Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken

So I’ve been playing this new Fire Emblem game that came out for Nintendo DS a few weeks ago and I’m already up to chapter 15. Goshdangit, Garnef, why didn’t you tell me you were planning to move? Bloody desert stages *grumble mumble grumble* Normal Mode is shockingly easy, though. The AI is really, really bad; they almost never attack .

I’m enjoying it, but more importantly I’m getting quite a lot out of it in the Japanese department. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like interrupting my gaming sessions to write out sentences or look up kanji. What I’m doing for Fire Emblem Shin Ankoku blah blah (later known as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon in the West), then, is reading all the dialogue out loud as I play. Being a remake of a NES game there isn’t that much dialogue to read anyway, but I try to sort of role play every single line, especially the bad guys parts and sort of get into the script, you know?

And what I’ve realized from this is, my pronunciation SUCKS! I can’t even hear myself properly but I can tell it sucks because it sounds all flat and monotone, and then I mean so say something but then it comes out completely differently… yah. It’s harder than it sounds. I think I’ll give a little more respect to voice actors now ^_^;;.

But what am I going to do about this sucky pronunciation? Getting more audio input definitely helps. I found it was easier to read stuff like “hatashite dou naru deshou ka” correctly because I’d heard that line so many times before. But I also think I should work more on output at the same time. You know how you talk to little babies, tell them to say “Papa” and then they babble and burble and finally come out with “Papa”? Yeah, like that, but not quite as cute. I need to find some audio to speak and repeat and to read out loud while checking my pronunciation. I already found this site with links to audio books and corresponding texts and am merrily downloading away even as I type. When I (eventually) get around to buying that mp3 player I started talking about 3 months ago, I’ll make sure it has a voice-recording option so I can tape myself as well. That’s my resolution for next week, by which time I should hopefully be done with Fire Emblem.

And that’s all for today.

あなたの助け舟

It’s the 13th of August and I’m feeling gooood. That means I should help someone else feel good, right? Okay.

You know how I was talking about JPSEEK the other day? After footling around on their site a bit more, I discovered they also have Japanese magazines and stuff (mostly fashion), up for download.* I like fashion, in a look but don’t touch kind of way. Meaning I could browse a fashion magazine for hours but when I get up I’m going to put on the same old jeans and t-shirt and walk out of the house like that. Money must be spent on video games, know what I mean? Speaking of which, Fire Emblem Shin Ankoku Ryuu!! But that’s a subject for another post.

So, by dint of hard work (and Babelfish), I have found for you the location of these downloadable magazines: here. You have to register, and then you have to post in the thread before you can see the link, but hey, it’s better than paying for it, right? I’m such a nice person, though,
that I’ll give you a freebie: the August edition of Vivi magazine (jpseekers don’t get mad at me, we’re all pirates together). You notice they’re hosting their files on www.fs2you.com. Why u do dis? It’s not the most reliable of sites and may occasionally seem to be down. If it seems to be
down, try updating your hosts file with these:

59.63.157.25        www.fs2you.com
222.169.230.101        dyn.www.fs2you.com
59.32.232.195 cachefile1.fs2you.com
222.169.230.98 cachefile2.fs2you.com
221.204.246.79 cachefile3.fs2you.com
61.150.85.80 cachefile4.fs2you.com
60.2.139.27 cachefile5.fs2you.com
61.184.189.10 cachefile6.fs2you.com
61.174.62.132 cachefile7.fs2you.com
58.211.75.49 cachefile8.fs2you.com
61.134.84.238 cachefile9.fs2you.com
61.156.40.181 cachefile10.fs2you.com
218.75.151.4 cachefile11.fs2you.com
58.211.75.31 cachefile12.fs2you.com
124.94.101.133 cachefile13.fs2you.com
221.204.246.115 cachefile14.fs2you.com
218.75.151.10 cachefile15.fs2you.com
58.218.209.126 cachefile16.fs2you.com
61.157.152.173 cachefile17.fs2you.com
125.46.41.27 cachefile18.fs2you.com
125.91.11.223 cachefile19.fs2you.com
59.53.48.134 cachefile20.fs2you.com
59.53.48.136 cachefile21.fs2you.com
59.53.48.144 cachefile22.fs2you.com
61.139.106.204 cachefile23.fs2you.com
59.53.48.172 cachefile24.fs2you.com
124.94.101.146 cachefile25.fs2you.com
61.166.111.227 cachefile26.fs2you.com
How do you do that, you ask? Go to C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc. You see a file called “hosts”? Open it up with Notepad. Copy and paste the above at the bottom (under localhost). Save and close. Now try the link again. Ta-daaa! No need to thank me, just send money.

*Flipping through fashion mags is not clinically proven to improve your Japanese, seeing as you’re staring at pictures 95% of the time. Reader discretion is advised.

And that’s all for today!

Edit: All of a sudden fs2you is asking you to install something called Raysource before it will let you download larger files. Like hell we will. Take your crappy filesharing system and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. Thank goodness I milked it for what it was worth when I had the chance.

