07-29T06:55:00.002+09:00

I love Japan - it forever gives up new secrets. Look at this...

Hashima is an abandoned island to the west of Nagasaki that earned the forbidding moniker "Gunkanjiima" or Battleship Island, and you can clearly see how it got that.

Built by Mitsubishi, starting in the 1890s and continuing well into the 20th century, Hashima was reclaimed from the sea with the goal of extracting coal from the sea floor. I can only imagine what an horrific job that must have been, given that the whole enterprise began right in the earliest period of the undersea business.

The island was occupied as late as the early 1970s, earning the dubious distinction of being the most crowded place on earth - having seen just how tightly packed some of the older streets in Tokyo are one can only imagine what an even more densely fitted population must have been like.

If it looks hellish, that's not a thought that has escaped other observers. It has been the backdrop to movies and the inspiration behind video games.

Currently there is a ban on tourism to the island, though I gather there is a movement to try to open it up to visitors.

Thanks to this post at MutantFrog for leading me to this one at Odee.

Check out these images from Picasa.

re イギリス, An apology to my students, friends and family

2008-05-31T16:57:00.003+09:00

Dear all,
It is with my hat in my hand that I come to humbly beg your forgiveness for the way in which I have "set you straight" vis-a-vis the misleading, and for our friends in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, slightly offensive moniker that your language takes for my home country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
As you will doubtless remember, where you may have mentioned the name of my country, or where I have regaled you with tales of growing up in the border marches and lost weekends among the mountains of Snowdonia, I will have probably set aside no few lungfuls to explain the misconception that seems to occur in the name イギリス (Igirisu) and its similarity to the word English, thereon pointing out that the English are native only to England, only one, though the largest and most populous, of the four home nations.
While I will stand by my discussion of the derivation of the word - as far as I know イギリス is a peculiarity in an otherwise accurate list of nations in approximations to their native tongue, フランス、ドイツ、イタリア and so on - I hereby retract the implication that it is somehow the fault of poor Japanese translation.
Whilst watching the excellent British TV show "QI", hosted by the brilliant Stephen Fry, it transpired that England and English were, up until about the 1930s and the development of Scots nationalism, used interchangeably with the name of the greater nation. Indeed, some prime ministers even went as far as to sign their names as "Prime Minister of England" when they meant the whole country.
So, for a friendly nation that so fastidiously takes efforts to use a nation's own pronunciation of its name, rather than simply changing it to fit one's own tongue ("Spain"), or making up a new name ("Burma"), or indeed just making a whole new country ("Iraq"), Japan should instead be applauded for its efforts.
I hope you can accept my apologies.
Dan

Testing LiveWriter

2008-05-08T06:18:00.001+09:00

I've spent a lot of time working away from the internet and often think of things then. So here is a great way to do things.

Laying tracks to learning kanji

2008-04-13T17:11:00.004+09:00

Studying kanji is not an easy activity outside Japan. The only appearance of the characters is within the confines of the study arena - there is no incidental reinforcement by the appearance around you that you get studying a language in it's own county, for example on TV or in on-train advertising.

When studying the kanji in isolation for it's basic meaning, as I do when consciously trying to learn new kanji, I find the meaning and the standalone 'kun-yomi' reading tend to stick more readily than the various compound 'on-yomi' readings. I would imagine this is because in many cases, because of my limited number of total kanji, many of the compound meanings are quite difficult for me as I may not know the other kanji in the compound. Without a mental 'hook' upon which to hang the new word, it falls away.

However, for me, one of the most noticeable improvements in my Japanese comprehension each time I return to Japan is that I can read more and more signs on the station maps; I can both find my way around the maps more quickly (now sometimes more quickly than my wife too!) and I get a feeling for the name's meaning. This has a knock on effect as I learn more on-yomi, or compound readings, for each character. Crucially, this also means that I have a 'hook' upon which to hang more new meanings. Since I know the whole word from navigating the rail lines, and I know some of the kanji, I remember the pronunciation of otherwise unknown kanji.

Take for example 上野（うえの or Ueno). 上野 is the terminal station for the Joban Line in to Tokyo, and a major station on the Yamanote Line that rings Tokyo. The first character in the title, 上, is one that you learn very early on and means 'up/above'. The second character, 野, is one I don't know yet, but which JDic tells me means 'field'. So I now know 上野 roughly translates as 'upper fields' which is consistent as it atop a small hill I guess.

A second example would be with the even better known 東京, a little place you may have heard of, known in English as Tokyo. The first character here, 東, means 'East', but on its own is pronounced ひがし or 'higashi'. It frequently appears as this as often a town/area has more than one station and the location is often the way to distinguish them: see Nishi-Funabashi, Funabashi and Higashi-Funabashi stations on the Chuo/Sobu Line for example (West-Funabashi, Funabashi and East-Funabashi respectively). In the case of 東, getting familiar with the compound pronunciation, とう or 'tou' is useful, and opens the way to further understanding - for example getting to realise that the 'Touhoku' region the guidebooks refer to is simply 東北, or 'East North'.

Of course, you may make all these connections yourself during your study. But equally, like me, you may find that being presented with more contexts for the isolated characters presents ever more ways of creating the links and meanings to help secure understanding.

And it goes without saying that learning the names of train stations does have an additional and more direct benefit beyond learning kanji - you can just get around more easily.

With these learning and practical values in mind, I have started to create flashcards for stations around Tokyo at Flashcard Exchange, one of the better generic study tools I have found on the web. I like Flashcard Exchange because it allows you, after making a small one-off payment, to deploy the Leitner system, a methodical approach to flash card study that focuses effort where it is needed, using the idea of spaced repetition to help move new knowledge in to long term memory.

So far I've managed just the Yamanote Line, but I think I'll try to add some the other JR and Metro lines when I get the chance.

Tadaima!

2008-04-12T18:10:00.003+09:00

Well, our two weeks are at an all to swift end. Yesterday's marathon journey home, started at 7.30am Japan time, saw us get back safe and sound just short of 24 hours later.

We had a blast, and it opened our eyes to a few things I think. We'll be working on some changes for a few months yet, but I'll speak more on that later. So, what did we get up to? Here's a quick run down of what we did and what I may get to write about over the next couple of weeks:

木曜日　Arrived and whisked straight away to Anderson Kouen（アンダーサン亜公園）, near Funabashi（船橋） for a day out.
金曜日　Visited Kashiwa and a few of the old haunts.
土曜日　Travelled to Shizuoka with K's dad to visit his mother, T's great-grandmother. Got a round of karaoke in.
日曜日　Shizuoka fish market, an abortive attempt to visit a frisbee shop, return to Kashiwa and a lost night with a couple of engineers I met while watching Reysol get defeated.　
月曜日　Returned home in shame. Finally got back out the house to meet my friend Mikako, her lovely new baby daughter and Eiko (a lady who was once my student, but later an employee of the Eikaiwa （英会話）I used to work for). Made the visit to that frisbee shop. Cool.
火曜日　I headed in to town to meet my old friend Duncan for hanami in Ueno park, then we met Gwilym and Dave. I later met some old girls from Shane, Akiko and Takako.
水曜日　While the others visited Tokyo Disney I walked the north half of the Yamanote Line (山の手線）the circular overground railway that links many of the major stations in Tokyo) from Ueno　（上野） to Shibuya（渋谷. Along and interesting day.
木曜日　A quick visit to Nagareyama-otakanomori, a new local station on the all new Tsukuba Express rail line, and a great new shopping centre.
金曜日　Visited Asakusa, the traditionally working-class part of east Tokyo where a major shrine for Tokyo-ites is located, this time using the brilliant Tsukuba express.
土曜日Travelled down to Yokohama（横浜） to meet Toru, a former student, and his new son. I raced back to go to yakiniku with the family.
日曜日　Travelled to Hakone　（箱根）, a beautiful National Park south-west of Tokyo, famous for it's onsen, or natural spring baths.
月曜日　Returned from Hakone.
火曜日　I took a trip to Minami-Kashiwa（南柏）, my old home station. Things have changed a lot. I wandered past my old apaato and then walked to another station through the suburbs, just for the vibes. great.
水曜日　Popped in to Akasaka for a chat with some important people, then an old study buddy in Ichigaya (市ヶ谷） who edits a science journal in Tokyo, before a trip to an izakaya with a friend near an old school of mine.
木曜日　Quiet day around Sakasai（逆井） and Kashiwa as it was raining, getting gifts, but did visit a great izakaya in Sakasai.
金曜日　The epic journey home.

