Getting better every day

My waist hurts (!?) so I’ll make this post very short. Thanks to Dragonball I managed to make this weekend an 80% Japanese weekend. I removed one more English element from my life: reading magazines at the salon. Reading tabloids like Life & Style at the salon was one of my guilty pleasures in life, where I’d pretend I didn’t really care about Brangelina, I’m just so bored in the dryer I might as well… is what I kept telling myself. But that hour or two every Sunday can add up so I’m just cutting it out for good from now on. I replaced it with Dragonball, which made the time pass in a FLASH, and when I run out of Dragonball (I’m already on volume 31 of 34, since I’m reading the Kanzenban) I’ll start one of the other manga I’ve been keeping in a huge box in the corner since 2005.

And that’s enough for today.

Minor setback

Computer troubles got worse and worse until the machine eventually wouldn’t start up at all. It had to be taken away completely and fixed and I only just got it back. I have a computer and the internet at home, but I spend most of my time at work so not being able to use the machine kinda hurt.

I didn’t let it affect me TOO much though. I finally got Mana Khemia out of the way (oh crap, I wanna play it again!) and can spend some time playing a Japanese game next. I have the Lucky Star and Suzumiya Haruhi games for PS2 but truth to tell, I don’t really like anime games. Also the glamour of those two anime have long since faded for me so I don’t particularly care to play with them. I might play an Atelier game, maybe, since I’m such a Gust fan.

I spend the downtime reading a lot of Japanese manga, working my way through my collection of manga that I bought long ago and never bothered to read. I read more Dragonball and also volume 1 and 2 of Azumanga Daioh. I notice my speed still isn’t too high when reading, even though I’ve been doing my reps and sentences. I get through the pages alright and I understand everything, it just takes a while to get through. I could finish one English volume in 15 minutes but it would take me about 2 or 3 hours to get through the same volume in Japanese. I should time myself one day.

All in all even with the delays I’m not doing too badly for myself. The search for proper spoken media still continues but I’m doing great when it comes to reading material and reading practice. And that’s all for today.

Computer troubles continue

I spent the whole weekend sleeping and playing Mana Khemia so there’s not much to tell about that. I found the time to watch 2006’s Kouhaku Utagassen, which was fun and mildly educational. Oh yeah, I also read some Dragonball (in Japanese). Every time I think I’ve gotten over that manga I pick up a volume and it’s like 1998 all over again . I think I’ll read the j-wiki on Dragonball while I’m at it.

Then on Monday I came back to my work computer to find it caput. First it would load but the internet was non-existent, then I fiddled with it for a while and all of a sudden Windows Explorer wouldn’t load any more! But somehow through Task Manager I managed to access Firefox, and here we are now. In my efforts to make sound work on the machine I ended up installing a lot of windows updates (silly me) and I’m positive they’re to blame for my current predicament. Currently systematically uninstalling them now. The moral of the story: leave well enough alone.

But still, since I have the internet I can still do my SRS reps and add items to it. I started about a month ago and I already have 776 entries in there. Way cool. I’ll see if I can make that over 1000 by the end of June. Ganbarimasu!

More Japanese learning adventures

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.

Some Japanese radio stations

Of course no sooner had I talked about my sound-recording software than it took it upon itself to mess with my drivers and stop working properly. Plus streaming media doesn’t work so well on my slow connection unless I stop all other internet activities, and I’d rather set up my torrents than stream media. My work computer is slow and Windows Media Player sucks, is my conclusion. I’m not going to give up just like that, though.

I found a site with a list of radio stations, but not all of them work right: Japanese Internet Radio and Online News Radio. And I’m still looking into the youtube thing, but not very seriously. For now I’m going to focus on more radio stations, especially ones I can listen to without passing through WMP.

Just this morning I managed to get Radio NHK news through Media Player Classic (which is having the same problems as WMP so I guess it really is my machine) and it’s great listening practice because the announcers take their time and talk slooowly and clearly, enunciating every single syllable so it’s all easy to understand. Of course ordinary Japanese don’t speak like this in real life so I’m not going to give up on watching and listening to other sources, but when it comes to speaking I want to speak clearly like that. But man, the news is all so depressing.

Pages I’m going to be reading today:

新作ゲーム紹介：「ダンジョン　オブ　ウインダリア」　2組の男女の愛を描くRPG　20年前のアニメが“復活”

マイケル・ジャクソン – Wiki page about Michael Jackson. This week’s strategy is to read wikis about things I already know, so I’m not straining myself trying to get the overall meaning of the article and can just focus on the details of each sentence. I read an article about Mariah Carey yesterday, for example. And that’s all for today.