Learning Japanese From Zero

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri Aug 12, 2022 4:51 am

Forest of Piano ep4: To be honest, this was pretty disappointing. There are a LOT of piano playing scenes in this anime, and they are pretty boring and repetitive, but the competition arc really takes the cake. Episode 4 shows three separate scenes of people playing the exact same song (once from Takako and then Kai twice), and there was a fourth in the previous episode (Shuhei).

In this episode, Kai initially plays the song copying Ajino's style, then plays it again "making his own Mozart", playing it in a unique style. But of course, a casual listener like me couldn't tell the difference between any of the four versions! It really brings to mind an unfavorable comparison with Glass Mask. There are a couple times when Glass Mask showed multiple performances of the same scene or play, but they were more obviously different, and more importantly, a play is inherently a lot more interesting to watch than endless repeats of random piano music.

I think going forward, I'll just skip through all the piano playing scenes to save time. Hopefully the drama parts will still be ok.

----

近所の子たちとも、セミやカブトムシを採りに行ったりして、たくさん一緒に遊んだよ。

Apparently, kabutomushi means "rhinoceros beetle". I wonder if this was the inspiration for the name of the pokemon Kabuto.

Image


Edit: I checked and Bulbapedia says "Kabuto may be derived from 兜蟹 kabutogani (horseshoe crab) with 兜 kabuto being the Japanese word for helmet." So I was pretty close. Given that kabutomushi = kabuto + insect, I figured it was some sort of root word. Anyway, it's really cool to discover references like this that you'd never noticed before.
1 x

User avatar
Sumisu
Orange Belt
Posts: 109
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:57 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N) Japanese (B1?)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 0c0a4beb42
x 332

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby Sumisu » Sun Aug 14, 2022 1:19 am

golyplot wrote:Forest of Piano ep4: To be honest, this was pretty disappointing. There are a LOT of piano playing scenes in this anime, and they are pretty boring and repetitive, but the competition arc really takes the cake. Episode 4 shows three separate scenes of people playing the exact same song (once from Takako and then Kai twice), and there was a fourth in the previous episode (Shuhei).

In this episode, Kai initially plays the song copying Ajino's style, then plays it again "making his own Mozart", playing it in a unique style. But of course, a casual listener like me couldn't tell the difference between any of the four versions! It really brings to mind an unfavorable comparison with Glass Mask. There are a couple times when Glass Mask showed multiple performances of the same scene or play, but they were more obviously different, and more importantly, a play is inherently a lot more interesting to watch than endless repeats of random piano music.

I think going forward, I'll just skip through all the piano playing scenes to save time. Hopefully the drama parts will still be ok.



I just started watching this after reading your log, because I'm a huge classical piano fan, and also play a little myself. But, even starting with the first episode I was a little frustrated by the long music scenes, because I'm watching this to learn Japanese and don't want to waste valuable minutes where there is no dialogue. As for the competition in episode 4, even one of the judges made the comment that the Mozart piece was a "plain song" (地味な曲), so it is kind of surprising they spent so much time on the multiple performances, although I did enjoy Kai's rendition.

Anyway, thanks for sharing this show. This is super niche subject matter, but I'm enjoying it so far.
2 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Aug 14, 2022 4:32 am

Sumisu wrote:I just started watching this after reading your log, because I'm a huge classical piano fan, and also play a little myself. But, even starting with the first episode I was a little frustrated by the long music scenes, because I'm watching this to learn Japanese and don't want to waste valuable minutes where there is no dialogue. As for the competition in episode 4, even one of the judges made the comment that the Mozart piece was a "plain song" (地味な曲), so it is kind of surprising they spent so much time on the multiple performances, although I did enjoy Kai's rendition.

Anyway, thanks for sharing this show. This is super niche subject matter, but I'm enjoying it so far.


Thanks. It's good to hear that it's not just me and that even a pianist found the piano playing segments boring. Anyway, I watched ep5 tonight and as planned, I just hit the "skip 10 seconds" button during the piano playing parts where it seemed like nothing else was going on. This turned out to just be three times during Shuhei's redition of Minute Walz, since Takako talks during hers.