A great trip, documented with loads of pics and video that I will be putting up over the next couple of weeks.

Better luck next time?

2008-03-06T08:28:00.005+09:00

So the result is in. And the word is not good.

45.25% Hardly my finest hour.

However, it's not all bad. Check out that best result! Listening. WTF?! That was the one I was most concerned about. And 65 is a pass. It's just a shame the rest of the scores were so damn bad.

So, I'm back on the vocab trail trying to work on the words that caused me a problem trying to read the last time round. Sure, that was the plan last time round, but I'm well pleased to realise that the tricky bit wasn't so bad.

To help things go better, I'm going to make a point of picking up a few of the old exam paper books while in Japan. With the exchange rate they should be less than half the price they are in the UK. Huzzah!

Cripes - practice now necessary!

2008-02-14T22:21:00.003+09:00

At last, we're going back to Japan!

For me it's been four years, and K and T haven't been back for nearly two. We will be rocking Chiba from 26 March to 11 April and frankly I'm having doubts that just over two weeks will be anything like long enough.

Cool journey has been arranged - we're flying from Bristol! Ahem, obviously not directly, but we have a fairly short stop over in gay Paris, then on to Narita. This should make the whole trip reasonably bearable - waiting at Bristol is not as long and getting out really is easier. The connecting flight is on a turbo-prop too, which I think is a first for me.

Activities on the list so far include:

get in a trip to Hakone for the three of us, and visit onsen
wallow at the local bath house
visit O-Edo Onsen again coz it's dead cool
visit K's grandmother in Shizuoka (by shinkansen, yeah!)
drink in Annabelle's in Kashiwa
ride on the new railway near Kashiwa
watch a Reysol game (maybe in a bar will suffice)
go to Tokyo Disney (or maybe I'll duck out of this one)

And I have to meet up with:

Duncan and Yuri
Tony (over in Kanazawa - yikes!)
Toru
Done-san
Ollie and Naoko
Gwilym
the Kashiwa area Shane folk
and more besides

I seriously cannot wait to go. I wanna go now dammit!

Owning up

2008-01-03T22:26:00.001+09:00

I went quiet. Want to know why?
I think I messed up.
I didn't study hard enough, and it really didn't need too much...
On the plus side, I can reuse all the textbooks I have bought over the last few years.
Let's go again...

More channels for Kanji learning

2007-11-07T06:39:00.000+09:00

Spend all your time online hanging out with friends on social networking sites?

Think about nothing but how you going to express yourself in your next Facebook update?

Sounds like you might work in the news centre at the BBC, but equally, if you're in to learning Japanese then you may finally have a legitimate reason for spending time loitering on fb:

Kanji Box

Following a run of checking these things out, Kanji Box is an interesting addition to the pack. A fb app that actually manages to do something meaningful, it offers all the jouyou kanji, cut and sliced two ways - by school grade or JLPT. You can review or test yourself on the characters and, and perhaps this is the killer part of this app, you can review your score results online against your fb buddies.

In addition it offers vocab (something I'm criminally weak on) and kana - great if you are just getting started.

The testing app is okay - you choose the correct answer from four options (but I'm not sure that this is self-defeating as this means that guessing becomes legitimated) and you have a clock to go against. There is no faulting the material either as the code-ninja that pulled it together is hauling on the venerable J-Dic of Jim Breen. Truly the Nihongo-phile portion of the Internet would collapse without that man around.

I like this, because unless we are as focussed on our results as Carlie, who blogs her progress on Reviewing the Kanji, Japanese study can be quite an insular process. Bringing learning apps to fb offers an interesting, and hitherto unexplored angle to things.

However, that same blog has also brought to my attention another spaced learning tool, which comes with a Japanese focus, but excitingly is also ostensibly for what ever you choose:

Anki

I've not got so much to say about this one as it appears to be a commercial app, but Anki looks pretty sweet.

It's another tool that draws on the spaced learning ideas of Sebastian Leitner. Like I say, although this is a tool designed to work with what ever you wish to add, it comes preconfigured with Japanese content. It looks really clean and nice, which is a bonus in a field that can sometimes look a bit homebaked. What makes it stand out for me are the impressive reporting stats and graphs, and the sophistication of the spacing element.

Anki is available for Windows, Mac and Debian Linux. Check out the screenshots for a bit more about how it all goes together.

I'm not in the market for such a thing right now as my kanji needs are being met by Reviewing the Kanji, and now Kanji Box, but if I find a learning need that could draw on Leitner as precisely as kanji learning does, I think I know where I'll be looking.

An approach based on sound practice

2007-10-25T07:38:00.001+09:00

By profession I create learning material - in fact one of the key reasons for having this blog is to put in to practice one of my firmly held beliefs (born out of reading the literature, rather than simply because I believe it). A few approaches that I would always bear in mind when creating material:

it is important not to create cognitive overload by trying to learn too many things simultaneously
breaking things in to chunks helps us manage our learning
spaced repetition is the key to long term memory creation
taking in information can be assisted by using prior knowledge as a building block

Of course, brute application of the type Tony at English Alien has been showing will work, but as a learning designer I'm aware that certain approaches can make the whole process easier.

I have some practical experience of this as it relates to the study of Japanese. What was most striking about my last trip to Japan was home much more intelligible everything was.

In the period since I'd lived in Japan I had actually been studying Japanese - something I hadn't done a great deal at the time as I hadn't really intended to remain connected to the country forever. Subsequently, getting on trains, walking the streets or looking at things to buy, the strange squiggles, markings and etchings that had silently passed me by the first time suddenly began talking to me. With a hundred or so kanji under my belt everything seemed to make a little more sense. I had a hook upon which to hang a few words and with that I was able to unlock vastly more than I knew, simply because the few that I knew gave me a lever on the possible pronunciation.

That said, it recently occurred to me that if I was to get through the remaining 三級漢字 for the test I would need to find a different approach: trying to learn the strokes, the meaning, on on-yomi and kun-yomi, plus some of the main words a kanji appears in fails to meet a few of the key criteria I mention above.

SO I set myself the goal of, in twenty five days, learning all the meanings at least (too little, too late) as a peg upon which to build.

Today I stumbled on Heisig and his "Remembering the Kanji" approach, thanks to Carlie, who looks to be about to try out his system. It wasn't the first time I'd seen his name - a challenge was laid down by Tae Kim a while back, which I thought nothing of.

Kim's criticism is that the kanji in and of themselves don't mean anything in Heisig. Heisig simply introduces the 1,945 jouyou kanji by meaning and strokes. Japanese readings don't even get a look-in until volume 2 of his book!

I can see why Kim's sceptical - it is possible to 'learn' all the kanji you need in everyday life in Japan without learning a single word of Japanese - but I can also see, from a professional stand point, very compelling reasons why Heisig's approach makes a lot of sense. Heisig argues that one reason that Chinese and Korean students find learning Japanese easier is that they are familiar with the meanings for kanji, even if they don't know the language itself. His approach levels that playing field, or so he claims.

I think the system is worth closer scrutiny for several reasons:

the whole book is broken up in to manageable(-ish) "chunks" of between 10 and 130 kanji
they are ordered so that what you have learnt will help to make sense of what is to come
the system relies on spaced repetition
you are only focusing on learning two things for each kanji - strokes and meaning

All of these things are practical, tested approaches that have a sound basis in learning theories that have been tested. The pay off comes as you add vocabulary later on - looking at new words in kanji you should be able to recognise the characters that make it up, and perhaps get a handle on the meaning of the word in precisely the same way an understanding of Latin and ancient Greek roots helps to decipher new words in English, or indeed in other European languages.

