A little Japanese when I have the time

When it boils down to it, I’d rather spend time with friends or family than locked up in my room studying Japanese. It would have been best if I’d discovered All Japanese All The Time (AJATT) when I was in college and had all the time in the world to devote myself to studying, but there’s no point going “what if” now. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t devote all 24 hours of my day to studying Japanese. I’m not going to beat myself up if I take time out to bake a cake with my sisters or play a little Mario Kart with my brothers. When I’m 95 years old looking back on my life I’m 99% sure I’ll wish I’d spent more time with those I loved rather than on studying Japanese.

Having said that, there’s a lot more room for improvement in my current studying process. Another weekend went by and I still haven’t bought my mp3 player. I am making headway with internet radio, though. I downloaded a program that records sound playing on my computer, so not only do I listen to the programs as they stream but then I save them as mp3s for later listening. I might use that on my anime files as well, so I have ready-made “drama CDs” to enjoy. I got some sound-editing software I’ve been itching to fiddle with, so I can use that to cut out the non-talking bits.

I also heard of a program that records youtube vids for later watching and I’m going to investigate that thoroughly later today. It pisses me off when I watch something really funny or interesting on youtube and come back later to find it removed or just plain missing.

So little by little I’m getting somewhere with Japanese, even though I’m not devoting as much time as I should to it. I realized I spend about 3 hours commuting every weekday so I MUST get that mp3 player and take advantage of that down time. Looks like I can get a decent 2GB one for under $50 so I’ll look into it. This weekend for sure!!!!!!

With that, today’s websites…umm… actually I didn’t read last Friday’s pages at all. I spent all the time on Dear Prudence, but I got rid of that and I’m not replacing it with any other pages so that’s the end of that. And that’s the end of today’s entry.

Getting serious

My task for today was to fix problem #1 at least at work by rigging my CPU so that I could plug in my earphones and listen to internet J-radio without having to stoop like Quasimodo. This turned out to be even easier than I’d expected, seeing that my earphone cables were longer than I’d thought and the earphone port was higher. All I had to do was shove a few books under there and presto! I’m listening to FM Osaka right now through WMP9. A program about a Japanese singer (Yane? I didn’t catch her name) who sings abroad. Her voice isn’t half-bad and her songs are decent, but not much beyond that.

Thing is, I can’t really concentrate on what the presenter is saying and read something else at the same time. I’m one of those people who have to give their full attention to what is going on or I won’t catch a thing. I’m compromising right now by doing my reading/work when the music is playing and then paying attention during the talking parts. Not sure it will work so well for pure talk shows but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Mini-off-topic-rant: Dear Prudence SUCKS. It’s not so terrible with the new writer, but when you go back in the archives to like 2005, the old writer is such an IDIOT. She looks 40 and writes like an airheaded 5-year old. “Prudie thinks” “Prudie wants” “Prudie says”… Give it a break already, you old bat! Anyway, lucky for me that DP is not good. I’m stopping after 2005 (honest!) and then I’ll stop cheating so much on my studies from now on.

Today’s websites, just two.
「吉井和哉」　- Ex-leader of one of my favourite bands. Boring article though, as are all Japanese wikipedia articles. They never have any pictures, even.
「倖田來未：「Ｍステ」で４カ月ぶりにテレビ復帰」

That’s all for the week. I’m going to slack guilt-free over the weekend with Mana Khemia and Fire Emblem.

Some Japanese, some of the time.

Half-hearted efforts produce half-hearted results.

