Bitlord refuses to get along with my sound card and sound drivers… or rather they refuse to get along with just about any other program I try to run at the same time, so I had to sacrifice everything except Firefox and MSWord for the sake of my Japanese education.
Having discovered the source of my problems and solved it, I am now doing even better than ever. I read about 10 wikis yesterday of my favorite J-musicians, including 吉田拓郎 and 布施明, only to find out that the two don’t get along over some petty incident that happened over 30 years ago. Whoa, talk about holding a grudge!
I’m definitely seeing an increase in my speed and ease of reading of Japanese nowadays. This morning I opened up Mainchi Daily and browsed the front page for several seconds before it hit me that I was reading Japanese! It felt like reading BBC or something, lol. The nice thing about reading the news is that they tend to use the same phrases and expressions all the time. Once you learn those words it’s smooth sailing all the way. Anyway, seeing as I’m doing so well with my readings nowadays, I don’t see the need to list every page I read from now on. I’ll only make note of exceptionally interesting articles or things I might want to go back to one day. Today’s list will be the last.
ポルノグラフィティ
筋肉少女帯
吉幾三
藤あや子
Now back to the subject of internet radio and streaming, I’m currently testing out the stream recording possibilities of VLC player, a player I normally avoid but that has its uses in a pinch. So far it seems to be…sorta okay. At least it doesn’t mess up my computer’s functions like NCH Soundtap did. I’ve only tested it on radio stations so far, will test it on video streams once I actually find something I care to play.
I’ve tried out several of the stations from the site I posted last time, but most of them are either pure music stations (which is all good and nice but not what I really need) or don’t work or are just plain boring.
Bee Wave – They talk a lot and seem to be having lots of fun, but the quality is TERRIBLE. Hard to listen to at times.
FM 76.3 – Not bad, but works erratically.
MBS – 9 minutes of daily news, I’m not sure how often it’s updated.
Radio NHK Japan – I mentioned them in the last update. I notice they broadcast in other languages as well, but makes it annoying when you’re just sitting there waiting for them to get back to Japanese. In Japanese they’re the best news source though.
Radio Nikkei – Evidently aimed at the non-fluent. Most announcers talk at 1 word per minute, if that. And their programs are booooring. I like it.
That’s it for today’s update.
