Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:48 pm

I browsed TvTropes last night and started reading about Isekai parody series. One of those was The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious (慎重勇者~この勇者が俺TUEEEくせに慎重すぎる).

I was surprised to see 慎重 in the title because that's a word I've had a lot of trouble with on Wanikani in the past due to the use of an uncommon reading for 重. I was also surprised because WK taught me that it means "discreet", but here it is used to mean "cautious". It's interesting when you discover that a word's meaning is a lot broader than you thought.

It also made me wonder what Sword Art Online would be called if it had been named according to modern web-novel conventions. :D My guess is that it would be titled "If I die in this game, I will die for real". What do you think?

I was also surprised to discover that Cautious Hero was not published on Shōsetsuka ni Narō, since I thought that's where all the isekai anime came from. Apparently, it was published on a completely different web-novel self publishing site.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:54 pm

This afternoon, doing Wanikani reviews, I missed 湖 due to not knowing the reading for it (mizuumi). After completing my reviews, I decided to watch a Hayato video, and soon into the video, I noticed him say mizuumi (around 0:44 below). It's funny how those things work out.

Incidentally, I just noticed another of the odd "demo" usage in the title of the video (for being able to fish even in a river of sewage).

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby golyplot » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:16 am

vonPeterhof wrote:
golyplot wrote:I watched the last four episodes of Erased tonight, back to back. I was only planning to watch two, but once it got to the reveal in ep10, I felt like I couldn't stop watching. I didn't understand the stuff about the spider's thread, but it's still one of my favorite anime.

The Spider's Thread is a very well known short story that's referenced a lot in Japanese and other Buddhist-inspired fiction. Although reading the Wikipedia article is the first time I learn that it's actually inspired in part by a bit in The Brothers Karamazov. I've only ever seen a TV miniseries adaptation of that novel though, and probably not even in its entirety, so no surprise that I never realized that.


I understood the story itself (since they told it in the anime). What I didn't understand is how it related to Erased, why the killer saw threads coming out of the heads of his victims, etc.


In other news, I was really puzzled by a line in one of Hayato's videos, 霜降り明星のせいやさんが. Despite painstakingly rewinding and pausing the video and looking up the words, I still couldn't make any sense of it. It appears that it was actually just a name and he was commenting on the fact that for some reason, all the citizens of his city were named 霜降り明星のせいやさん, which would explain why looking up the words didn't make it make any sense.

However, the real WTF was that 明星 is read "myoujyou" for some reason. It's stuff like that that make you think Japanese is trolling you.

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vonPeterhof
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:12 pm

golyplot wrote:I understood the story itself (since they told it in the anime). What I didn't understand is how it related to Erased, why the killer saw threads coming out of the heads of his victims, etc.

I'm afraid I don't really remember the specifics well enough to tell (doesn't help that the final arc was by far my least favorite part of the anime). From what I hear the anime left out a lot about the killer's backstory and motivations, so maybe that part was clearer in the manga.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Sep 08, 2021 4:52 am

Tonight, I watched Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (w/eng subs like usual). I found it interesting that most people call the main character Cherry, but his actual name is Sakura. However, it's not *written* like the word for cherry. This is the second anime I've seen where a character had the last name Sakura, and both times it was spelled 佐倉 rather than 桜 like you might expect. I wonder why.

Another interesting point was that Yuki had her bed covered in some sort of net. Is this common in Japan? What is it for, keeping out insects?

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Lastly, there was one thing that really bugged me - at the mall, one of the signs (the "arrivo") had no perspective. It looks like it's just a random word floating in midair! But the weirdest part is that all of the other signs in that scene due correctly display perspective. I just can't understand how such an obvious mistake could slip through into a theatrical movie like that. If it was every sign, I'd just chalk it up to lazy animators/lack of budget, but they clearly did care, since they got the rest right. And it looks like they're using 3d modeling that should handle that automatically anyway. How does that even happen? Did they mess up the word and just dub it on top later like a subtitle?!

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:32 am

Here it looks like Hayato is using iru rather than aru to refer to a truck. I thought iru was only used for living things? Is it referring to the truck driver by implication or something?

Also, I finished Noriko's podcast today and started listening to Noriko and Teppei's podcast for a change.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Sep 14, 2021 4:56 am

Tonight while listening to Teppei and Noriko, Teppei made a joke about wringing out his towels to get the scent of his own sweat, and I noticed he said shibotte, which I recognized as 絞る, a word I used to have considerable trouble with on Wanikani.


Sometimes doing WK feels like a pointless waste of time, but being exposed to words is helpful since it makes it easier to recognize them later. Speaking of which, on Little Witch Academia tonight, I noticed that the Fountain of Polaris was called izumi, another challenging word on WK (mainly because I can never remember whether the reading is izumi or itsumi). The previous episode had the Rastavan Ruins, which I noticed were called iseki (遺跡), a word that I still keep missing on WK.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Sep 16, 2021 5:03 pm

Two days ago, I decided to try JPDB, a kanji/vocab learning site I saw recommended on Reddit. Unfortunately, it started me off with an endless stream of really basic kanji. Even marking them "easy" didn't help.

I ended up using the option to mark the 1000 most common words as known (even though I probably don't actually know them all) and marking any words I know as "never show again". Unfortunately, this renders the %known stats useless, since "never show again" words are excluded from that calculation.

It will probably be a while before it becomes really useful, but we'll see how that goes.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri Sep 17, 2021 11:10 am

I ran into an example sentence on JPDB that didn't make sense to me.

まさか経営難だとは思わなかった

I've seen "to omoimasu" a lot, but why is there a は in the middle?
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:46 am

I recently learned the word kinoko (mushroom) due to watching LWA, where one of the main characters is obsessed with mushrooms. Tonight, I happened to notice Teppei use the word on the podcast, which was pretty cool. He made a comment about college students' rooms having mushrooms growing in them.

Also, interesting thing I’ve noticed on Wanikani is that a few of the words where I remember being frustrated by terrible mnemonics my first time through last year now have much better mnemonics. Two particular examples I’ve noticed are 預かる (Asgard -> A Zoo) and 退く (something about butts -> She rezone) .
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