JEdutainment.com

Here’s another great Japanese resource I came across during my Interweb explorations.
They basically explain a bunch of Japanese phrases and expressions that are used everyday, but are rarely found in textbooks.

Definitely worth checking out!

I added it to the sidebar in the links section for easy access.
Or check it out here:

http://thedailyyoji.blogspot.com

Just stumbled across this gem of Japanese goodness.

Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime

It’s a great audio blog where the author posts Japanese readings of classical Japanese literature.

Since most of the content is “classic” and therefor older-style Japanese, so it’s a bit advanced. But it’s definitely wroth checking out. Very interesting, and good practice.

今日このブログをたまたまに見つけました。日本の古典的な文学を読んでいる声を録音しました。古い日本語はちょっと分かりにくいですけれども、素晴らしいアイデアですね。

そろそろ日本語のブログを始めます。このブログはずっと日本語の勉強と日本文化について書いています。２年間以上やっていますが今までは英語しか書いていない物です。日本人が読めるように、日本語の勉強になるように、これから日本語で書こうと思ています。僕は日本語能力がまだまだですからここに書いてある文章は間違いだらけかもしれません。気になる失敗があればコメントの方に教えてくれたら嬉しいです。これからよろしくお願いします。

So I decided that it’s about time I start posting some things in Japanese around here. I’ve been living in Japan long enough now (over 1.5 years) and besides it’s good Japanese practice for me. I’m sure I’ll be making plenty of mistakes along the way, so please bear with me and feel free to make any corrections in the comments.

So here are some mistakes that I had to learn the hard way, seen other people doing, etc.

1. NEVER NEVER NEVER use romanji.
   It’s a huge waste of time. It only takes like a week or two to learn Hiragana and Katakana. If you even want to learn the most basic Japanese those are necessary. Starting with Romanji means that you’ll have to relearn how to spell everything all over again. And what do you gain out of it? Nothing.
2. NEVER use a dictionary to go from English to Japanese.
   One-to-one word translations between English and Japanese are the exception not the rule, so don’t rely on them and don’t use your dictionary as if that’s how it works.
   There are so many literary words and old words that people NEVER use. Chances are you’ll probably end up remembering a word that is useless, or using a word that nobody understands. Only use the English->Japanese as a reference for words you already know/have seen, but can’t recall. Simple nouns can be an exception (ie cat, dog, book, etc).
3. Don’t translate things from English to Japanese literally.
   This is especially true for phrases and idioms. Since you’ve been speaking English your whole life you probably don’t realize how rediculous the things we say are. If you try to translate them literally into Japanese people will have no clue what you mean. For example, there is no way to translate “sick as a dog” into Japanese. Don’t even try it. Just say “I’m sick.” There’s lots of colorful Japanese sayings and idioms that are out there if you want to learn them, but they are very different from the English ones. Get the basics down first.
4. Don’t think that you can get by without learning Kanji.
   Yes there’s lots of Kanji. Yes it’s very hard to remember them all. BUUUT there is an upside. Each kanji has a unique meaning. If you know that kanji you will know the gist of what a new word means just by seeing it’s kanji. Also if you know the reading of that kanji you can sometimes guess as to how the word is pronounced. Kanji is your friend not your enemy. If you don’t learn Kanji, learning Japanese will be much harder than it already is.
5. Don’t pronounce katakna words like the “should” sound in English.
   Yes, you are using the original and correct pronunciation, but not a single Japanese person will know what the hell you are talking about. This sounds a lot easier than it is. Your tongue will naturally and unconciously tend towards the English pronunciation. You must learn to be aware of this. The more you try to imitate Mr. Miyagi the better your Japanese will be.
6. Pretend like the words “I,” “me,” and “you” don’t even exist.
   Of course they do exist, but in Japanese they are rarely used. I hear so many foriegners overusing them all the time. It makes your Japanese sound really unnatural. And if you’re a guy and keep saying “anata” you will sound really gay.
7. Don’t pronounce things like you would in English.
   There’s nothing that will make your Japanese sound crappier. Don’t be the person that says “Waaataaashiii Waaaa … Deeessuuu”. Think of how Keanu Reeves talks. That’s how you sound in Japanese if you do this. You must divide your brain into 2 areas, one for pronouncing English and one for pronouncing Japanese. Imitate the sounds that Japanese people make, even if you think you sound rediculous.
8. If you are not at least 95% confident of a word or grammar point, Don’t use it in real life.
   If you do, chances are you will offend someone. Or in the best case you will sound really silly.
9. There are no shortcuts to learning kanji.
   No matter what stories you hear about your friend’s friend, or how many books you buy… there are no shortcuts, no magic tricks to make you learn faster. I won’t say that there Isn’t any good advice about learning methods, but nothing will shrink the vast mountain of characters that there are to learn. Just learn them. That’s all you can do. Little by little, day by day.
10. Are you really sure you want to learn Japanese?
    I mean don’t get me wrong, Japan is great, and learning Japanese is fun and interesting. But it’s really hard. Let me say that again, it’s REALLY hard. Do you fully understand the amount of effort and memorization that is involved? Even if you live in Japan and study every single day it will take you at YEARS to be considered somewhat “fluent.” You could probably learn French, Spanish, and Italian in the time it takes to learn Japanese. It’s a wonderful journey, but be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into before you set off on it or waste your time/money.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about electronic dictionaries for some time now. Today I just got an email update from the good folks over at whiterabbitpress.com. It seems that they’ve put together a nice little guide to electronic dictionaries. I’ll add my own experiences and opinions in part 2 of this post. But for now this looks like a good place to start for any of you who are looking for a dictionary and are a bit lost.

