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.

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.