I came across live365.com by chance just new. Input “japan” in the search string and it came out with 300+ results! I don’t have the time to check them all out right now so I’ll just save that URL here and check them out when I’m ready. One of the results is a station with Japanese gospel. Gospel!? In Japanese!?!?! I’m listening to it right now, not bad. Just that they alternate with Japanese and American music, which isn’t really good for me. Still, having fun with that right now. It’s all good.
Polyglot: How I learn languages book review
I spent two days last week reading Polyglot: How I Learn Languages
But it was disappointing because despite the title, the book was pretty skimpy on the details of how and when and where she did it. She gave a vague hypothetical example of how she would go about learning a language: buy a dictionary, buy a book, listen to news, read newspapers, etc, but I would have been happier if she had delved into a particular language more showing her method at work. She mentioned learning Russian by studying a book with a dictionary and figuring out the grammar rules…how? How did she do this? She also mentioned a writer who learning English by reading a poem by Shakespeare…how? How did he do this? Step by step, what, then what, then what…
It was very light on the details. It’s always like “I decided to learn Chinese, so I bought a book” Two or three lines later “So when I was translating Chinese to this group of tourists…” There’s a world of information missing in there. What did you buy first, how did you study the hanzi, how long did it take you, how much time did you spend on it, what did you listen to, what did you read…gahhh. It was frustrating.
Her anecdotes were fairly interesting though, and I felt quite pepped up after reading it, so I guess it was worth the time – and breaking my All Japanese All The Time for that. I broke it some more by listening to French radio yesternight, just to prove I’ve still got it. I might take it back by reading the book’s reviews on online in Japanese or something. Anyway, that’s all for today!
Zzzzzzz….
I’m trying to watch the latest Kohaku Uta Gassen, but it’s BORING! Oh, so boring. At least I got one or two songs out of the last one, especially Hirai Ken’s “Elegy”. I’ve listened to that one about 6 times today alone. But this latest Kohaku looks to be a complete wash. In fact I’ve stopped watching it and I’m now surfing the net while I listen to them talking. What a waste of 4 hours. Bleh.
Gackt + Yoshiki + Hamachan + Matsumoto = ROFLMAO
As part of my efforts to ramp up my Japanese input I’ve been watching all those Japanese videos I downloaded from youtube ages ago and rarely watched. I found a couple of vids where Gackt and Yoshiki sit with the guys from Downtown and just eat their way through each others’ favourite foods. Gackt seems to have had slightly too much to drink so he’s really cutting loose instead of with that silly posing and those silly affected manners he always puts on. I like him much better like this. If he’d always have a couple of glasses of wine before showing up to an interview I would like him much better. That was one interesting episode of…whatever it was an episode of. And the food all looked DELICIOUS. Mmm.
Looking on youtube, it seems to have been taken down. This is the only one I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DQ7A5yxe3E
Lucky me for dling when I could.
Kohaku Uta Gassen 2007
2007’s Kohaku means the one the year before the last. I’ve got the latest one as well, but I’m not in any hurry to watch it. The one I did watch over the weekend was hosted by Nakai Masahiro and some Tsurube guy I had never heard of but who had the most annoying voice I had ever heard. The two of them had ZERO chemistry and Nakai seemed to be frequently frustrated at Tsurube going off on one tangent or another, reminiscing about random things. Nakai himself is a terrible host. His very presence just trivializes the whole event, and those clothes! Ewww.
The show itself was very bland compared to the previous year’s and the one before that. I watched both of those and enjoyed them thoroughly. I got some good songs out of them too, and found out about some new artists I’m still following even today (Tokunaga Hideaki in particular). In contrast the song that got the most rise out of me in this one was “Oshirikajiri mushi.” 
Let’s see, I also liked Hirai Ken’s song Elegy and the last 4 songs by Wada Akiko, Sakamoto Fuyumi, Mori Shinichi and Itsuki Hiroshi are some of my greatest favorites. Everything else was a complete wash.
While we’re on the topic, I watched an NHK special on B’z the other day. Talk about zero chemistry again, those guys have like, none, and yet they work so well together. It looks like outside of music production they don’t have much to do with each other. Like they respect each other but don’t particularly like each other. Matsumoto came across as rather bossy, Inaba as some retiring mousy recluse. And he’s so thin now, what happened!? Of course it’s entirely possible that NHK edited their footage to make things seem that way. I wouldn’t put it beyond a TV station. Anyway, the title of the special was (I think) 「大ヒットの秘密：２０年目のＢ’ｚ」so they trailed B’z for 6 months to find out their secret. In the end the “secret” to their success is: They work like dogs at it. Gee, I could have told you that to begin with!
I want to get better at Japanese, I’ll need to work like a dog too. And that’s all for today