There are problems with it of course:

learning all 1,945 jouyou kanji is all well and good, but at my level I am unlikely to need them, or encounter them to ensure learning continues
maintaining spaced repetition going forward would require testing yourself at 60 a day, everyday, just to make sure you view every one once a month
motivation is likely to be tricky as it would probably be unclear at times exactly where the benefit was - without an equally intensive vocabulary campaign to follow or run concurrently you may never need many of the kanji for years to come, if at all...

On balance, I don't think the system is going to be appropriate for me right now, but should I get that 三級 and we go back to Japan, I think this could be really useful.

If you're interested, you can download a sample of the first 250 or so kanji covered, and at the Reviewing the Kanji website you can track your progress and see useful stats about your progress (if you visit my other blog, Learning Rocks, you'll see why the application of IT to learning at there site, and their attempt to leverage the online community of learners, is so exciting to me).

Chasing a better goal

2007-10-11T19:16:00.000+09:00

Writing is key to language improvement

This post by Steve 'The Linguist' Kaufmann is interesting to me for a couple of reasons.

word accumulation is a more helpful goal [for new learners, than spoken fluency ]

This, to me, makes a lot of sense. In fact, word accumulation is my biggest barrier to being able to speak well as I very quickly find myself wanting to talk about a subject which my Japanese brain can't express. I can bugger about with the grammar and get my gist over, but without the labels to hand it is worthless.

But another point he makes:

if we have too much output before sufficient input, we risk ingraining wrong patterns in our brain

also rings true for me. I have become accustomed to speaking in casual Japanese at home to the extent that I struggle to remember the polite conjugations - hence the benefit I have had in using the fairly basic Berlitz book. I hear this too in other people - typically those who are better auditory learners than books types, who have picked up their language on working holidays or down the izakaya - one guy who entered my Japanese class a few years ago really struggled with the material we were covering simply because he didn't know the polite form very well, despite being far more capable of sitting and chewing the fat with folk in Japanese.

Moreover, Steve advocates writing as the way to improve:

Learners can write using their newly saved words and submit this for correction. Even a few lines will do

This is of course what he's going to do - he's plugging his product LingQ, but to me it makes sense: one of the most successful students I had, in terms of the pace of her improvement, was a girl who each week wrote just a few lines of diary and we corrected it and chatted over it (I use the word chat loosely, mind you). But the benefit was clear - she quickly moved through from very simple declarative statements to expressing opinions and talking about her weekends, past and future. Slowly, and on a limited range of topics, but moving far quicker than our actual book based study, or other students who only used that route.

So perhaps my goal should be to try and write more and use that as the basis of my language exchange each week.

The Coward

2007-10-11T08:25:00.000+09:00

I went along to Japan club this evening since I found myself leafing through the paper a little after 9pm, swearing blind that I wouldn't fire up the laptop (ahem) and waste another evening looking at Ultimate videos on YouTube.

I was kinda surprised and happy to see a) that 日本クラブ was 忙しい, indeed it was almost 込んでいます、よ。

I chatted to a few folks and chewed the fat, but the fact was I was positively scared of speaking in Japanese. At Japan Club. Even after a few beers I was still not prepared to try to join in the conversation, despite the fact that I could follow it reasonably well enough.

Where do I have to be to make the mental leap to my comfort zone and just let rip? Curiously, as I said (in English) to one guy - the easiest time I have speaking Japanese is with my mother-in-law as she is so thankful for the communication (she speaks no English) that it makes my Japanese shine. Is that really what it has to come down to, ね？

Is there any point?

2007-10-06T23:24:00.000+09:00

For some reason I got it in my head that the cut off point for JLPT applications was mid-October. It wasn't. It was yesterday.

But no fear - this isn't a recent discovery - just one that I made last weekend.

I duly got the application away recorded delivery on Monday with, hopefully, enough of a margin to get it in by Friday, 6pm. But then you can never be sure with the terminal patient, the Post Office. And sure enough I may have been scuppered by the strike that has brought the entire postal network to a grinding halt mid-week.

So now I have just to wait...

Doraemon - off target learning

2007-10-04T16:48:00.000+09:00

One day in, I'm pleased that I'm actually studying, but my subject, chosen mostly because of its portability and use of pictures, is proving a little too obtuse.

As much fun as Doraemon is as a subject, and I've written about him before, some of what I have been looking at is unlikely to be on the syllabus for 三級。

In last night's learning I encountered valuable gems such as かほう meaning (and I'm guessing here) 'heirloom' and とのさま which I was unable to find in either of my (admittedly fairly basic) paper-based dictionaries, but which the wife tells me is 'king' or 'lord'.

Added to this fairly non-standard vocab, there is of course the matter of the subject being a bunch of school kids using pretty colloquial spoken Japanese, which is useful personally, but again, not likely to be on the test in two months' time.

Perhaps tonight I may give a text book a whirl...

Getting back in the groove

2007-10-03T07:15:00.000+09:00

Trying to pick up where I not so much left off as dropped out altogether is proving far more difficult that I thought it would be.

I have a subscription to JPod101 once again, but as I sort of found the last time round, the sheer volume of material there now, and of course there's more again, means it is quite intimidating. With my BlueTooth link seemingly on the blink, the best thing about this, and ironically the free bit too, the audio, is largely denied to me.

What's more worrying is that mentally I can't even seem to engage with the enormity of the task, but while I have more freedom at work from the stressful stuff - I'm working to help other people with their stress and that is personally a lot easier - I really need to knuckle down. That said, I do find that reading ドラえもん is reaping benefits - I am recognising more words in the stories these days (at last) and they provide useful queries for my language exchange on the weekend.

But now I'm going to dust off a few old friends:

Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide - for me the best ordered guide to grammar (and not just online, but full stop)
J-Gram - widely considered the most comprehensive J-grammar resource, including by Tae Kim, himself a contributor I believe

and two JLPT specific resources:

Meguro Language Centre - one of my lottery winning dreams is to enroll with MLC for a few months, quite simply if it's not here it's not in the test
JLPT Study Page - from the Ronseal school of product marketing

Right then, I'm off to Kim's, after new thing for the day...

Thing for the Day

さ - a filler word meaning 'right then' or 'ok', used to acknowledge the other speakers and signify a change of topic.

An exam in two months?

2007-10-02T05:48:00.000+09:00

Okay, so I've sat on my arse and barely done a jot to prepare for the impending san-kyuu exam. That's smart.

I've completed my application form and I'm ready to send it off. But just look at it! What is this? The 1980s? Christ, it could be the 1960s. If ever there was an event crying out for a slick, automated online application programme, surely a once a year, simultaneous global exam is the ideal subject for one? But no, instead we have a carbon copy quadruplicate form. Insane

I need to get it away tomorrow. If I don't, there's every chance I will bugger up my application for this year - the deadline is Friday...

So how will I kick start my revision? With this - Berlitz' Basic Japanese.
It was a gift from Kazue for my birthday last month.
It's entirely in romaji. Initially I dismissed it as being below me but what I've found is that it has two very good reasons for using it:

being in romaji I can read it very quickly. I'm okay with kana and those kanji I'm familiar with, but my lack of practice means I'm slowed by an unexercised brain and poor vocabulary. Reading in romaji removes one of those barriers and allows me to quickly cover all the ground I've lost in double quick time.
Berlitz have a very good approach to creating material. The dialogues are wholly integrated - they build on the last and cement earlier learning in a way that JBP, for example, just do not. Perhaps it is the shortness of the chapters that allows this.

That said, though I think the format helps me now, that's because I know most of it, but I have forgotten it. I would find this a very difficult to learn from as it lacks the organised approach I need to learn from. An adaptive language learner would benefit from this, but a structural learner like me would struggle.

Note, for all you linguist out there, I just made up those adaptive and structural learner definitions.

The sound of gibberish

2007-08-18T17:46:00.000+09:00

The strange thing about the way language works is that everyone else has an accent except me.

