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bakatsundoku

Moving forward…

After the last post, I just stopped caring about blogging for a while.  I just pretended like it didn’t exist.  It kind of helps that a medicine I’m taking seems to make me care less in general, which, knowing me, is a good thing. My feelings about Japanese are still very conflicted, but as of right now, I’m just studying wanikani and letting the rest kind of sink in.  And I am seeing results.  Today I went to the local HEB and there was a real honest-to-gosh Japanese person manning… Read More »Moving forward…

Nani?

I am not good at writing posts when I am discouraged.  I’m terrible at feigning enthusiasm, and there have been several posts I’ve written over the past couple of months that I abandoned halfway through, with the thought “what’s the point?”.  I tried to write another one tonight, and it met the same fate.  I just can’t pretend.  I can try to, but it never, ever works.  Maybe it’s just a peculiarity of my background or personality. I keep coming back to one thought:  why am I doing this?  I’ve… Read More »Nani?

Hidden Japanese #2

This one rather amuses me, though it’s a little on the adult side. So Americans, when they are getting intimate, use the word “come”.  I’ll be circumspect and not come right out and say the context, but those of you that know what I’m talking about, know what I’m talking bout, and those who don’t, well, look it up at your peril. Japanese say　行く, or essentially, “I’m going!”. I know they like to do things backwards from English, like putting the verbs at the end, but that’s kinda taking it… Read More »Hidden Japanese #2

Hidden Japanese #1

We are mostly all familiar with the typical numbers in Japanese: 一ニ三四五六七八九十 But did you know that these are not the only Japanese numbers?  I’m not talking about ひとつ , etc., I’m talking about an entirely different set of kanji for the on’yomi readings. These kanji exist because in the ancient Chinese culture, long before their language was exported and integrated into Japanese, the Chinese had a problem.  It was really easy to just add strokes to 1, 2, 3, and 10, to make it into another kanji.  So 100… Read More »Hidden Japanese #1

New Years

New Years is tomorrow, and for nearly all cultures (even though it may happen on different days) it is seen as a time of renewal and regeneration.  I don’t see why this blog should be any different. Starting tomorrow, this blog will take a slightly different direction.  It will still be about Japanese – in fact, moreso than it is now.  I will still occasionally write about things that interest me.  I will keep it on this domain and blog for right now.  But starting tomorrow, I will be starting… Read More »New Years

A New Direction

I started three different blog posts, and abandoned them right in the middle.  That’s a sign that I need to do something different.  I’m starting to bore myself, and if I’m boring myself, I can’t imagine what I’m doing to everyone else.  I’ve run out of interesting things to say – even to myself. I have a few ideas on how to escape from this, but it requires a complete shift and thinking and some new ideas, neither of which I truly have right now.  I have several ideas, but… Read More »A New Direction

Christmas

Today is Christmas in Japan, and tomorrow is Christmas for me. Christmas and Japan really seem to have a strange relationship with each other.  It does seem that Japanese do celebrate Christmas – in their own way.  It’s been stripped of any religious or spiritual significance, and has been converted into a time where people eat fried chicken. It will, perhaps, surprise Japanese people that that is not a tradition here.  It turns out that someone lied a long time ago and said that KFC is a tradition in America.  Trust… Read More »Christmas

Reflections

It is that time of year again – nay, that time of the decade.  The time where we hit an arbitrary marker that causes us to look back on a particular, arbitrary period of time, and think about how it measures up against a series of arbitrary criteria that matter not to anyone.  But we have, indeed, hit upon one of those markers, so this is a good time for reflection. I consider this blog to be aimless and disorganized.  Usually my posting schedule is “oh, I have something to… Read More »Reflections

Leggo my eigo

Many years ago, when I was a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s, the cult that I was raised in had a propaganda magazine called “Youth <insert year here>” where leaders of the cult would attempt to be relevant to the youth of the day, and most of the time, they just came off as condescending. I remember very little about that magazine, to be honest.  I remember the very first magazine that came out had a large photo of the cult leader’s face adorning the front, inside… Read More »Leggo my eigo

Jyukugo

Japanese jyukugo fascinate me, because each one tells a story.  Sometimes the story is boring, but sometimes they offer an unwitting insight into the mind of a culture. I was reminded of this when I learned the jyukugo 電池.  The two kanji together mean “electricity” and “pond”.  But if you put them together, it means “battery”.  It’s a very poetic word, and not really intentionally, I think.  The Japanese people needed to think of a word for electrical storage, and well, why not? I’ve often been curious as to how these… Read More »Jyukugo