This episode also answered the question of how the piano survived in the forest so long - apparently Kai was just covering it with a sheet when it rained up until now. It's interesting how the show is a lot less fantastical than I expected it to be. When I heard that the premise was that there is a piano in the forest that only one kid could play, I assumed it was just magic, but then the end of the first episode explained that the piano was Ajino's old piano, and now ep5 shows that Kai was taking care of it. It seems that the only supernatual element of the show is the way that only Kai can play the piano - or at least could prior to ep5. I'm guessing this is linked to his emotional state and love for piano somehow, and that he'll recover and become able to play it again later on.

---

先日、ダースト容疑者が自ら出演した、HBOのジンクスというドキュメンタリー番組の撮影現場で、彼自身が、殺人をうっかり自白してしまったことが、逮捕につながったようだ。

I looked up 自ら and was surprised to see that it is listed as Top 900 on JPDB, since I've never seen it before (as far as I can recall) despite years of studying Japanese.

---

In other news, I finally managed to power through the last bit of my JPDB review pile last night after two weeks of banging my head against the wall, and thus I was finally able to start doing new cards again for the first time in just over two weeks. Now that I have a readable text version of それでも、ハッピーエンド, I decided to create a deck for it on JPDB. I plan to try reading it a second time once I've studied the vocab on JPDB. I'm currently at only 77% coverage on JPDB, a lot lower than when I started 「月王子」. No wonder it seemed to hard to read.
2 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Aug 15, 2022 5:13 am

I rarely bother paying attention to the podcasts nowadays, but I happened to notice Utaco say "shimohanki" this evening and got curious about it. I thought the "shimo" might be 下, but the only thing that came to mind for "hanki" was 炊飯器. Anyway, I looked it up and it turns out I was right about the first part. It is actually 下半期 (second half of the year). I was surprised because I was under the impression that the shimo reading of 下 referred to private parts and their products. Why isn't it read shita here instead?

---

I spent a lot of time this evening on Japanese study, and specifically JPDB. It took me many, many review sessions throughout the day, but I finally broke through the review pile again and did new cards again tonight, thus extending my three day streak. I decided to reduce my max new cards per day from 19 to 17 to marginally reduce the rate at which I might get overwhelmed again next time.

---

Forest of Piano ep6: Wow, this show constantly goes against my expectations. When I first heard of the show, all I knew is that it was about a magic piano in the forest that only one boy could play and that the piano eventually goes away. I assumed that this would be a light-hearted fantastical show where the piano is a metaphor for coming of age or something and that the piano would magically disappear at the very end of the show once he had outgrown it. But it turns out I was completely wrong about everything in every way.

And it's not even just my pre-show expectations either. Even while watching the show, it seems like every time I make a guess about what will happen in the plot, something else happens instead. Even in just six episodes, there have been many curveballs.

Anyway, one interesting bit is that in this episode, Kai is challenged to play a piece that is supposed to be very difficult, even for piano instructors. It sounded familiar to me, but they never said what it actually was. My best guess was Dvorak's New World Symphony, but there's no way to confirm that since the show doesn't say. @Sumisu, did you recognize it?

Also, I noticed that at the beginning when Kai says he wants to play the piano, he said what sounded like "hikitei" instead of "hikitai". Also at one point near the end, for "you don't understand", he says "wakattene" instead of "wakaranai". This must be some sort of dialect or slang thing. I checked the Japanese subtitles out of curiosity, and they show the -nes as well.

Image

Image
3 x

User avatar
Sumisu
Orange Belt
Posts: 109
Joined: Sun Nov 15, 2020 1:57 am
Location: USA
Languages: English (N) Japanese (B1?)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 0c0a4beb42
x 332

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby Sumisu » Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:41 pm

golyplot wrote:
Anyway, one interesting bit is that in this episode, Kai is challenged to play a piece that is supposed to be very difficult, even for piano instructors. It sounded familiar to me, but they never said what it actually was. My best guess was Dvorak's New World Symphony, but there's no way to confirm that since the show doesn't say. @Sumisu, did you recognize it?



Nope, I didn't recognize it either. It sounded somewhat contemporary to me, but it's hard to tell. It'll be interesting to see where the show goes from here. I liked when Kai finally called Ajino 先生. It's such a commonly used word, but you see its power and significance in a scene like that.
0 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri Aug 19, 2022 5:20 am

それからクリスマス前日になっても恵梨香は体調が良くならず、明日のクリスマスのイルミネーションの約束には行けないことも決まり、天斗たちは4人で行くことが決まった。

I initially thought that イルミネーション was just "illumination", but it seems like it refers specifically to the activity of viewing Christmas lights here. Is this a big thing in Japan?