The natural tendency is to look upon everyone else's variations from my normal as being the odd bit. What's equally fascinating is that for a large part of it, it is simply the sound that makes things different.

Here a guy called Crehnquist tries his hand at sounding like he is speaking a few foreign languages, including Japanese (thanks to Carlie who put me on to this one).

I think he does a remarkably good job, and though of course my familiarity with Japanese means I spot the sounds and words that are wrong, if I wasn't paying attention and I heard this in the background, I probably would have mistaken it for the real thing.

The responses are mixed and frankly they mostly seem to miss the point, but for this guy, a German who's voice sounds, if you tune out, just like a CNN newscast (actually, one of the responses says BBC but he is clearly too animated for the BBC who are more neutral sounding than this).

The important thing we should take from this as students of language is that if you want to speak a language there is so much more to doing it properly than simply learning the words and the grammar - you really need to listen to the sound.

Anyone who has taught English in Japan will understand the impact of a student who, after you've spent hours teaching kids and housewives who maybe have never been abroad or used English in anger, wanders in and starts communicating in accented Californian or Australian English. You almost wonder what they are doing there.

Personally, when I am thinking about my Japanese I always try to speak from the back of my throat and barely move my lips, like the monosyllabic grunts of Samurai films. Of course, for girls you have to do that whole trill screechy thing. Well, it's never easy is it?

Panic On

2007-08-06T21:53:00.000+09:00

There are just 118 days until the next Japanese Language Proficiency Test day, 2 December 2007 (thanks to MLC for that calculation).

I had once again let time slide and thought that perhaps I would ignore sankyu for another year. Then, out of the blue, comes a query as to whether "we" are on for studying for it together. "We" means my friend Rachel who has just returned to the UK after a little more than 2 years in Osaka.

Well, what do I do? I have rather let my studies slide for another year, but perhaps this shot across my bows should spur me in to action?

It costs around £50 to take the test in London at SOAS - the only test centre in the UK. That's not a huge sum, but would still smart if it was an outright waste of money because I know there is no point in sitting the exam. Hmm.

Needing a new approach to learning languages

2007-07-29T21:50:00.000+09:00

The problem that faces the self-driven learner is the usual lack of other people in the study process. Carlie at GoddessCarlie recently wrote a good piece on her approach and learning style, but one interesting feature was that in summarising the skills side of things she neglected to mention speaking - a function of what happens when you don't have too many opportunities for practice.

Learning a language has four areas that need to be addressed equally if it is to be successful:

reading (visual input)
writing (visual output)
listening (auditory input)
speaking (auditory output)

Of course, there are lots of different ways of learning a language, but without a concerted focus on all four you end up with odd anomalies:

a friend of mine spent his very early years in Japan before moving to the UK until after university. He could speak Japanese fluently but couldn't really read or write, except in hiragana.
my son, now in the UK, watches Japanese TV and films, and listens to his mum in Japanese, but hasn't much cause to speak it, so he is receptive to Japanese only. This is common for kids in the UK where one parent comes from a country that doesn't have a strong in-country community (for example Chinese, SE Asian or Muslim).
I'm far better at reading and writing Japanese than my dreadful spoken efforts would suggest.

The reason I've been ruminating on this is that I have been considering my language learning in light of the approach to developing training (my day job) advocated by Will Thalhiemer (amongst others, but Will is most passionate about it).

Will argues that any approach to training needs to focus on:
“What do learners need to be able to do, and in what situations do they need to do those things?”
But surely being able to read, write, listen to and speak a language is at the base of any language teaching?

Hmm, not really.

In schools the focus of language teaching is to pass exams. Vocabulary is taught in sets, small tests follow and on you go; group listening tests; paired communication exercises typically read out of a book. Rarely is there any ability to focus on those aspects that might encourage trying to embrace speaking it in a situation where the learner may find themselves.

In evening classes my experience has often been on blindly following a book. The pace will not match the abilities of the class and the learning benefit of in-class time is largely negligible.

My experience of the eikaiwa teaching environment is that the focus is very much on simply entertaining students and maintaining an illusion of progress, as long as the students return each week and pay their dues.

For the lone language learner there are patterns in the training material you are most likely to encounter that lead us away from the ideal:

most traditional courses (Mina-no-Nihongo, JBP and so on) are built in precisely the same way, mostly around use of the book, with a variety of additional texts to boost takings (the CDs and practise books). While fans of each will argue the toss on the relative merits, they are mostly talking about the nature of the vocabulary taught, for in learning approach they are essentially equal.
the JPod101 model, great though it is, is hit and miss. It offers far greater access to useful listening exercises, and even provides, as its subscriber service, access to written material. But in targeting lone students it excludes speaking practice almost entirely.

So, what's the alternative? Well, I'm going to save that until my next post. In the meantime, don't forget to ask yourself the following question as you learn.

"How will I benefit from studying this and how will I use it in practice?"

If you can't think of a reason for studying it, give yourself a break and try to find something useful to learn. Or else go out and engineer a situation where you can use it.

If you're going to take one holiday this year...

2007-07-28T09:28:00.000+09:00

...make it this one: One Life.

Lovely idea - I really hope it works out. I know from experience (cycling to work a couple days a week instead of riding the train) that cycling is about the BEST way to see Japan. These tours would be great. Maybe some day I'll get to join Kevin on one.

New Product from J-Pod101

2007-07-21T22:16:00.000+09:00

JapanesePod101, by far the best application of commercial elearning I have come across and simply one of my favourite ways of studying Japanese (when I can be bothered) have launched a new product range: eBook and audio 'study packs'.

In effect the study pack is like an extended lesson of the type you would usually get as part of their daily service as a subscriber. For your USD19.99 you get an 8-part audio set comprising 25 minutes of dialogue, and 8 corresponding eBooks totalling 91 pages of transcripts, key vocab and key grammar.

So far they have one of these 'study packs' available covering the day in the life of a university student - a valid subject I suspect as I'm quite sure JP101 are now on the required listening list of most non-Japan domiciled university students of Japanese (and many in-country too I'm sure).

It sounds like an interesting proposition - with each eBook being longer than the equivalent study guide that accompanies the daily podcast, it sound like you are getting a little more to work with, but given that the cheapest monthly subscription is only USD8, and this gives you access to the ENTIRE back catalogue of PDFs (the podcasts are free anyway), then it is difficult to see how the new product can really be said to offer great value for money.

For my money, I think the error lies in making these new packs story focused. That's what all the other content is. This is great for daily exposure, but the language covered tends to be very hit and miss.

I think that they could make more out of this approach if in the study packs they focused on one aspect of language - say a pack that dealt with mixed family so it covered all the family members, household vocab, events like weddings, births and so on. Or another could deal with getting about and cover this in all its aspects - navigation, landmarks, asking for directions, buying tickets and so on. This way, at the end of a work set you would really feel like you have mastered a linguistic area, and would open up a new area of conversation for you.

At present, because of the ad-hoc way in which language is covered simply to support the stories, you might learn the word 'river' and 'bridge' but not, say, the words that describe different sizes of river, the terrain that accompanies it and so on.

Alternatively, the theme could be built around language skills - for example introducing new grammatical structures, perhaps with alternatives, and drilling them. Perhaps they could do a study pack that dealt with exclusively with describing things, so adjective behaviours and lots of example vocab so you could build up through each study set.

I realise that this is not an approach that suits everyone - I particularly like the idea of covering language in themed sets - but I would suggest it as it is fundamentally different to the regular approach, so it would offer an alternative to complement the existing product range, rather than repeating it in a different way.

Commercial de ja vous

2007-07-06T06:18:00.000+09:00

When you go anywhere or do anything in Japan you get this strange feeling of "seen that before" whenever you look at ANYTHING. Seriously. The same names crop up time and time again. It's not that there aren't many names in Japan mind you - it just probably is the same name.

A zaibatsu was an single company that covered many fields. They sprang up, for the most part, during the peace of the Tokugawa period (1600-1853). These entities became enormous and a handful dominated the Japanese economy.