I can’t go on watching Last Friends

Ummmmm… about Last Friends… I, err, got to thinking eh, and I realized that err, maybe I’m not quite thaaaat desperate to learn Japanese just yet? Like, it’s not supposed to be torture, right? There’s a glimmer of a good idea behind the how, but the actors just can’t get the job done. I’m talking the main two, the Michiru actress and the Sousuke guy. That Nagasawa girl has only 3 expressions: happy bunny, sad bunny and confused bunny. Pathetic. As for Sousuke, he’d be okay if he’d just keep his bloody mouth shut. He makes a decent creepy-abuser guy (though story-wise it was stupid to have his character come out in full-swing right at the start but whatever) but as soon as he opens his mouth he just blows it all way.

So, I’m not going to suffer through any more of this show. 3 episodes is more than enough. For now I’m just going to rip the audio from each episode – waste not, want not – and listen to it or something. And I’ll skip over all the domestic violence bits because they’re dumb and unnecessarily overwrought. The writers should have watched more Lifetime TV or something, they’ll show you how it’s really done (just kidding). At least then they would have had the decency to attempt to explain why Michiru puts up with Sousuke’s nonsense, and no, “her father was a drunk” doesn’t cut it. I mean, the two of them are already dating when the show starts so we have no idea how they met, or what she sees in him or anything. BS. It’s like the writers opened up a manual which said “abusers behave like this” “abused people behave like this” and so they went with it and expect the watchers to play along.

Alright then, so Michiru is stupid (she certainly looks it), fine, but is her stupidity infectious or something? I mean, why would Ruka and Takeru of all people cover up for Sousuke as well? “Oh it’s nothing, nothing happened here,” when both of them are lying on the floor with Takeru standing over them with a chair? They only just met him that day, why make up lies to cover for him? BULLSHIT. Thanks for reminding me why I avoid j-dramas, Last Friends!

Next up… I need a cleansing break. I managed to get a fairly decent cam of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. It’s been a while since I watched a cam anyway, lol. I’m almost hoping someone will get up and walk across the screen halfway through, hehe.

J-drama

It occurred to me recently that perhaps I was giving Japanese dramas a bad rap. That I wasn’t giving them enough of a chance, just because stuff like Tokyo Love Story was dry and wooden and terribly, terribly acted doesn’t mean all j-dramas are equally terrible. I mean, Oshin was good (bloody good), Sensitive Samurai was good too. Who knows, I might chance upon something else I liked.

That’s what I was thinking when I started downloading j-dramas from the fansubbing group JPSEEK. If you’ve ever been to their site, you’ll know they sub stuff…in Chinese. Which I speak very little of. I can’t even find my way around their website; I have to use Tokyotosho. Why get the Chinese subs and not just raws, you ask? Simple, because raws are HUEG LIEK XBOX. Even English subs average about 400mb per episode, as against around 250mb for jpseek subs. I don’t have the internet speed for that, I average about 20kb/s IF I’m lucky, so huge files are a luxury I don’t have. Plus I’m only going to delete them when I done, so no need for super-high quality or anything.

And so, with that established, I started with Last Friends. I consciously stayed away from any reviews/previews/summaries. In fact I didn’t even know what the series was about, and I liked it that way. So with one episode out of the way… it’s pretty bad. Yah, cheesy, pretentious, overly melodramatic, badly-acted… pretty, though. I think I could get through this. I think I’ve built up some immunity over the years by forcing myself to sit through crappy anime like Shuffle!, Maburaho and School Days (guilty pleasure, but I couldn’t do it again), and if I can watch those then Last Friends should be a breeze, right? The actors are plastic enough that I can pretend they’re just anime characters anyway. But seriously, what is it with j-drama and long, dramatic pauses in the dialogue? It makes things really awkward, if you ask me.

Anyway, a j-drama episode a day on top of my reps, sentences, reading and radio-listening is just what I need to kick my Japanese learning to a new level. It’s been 10 weeks since I started All Japanese All The Time* and I’m definitely seeing results!

*and over 6 years since I started learning Japanese…

 

The Fifth Elephant book review

Well “The Fifth Elephant” by Terry Pratchett turned out to be a terrible book as far as Discworld novels go. Among the bad Discworld books it’s slightly above Monstrous Regiment and slightly below Men at Arms, about on par with Night Watch. You know, I don’t think Terry Pratchett has got it any more. Or maybe I’m just too used to him now. Or maybe it’s the Spirit of Japanese, punishing me for daring to stray from the path of immersion.

Anyway, this is a blog about Japanese, not a blog about books (English ones, at that) so let’s get back to the point, which is… GAMES. To be precise, Ar Tonelico 2 and Mana Khemia 2. I should be buying stock in Gust right about now, really. I can hardly wait for the weekend to start so I can sink my teeth into them. Which one should go first? I enjoyed AT more, so maybe I should keep the best for last? Then again why suffer through MK2 when the first Mana Khemia wasn’t really up to scratch? It was made after AT and it had worse graphics, can you believe that? Okay, so it’s settled. Ar Tonelico 2 it is. At least it will keep me occupied (and learning Japanese) until Fire Emblem DS comes out on 7th August.

じゃ、今日はここまで。