Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Jan 29, 2023 6:40 am

When I watched Sword Art Online last night, I noticed them say "garigari" when the guy was talking about how he was scrawny (and thus could sneak through the air vents.) I noticed "garigari" come up again this morning while listening to Utaco's podcast, when she was talking about ice cream, which I thought was odd.

Jisho lists the definition "very skinny; emaciated; all skin and bones", which would match the SAO context, though "emaciated" seems a lot more extreme to me than what was subtitled as just "scrawny". However, I'm confused about why it would also show up when talking about ice cream (and sadly this is one of the old episodes before she started posting transcripts.) Jisho does say it can mean "hard and crunchy" too, so maybe she was talking about something crunchy mixed in ice cream? Or maybe it was something completely different, like "obsessively", or maybe I just misunderstood.

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Anyway, tonight, I did not watch SAO for once. Instead, I continued watching The Seven Lives of Lea as mentioned yesterday. It's not Japanese related, but I do like it so far.

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This evening when I briefly tried to do JPDB reviews, I was surprised to discover that the audio for example sentences was now autoplaying. It wasn't like that before, even this morning. I checked the changelog, and sure enough, there was an update today to add that as an option (and it seems to have defaulted to on for some reason - default off seems like it would make more sense, but I guess that is one way to make everyone aware of the existence of a new feature.)

Anyway, in the process, I noticed the previous update in the changelog, on January 15th, added a deck for the web novel 濁った瞳のリリアンヌ. As previously described in my log, I tried reading 濁った瞳のリリアンヌ for a while last spring/summer, and requested that it be added to JPDB back in May 2022. It had been so long though that I had completely given up on it ever happening. JPDB has updates from time to time adding decks for new media, but it is always anime, visual novels, games, dramas, or novel novels. I don't think they've ever added a new web novel deck before (at least since I started last spring), they only have what the bothered to import back when it was first starting up. So that was a big surprise.

Anyway, according to JPDB, it has a difficulty rating of 6/10 and I know 76% of the words, so it seems like it is still on the difficult end. For comparison, the story I'm reading now, 悪役令嬢が私をいじめるのには訳があるそうです。, is rated 2/10 with 89% words known. Not having to look up or skip over as many unknown words while reading really makes a big difference. Incidentally, the previous story I read, ふわふわ日記, also shows 89% words known, but is now rated 3/10. I could have sworn it was rated 2/10 back when I read it. Perhaps the import of 濁った瞳のリリアンヌ caused it to adjust from 2/10 to 3/10, since the rankings are just on a relative scale within the genre, but a) it is hard to believe that a single work could adjust things that much and b) if the new work is harder, that should logically adjust everything below it downwards if they're adjusted at all. Oh well, it's not a mystery that really matters.

Also, note that the "words known %" should be taken with a grain of salt because a) there are a lot of words I know but haven't specifically studied in JPDB (including lots of katakana words I effectively "know" despite having never seen before because they'd be obvious if/when I do see them) and b) I've blacklisted a large number of words on JPDB, especially grammar type stuff. There are also a bunch of words marked known on JPDB that I don't really know, since I set it to mark everything up to level 47 on Wanikani as known. However, words known % is still useful for judging relative difficulty of the different stories listed on JPDB.

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Now that I've finished going through all the old IOSYS Touhou videos, or at least all but the dregs, I figured I should list the ones that actually seemed good. Of course, the best is still the one I mentioned back in November, お人形遊び.



However, there are two others that seemed decent as well:



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golyplot
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Jan 31, 2023 7:00 am

I read a bunch more of 悪役令嬢が私をいじめるのには訳があるそうです。today.

「賭け、って何をするんですの?」
「テストで点が良かった方が勝ち。負けた方は勝った人の言うことを一つ聞くって言うのでどう?」

I found the 点が良かった方 construction interesting, since it's not at all the way English speakers would think. I'm pretty sure I've seen it before (and in fact vaguely recall there being a note on SR calling this out explicitly), but it's still hard to get used to. Also interesting that 賭け can be used as "bet".