They were dismantled by the occupation powers following the occupation of Japan after the war, but they reappeared as a cluster of smaller companies still bearing the same name of their parent companies, usually sharing a common bank. The crucial factor in this is that all the companies tend to own shares in one another and so still share a common bond. They might even integrate themselves in a supply chain, so the mining company supplies the smelting company supplies the materials to the manufacturer. In other cases, individual parts may have gone independant in legal terms, but they still share a common heritage.

Sumitomo, a name still recognisable on the streets of Japan is a typical example. Founded in 1630 as a shop selling medicines and books, it branched out in to metallurgy (naturally) and nowadays, as a keiretsu, can be found in forestry, mining, armaments, consumer electronics and, of course, banking.

Here are the main players, their banks and a few of their headline brands:

Mitsubishi
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ
Mitsubishi Corporation, Kirin Brewery, Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Fuso, Mitsubishi Motors, Nippon Yusen, Shin-Nippon Petroleum, Tokio Marine and Fire Insurance, Nikon

Mitsui
Sumitomo Mitsui Bank
Fuji Photo Film, Mitsui Real Estate, Mitsukoshi, Suntory, Toshiba, Toyota

Sumitomo
Sumitomo Mitsui Bank
Asahi Breweries, Hanshin Railway, Keihan Railway, Mazda, Nankai Railway, NEC, Sumitomo Real Estate

Fuyo
Mizuho Bank
Canon, Hitachi, Marubeni, Matsuya, Nissan, Ricoh, Tobu Railway, Yamaha

Dai-Ichi Kangyo
Mizuho Bank
Fujitsu, Hitachi, Isuzu, Itochu, Tokyo Electric Power

Sanwa ("Midorikai")
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ
Hankyu Railway, Keisei Railway, Kobe Steel, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Orix, Shin-Maywa, Takashimaya, Toho

I must stress, the zaibatsu do not necessarily OWN the companies in the family, but they may still have close ties and more than likely a mutual shared ownership of shares. The leaders may get together to bond from time to time. In the case of Sumitomo, for example, it is said that they still all obey the rules laid out by the founder 350 years ago.

Another interesting feature of all this is that the people who worked for these companies would follow the line. So, again using Sumitomo as an example, if you were a worker for NEC (you assembled stereos), you might ride to work on the Keihan railway, living in a commuter town on that line build largely by Sumitomo real estate. You would bank with Sumitomo, who may have lent you the money to buy your Mazda and when you get home in the evening you would be most likely to unwind with a nice Asahi.

Sounds a bit fuedal really.

A grim reality?

2007-06-26T20:45:00.001+09:00

Why don't we listen to our inner voice? This week I told myself "buy that and your love of Japan will suffer." I did, and it has....

The Rogue "gave me" a Borders book voucher for Father's Day last week. I love book vouchers. I got one because Kazue complains that I always give people the same thing, which is largely true. I see book vouchers, particularly for Borders here in Bristol, as the gift that gives twice - on one level you get a few quids worth of books, but you also get the fun of looking for a book to buy. Borders rocks for me as I can stroll about on an evening (open till 10pm), browsing books on Japanese (nice Kodansha dictionary), IT, businessey stuff, new fiction, Iain Banks and so on.

I wondered about buying some GTOs (nearly half way) or perhaps a guide to Samurai warfare techniques but I was attracted to Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr. I'd heard about this book when it was released, but hadn't ever had a chance to buy it. But as I'm thinking about returning again I thought a browse might be in order. I kinda wish I hadn't.

Kerr's hypothesis, not unique, is that Japan is eating itself. It is country that has never really gotten to grips with the fact it is an advanced nation and it going hell for leather along the same path that it set for itself in 1940 (even 1853) without ever really adjusting for the reality of modern living. This, he argues, explains the inability to reform the banking sector, the obsession with building huge roads way over-engineered (the road on stilts to Nikko is one I remember), the "messy" appearance of streets and so forth.

It makes for very grim reading - the never ending march of progress to a goal that Japan achieved in the 1980s. The chapter on buried pollution in particular is depressing - especially if you are thinking of living there. It seems from Kerr's reporting that you are taking your life in to your own hands if you do!

I think it is an important book, and worth reading by every potential long term NJ resident, even more so by Japanese themselves, but only if you are willing to face the inevitable moments of loathing it will induce.

We -illas stick together

2007-06-17T03:42:00.000+09:00

A few months ago I posted something with Godzilla on the grounds that our names are similar, despite it not really being in any way, even tenuously, language related.

Well, much as I hate to post too frequently, here's another one: Fumakilla - a Japanese roach spray. Frankly, it's another "only in Japan" moment, and of course, my little boy LOVED it.

What are they on about? J-League Names

2007-06-11T21:31:00.000+09:00

If ever you've stopped to think about the names of Japan's sports teams, and thousands haven't, one odd feature is that almost exclusively they are rendered in Romaji and are intelligible to foreigners without assistance.

In the case of soccer, or as it is known correctly, footy, it starts at the top with the national squad being Team Japan and the league even being called the J-League (Japan's name for itself, in case you didn't realise, is not Japan, but Nihon).

The names of Japan's soccer teams are high profile examples of brilliantly combined Japanese and Gaikokugo; more than just Japlish though, but Japlian (Japanese-Italian), Japanish (Japanse-Spanish) and so on. But far from being the usual rubbish there has usually been a degree of thought behind the titles. Let's have a look at them:

Kashiwa Reysol: Hailing from Chiba, Kashiwa were once the team of Hitachi, still their prime sponsor. The hi of Hitachi is sun, hence we get sol. Rey is a reference to king, in Spanish - think Rex or roi (not sure if this is related to tachi). So Kashiwa are the sun kings (as well as the best team in the league*).

Urawa Red Diamonds: Ever coveted an Evo (that's a fast car for those that haven't). If so, you've seen the red diamonds in question splashed across the front grill - Urawa have their origins in the factory team of Mitsubishi, whose name means three diamonds.

JEF United: WTF? A team called Jeff? Hmm, not quite. Chiba Ichihara JEF United, to give them their full (and redundant) title are the former team of Furukawa Electric (the F), later merged with the team of Japan Rail East (the J and E). Not so clever, but an amusing quirk, ne?

Ventforet Kofu: The "plucky" minnows of J1, Kofu have a name inspired by a great warlord, Takeda Shingen. The name is comes from a quote he in turn took from Sun Tzu's Art of War. And then it's been translated loosely in to French, coming across as "Windy Forest". Brilliant!

Vissel Kobe: The best thing I can do here is refer to the brilliant analysis from Rising Sun News:

"What the heck is a vissel?" Perhaps the team was choosing a yiddish word to describe what fans do after the opposing team scores a goal? No, the team explained, "Vissel" is a combination of the words "victory" and "vessel". This was a ship that was going to carry Kobe to victory.

Ha ha ha. Losers.

Jubilo Iwata: The former company team of uber-vehiclists Toyota, Jubilo take their name from the Spanish for "delight". Straightforward enough.

Nagoya Grampus Eight: Grampus are arguably the most well known Japanese team in the UK, thanks to their signing Living National Treasure Gary "Gary" Lineker (heck, even my brother considers them his Japanese team of choice and he's got nothing but contempt for the Japanese game). What's less well known is the meaning of their name - even in Nagoya.
The Grampus part is documented as being an English name for some dolphin-like figures atop Nagoya Castle. The mystery bit is the "Eight", which is probably why it is ignored in everyday use. Curiously, it is spelt "eight" on their logo, i.e. in English.

Sanfrecce Hiroshima: This team get their name in a spectacular example of Japlian, combining as it does san, Japanese for three, and frecce, allegedly an Italian word meaning arrow. The three arrows motif is a powerful symbol in and around Hiroshima, referring to wisdom from an ancient warlord to his sons.