Just for the curious, I use a Casio Ex-word XD-GW9600 with the additional Kanji Learner’s Dictionary software installed. It’s great.

Konnichwa everybody!

I just came a cross this weird interesting video podcast a few weeks ago that I thought I’d share. It’s brought to us by a Japanese news channel, and it’s called:

珍品堂 (chin-pin-doe)

which roughly means “Hall of Unique Products.” It’s basically a few overly-genki ladies introducing weird and crazy products in Japan (products that even the Japanese consider strange).

For example:

• postcards made from recycled horse manure
• a print-your-own-hat machine
• a $1,000 electronic fish scaler
• a solid gold computer keyboard
• ridiculous cell phone accessories
• etc… the list goes on and on…

The episodes are really short and the Japanese is pretty easy to understand, so it’s a quick fun way to get some Japanese practice. It’s definitely more interesting than typical Japanese TV, or most other made-in-Japan podcasts.

Check it out via one of the two links below!

Podcast RSS feed

iTunes Store

 As you may remember I recently wrote about how I found an interesting site AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com. At first I wasn’t sure exactly what to think of the author’s methods. So I did a bit of digging. Now I’m convinced that the Spaced Repetition philosophy he writes about actually makes a lot of sense. I didn’t even realize it but I was already using elements of spaced repetition in my own study methods (although my ways were a bit more painful at times).

The idea is that you keep exposing yourself to the material you want to remember over spaced intervals of time. These intervals are spaced according to how well you can recall the information and whether or not you make mistakes.

For example once you remember a new word today, that new word will be showed to you again tomorrow, if remembered then again in 3 days… 7 days… 1 month… 2 months etc.

The basic premise is that humans, as we are designed, remember things for a short while (yup, short-term memory). Then as time passes the memories fade if they are not reinforced. This has been a major problem of mine in studying kanji. I’ll learn an amazing amount of kanji before an exam, but then 2 weeks later I’ve forgotten almost half of them. Why? Because none of them were committed to my long-term memory. None of them were reinforced after the exam. This can ONLY be acheived by repeated exposure to the words/characters.

So now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Yes, repetition=memorization. duh!?”

But how do we intelligently space the repetition? How do we organize all this data? How do we ensure that the words we already know aren’t reviewed unnecessarily? How do we remember to remember the words that we forgot?

