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December 2020

Why I Deliberately Do Not Correct Typos (Most of the Time)

If you go back to my previous posts, you will find typos. Some of them are pretty prominent. I am aware of them, and I don’t correct them, unless they substantively change the meaning of a sentence. See, I write this blog, usually, on a chromebook. Some of the keys are not very responsive (particularly the ‘l’, it seems) and sometimes I miss or add letters. I correct them when I spot them, but sometimes I don’t, and I click the little “publish” button with the odd mistake coming through.… Read More »Why I Deliberately Do Not Correct Typos (Most of the Time)

Crucible

I don’t think I would be coming even close to lying if I said the past two weeks have been some of the most difficult of my life. This year started out bad, and it seems like things just compounded on each other. First coronavirus, then the riots (and if you don’t like me calling them riots, zakennayo), then the election (which, in spite of common knowledge, is still not resolved, and again if you don’t like me saying that, zakennayo). Then comes a few personal things, one stacked on… Read More »Crucible

Sadness

When you’re gone, how can I even try to go on SOS – ABBA When I was young, my parents, myself, and my sibling were travelling to a city on the western side of Michigan. I remember driving down I-94, and they had the radio on. A jazz version of a song came on, with an interesting chord progression. I have always, always remembered that chord progression, even though I didn’t know the song. Cut to years later, when some folks were having a pool party outside of the apartment… Read More »Sadness

Chibi Maruko-Chan Goes to a Tropical Island

Last night I watched an episode of Chibi Maruko-Chan (English dubbed, unforunately). In this episode, Maruko’s ojii-san wins a trip to a tropical island, but can’t go. Maruko, in her own initimitable way, manages to finagle her way into going. On the way, she has some really fun adventures and makes a new friend. In this episode, she is a very brave little girl. She flies on an airplane by herself, she gets on a boat by herself, she even goes on a canoe trip to an island along with… Read More »Chibi Maruko-Chan Goes to a Tropical Island

Normalcy

In the cult I grew up in, throughout my childhood, there were some very strict expectations about how one was to behave. One was always to behave in an “upright” manner – to be honest, the ideas of tatemae and honne are not really all that foreign to me, as I lived that as a child. One was to be “in the world, but not of it”. Practically, this meant we had our own set of traditions. For example, we would celebrate a somewhat bastardized version of the Jewish Holy… Read More »Normalcy

So I watched some Anime…

I have some extra time on my hands at the moment, so I decided that I was going to try some anime. The first one I watched was “Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid”. It was well animated. It was funny at times. And it was kind of dumb. I didn’t watch any further than the first episode (and not just because I couldn’t find an unsubbed and undubbed version). The second one I watched was “Himouto! Umaru-chan”. It is about a perfect 15 year old girl who lives with her old… Read More »So I watched some Anime…

Tips and Tricks for Japanese Learners

Over the past ouple of years, I’ve learned a few things about Japanese that are not obvious to people just starting out in Japanese. Let me try to summarize them here. Maybe I’ve said some of these before, but I’ll just repeat here if so, I guess it bears repeating. Okurigana Okurigana are those hiragana characters on the end of Japanese words. Here’s the tip: An English speaker is going to be tempted to look at a kanji and think that it is a word. In many cases, it is… Read More »Tips and Tricks for Japanese Learners

Sometimes I’m Wrong

I like to say that I’m never really wrong – as my decisions and opinions are nearly always right based upon the information I have. But sometimes I don’t have enough information, so as I get more information, my opinions can change. That kind of makes my previous ones wrong. I don’t really mind all that much because I did my best with what I have, but it still requires some acknowledgement. I had the opportunity to ask my sensei last night about the whole “brother/sister” thing, and I have… Read More »Sometimes I’m Wrong

Life

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but there is a thought that, if I pursue it with any seriousness at all, can lead to insanity. In fact, as I pursue the thought, I can feel just the barest tendrils of insanity taking hod and I have to pull away from that thought. It makes my heart race, it makes my mind start to spin out of control, and ultimately it is one of only a handful of thoughts I am not capable of following through to any… Read More »Life

Entirely Removing Third-Person Pronouns

I mentioned a while ago that I was going to attempt to remove third person pronouns from my everyday language as much as possible. There are several reasons for this. The first is that Japanese and other languages get along just fine without using them as an ordinary part of speech. I mean, they do exist, but they tend to have connotations that our pronouns don’t and are generally used more sparingly. So it’s possible and seems like an interesting experiment. The second is that some snowflakes got their knickers… Read More »Entirely Removing Third-Person Pronouns