Every now and then I check my site stats to see who’s visiting what and where they come from. In something that is perhaps not a surprise and is totally expected given the crap quality of what I create here, there are not many visitors, though there seem to be a little more lately. Perhaps the most highly trafficked page is one where I call out Akimoto Yasushi for being a bit of a… not so nice person. Perhaps the second most one is the one where I say why… Read More »Visitors
I don’t have any tattoos. In fact, I think tattoos are ugly and I would never intentionally get one. Why one would intentionally blemish their skin like that is beyond me. (and if you disagree, then go ahead, but this is my opinion and I’m sticking to it). I haven’t put a lot of thought into the topic, but lately a particular image has been sticking out at me, about what I would get as a tattoo, if I ever somehow decided to get one. Here it is. 外人 This… Read More »Gaijin
My sensei, who has been in this country for somewhere around thirty years, still has difficulties with this topic. It is as difficult for a foreign speaker as “wa” vs. “ga” is – and she had to ask us once which one was appropriate to use. So I thought this would be a good thing to post for Japanese speakers who are learning English. Here goes. It is very simple for a native English speaker to know when to use “a” and “the”, and I honestly think it could be… Read More »Learning English (ESL): Definite vs. Indefinite Articles
So the final grades are in. I got a 91%. I would have gotten higher but sensei dinged me on participation. I’m not sure why, but the difference between 91 and 98 percent is really just ego, to be honest. So I’ve let it go. Japanese is an interesting language – it has a very, very high initial learning curve. It’s intimidating as heck and it’s hard to even know where to start – because you have to learn several entirely new writing systems before you can even start doing… Read More »Japanese Does Get Easier
Last night I tool the final exam for the Japanese class I’ve been taking for three months. I learned a lot. I’m pretty sure I passed with an A (or at the very worst a B). I feel like I have a better foundation than I did when starting the class. I am not taking Japanese II for the time being. I have felt uncomfortable in a college setting from the very beginning, and there were many reasons for that. A relatively large percentage of the students there were teenagers,… Read More »Class is over
Pretty well. The constraints were, we had to use introduction phrases, speak relatively fluently, and make sensei laugh. So early on, we came up with the idea of a doctor and patient. My partner was the doctor, and I was the patient. I had not filled out the forms and she kept asking me questions while I asked for help. The kicker was that the questions got more and more absurd the longer we went on. Towards the end, she asked my cats’ names (Inoki Antonio, Abe Shinzo, Takahashi Minami,… Read More »How did the skit turn out?
I imagine that when most people think of Japan they think of the media that Japan produces, and it’s really incredible. There’s anime, manga, variety shows… and there is so much more for Japan to offer. It’s completely understandable that people from other countries might latch on to the otherness of Japanese culture and kind of worship it. And there are quite a few people who do that. But as you learn about Japan – I mean, really learn, and not just from their mass media or television, a different picture starts… Read More »Japan: Warts and All