Listening to lots of music

I just moved all my mp3s to a new computer… wait, I should mention that my mp3 player is caput. It’s a useless POS, stay away from Sony mp3 players… So anyway, moved all my mp3s, and what I hate most is seeing “Play Count 0” next to any song, so I’ve been listening to all my songs compulsively from morning to evening. I have hundreds of hours worth of mp3s, and of course some of them are too good to listen to only once, so I’m getting lots of listening practice…I guess? I also found a copy of last year’s Kohaku Uta Gassen that I downloaded and burnt and never watched, so I think I’ll pull it out for a spin tonight. TBH I don’t like Nakai Masahiro as a Kohaku host. I feel like his mere presence trivializes the whole event, but then again he’s been host for 3 events running so maybe the Japanese like him. No accounting for taste, hmph.

In short I’m keeping at it & hanging in there. And that’s all for today.

Back from an SRS break

Even before Khatz at AJATT put up this post, I was already on an extended break from my SRS. Meaning I was still doing my reps every morning but I hadn’t added anything in weeks. Somehow it just got tedious and unfun so I ditched it for a while. But now I’m back! And over the past 3 days I’ve plundered over 100 sentences from Japanese wikipedia, using the tried and tested “articles on subjects I like” method! This time I read up on my favorite and unfavorite pro-wrestlers from about 10-15 years ago when I used to watch wrestling, people like Bret Hart and Mr. Perfect and Shawn Michaels, etc. Good times, good times. As usual the writing is blander and less opinionated than the English equivalents, but still interesting to read. Next week I might read a bit about legends of Japanese pro-wrestling, like Rikidozan and stuff.

That’s all for today!

Sekai no Chuushin de Ai wo Sakebu book… review?

I’ve been too lazy to post anything, but rest assured I’m still working as hard as ever. Right now I’m reading a Japanese novel, Sekai no Chuushin de Ai wo Sakebu (translated into English as “Socrates In Love“) There was a big fuss over it 2 or 3 years ago so I finally got around to checking it out only to find out it can be summed up as “BAWWW, MY GIRLFRIEND DIED, BAWW!” And she died before he could pork her too, that’s his real beef, I bet. I’m not done yet, about 4/5 in there. It was fun going at first but then the hospital descriptions started to turn me off. I don’t know whether to be flattered or sad that I understand Japanese well enough to be creeped out by Aki’s illness but in any case I’m kinda forcing myself to go through it now. I have to stop myself from giving in and just reading a summary on J-wiki.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to for the past week. When I’m done with it, I have some other books I might work on as well. One of them is about Yoshiki. Hmmm… Surprisingly enough, pulling out Japanese books in the bus or car doesn’t attract much attention from the other passengers, which I’m grateful for. Guess I’ll get on with it, then.

On and Off

I’ve been getting seriously lazy over the last couple of weeks. In fact, I haven’t read a single Japanese thing since Saturday, and even that was a brief glance-through. Seriously, there’s nothing I want to read! I’ll see if I can find some interesting books in New York, because the internet is just a grand failure. All those light novels I downloaded are mocking me because I just can’t get into reading light novels on the computer. It’s, like, unnatural. If my DS M3 could display Japanese characters I’d upload them on there instead.

Anyway, I did have some minor success with the Lucky Star radio dramas last week. Turns out there’s a series of Lucky Channel radio talk shows, not too interesting but not bad either. A few of them were good, especially the ones where viewers write in good excuses for doing something wrong or failing at something. E.g., when you lose a fighting game: “I’m such a kind person, even in a videogame I can’t bring myself to hurt people.” :-p

 

Election coverage

I’m amassing quite a sentence collection from Japanese articles about the U.S. election, but to tell the truth I prefer coverage in English. Straight from the American media, you know? It’s more authentic, more “real”, more “immediate” than the stiff stilted news language used in Japanese news. Even in the most formal news articles in the NYT & co. there’s always some element of colloquialism in it, like it’s something that an ordinary person could say, but Japanese news language is as stiff and dead as a tombstone. Better get used to it, though.