Update: The next paragraph clarifies what this "illumination" involves:

クリスマスの当日、4人は夕方になり暗く始めた頃に集合した。大きなクリスマスツリーのイルミネーションや、様々な花のイルミネーション、カラフルな色彩が彩る空間に4人は魅了された。

---

This video came up in my Youtube recommendations this evening when I was looking for Japanese songs. I didn't know anything about it or the artist, so I was surprised when the girl first appeared on screen and I thought "hey, that looks a lot like the girl from A Whisker Away!" (which I watched back in 2020 when it came out.) I was proud that I managed to recognize it, even before the cat mask showed up and gave it away, despite having no context and not even knowing that this was an anime music video in the first place.

1 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Aug 20, 2022 5:24 am

Well, I've officially quit Forest of Piano. I've found it pretty boring lately, especially last night when I watched ep10 and couldn't pay attention to it at all, thinking about Magic: The Gathering the whole time instead. I was inclined to keep going since I figured I was near the end and not finishing a series feels bad, but then I noticed tonight that it actually has two seasons and there are still another 14 episodes to go, and so I decided to just stop watching it entirely.

---

I've been struggling a lot lately with 放す vs 放つ on WK lately. After missing the former again this morning, I came up with a new mnemonic: "Disney will sue you if you sing Let it Go". Of course, I'm not sure how well it will work since they sound so similar and have partially overlapping meanings, but hopefully it will help.

---

冷え込みは増すばかりで風邪も流行っていた。

I did a double take when I saw this as an example sentence on JPDB this morning, since I recognized it as an exact quote from いつも通りの日常で、、君からすれば, and in particular, the bit of ch8 that I read just the previous evening. In fact, the very reason it showed up was because I added the word 冷え込み after seeing it there, and this was the example sentence that showed up for the card on JPDB when I studied it the next morning. I had no idea that JPDB was pulling example sentences from web novels like this.

---

An interesting note on Satori Reader:

にっこりと微笑んだ

You might wonder if this expression is not redundant, since it seems to mean "they smiled smilingly."
To be honest, this is somewhat open to interpretation. The following is a combination of the thoughts of the author and this annotator.
By itself, hoho-emu sounds like a very gentle smile. It is usually a kind and warm smile, but the mouth is often closed. The face is relatively calm. (Note that the character used for the hoho part of hoho-emu means "faint; slight; subtle.")
Nikkori (along with friends niko-niko and nikoyaka) dials up the feeling of heartfelt happiness a little. Now it's closer to grinning, beaming, smiling radiantly. We're still not laughing out loud, but it's safe to imagine the full face involved: eyes squinting, a broad smile, perhaps an open mouth, a genuinely happy expression.
Although we can't find evidence for this claim in any dictionaries, the author feels that you're more likely to see teeth in a nikkori hoho-emu smile than a mere hoho-emu one.
So, while the difference is subtle, take the addition of nikkori to here to be increasing the sense of happiness in the smiles of Yuuta and his father.


The part that I really found interesting was the comment about hohoemu using the kanji 微 ("delicate/faint"). For some reason, I never paid close attention before and just assumed that it was 頬 ("cheeks") all along because it was using the reading of 頬 rather than 微 for some reason.
1 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Aug 21, 2022 5:27 am

I did it! I finally scheduled a lesson on Italki! For many months now, I'd been telling myself that I would try using Italki to work on speaking skills after I got back from vacation in August (on the 6th). When I got back, I decided that I'd look into Italki once I had finished working through the giant vacation review backlog on JPDB, which took almost a week. However, after that I continued procrastinating and trying to research things and telling myself that I needed to prepare more. This evening, I decided that enough was enough and that I should just take the plunge instead of worrying about preparation, so I signed up for Italki and scheduled a lesson for tomorrow evening. I'm sure it will be a painful embarrassment, but you have to start somewhere.

---

I also tried playing Altdeus: Beyond Cronos again for a little while today, the first time since June.

