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日本

Wow wow wow seishun

Wow, wow wow youth, there are so many types. When two or three get together, it’s noisy, noisy Morning Musume, Joshi kashimashi monogatari These past couple of weeks have been a time of deep reflection for me. As the time of my youth slips away, I’m forced to look back at many things in my life from a different lens. The truth is, I never really got a childhood. And I never really got to be young. I was always old beyond my years, and by the time I realized… Read More »Wow wow wow seishun

Hagibis and “Black Companies”

As I have said previously, there are many things to admire about Japanese culture, and quite a few things not to admire as well.  I have always strove, in this blog and elsewhere, to look at Japan with an unflinching lack of bias – acknowledging the good, acknowledging the cultural differences that are legitimately morally relative, and also calling out the unquestionably dark sides of Japanese culture that sometimes rear their heads. Honestly, though I hear it’s recently changing, the biggest thing about Japanese culture that actually deters me from… Read More »Hagibis and “Black Companies”

Ariana Grande’s BBQ Grill has Seven Rings

I’m sure, by now, if you pay attention to anything Japanese or related, you’ve found that a major US pop star with lots of beauty and very little talent has decided to get a tattoo with Japanese kanji. It is supposed to say “seven rings”, which I assume is the title of either a movie or a song she darkened the door of, but instead, apparently, it says “BBQ grill”. Even though Ariana Grande and I have little in common – she’s a beautiful young talentless star, I’m a balding… Read More »Ariana Grande’s BBQ Grill has Seven Rings

Japanese Does Get Easier

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

Class is over

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

Japan: Warts and All

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

Rajiotaiso

So I’ve learned something very interesting about Japanese culture. Every day at around 6 AM, they put exercise music on the radio, and have a prescribed set of exercises everyone in the country does.  Sensei told us that children, even in the summer, go to the park and do the exercises, and get a sticker, which they can redeem at the beginning of school for a prize. So, naturally, sensei had the brilliant idea to have us do the exercises in class. I did not.  I stood up and halfheartedly… Read More »Rajiotaiso

Syllables

There are about a hundred syllables in Japanese, give or take. I looked up today how many syllables there are in English, and the answer, apparently, is 15,381. I think this gets to one of the roots of why Japanese is a difficult language to master for English speakers, and English is a difficult language to master for Japanese speakers.  Japanese syllables are always pronounced the same way.  It’s true that they might run together and thus make slightly different sounds in practice, like あい sounding a little like the English… Read More »Syllables

What is Missing in Japanese Language Education

I have been thinking a bit about why Japanese is so seemingly difficult to English-speakers such as myself.  I’ve made a few other posts on this topic, but I think they were all skirting around a more fundamental issue. English is a very difficult language, from what I hear.  Of course I’m fluent in it, but that’s because I was raised in the language.  And because of that, there are some things that are pretty obvious that may not be obvious to a foreign language speaker.  Specifically, some words have… Read More »What is Missing in Japanese Language Education

Prelude

I have purchased the books required to attend the CC Japanese class, and have paid the tuition.  Looks like I’m doing this. The book is “Yookoso 3”, which is horrendously expensive (I got it for about $99 and that’s half the price the bookstore was selling it at), the workbook which is also horrendously expensive (I got it for $80, which was a $40 discount from what the bookstore was selling it), and I didn’t opt for the CDs, as those resources are available online.  So, in total, I would… Read More »Prelude