 ナッツと一緒に鶏肉とピーマンあたりを炒めてみようかな。多分美味しいでしょ。

I initially mistook 炒 for 妙 or 秒 and got very confused, but apparently it is a new kanji I've never seen before that means "stir-fry".


私もそれにならって鞄から単語帳を取り出す。

Speaking of which, here's another new kanji, 鞄.


 私も遅れずにペンを持ち、問題文を見る。
 と、言っても最初はサービス問題。授業さえ聞いていれば答えられるようなものだった。

I was confused for a moment by the use of サービス here. I'd heard of "service" used to refer to stuff being free before, but that was always about goods or services being sold. I assume from context that Phil is talking about the first question on the test being so easy that it is basically a freebie here, but it is very jarring to see "service" used for that.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Feb 11, 2023 9:29 pm

Well, it sure has been a while. It's embarrassing that my log fell all the way down to the bottom part of the third page, when I normally update very frequently. Part of it is that I've been struggling lately to keep my head above water with even my basic minimal Japanese routine (WK+JPDB+SR). Also, I got re-addicted to Magic: The Gathering for three days this week, so that was unfortunate as well.

My vow to avoid MTG wasn't even the only months-long streak I broke on Monday. I also broke my JPDB streak as well. Every day since October 28th, I've been doing at least 10 new cards on JPDB every day, come hell or high water. I started out doing 13 cards a day but went down to 10 in December.

Even at 10 cards a day, I'd really been struggling lately, but had always brute forced my way through every day for the sake of maintaining my streak and so on. Unfortunately, after getting re-addicted to Magic Monday evening, I completely forgot about JPDB until it was too late, and thus finally broke my 100-day streak. In fact, by pure coincidence, it seems that my streak was exactly 100 days when I finally screwed up.

Here's my JPDB graph, with the missing day circled. Note that JPDB still shows my streak intact, because JPDB's streak counter only counts whether you did any reviews at all that day, not whether you did new cards.

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Years ago, I once read that Kitkats are very popular in Japan because the name "kitkat" sounds like "good luck" in Japanese. When I learned Japanese, I tried to figure out what it might be, but couldn't see any resemblance. By chance, I was watching a Hayato video last week when he said it, finally ending the mystery.

In this video, he jokes about the chocolate bars in the game being Kitkat bars, and says "kitokato de kitto katsu". I guess it is more like "you will surely win" than "good luck" as I was told.

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Also last week, I watched Ni no Kuni on Netflix. the review I'd read was not great, but I watched it anyway out of boredom, and sure enough, it is pretty dumb and forgettable. (Apparently, it was also a box office bomb in Japan, which is why it got dumped on Netflix in the first place). But what I found interesting was how there were three prominent katakana terms in the movie that were translated completely differently in the subtitles.

The first is "toraberer", subtitled as "Wayfarer". It's a bit amusing, since "traveler" is already an English word, but I guess it is fair, since presumably the use of an English term in Japanese is meant to sound a bit exotic, and so switching to "wayfarer" would preserve the exoticness.

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Also, the magic sword in the movie, "guradio", was subtitled as "Mornstar". No idea where that came from.

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Lastly, we have Princess Asha, who got subtitled as "Princesss Astrid" for some reason. I thought it was weird, because Asha is already an English name! I wonder if "asha" is just the mangled Japanese attempt to say "Astrid", but I feel like if that was what they were going for , it would have been rendered as "assturedo" instead or something.

Speaking of incomrehensible katakana pronunciations, I also ran into this in another Hayato video I watched last week.

At first, I just heard him saying what sounded like "tori aji", and I didn't even realize it was katakana. I assumed it was just some normal Japanese word, something along the lines of "取り味", but I had no success finding it on Jisho. Fortunately, it came up as text on screen, and it became clear that it was actually meant to be triage of all things. WTF!? I've seen some weird waseieigo pronunciations before, but it's rare to see something that is so unrecognizably different than the English word it is attempting to imitate, even after accounting for the usual Japan-ization patterns.

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golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Feb 12, 2023 6:44 am

This morning, I found a playlist of Ushizawa's Shobon videos and watched the first one. I'd previously stumbled on the sixth video and watched it without any context. Hopefully watching them in order will work better.