I'm still in the same place I've been since February - the very first room after the prologue. As I discovered in June, this is a room full of selectable objects, and each time you click on one, the various characters in the room will have a conversation about it. Presumably once you've gone through every object in the room, the game will advance to the next scene, but of course I've never attempted that.

I remember being frustrated in June that there was no way to replay the dialog, and it wasn't even possible to restart a conversation from the beginning. Once you've gone through it once, there is no way to select the item and see it again. And thus I was surprised when I finally booted up the game again today and all the objects in the room were selectable again - I went through two conversations for items that I remember choosing back in June to test it.

Furthermore, when I quit Altdeus and played Moss 2 for a little while, then went back to Altdeus, the same objects were selectable agian. It would appear that simply quitting the game resets the state of the room. I guess this is an incredibly slow and hackish way of replaying dialogs in the game. Unfortunately, I can still barely understand them, and there is little incentive to bother playing when it is easier to read things on the computer where word lookups are easy and you can just put things into Google Translate to try to guess the meaning.

---

I looked up Yorushika on Youtube again tonight and came across this impressive video. The song itself didn't appeal to me, but I was amazed by the video. It must have taken an incredible amount of work to animate.

3 x

User avatar
ryanheise
Green Belt
Posts: 459
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:13 pm
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Japanese (beginner)
x 1681
Contact:

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby ryanheise » Sun Aug 21, 2022 3:58 pm

golyplot wrote:Anyway, one interesting bit is that in this episode, Kai is challenged to play a piece that is supposed to be very difficult, even for piano instructors. It sounded familiar to me, but they never said what it actually was. My best guess was Dvorak's New World Symphony, but there's no way to confirm that since the show doesn't say. @Sumisu, did you recognize it?


It is Dvorak's New World Symphony, 4th movement, 1st theme:



3 x

golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
x 3404

Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Aug 22, 2022 5:15 am

1000th post! Woohoo!

It sure is a coincidence that 1000 posts happened exactly on the night that I did my first Italki lesson. Of course, Lotus had ~20 posts in this thread that disappeared when his account was deleted, so if those were counted, 1000 posts happened a while ago, but there's no way to see that now.

---

Anyway, the big news is that obviously, I had my first lesson on Italki this evening. It went better than I expected, considering that it's basically the first time I've actually tried speaking Japanese. Apart from practice in general, I think the main advantage of conversation practice is to identify gaps to practice. Of course the main gap is something I already knew - I don't know any of the basic conversational glue, like how to agree to questions or respond to greetings or that sort of thing. I was hoping that the teacher would help with that, but of course, I didn't even know how to express that to ask her about it.

Apart from that, there's all the things I tried to say during the lesson that I couldn't remember how to say correctly that I'll have to look up. Hopefully if I do that enough times, I'll get better at speaking Japanese.

During the lesson, the teacher sent me a list of discussion topics to read that we discussed (What are the famous landmarks in your country? What is the traditional dress of your country? What kind of Japanese food do you like? What is your personality, and are your siblings and parents personalities similar?). It's written with relatively easy kanji and vocab, but there was still one word I didn't know and wasn't able to read - 衣装. My best guess for the reading was ひょうそう, mistaking the first kanji for 表. I also misundertood 性格 and thought it meant "looks" or "clothing style" rather than "personality". I could have sworn I've seen it used for appearance before.


---

This morning, I heard Utaco say something that sounded like "gaishitsu seigen" a lot. I had no idea what it was, but after some Jisho consultation, I figured out that it is 外出制限, restrictions on going outside, which makes sense, since the episode was from early April 2020. I'm sure I'll hear that come up again.

---
そして、自分自身にとってはどうだろう。本当に満足できる人生だっただろうか。

I'd heard "jibunjishin" a lot, but always assumed it was 自分自信 (self confidence). I never realized it was actually 自分自身 and just meant "oneself" until seeing it written here on SR.

---

Since I gave up on Forest of Piano, I've been uncertain about what to watch next. Tonight, I tried watching Orbital Children. I didn't expect much, but at least the first episode was pretty fun and entertaining. The holographic displays and ads in the background and switches to cyberspace and back give it a very busy and confusing appearance, so it takes some getting used to, especially since the show throws you in the deep end as far as exposition goes, but it is cool to see their vision of space exploration and future technology.

Image
5 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests