The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

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Sayonaroo
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby Sayonaroo » Wed Mar 07, 2018 10:09 pm

since you have a kindle I recommend OTSUICHI's stuff that won awards like hanabi to shitai (not sure about the title) since they're page turners. I personally love his writing style because he doesn't waste a word as in he doesn't describe crap frivolously. since you have a kindle don't compromise and read boring crap ie children's books ( well some children's books are very well written and interesting enough to capture an adult's attention.... what I mean is don't read stuff just because it's easy. The number one reason should be that you enjoy it and the second reason is that it happens to be in japanese.)
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kujichagulia
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Thu Mar 08, 2018 1:02 am

Serpent wrote:intermediate is a really vague term that can be used for any level between about A2 and B2 :x I generally avoid applying the level to myself at all.

That is precisely why I do use the label, because it is vague. :lol: At times I feel like I'm closer to a B2, and at other times I feel more like an A2. This morning the principal of the school said something to me in Japanese, and I had no clue what he was saying. It was one of those "closer-to-A2" moments. :lol:

Serpent wrote:as for twitter, it's best to find something through the search or hashtags. i mostly like to follow individual people (are you maybe somewhat embarrassed to do that? seek out those who already have many followers)

I don't think I'm embarrassed to follow anybody on twitter. Well, I would be embarrassed to follow Donald Trump on twitter, but luckily I'm strong enough not to. :lol: The problem is that I don't know where to begin. You say to seek out those who already have many followers, but how do I do that? Is there a page somewhere I don't know about called "Most Followed People on Twitter"?

Sizen wrote:The easiest novel I ever read in Japanese, by far, was バンドリ. Though I must say that one of the only reasons I read it to the end was precisely because it was so easy.

Another great read...

Thanks for the suggestions, Sizen. I will add them to my growing list of recommendations and give them a try!

Sayonaroo wrote:since you have a kindle I recommend OTSUICHI's stuff that won awards like hanabi to shitai (not sure about the title) since they're page turners. I personally love his writing style because he doesn't waste a word as in he doesn't describe crap frivolously. since you have a kindle don't compromise and read boring crap ie children's books ( well some children's books are very well written and interesting enough to capture an adult's attention.... what I mean is don't read stuff just because it's easy. The number one reason should be that you enjoy it and the second reason is that it happens to be in japanese.)

You're right about not compromising. The great thing about using the Kindle app is that I can download samples of books for free. I'm always afraid of paying money for a book and not liking it when I read it. I feel like I wasted my money. With samples, I can easily see if I will like a book, then I can buy it. It's kind of like buying a sofa... except you don't sit on it. :lol:

Hmmm.... I think I'll sit on making jokes for the rest of the day.

Anyway, a while ago I started reading a sample of a novel aimed at pre-teens. It was really appropriate for my level - I probably knew 90% of the words - and there was furigana listed about the kanji. My wife saw it, though, and said, "Why are you reading something like that?" So I gave up and looked for more grown-up stuff. In retrospect, I shouldn't have listened to her. Now that I think about it, that's probably good advice in general. ;)

My thoughts about novels and reading are beginning to change, though. Before, I was coming at it with this approach: What book is going to be easy for me to understand, but also filled with colloquial, conversational Japanese that I can make notes of, practice, and acquire for my own use? I think that's the wrong approach, though. I think this is the right approach: What book is interesting?

============
For Japanese yesterday, I wrote in my journal... and really, that was it for intensive Japanese yesterday.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true. I had not watched 男子ごはん (Danshi Gohan) up to last night. I kept waiting for the perfect time where I have no distractions and nothing else to do, when I could just sit in front of the TV and watch. However, after dinner I was washing the dishes in the kitchen and my wife was in the bath, and I'm thinking, You know what? Forget it... I'm just going to start an episode of Danshi Gohan and have it on while I do the dishes. I'm tired of waiting for the perfect time. So I did. And you know what... it was just as I expected. It was hard to follow along while doing the dishes. I couldn't always look at the TV, and I couldn't hear the conversation because the dishes were loud.

But not all was lost. Even though I left the closed captioning off because it's hard to see from the kitchen, being a non-drama Japanese TV show, there's always some text appearing and disappearing from the screen, and that is sometimes helpful for me. For example, there was one time when the cook was pouring dressing on a salad, and text appeared on the screen: ドレッシングをかける. Hmmm... I had never thought about saying it that way before. My first instinct would be to say ドレッシングをする (which, in hindsight, seems strange) or ドレッシングをサラダの上におく (which probably works, but ドレッシングをかける sounds much better!). So, I did learn that expression.

Later, while my wife was watching TV, I wanted to read a little bit of the sample of ブラジル蝶の謎 (The Mystery of the Brazil Butterfly). There were just so many words I didn't know; I was having to look up at least a word a sentence just to make sense of the story. So, I showed the book to my wife and asked her if she thought it was a difficult story. She said, "A crime story, huh? Hmmm... wow, this is difficult even for me!" That was all the motivation I needed to delete it from my Kindle app. Maybe in the future.

Instead, I opened up another sample called 任侠学園 (Ninkyou Gakuen, or Chivalrous School/College). It's written by a guy named 今野 敏 (Bin Konno). It looked interesting; it had high school students on the cover, so I assume it's aimed for that age group. I only read the first few sentences before I realized, "Crap! I need to finish planning for my Hong Kong trip this weekend!" However, those first few sentences were much easier to understand than ブラジル蝶の謎, so it's promising.

It was a more productive day for my Portuguese. I did some more narrative questions from DLI Lesson 51, so I got some writing in. I did duolingo and I did five minutes of reading my journal entries aloud for speaking practice. I didn't do Anki reviews for either of my languages.
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Thu Mar 08, 2018 6:10 am

ロータス wrote:Have you checked out the Taishukan Japanese Readers or the two volumes of Nihongo Short Stories? You can find them at any bookstore with a Japanese study section. I thought they were intresting because I have never seen them before coming to Japan.

When I first heard of those, I had already been studying Japanese for several years, and I thought they were too easy for my level. I should probably give them another look, though. I think I’m at that tricky place where graded readers are easy, but the native materials I want to read are still difficult.

Thank you for the suggestions!

EDIT: I went to the Taishukan website and found these samples. Levels 0 to 3 are quite easy. The Level 5 sample - about Sakamoto Ryouma - has some words I don’t know, but they all seem to be related to samurai and the old way of life. I believe Level 5 is the highest in that series. It says Level 5 is pre-advanced (中級上). That’s surprising... I might have to read more of that book because it doesn’t seem advanced. :o
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby Serpent » Thu Mar 08, 2018 4:43 pm

kujichagulia wrote:The problem is that I don't know where to begin. You say to seek out those who already have many followers, but how do I do that? Is there a page somewhere I don't know about called "Most Followed People on Twitter"?
Well this was just my assumption educated guess :) Just because you said you only follow news sites and that's boring.

If you typically get your news elsewhere, I would unfollow most of these news accounts.

Are you familiar with the trending topics? You can browse them for a specific country or city, or get personalized ones (I just switched to that and I have no clue how that works... i guess it's based on what you like and rt).

Anyway, the minimal unit of twitter is a tweet. Find tweets you like, and eventually you'll figure out who to follow. Well, twitter can suggest it too, but if you mostly follow news sites it will probably offer more news sites :roll: :lol:
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kujichagulia
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Fri Mar 09, 2018 12:09 am

Serpent wrote:Well this was just my assumption educated guess :) Just because you said you only follow news sites and that's boring.

If you typically get your news elsewhere, I would unfollow most of these news accounts.

Are you familiar with the trending topics? You can browse them for a specific country or city, or get personalized ones (I just switched to that and I have no clue how that works... i guess it's based on what you like and rt).

Anyway, the minimal unit of twitter is a tweet. Find tweets you like, and eventually you'll figure out who to follow. Well, twitter can suggest it too, but if you mostly follow news sites it will probably offer more news sites :roll: :lol:

My twitter feed is full of English, Japanese and Portuguese news accounts. Twitter has become boring for me because I end up looking at a wall of news flashes whenever I go there, so it's probably a good idea for me to unfollow them. :lol:

I'll try the trending topics, although for Japanese it's usually the names of shows I don't watch, or things like "OMG Mari kissed Ryousuke!" I'll keep trying to find accounts that are more towards my own interests. Man, it is difficult being picky. :mrgreen: Thank you for the advice!

============
I forgot to mention yesterday that I did some of Portuguese DLI Lesson 52 on the commute to work. I continued the lesson this morning as well. This routine of doing DLI lessons every morning is going well - so well, in fact, that I can't remember how many weekdays in a row I've done DLI! I could go back and count if I weren't so lazy. But I'm not complaining. If I can't remember how many consecutive days in a row I've done it, then it probably means it's become a habit.

A few years ago, I would have designated "language days". For example, I'd do Japanese study on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Portuguese on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was always hard for me to stick to that routine. With this current DLI routine, it just feels easy: go to the train station, hop on the train, open the .pdf and start the audio.

My afternoon commute has been taken over by duolingo. I think duolingo is really good for my afternoon commute. Sometimes I feel too tired or sleepy to do DLI on the way home, and as I mentioned before, sometimes students or other teachers talk to me if they happen to be on the same train. duolingo is supplementary, so I don't feel as bad not doing it if people are talking to me.

The only other intensive Portuguese activity I did yesterday was continuing writing the answers to the narrative questions from DLI Lesson 51. I did that during a break at work. Oh yeah, I did Anki as well.

What I didn't do for Portuguese that I had planned: speak Portuguese for 5 minutes (I did speak for one minute; I sent an audio message to a person in Brazil) and watch an episode of Easy Portuguese (I have not yet done that this week, and it's looking unlikely because this week is busier than expected).

For Japanese, I wrote in my journal, did Anki reviews, and I read more of 任侠学園. A teacher in the office who is Japanese looked at my open iPad and saw 任侠学園 on there, and the first thing he said was, "Wow, a yakuza novel." I had not yet come to the part where it became clear that the story is about a group of yakuza, so I wondered how he could figure it out. He explained that the word 任侠 (ninkyou, which the dictionary translates as "chivalrous") is almost always used in situations involving yakuza. That's interesting. When I saw the word "chivalrous," I immediately thought of knights in Middle Age Europe, and I assumed the story was going to be about boys doing honorable things protecting girls at school, or something like that. It's funny how the same word can have different nuances in different languages and cultures.

I also had some Japanese speaking practice. Being in Japan, sometimes I have moments where I realize I'm getting more Japanese practice than I thought, and right now is one of those moments. On Thursday evenings I teach English to a teenage girl. Her house is far from the closest train station, so her mother picks me up in her car and takes me there, and she drives me back after the lesson is over. It's about 10 minutes each way, and the whole time we are chatting in Japanese. Her mother knows no English, so I'm forced to use my Japanese. It's definitely good practice, but sometimes it's embarrassing for me. I was talking about how my wife's car becomes dirty every week because she works near large factories. I remembered the word for "filth" (汚れ) but I somehow forgot the word for "factory" (工場). You'd think "factory" would be easier to remember.

What I didn't do for Japanese that I had planned: any kind of study at home. To be fair, I was working late last night, and what time I had at home went to preparing for my trip this weekend and talking to my parents in the U.S.
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby Serpent » Fri Mar 09, 2018 2:30 pm

kujichagulia wrote:My twitter feed is full of English, Japanese and Portuguese news accounts. Twitter has become boring for me because I end up looking at a wall of news flashes whenever I go there, so it's probably a good idea for me to unfollow them. :lol:

I'll try the trending topics, although for Japanese it's usually the names of shows I don't watch, or things like "OMG Mari kissed Ryousuke!" I'll keep trying to find accounts that are more towards my own interests. Man, it is difficult being picky. :mrgreen: Thank you for the advice!
I don't buy the whole notion of "picky", at least when it comes to spending your free time 8-)
As I said, along with the trending topics you can try the search and hashtags.
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby iguanamon » Fri Mar 09, 2018 5:03 pm

Like anything else, balance is achievable. I follow some news sites for stuff in my languages, like Radio France International in Portuguese, and VOA Kreyòl but I also find that following individual journalists often leads me to interesting items. Most of the news sites I follow are more like "magazines" than straight news. The BBC language services are really good for providing a wide variety of general interest topics. Politics is one of my interests, so I have a few commentators I follow. I also follow poets, musicians, an English learning site from Brazil, authors, cartoonists, language institutes, philosophers, bloggers, book-tubers, and some random regular people, mostly all in my languages. It makes for a good mix so that I'm not overwhelmed with "breaking news" all the time. If something is important, I'll know about it.

Curating a twitter feed is an art, not a science. My recommendation would be to think about what you like and search for people to follow. Then, try not to overwhelm your feed by following too many accounts. If you're
following over 300 accounts, it becomes a fire hose instead of a faucet. The thing about twitter is you want it to work for you instead of the other way around... kind of like the people who let srs overwhelm them. A good, balanced TL twitter feed can be great for language-learning and maintenance. You can interact with others in TL and learn stuff you wouldn't normally see on your own. I find that following some people with different views than my own useful too. Of course, you don't want to follow anyone you'd find offensive, but challenging my own views is important. I think it's important to gain other perspectives and views.

I found one of my favorite blogs, zenhabits.net, because I decided one day I should be reading some blogs. So I searched for "the best blogs of whatever year it was" and zenhabits was on the list. The internet loves lists. If you want to check out people you may be interested in following, try searching for the 100 or 25 or 10 or whatever most popular twitter accounts in whatever field you may have interest.

This might give you some ideas How I'm using twitter to learn Japanese. It may be geared more for less advanced learners than you are, though. Twitter has been highly useful for me in language-learning. I've made friendships via the service. I've been able to practice my TL's... including Ladino, when I needed it. I've found links to things I would've never know about before... all via twitter. Like anything else in language-learning, you are the one who has to choose who and what to follow based on your own interests. Just don't let your own interests be your only guide and remember to follow a few folks who you may not normally follow to put a little spice into it. When you tweak your account to work for you, it is an amazingly useful tool.
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:02 am

iguanamon wrote:Curating a twitter feed is an art, not a science...

Thank you for the useful information about using Twitter, iguanamon. I am VERY curious as to exactly how you were able to find friends on Twitter. That seems amazing to me.
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kujichagulia
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:16 am

Well, I'm back from my trip. It's taken me a bit of time to get back into my routine, though, but I'm getting there.

To kick this (shortened) week off, I'm going to review how I did last week. Basically, from Friday night I was preoccupied with the trip, so I'm going to give myself a break and just talk about what I did before that.

JAPANESE
  • Read 15 minutes of Japanese a day. I was pretty good with this, just missing Wednesday.
  • Anki reviews daily - I missed two days of Anki reviews, but that's alright.
  • 15 minutes of study at home each day. Absolute disaster. :lol: I knew this was going to be tough, and it was. I think I only did two days of any type of study at home, and that was limited to speaking practice by reading aloud my journals. Neither of those times lasted 15 minutes.
  • 15 minutes of Japanese writing each day. I wrote every day. Yay!
  • Watch one episode of 男子ごはん a week. Absolutely nothing here, other than that time I played one episode while washing the dishes. I barely got anything out of that. Multitasking is bad, folks.
  • Watch one episode of Easy Japanese a week. Nope. This used to be what I did when I was on the exercise bike at the gym I used to go to, but the new (cheaper) one doesn't have a handy Internet-connected monitor on their exercise bike.
  • 5 minutes of Japanese speaking practice daily. I might have gotten enough Japanese speaking with reading aloud journals and doing everyday things in Japan... like having to get a new smart card for the train after my last one died.

PORTUGUESE
  • Do DLI study during my morning commute every day. Did it every day! (On a related note, I did not do DLI on the morning commute yesterday or today, so the streak is over. But I was doing a really good job before the HK trip. Time to start a new streak.)
  • Anki reviews daily - see Japanese
  • 15 minutes of Portuguese writing each day... or three sentences, whichever comes first. Did this every day. Most of it consisted of answering the narrative questions in DLI.
  • Do one new lesson and reviews on the duolingo app each day. Did it every day!
  • Watch one episode of Easy Portuguese a week. Nope. See Japanese.
  • 5 minutes of Portuguese speaking practice daily. Only read my journals out loud for perhaps 10 minutes total.

I didn't come close to accomplishing all of my goals, but I'm not too downhearted. The week was shortened a bit because of the HK trip. Also, there are a lot of goals on this list. I'm setting some (relatively) big targets for myself, but even if I get halfway... I'm still doing more than what I was doing up until then. I'm getting more high-quality things done, so in that sense it's been a great success.
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Re: The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

Postby kujichagulia » Mon Mar 19, 2018 4:19 am

Well, there’s not going to be a weekly review this time - sorry ladies and gentlemen. :D Due to the short week because of my travels, and also because of the fact that I am not yet completely back into my routine, I probably didn’t meet any of my weekly goals, and besides that, I didn’t track my goals last week. So, there you have it.

I did some rare weekend focused TV watching. Last night, my wife wanted me on the couch next to me while she did some reading. She wasn’t using the TV and I had nothing else better to do from the couch, so I turned on a recorded episode of 男子ごはん。 I watched 20 minutes of it before falling asleep (it was after 10 PM). However, I was happy about even doing 20 minutes because it’s hard for me to sit down sometimes with nothing to do except watch TV.

I realize how difficult that show is sometimes. It’s really easy to follow the steps to the recipes. I know enough “recipe Japanese” from being forced to cook food that my wife likes. :lol: However, the small talk and banter that the two men do in between and during cooking is hard to understand. First of all, there’s a lot of slurring and a general lack of clear enunciation going on. Second, just like in English, and I suspect any other language, when you have two somewhat young men talking to each other (hey, I’m almost 40; 30-something-year-old men are young to me!), you don’t get “standard” language. You get “man” language, and that’s probably what’s going on there. They don’t teach that stuff in textbooks; you just gotta pick it up. Third, I simply need more vocabulary.

I watch it with the Japanese closed captioning on, but without a dictionary. Because it’s recorded, I could rewind it a little and listen again to a part that is difficult, but I didn’t. I wanted to watch it through one time before watching it again and trying to review interesting parts. Of course, if I can’t even watch it all the way through the first time, I won’t be able to do that.

Sometimes unknown words pop up over and over again, and I can figure it out from context. For example, they kept saying ご当地. ご is an honorific prefix, but I didn’t know 当地. The character 当 means something like “this right here” and 地 is “land; area; locale.” They kept saying things like 今日のご当地のグルメ, which I thought meant “today’s food from this location right here,” which was odd because they were talking about food from Saga Prefecture, but they were in their usual studio location in Tokyo. So I guess 当地 means something like “local”.

I hope this will help me to develop my listening skills, especially when it comes to “man Japanese.”
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