Anyway, I learned two new words: bane (spring) and zangai (debris). I also noticed that he seemingly used "girigiri" a lot to describe the precise jumps required in the game.

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I've mentioned this before, but lately I've been spending a lot of time looking for old IOSYS Touhou videos to try to find more Japanese songs I might like (mostly without success). Tonight, I came across a video recommended by Youtube, apparently from a different group called "Yonder Voice".



I looked at the channel out of curiosity and watched one of their other videos. Sadly, this one does not have English subtitles and I haven't been able to find a translation of the lyrics anywhere. (It also isn't animated, but it seems like most of them aren't. Making an animation like that first video must be a ton of work.) Anyway, I was surprised at the music, since it seemed almost like a different genre than all the songs I'd seen before.



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Thursday night, I finally finished Sword Art Online (s4). One oddity is that a note shows up which is subtitled with "Ye" and "yon". It made me think that the Japanese in the note must be archaic as well, but it didn't seem out of the ordinary to me. Does anyone know whether it is or not?

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Since I finished SAO, tonight I tried watching the first episode of Run For the Money on Netflix, a reality show where contestants have to hide/run away from "hunters" for prize money.

Unfortunately, it was a lot worse than I expected. Especially at first, it primarily consists of disconnected shots of contestants and hunters walking around, and it is impossible to get any idea of where everyone is, what they are doing, how close different people are to being caught, etc. They desperately need better editing and to use more maps and aerial shots so the audience actually has some idea of what is going on. (There are a few of these later in the episode, one pictured below, but it still isn't common.)

The narration constantly repeats some rules in an overly dramatic voice to fill time, while not bothering to explain other bits at all. For example, it took me a while to figure out that a) there is a timelimit on the mission and b) the prize increases didn't take effect until the mission is over, because they never explained that until they implied it at the very end.

There's also weird stuff like a moment where the Game Master silently holds up the photo of a contestant next to his face and grins, and it is played like it is supposed to be a joke of some sort, but I didn't get it at all. Maybe the two are celebrities and people who knew them would understand it?

Anyway, I was originally planning to watch the whole show, but with the first episode this disappointing, I don't think I'll continue after all. So I still need to decide which anime I'll watch next.

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golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
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Languages: Am. English (N), German, French, ASL (abandoned), Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese (N2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:22 am

Tonight, since I was still looking for a new anime to watch, I decided to trying watching Kimi ni Todoke on Netflix, without knowing anything about it, even the premise, let alone reading reviews. Plot and character-wise, I found it a bit forgettable and hard to get absorbed into, since it seems like a generic romance. Instead of paying attention to the story, I kept getting distracted by the art style and use of 爽やか.

This anime has an unusual art style, where the backgrounds have a water-color like look that tend to fade out around the edges. It reminds me a bit of Children of the Whales. Of course, the art style isn't like that of CotW, but they are both shows that have an unusual art style that doesn't look like every other anime. The character designs and art style are also a bit unusual.

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The main character's name is Sawako, written 爽子, as the intro tells us. I recognized the 爽 kanji, since it is on WK, but I knew it as "refreshing", and thus thought it was odd that the subtitles said that it means "cheerful child".

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The word 爽やか (sawayaka) also shows up many times in the dialogue of the first episode. What is really interesting is that it is subtitled very inconsistently. The same word gets subtitled as "cheerful", "refreshing", or even "friendly" at different points in the episode, and even gets subtitled as different words when used multiple times in the same scene. It's interesting to see how a connection in the Japanese dialog would be completely lost on an English speaker who doesn't know Japanese (or doesn't happen to be paying attention to the Japanese dialog - I might not have noticed it myself if the show were more interesting :D )

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One last point of note is that when Sawako "reveals" to the two girls that she can't actually see ghosts like the rumors claim, they say something about "coming out" in English in the Japanese dialog. Now that's an interesting waseieigo word.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Feb 14, 2023 6:02 am

For the last two weeks or so, I've been really struggling with JPDB, and I've only been getting through the review pile and daily new card target minutes before the deadline each night. Therefore, I decided that starting tomorrow, I'll lower my target from 10 new cards a day to 8, and will also adjust the settings to use shorter SRS intervals. Obviously, the latter will mean a lot more reviews in the short term, but I'm hoping that it will make things easier in the long run.