I still need to replace a lot of English/non-Japanese media in my life:
1. Radio shows, especially in other people’s cars where you can’t change the channel. Media Player 9 allows you to access Japanese radio stations, but that’s only when you’re connected to the net, so not so convenient.
2. Subtitled anime. I’ve cut down on almost all of them, but I feel obliged to finish watching Cluster Edge because I went through all the trouble of getting it, plus I’m too lazy to switch to watching Code Geass R2 in Japanese. I don’t watch that much anime any more anyway so it’s not that big a deal.
3. Manga. For the series I’m currently reading I’ll stick with English versions because …err…I have no real excuse, I’m just lazy. But I’ve already decided that any series I pick up from here on in is going to be in Japanese only. I don’t plan to pick anything up any time soon though.
4. Video games. My biggest failing. I play a lot of video games but see, I share them with the rest of my family who don’t speak Japanese so buying them in Japanese only…. okay I’m just making excuses. My newest DS games are all in Japanese anyway, just gotta make sure I do the same for anything else I buy or, ahem, obtain in the future. I always switch the voices to Japanese whenever the option presents itself but the voice-acting is usually so bad I just tune out.
5. Too much empty space. I spend a lot of time not listening to anything in Japanese, just sitting and typing (like now) or taking it easy or commuting. Buying an mp3 player will fix this partly, but I also need to make more of an effort on the media front.

For today I’m going to be reading fewer websites because I have a busy day ahead.
「The Yellow Monkey」
「完全食」

And that’s all for today because I dont’ feel like writing any more. I’d rather be home playing Mana Khemia.

To a dead cockroach

Oh dear cockroach,
who was sent from the heavens
to wake me up at 3:03am.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGHHHHHHHH!!
Your noble sacrifice will never be forgotten.
You will live on forever in my blog,
and in the trash heap,
My Hero.

I managed to get 47 sentences into the SRS yesterday. A little every day goes a long, long way. It would go even further if I could do more studying at home, but once I get off work I just want to plop down in a lazy chair and play something simple and straightforward. Gotta get out of this habit of relying on English translations a.s.a.p. Speaking of which, I hear Mana Khemia 2 will be out tomorrow.

On the plus side, I’ve definitely noticed a great boost in my reading speed ever since I started this All Japanese thing. It still takes me a while to get through Yomiuri articles and the more technical wikis, but manga is a cinch. So is Mainichi Daily, which seems better designed and more tailored to the plebs than Yomiuri. Their entertainment section is more interesting, too.

Now on to today’s websites. I usually read one or more websites than I list here, but this is just the minimum I try to get through in a day.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/gourmet/food/gatyou/20080522gr02.htm 「食材一掃の無国籍料理」
http://mainichi.jp/select/50news07/news/20071205org00m040056000c.html　「日本代表の森さん　ミス世界一」
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9F%8E%E5%B3%B6%E8%8C%82　「城島茂」

I ran out of Dear Abby articles to read so now I’ve switched to Dear Prudence. She’s not much fun, though, and her questions/answers are all tl;dr. That’s all for today.

Long weekend!

Yah, so Monday was a holiday in addition to the delicious weekend break. I usually take a little break from Japanese on weekends, but this time I took a BIG break.

I still managed to watched a few episodes of “Erin ga Chousen” (I’d link to it but I can’t be bothered, check the usual websites for buying stuff) and I entered several sentences from Naoko Chino’s All about Particles book, but that was all on Friday. After that, banzaiiii!!

All English games! Almost done with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, and getting somewhere good with Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn. I told myself once I was done with those two games I would only play Japanese games, only go to right ahead and start Mana Khemia. What can I say, I’m a sucker for Gust games.

Also cheated anime-wise. Even though I have a lot of Chi’s Sweet Home and Amatsuki raws, I decided to watch Gundam Seed…even though I’ve already seen it once before. It sucks even more than I remember, why do I do this to myself?

So to cut a long story short, I have a lot of catching up to do this week. 50 sentences a day and only 1 Dear Abby column per 10 sentences. That’ll teach you to be naughty. Today’s websites:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%83%AB%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88 「フルキャスト」
http://mainichi.jp/enta/music/news/m20080527spn00m200014000c.html　「安室奈美恵：さらに進化！40万人ツアー」
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/gourmet/food/shinagaki/20080526gr09.htm　「アニメと同じ　陰の努力」

Yomiuri is really, really, really boring but very good for learning new vocabulary. And that’s all for today.