Albirex Niigata: The team at the end of the most expensive bit of bullet train track in the country take inspiration from the stars. Albireo is the third brightest star in the constellation Cygnus, so no overly ambitious symbol then. Cygnus is, of course, the Swan; the swan being a local symbol apparently. Since the name Albireo was already taken by someone else (my sources can't say who), the club were forced to append the word king to the title, this time in the form rex. Sure enough, the club mascot is a fat-assed swan in a crown.
Interestingly, the club have a spin off team in a league in Singapore(?!), usefully entitled Albirex Niigata FC (Singapore). Perhaps ManU or Chelsea should look in to this.

Oita Trinita: Way down in Kyushu, the southern most of the four main islands of Japan, is where Christianity has its firmest evil roots. In recognition of this, the most prominent club on the island are named after the Holy Trinity, the sickening religiosity tempered slightly by clever use of the the -ta ending of the city's name.

Yokohama F. Marinos: Okay, so the former club team of motoring also-rans Nissan are based in the town that has one of the biggest ports in a country full of big ports. Marines was out thanks to the local presence of the rather less pleasant USMC; Mariners is out as they are a (Japanese-owned) baseball team in the States; so we get the quasi-Latinate sounding Marinos, presumably named after the greatest quarterback in the history of the Miami Dolphins.
Rather more interesting is the F. There used to be two teams in Yokohama: Marinos and the Flugels (WTF?). One day, without warning, the two clubs were "merged". Just how much of a merger this was is evident from the reduction of one half of the new team being reduced to an initial. All the Flugels fans turned their backs on the new team (haha) and instead supported an alternative team, Yokohama FC, who his year were promoted to J1 themselves. Hurrah!

Shimizu S-Pulse: These guys see themselves as the Pulse of Shizuoka-ken. Obvious really; though this claim is contested annually by the rather more successful Jubilo, also from Shizuoka-ken.

Kashima Antlers: Deer have a long tradition of links with football - see White Hart Lane, home of Spurs, and, er, {ahem} oh, and Gary "Gary" Lineker played there too [neat distraction work - Ed]. The eastern coastal city of Kashima has deer as a local symbol, so that's obvious enough. Functional, though hardly imaginative, it's the best one can expect from a team in Ibaraki-ken.

Omiya Ardija: A word in Spanish for squirrels. I mean, why? Where is the thinking behind that? Still, they're from Saitama-ken, so it's hardly surprising.

It's not all exciting, mysterious names though: thank heavens for the rather more prosaic FCs Tokyo and Yokohama, and the bold move taken by Gamba Osaka to actually take a name based in Japanese (roughly translated for the terraces, Gamba means "Go on!").

*Okay, so Reysol aren't the best team in the sense that they are the most successful (Antlers), currently top of the league (Gamba), title holders (Reds), or even best in the face of obvious adversity (Ventforet are waay smaller than the other clubs, but still do okay) or the best supported (take your pick). But in another, very real sense, they are without question, the best.

Advice on dating, from an expert

2007-06-11T00:44:00.000+09:00

I'm a cautious man by nature - I like to stick with what I know - so it's no real surprise to see that the author of this very good overview on finding a language exchange partner is none other than Tae Kim, who is second only to Tony for name checking here.

For all my interest in it, I really struggle to get the time to pursue this. However, I can vouch for the value of Mixxer that gets a shout. I signed up there and got half a dozen offers of exchange in the first couple of weeks. It tailed off one I stopped frequenting the site, afraid of how I would explain sitting up late at night chatting to teenage Japanese girls (well, some of the women were a bit older, but there certainly weren't any blokes) to the wife. That may not be a problem for you, in fact it may be something of a draw...

Wanted - Japanese Car

2007-05-23T21:42:00.000+09:00

My old man has just traded in his old Mitsubishi Delica, a great 4x4 imported from Japan.

To replace it we are interested in the Nissan Cube, but as you can see, the prices are quite high in the UK. Anyone interested in trying to buy one in Japan for me and export it?

Seriously.

...and no tag backs...

2007-05-21T21:40:00.000+09:00

Hmm, seven things I'm willing to reveal here?

1. I apparently look like Hugh Grant - this has been a regular comment from people I know and those I've just met met since I was about 19. Sadly, I've never dated anyone that looks good in a pink cat suit. Frankly, neither has Hugh or anyone else. Pink cat suits are inherently a bad idea.
2. My last words to my Mother as I went through the gates at Heathrow were "Don't worry, I won't come back with a Japanese wife or anything silly like that." No, indeed; I came back with much more than that.

3. I used to play basketball and sucked for five years at school when I played with Tony. But I was taller than him so it was occasionally possible to stop him. This pic documents the county championship winning team of '93. Tony, as our mascot, sits front centre; I'm trying to psyche the camera man out in the number 10; Ian (6) and Ed (9) are subjects of posts by Tony and I bumped in to Joe this week - pretty much one of the first times since this picture was taken... Owain (13), Mike (11) and Graham (12) are MIA.

4. I secretly still like to go skateboarding at the age of 30. This is frowned upon by parents and associates as deviant behaviour so when I have meetings with clients I throw my deck in the back of the car, finish up when I can, then skulk around playing fields looking for shapely bits of of plywood or concrete.

5. Bristol Japan Club is Bristol's premier venue for people in Bristol who are interested in Japanese culture. Most people who go there probably have no idea what my connection to Japan is - my wife never, ever goes. I used to sell Japanese books there, mimicking my love of Good Day Books, but I lost money on the venture.

6. I read the Guardian. I have to keep this secret from my parents, who would doubtless be offended at the soft-bellied liberalism this implies.

7. I was border-line narcoleptic at uni and slept on a speaker in a night club, on the stairs in halls, in the hallway, in a shop doorway, in a park, in the library, in lectures, etc. This was a serious medical condition you understand and not in any way related to consumption of alcohol.

The ドラえもん conundrum.

2007-05-16T09:38:00.000+09:00

Why is Doraemon spelt like that?

ドラえもん

Notice that? The name uses both katakana and hiragana. If you don't read kana, notice how the first two characters are angular, the other three more rounded.

Weird. My local expert hasn't a clue. Any suggestions?

Formality saves me!

2007-05-15T21:34:00.000+09:00

Taking a leaf out of Tony's book I reached for Doraemon #1. Sure enough, we have a copy. In fact, as far as I can tell, there is not a home in Japan that won't have a copy of these books chronicling the adventures of the earless robotic cat from the 22nd century! They bloody love 'im.

Still, I ploughed on, for most part dumbfounded by the casual language until on page 36...

Someone's, what? Boss? Landlord? Has come by and Nobita-kun has been sent for biscuits. He offers up some animal crackers he finds in his room.

You don't need to be able to read Japanese to tell that Nobita's mum isn't so happy (I reckons she's saying "What's this? What are these biscuits?"). The best bit is that the gentleman, polite as the situation demands, is using the kind of textbook Japanese I've come to know and, well, if not love exactly, at least get a functional understanding of. He's saying "It's okay, I love these biscuits."

36 pages in and at last my starchy, stiff collared Japanese gets a break.

What's also interesting is that alone here 大好き (love - lit. "big like") gets a kanji rendering, while "I" and "what" are in kana. I would presume this because big 大, is learnt early on (it's a man with his arms outstretched, see?) as are 女 and 子, woman and child, that form 好, the root of "like". So the word for love is learnt ahead of self or what just because it is easier to learn (the other kanji being 私 and 何).

What is rather less clear is why the other kanji I have recently learn, 世界, world, and 世紀, century are presented in kanji when they are clearly more advanced (rank about 200 on the list I've been using).

It's this seemingly arbitrary arrangement that has caused me to struggle with the learning in GTO and ラブヒナ as my patchy kanji mean long tracts are impenetrable - I might have the vocab, but I can't read the kanji, or it takes me ages to associate a string of kana with the right words. Still, either way, manga kicks JBP ass!

East/West Perception

2007-05-13T00:21:00.000+09:00

Not sure this really fits on here to be honest, but it is fascinating.

Apparently Asians see the world in a different way to Westerners, according to this article from some science website I never heard of.