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With my two week hiatus from this log, I haven't posted much about SR, but the chapter this morning had some interesting notes.

体力的にというよりは、肌を刺すような日差しで、暑さがきつかった。

SR has a note explaining that というよりは means "not so much ~ as ~". Seems like a useful grammar pattern to learn (not that I'm actually going to remember it).


キャンプ場から一緒に登っていた、マイケルという人が、明彦と一樹に、「帽子を水で濡らすといいぞ。少し楽になるから。

I was surprised by the use of 楽 to mean "comfort" here, since I always thought of it as "fun" or "pleasure".

軍の救急隊員ってとこかな。

Another interesting note here:

This sentence might have struck you as challenging. Let's take a look together.
First, the toko here is short for tokoro.
The tte here is the casual quoting particle, which can often imply an omitted iu.
In other words, eliminating the abbreviations, this sentence is equivalent to:

軍の救急隊員というところかな。
I guess you'd call me a military medic.

The expression ~ to iu tokoro is used to summarize or approximate something. Here, the sense is as follows. Michael had a specific rank and job description while in the military, but he might not know the exact Japanese words for those things, especially if they include military vocabulary. And even if he did, it's likely that Kazuki and Akihiko will be unfamiliar with such names.
So he picks a description that will be easy for them to understand, using the common word kyuukyuu tai-in, "an emergency medic" (the kind that comes in an ambulance).
The to iu tokoro tells us that this is the rough approximation of the actual title and position.


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Kimi ni Todoke ep2:

In this episode, Sawako tells Kazehaya that animals and babies are afraid of her, at least going by the subtitles. The weird part is that the line here is "ato kodomo", but is subtitled "babies are too". I usually think of "kodomo" as "children", and I'm wondering whether the Japanese has a bit of a different nuance here or not.

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In this episode, there's a seat change, and the main conflict is that noone wants to sit next to Sawako because they think she's bad luck, until her friends deliberately choose seats next to her. But the amusing part is that of course she manages to end up in the Stock Anime Protagonist Seat, next to the window, second from the back.

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At the very end of the episode, a mysterious new character appears briefly without being named. I assume she's going a major character later, but what I found notable is how from the back she reminded me very strongly of Ayumi from Glass Mask. I thought that Ayumi had long blonde hair like that as well, but going by Google Images, it seems that my memory played tricks on me and it was actually light brown. I wonder if I'm the only one who saw the resemblance.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Feb 16, 2023 6:14 am

The JPDB change proved short lived, as when I set it to shorter SRS intervals, it suddenly added 335 reviews, presumably all the items that would be immediately up for review under the shorter intervals. I knew I'd never get through that, so I immediately changed it back to normal. I did stick with the eight card per day limit though.

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I watched parts 3 and 4 of Ushizawa's Shobon series last night and this morning. Not only is the gameplay itself entertaining, but I think they make a good way to learn Japanese as well, as it is relatively easy to understand while the host reacts to and puzzles through the game elements. It's a shame there's only one more video to watch.

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Unfortunately, this evening tragedy struck. Youtube was still working normally this morning, but this evening, it suddenly broke. Whenever I try to put a video into fullscreen, the screen is just black (but the audio still plays). I quickly ruled out extensions as the culprit. Even weirder, if I switch to my "Storyyeller" account (I have two channels on Youtube as a result of Google merging pre-existing Youtube accounts with Google accounts way back when), videos do play normally. Unfortunately, this isn't a real solution, because not only does it mean losing watch and recommendation history on Youtube, but it also means I can't use Youtube Music either. It's a real shame, since it would be more convenient to be able to comment on Youtube under the storyyeller alias as well. But as for the bug, I'm completely stumped, and I hope it goes away soon, as it makes Youtube near unusable, since I always watch videos in fullscreen.
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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)
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Feb 18, 2023 7:04 am

Last night, I followed a link to a Youtube video, and immediately fullscreened it out of unconscious habit. Surprisingly, it worked. It seems that whatever the Youtube bug was is fixed now, which is a great relief. That was a lot faster than I expected.