One answer is The JEdutainment Podcast
but unfortunately podcast episodes can’t change vocabulary dynamically.

Another great solution is called Spaced Repetition Software. There are a variety of SRS applications out there, but the one that I chose and which works best for me is called Anki. I like it because it runs on a Mac (but it also runs on Windows and Linux). I like it because it’s free. I like it because I can sync to a webserver for free which allows me to study from any other computer, or from my cellphone. I like that it gives me lots of options as to how it will display information to me. Overall it’s a great piece of software that does everything that the Spaced Repetition philosophy is about. You just input the vocabulary and the software algorithm handles the rest.

I like it so much that I have completely changed my studying methods. I now input all of my new material into Anki and use it for studying everyday. No longer do I spend hours writing up my own flash cards, or carrying around big bulky cards everywhere I go. I always have my cellphone anyway, so I can study anywhere anytime.

If you have problems forgetting words/kanji I highly recommend you give it a look. If not Anki than maybe search around for another SRS program. I welcome any comments or experiences with SRS in your studying.

Gambatte!

Do you find it annoying reading webpages and emails when there’s TONZ of kanji and Japanese that you don’t know? Do you find yourself banging your head against your monitor as you tediously copy and paste word after word into a dictionary website? Well fear not. JEdutainment has got you covered! We’d like to to introduce to you a really amazing tool that you can download for free. It’s a plugin for Firefox that allows you to simply mouse over a Japanese word/character and it will popup the definition/translation. Once you start using it you’ll wonder how you ever computed in Japanese without it.  

The plugin is called Rikaichan. But first you’ll need to download the Firefox web browser. Once you get Firefox installed head on over to the Rikaichan website. There you can download the Rikaichan plugin and dictionary file of your choice. Restart Firefox and you’re ready to roll. To activate the plugin simply click on the “Tools” menu, and then “Toggle Rikaichan.” 

So I was sent an interesting link my a friend of mine the other day. www.AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com. 

So I’ll spare you all the details because you can check it out on your own, but basically this American guy decided to learn Japanese on his own. He claims that he was able to go from nothing to completely fluent within 2 years.  That’s a pretty obsessive aggressive goal, especially without ever living in Japan. But cheers to him since he was able to do it. He has a lot of interesting links to language theory, and the way human long-term memory works. Even if you’re not as 真面目 as him it’s still worth a read. I picked up some good information and will try to implement some of these methods into my own studying practices. 

As always, Gambatte ne!  

I wrote a little while back about how I was excited about the new Japanese/English dictionary featured in Mac’s new OSX Leopard. Now that the OS has been released and I got my grubby little hands on a copy, here’s my full review. 

First of all this is hands down the fastest dictionary I’ve ever used. That’s because it’s running on a powerful computer and it doesn’t have to go across the internet to fetch the results. So the results to your queries come back instantly. Pretty nice. Also it comes with a good amount of dictionaries built-in.   

• English-English dictionary
• English-English Thesaurus
• Japanese-Japanese Dictionary
• Japanese-Japanese Thesaurus
• Japanese-English dictionary
• Apple dictionary (for any technical Apple computing terms)
• Wikipedia (a desktop interface for the website)

Another great feature is that all words and kanji are clickable and will link to any cross references. Many electronic dictionaries have this feature, but point and click with the mouse is much faster and easier. Another nicety is that there are tons of example sentences and phrases, all of which are very good.

Conclusion: For a free dictionary that comes with an OS you really can’t beat it. I think this feature alone is worth the upgrade to Leopard. On the downside, it’s no more portable than your computer**, has fewer dictionaries than most portables, there’s no good way to lookup kanji for which you don’t know the readings**, and there’s no instruction on how to write the Kanji**. I wouldn’t rush out and sell my electronic dictionary just yet, but this is a handy supplement. 

**I highly doubt this will ever happen BUT… Apple if you’re reading please please please incorporate the The Kodansha Learner’s Dictionary, and figure out a way to put this app on the iphone and/or ipod touch!!!