In summary, Asians pay more attention to the interrelatedness of things, while Americans of European extraction(the actual subject it seems) are more interested in bold features. This extends to conscious description of an image as well as studies of eye movement. Amazing.

May have greater relevance to Learning Rocks frankly, but I like this site.

Building a Japanese Environment

2007-05-08T21:53:00.000+09:00

Over on Learning Rocks, my "professional" blog, I have been following the "personal learning environment" thread that has been going around blogs on the same subject.

There have been a few points of view, but the settled opinion of a PLE is the space you build yourself, online in the most part, to help you learn. With Learning Rocks, extensive use of Google reader on elearning blogs, joining in on Wikis and various other bits I do every day constitute my "PLE" with regards to elearning.

However, with Japanese it is proving more difficult. What I'm keen to try to do is find a community of other learners who blog about their experience of struggling with the language. This I seem unable to do. Tony's blog is a perfect example, for although he alludes to his learning and has blogged about it explicitly, it is a small part of his oeuvre. Tae Kim, whose Guide is one of my favourite learner resources, is an intermittent writer and at a very high level anyway.

I could rejoin the forums at JPod101, but I never found them as useful - they are not a place for reflective learning; newbie questions and boasting are the norm.

So, if you know of any blogs that add to the mix and discuss the pleasures of learning Japanese, please let me know and help me build my J-PLE.

My namesake in action

2007-04-29T04:14:00.000+09:00

You have to check out this mash-up game video, hilarious entitled "Fuck Yo Mushroom Kingdom, Nigga", created in the M.U.G.E.N engine and featuring the original bad-ass gaijin visitor with a problem communicating.

Days of the week

2007-04-28T09:02:00.001+09:00

One of the great curios of learning Japanese, for me at least, was the similarity in the naming of the days of the week in Japanese and English:

日曜日(nichi-youbi) literally translates as sun-day
月曜日(getsu-youbi) is moon-day, or Monday
(the bi bit is the part used for sun, one sun being a day, naturally)

I couldn't understand how this might have occurred unless by Japan adopting new names for the days of the week, and presumably a western style seven day week along with all the other things it took up during Meiji.

Well, as it happens the story is more interesting. The Japanese calendar is, surprise surprise, based on the Chinese calendar. The Chinese calendar is itself the product of a Babylonian influence on pretty much the whole world. The Babylonian seven day week, probably born from the 28 day lunar cycle and the need by early agrarian societies to meet to trade, was named after the seven bodies in the sky that were visible, ie the sun, moon and five planets.

In English this got corrupted as certain days of the week were re-associated with Norse gods, for example Thursday = Thor's Day, Friday = Freya's Day; but the sun and moon remained.

In Japanese, from Chinese, the relationships for the rest of the week are:

火曜日 (ka-youbi) or fire-day = Tuesday
水曜日 (sui) or water-day = Wednesday
木曜日 (moku) or wood-day = Thursday
金曜日 (kin) or metal/gold-day = Friday
土曜日 (do) or earth-day = Saturday

The observant might spot that these relationships are like the elements, and that's about it; in Chinese mythology the planets are associated with elements - for example the planet Saturn is associated with the element earth. Which is, lo and behold, found to be doyoubi, or Saturn's Day = Saturday.

On a related note, in written form the days in Japanese usually omit the you bit of the days of the week, so 土日、日日 etc would be common. This 曜(you) bit is a little odd as while in Japanese its use is limited to the meaning discussed here, in Chinese it means 'pretty bird' or something along those lines.

NOTE: this is predominantly pieced together from Wikipedia (here and here), which as we all know is an entirely unreliable source, but as the facts seem to hold together from various entries, and bare out a logical consideration of the facts, I'm content that in this instance it seems reasonable.

On the JLPT trail (again)

2007-04-26T07:47:00.000+09:00

It's the front half of the year still, so time to make some vague promises to myself to get JLPT3 again. That'll be four years then...

This time I have a half-assed agreement with my buddy Rach to work together to achieve this. Not a bad idea. In keeping with my way of doing these things, my study buddy is in Japan - well, she is at the moment - I think she returns soon after two years over there.

I'm going to be interested in this as she won't be living near me, but we are going to be wokring together to achieve our goal. Collaborative learning online is the sort of thing that usually gets me exercised at Learning Rocks, but it will be interesting to see if I can bring a newbie along with me - I mean, she doesn't even have a blog...

Kana or Romaji - that is the question

2007-04-24T22:03:00.000+09:00

Tony (my muse it would seem) posits a valuable question about learning Japanese in his most recent entry.

Is it better to study wholly in the target language, using only kana and kanji, or is it more effective to rely on the prop of romaji (spelling Japanese words in Latin alphabet).

My old chum Olly, now a resident of west Tokyo, seemed to work by this rule. He worked heavily in romaji and this meant that he was often waiting for me to catch up when we studied for JLPT4.

On the other hand, Nigel, a friend from Japan (I met him there - obviously with a name like that he isn't actually from Japan), swears blind that you should work wholly in kana if you want to make the breakthrough.

On a personal level, I feel it is hard working with kana. Counter-intuitively, it became much easier for me once I started learning enough kanji. Kanji allow you to make sense of a sentence far more quickly than is possible in kana. Consider this simple line:

私は英国人です。
わたしはえいこくじんです。
Watashi wa Eikokujin desu.
(I am British)

The top line, with its kanji, has some shape and texture, and with a little familiarity with the few kanji are instantly recognisable. The second line is all very samey and this problem is accentuated by the fact Japanese doesn't have spaces between words (though often they are when using kana).

Below the kana the romaji interpretation on the other hand is instantly recognisable - three decades of decoding the characters means I don't have to think for one second what is being said. The act of reading does not present a barrier for me.

But does it help me "get in the Japanese frame of mind"? Moreover, would relying on the romaji slow up my development of the ability to read effectively in Japanese. I think the answer to this second question would overwhelmingly have to be yes - but it depends very much on what you are trying to achieve.

Nigel studied Japanese at university. His aim was academic attainment and he would be tested on his written as well as spoken ability. It was imperative that he develop his skills on all fronts. Olly, by contrast, had little need for written language skills - he needed the language to speak to his wife, or more importantly to his in-laws.

My situation, much as I fantasise about being able to take up a bilingual position in a Japanese company, is much closer to Olly's. Perhaps I should take a leaf out of his book (he is, after all, a PhD) and ditch the kana and kanji and focus on building the vocab the easy way.

I look forward to following Tony's progress and seeing how he does and how he begins to benefit from the intermediate boost when you start being able to apply more kanji. Maybe in a few weeks (at the rate he is learning) we'll see. I'm curious to find out.

A true challenge

2007-04-11T08:19:00.000+09:00

I struggle with Japanese. Not so much the language itself, it's fairly logical, though I'd be the first to suggest I'm not so good at it.

No, I struggle to make the time for the study it requires. I labour and tussle with my time and never seem to make time for what is arguably the most important change I could make to my domestic arrangements. In this I suffer in learning the vital parts of the language that I need to be able to communicate - my vocabulary is terrible and without it, for all my understanding of the various tenses and conjugations, I understand very little of it.

In all my time (about six years now) I have only achieved the very modest level of JLPT4. Pathetic.

So it is some admiration that I look at my friend Tony of Englishman in Japan fame who is just now embarking on a crash course in Japanese at university in Kanazawa. He is expected to reach JLPT2 this year. A chum from my time in Japan, Nigel, struggled to get 2-kyuu after a year of living there, and four years of study at university here in the UK, so I appreciate it is one hell of a challenge that Tony has had thrown at him.

I'll be watching his progress closely.

Try a Japanese second life!

2007-04-02T08:34:00.000+09:00

One of the great ways to learn a language is to emmerse yourself in it, spend time amongst the natives and soak it up.

Easier said than done when your language of choice is Japanese and you live in the UK. So rather than give up, here's a way to do it: www.splume.com.