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One thing I've been wondering about for a while is the setting of 悪役令嬢が私をいじめるのには訳があるそうです. It is set at the National Isis Academy in the fictional country of Artelialy??? (アートリアリー), and all the characters have Western names (Phil, Sofia, Charlotte, Tina, Zion, etc.), so one would assume that it is set in a Western-inspired fantasy world.

However, Phil has a brief dilemma about which club to join at school, where it is implied in a very Japanese way that it is super important for all students to join exactly one school club. Furthermore, the "chapter" I read this morning talks about planning for the school festival, and Phil suggests that their class do a restaurant.

It's very weird, because culturally, everything seems very Japanese, despite the fact that all the names are Western. I wonder if it is a deliberate fusion, or if the author just can't be bothered to research non-Japanese cultures or what.

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Kimi ni Todoke ep6:

One thing that is really weird is Mysterious Blonde Girl. She is shown briefly at the end of episode 2, which I thought was a sort of stinger implying that she would be properly introduced in ep3 and an important character going forward. However, she just got another brief cameo in episode 3, still with no name, description, or dialog, and then she didn't appear at all in episodes 4 or 5.

Anyway, at the end of episode 6, she briefly appears again, still with no name, but she does talk for the first time. I guess this is probably the real stinger that forshadows her proper introduction in the following episode. It's just really weird that they would pull that several times and not follow through.

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The episode subitles also mention "zashiki warashi", which I had to look up. Apparently, it is a kind of youkai. Also, I just noticed that the kanji onscreen is the "juvenile" kanji, 童, but read "wara", rather than "dou" like I've always seen before. I didn't even know it had kun'yomi, but per Jisho, it can apparently be read "karabe" or "karashi' by itself.

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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
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Feb 19, 2023 9:17 pm

I wasn't too keen on Kimi ni Todoke originally, but ep7 was pretty enjoyable. Incidentally, the Mysterious Blonde Girl teasing continues. After the (second!) ominous stinger at the end of ep6, she once again doesn't appear at all, except as a brief yearbook photo halfway through the episode. At least we finally learn her name, Kurumi.

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It took me six episodes to notice, but for some reason, the show has unique title cards for each episode with random art that seemingly has nothing to do with the episode content. The episode 6 one features grapes everywhere, while ep7 (which I didn't screenshot) has Sawako in bunny ears. Neither has anything to do with the actual show.

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Yesterday, I noticed Utaco say "sonogo", which surprised me because I thought that sonogo was the more literary version and sonoato was preferred in normal speech.

I also just discovered that the Chrome IME appears to be broken, so I can't type in Japanese at all. That's pretty annoying. It seems like if it's not one thing that breaks, it's another. Hopefully, it gets fixed as fast as Youtube did, but I'm not optimistic.
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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
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Feb 22, 2023 2:49 am

For some reason, Kimi ni Todoke episode 8 did not have a title card. I think perhaps I actually didn't fail to notice before and it is just that only eps 6 and 7 have them for some weird reason.

Episode 8 also finally introduces Mysterious Blonde Girl properly after six trait episodes of teasing. Although she hasn't actually done anything yet, except act like an innocent little girl. It's weird because based on some spoilers I saw, I was under the impression that she was going to be a manipulative villain character, but either I'm wrong about that or that is a twist the show is still trying to hide.

Also of note: After Sawako tries to borrow a soccer ball in order to practice soccer, only to find out that this is not allowed, she says, per the English subtitles, "My great plan fell flat." However, the dialog sounded like "hatten ga kuzurechatta". I looked up "hatten" on Jisho, expecting it to be a new word for "great plan", but instead, it just means "development".

Jisho says that hatten can mean "growth" and kuzureru can mean "to be thrown into disarray", so I guess the Japanese was something like "my soccer skill development was thrown into disarray", but it still seems odd and very different than the English subtitles.

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