This is an emmersive online world much like Second Life, but aimed at the Japanese market and, apparently, following a somewhat different design philosophy. Whatever, I'm sure it would be fun.

Facing the challenge!

2007-01-23T08:19:00.000+09:00

Okay, so I need an external motivator to get me to study. How about this one?

I've signed up for the free san-kyuu kanji email service from the Japanesepage.com, - this will operate as my external force - and I am entering them in to my brilliant kanji drilling tool from Declan (see Nihongojira passim).

This will force me to at least get exposure to the basic kanji, without my own useless sense of study gold-plating ("can't move on till I understand, dammit!") interfering to block my progress. In fact, as I signed up to the list a few weeks ago, I will have to more than keep up! I need to go faster to catch up!

The sad truth

2007-01-23T07:30:00.000+09:00

Inspired by the fact that I noticed that I hadn't posted for several days (well, you can count it in weeks actually), I thought to do a quick check on exactly how much Japanese learning I actually do. After all, this blog is supposed to be about helping me study Japanese, right? So why wasn't I learning anything, or at least, why wasn't I learning anything worth posting about?

Well, a week and a bit on, I think I have found the root cause. I'm not studying.

I have been keeping a record of how much learning (any subject), running (for my 10k in April) and writing (of any sort) I am doing*. Well, I didn't really even need to make the cursory glance that I did make to reveal the cold hard fact that I spent NO time engaged in Japanese study at all. In fact, without much flexing of the old grey matter, I can safely say there has been no casual study at all in a month or so, and no serious, books out study since, well, probably last autumn.

Sad really.

*these, sadly, are the goals I must set myself in order to feel successful.

The glaze under scrutiny

2006-12-30T13:09:00.000+09:00

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...

Fuyu-yatsumi

2006-12-30T07:28:00.000+09:00

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.

The glaze...

2006-12-08T21:56:00.001+09:00

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...

Yeah Reysol!

2006-12-05T06:54:00.000+09:00

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。

Gimme gimme IME

2006-12-01T21:32:00.000+09:00

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.

More quality materials

2006-11-29T04:07:00.000+09:00

For Nihongojira it's my desire to plug only the finer sites that can help in the quest to learn.

Another one I have found, thanks to those wonderfully contributors on the JPod forum is this little place: the JLPT Study Page.

It is specifically geared to the most widely (only?) recognised exam for students of Japanese. Lots of useful references and a system that links to the best grammar resource on the web, Tae Kim's, mean it is a great place to check your level. I'm pleased to see it also references Jim Breen's JDic and Meguro Language Centre.

That's pretty much all the places I recommend too.

OK, I'm getting serious

2006-11-10T07:37:00.000+09:00

My recent regular attendance at Bristol Japan Club is spurring me on, and conversations with other learners have encouraged me. So I've joined JapanesePod 101.

Check it out if you haven't already.

Candidate for guruship

2006-10-30T07:59:00.000+09:00

Down the list at the side you'll spot the name Tae Kim. For me, this guy's work is an invaluable tool for learning Japanese. His guide to Japanese is simply one of the most interesting and thoughtfully constructed intros to the language you will find anywhere (I'd be lying if there wasn't a small part of that in the genesis of this site).

The guide is, however, only part of the story. He also contributes to a site called 3Yen which is a blend of the obvious, the dull and enlightening. That last category is pretty much served exclusively by Kim. He answers queries, posts his own musings and apologises for not having blogged as frequently as he would like (yeah, I'm like him in one respect then!)

The malaise that has hampered my learning of late is in no small part down to some of the problems discussed in this entry on his blog at 3Yen, Tips for Learning.

One of the comments seems strangely familiar (don't learn off the wife - I covered it a few posts back myself), but really the whole thing resonates as I am aware that for all the progress I made initially, and the claw back at the beginning of the year, once again my Japanese is stagnating and in decline. It's perhaps because as it stands right now, the chance of returning to Japan seems to be fading and I'm getting a little bummed by that.

Why this doesn't work

2006-10-16T07:31:00.000+09:00

I set this whole blog up as a tool to encourage me to study more and use a blog more often (I have a certain professional interest in their use applied to learning you see).
So much for that plan.
The actual effect was to stop me both writing any blog or studying. This comprehensively did for my attempt at the 3級.
Nevermind, since we're so broke we aren't likely to be going to Japan any time soon, there's always next year.

So let's kick off Ninhongojira once again, this time with the kind of insight that makes sense wihout studying the damn language.

If you use the ever-so-useful IME to type your Japanese, you may not know that you can easily switch between English and 日本語 input simply by pressing left Alt+shift.

Makes life a lot easier.

Pay dirt!

2006-06-21T20:57:00.000+09:00

I used to visit the Meguro Language Centre site quite a lot to get hold of material to prep for JLPT4, but the last time I went there some of the material I had used previously had disappeared, so I stopped going.

Imagine my excitement then when I found that in fact the amount of stuff available has blossomed! I was particularly after the JLPT3 adjectives summary - a weakness of mine - but you could spend hours looking through it all.

If you are interested in JLPT the absolute best start you can make, and I mean anywhere, is to check out the guides to each level that you'll find at the bottom of the page linked above.

Exam Time!

2006-06-20T07:28:00.000+09:00

Argh. (Spell that in Japanese! アルグ？！）It's exam time on my evening class course. Tomorrow I'll treat you to my attempts to write something.

Starting out

2006-06-18T23:19:00.001+09:00

イギリスに帰った後で日本語勉強を始めました。

The example above shows how to get around the tricky aspect of saying the you started doing something. In English, you use the verb 'to start' and the action verb in the gerund or the infinitive.

Easiest way to avoid this in Japanese is find a way of not using a verb it would seem.

家に帰って食事を始めました。

Don't think about the verb (食べる) and just start the meal.

Easy.

Reaching out.

2006-06-18T23:19:00.000+09:00

四年前に日本に住んでいました。イギリスに帰った後で日本語を勉強始めました。毎日、日本語ちょっと話していますけど上手でわありません。

So goes my first attempt at getting a language exchange partner over the internet.

As I said, I began learning Japanese in earnest about four years ago, after returning to the UK from time spent teaching English in a city near Tokyo (千葉県、柏市 for those that are interested).

I joined local classes and bought a bloody great big pile of books and plodded through them, not really making a great deal of headway. No surprises really. What is shocking is I have the perfect learning resource at home - a Japanese family (English is the minority language in the home!) But for the same reason that you should never learn to drive with members of your own family (in my case arguements with Mum, Dad just going to sleep) so it goes that learning to speak another language is best left to professionals. You correct a little grammar mistake ("No, back is not a verb, you 'go back'") and before you know it, the pots and pans are flying and international treaties are being torn up.

So I studied for the JLTP4 with a buddy from classes. We did okay - passed at least and probably learnt more in those intensive sessions than we did in our pleasant but aimless classes.

Then along came a new job opportunity, a professional qualification to study for and /boom/ there went the Japanese learning. That was back in 2003 that I got L4 and I meant to get L3 both the last years, but it never happened. This year it seemed to get the final nail in the coffin when that study buddy damn well went and landed a job editing a new English language science journal in Tokyo. He won't be needing our sessions anymore...

However, I'm in the learning game - I write those on-line courses you do when you join a new company, if they're switched on. Next year I need to do another qualification, maybe a Masters or something, so I gotta get the JLTP3 outta the way, and fast. I have a little under six months to try and get myself through L3. Should be possible.

I have at my disposal a plethora of resources: those aforementioned books; the amazing by-products of the work of Jim Breen, in particular the dictionary; the really (for me) exciting development of podcasting, in particular J-Pod 101; the amazingly detailed grammar guides of Tae Kim and J-gram and innumerable kanji sites and additional resources that various people have thrown in to the mix.

So what's this site about? Well, it's about me using one of these things (a blog) as a notebook. The old MS IME is another useful tool, so I may as well exploit all of it if I can.

Fingers crossed.

がんばれます！　ファイト、ファイト、ファイト！

始めましょう

2006-06-18T23:18:00.000+09:00

Let's get started!