If you’ve been following my twitter account, you may have noticed that I’ve been posting a new word along with an example sentence and a link to the source material every day for the past few weeks. I wanted to see if I could keep up with it before I blogged about it. So far, it’s been really easy to take a few minutes out of the day to pick a word, search for something using that word, and post something on twitter every day.

What I haven’t mention yet is that each word I pick is a word I just learned personally. Usually, I pick a word from my dictionary history, which has things I looked up recently while reading books or listening to podcasts and then search around for something online that uses that word. It’s actually more for myself than anything as it allows me to review a word I just learned in a different context. At first, it annoyed me that I couldn’t just add a bunch and schedule them to appear later on twitter. But it’s actually helping me to memorize the word because it may be a few days after I learned it that I actually post it. As fans of SRS know, it’s best to not think about a word for a while before conjuring it up again.

If you’d like to try your own WOTD on twitter, post a link to your account in the comments so I can follow you. Don’t just post the word though (which is same as looking it up in the dictionary). Try to find a sentence that uses the word and post a link to the source.

Want to feel dumb? Then listen to this podcast where a middle-school student discusses a diverse range of topic such as 電力自由化, the electricity market (PX), derivatives, M&A, and LED. I especially liked vol94 and learned a lot about the electricity exchange. Check it out!

http://itunes.apple.com/jp/podcast/id291600295?l=en

When I was in middle-school, all I remember doing was fooling around and play games. Not to mention trying to survive through middle-school.

I found this fairly interesting video podcast the other day. It’s a Japanese cooking show about Korean food. Talk about being multicultural!

I already learned a new word: 「長蛇」. I had no idea that the on-yomi of 「へび」 is 「ダ」. I love how Japanese TV shows emphasize things said by showing it in large text on the screen. Makes it real easy to learn new words.

So while I have a physical book to read in convenient locations around the house (such as certain locations where I get to sit undisturbed for a few minutes *ahem*), I like to have something online to read as well in case I don’t happen to have a book on me. I figured it was finally time to start reading some of the more famous Japanese literature works. I tried to read 「こころ」 before but it was too depressing for me to get very far. Now, I am reading 「吾輩は猫である」 and I’m enjoying it a lot more.

I also got the Android app to get these ebooks from 「青空文庫」. Unfortunately, the mobile version doesn’t seem to have the handy furigana text, which is too bad because this is fairly challenging reading even with the modern kana and kanji conversions (such as いう instead of いふ). There’s tons of Kanji I’m not familiar with, too many to list here but here’s an interesting sentence:

吾輩の尊敬する筋向（すじむこう）の白君などは逢（あ）う度毎（たびごと）に人間ほど不人情なものはないと言っておらるる。

Apparently, 言っておらるる is the equivalent to 言っておられる. I’m not too far into the story yet but I’m enjoying it so far. I like cats and this book doesn’t seem as depressing as 「こころ」. I’ve got a couple novels I’m going through now so this will probably be my last blog post on what I’m reading for a while. But I think I’ve introduced a number of resources with tons of reading material so please share interesting things you’ve read or are reading in the comments!

Difficult: 4.5/5 (with 新字新仮名)
My Rating: Will update later

So apparently, while I was busy with life (new job, new family member, etc.), the next Haruhi book came out over a month ago. For those of you non-anime fans, 「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」 has been the hottest thing probably since Evangelion. Actually, you don’t have to be an anime fan because the stories originally come from novels.

I bought the latest volume: 「涼宮ハルヒの驚愕」, which has finally come out after 4 years of delay. So actually, I’m going to be reading the previous book again just so I can remember the story. To give you a taste of what the books are like, here’s the first sentence from the first volume. The sentence is so wordy it’s also the first paragraph. So that should give you an idea of the writing style.

サンタクロースをいつまで信じていたかなんてことは、たわいもない世間話にもならないくらいのどうでもいい話だが、それでも俺がいつまでサンタなどという想像上の赤服じーさんを信じていたかと言うと、これは確信を持って言えるが、最初から信じてなどいなかった。

The anime starts off the same way as well so you can hear the first couple lines of the book.

If you don’t happen to have a Japanese bookstore handy nearby, it looks like you can order it online. I haven’t tried ordering from the site myself so that’s for you to try.

I personally really enjoy the books. It has a nonlinear narrative, which I always like (my favorite novel is Catch-22) and it’s further complicated by the time traveling bits. Plus, with 11 books in the series so far (last one is split in 2), there’s plenty of reading material!

Difficulty: 4/5
My rating: 5/5

Lately, I’ve been spending some time trying to improve my writing skills in Japanese, which definitely needs some more work. What’s the first step to improving writing skills? By reading of course! So I’ll be sharing with you guys what I’m reading right now on the internet.

I’ve been trying to find some interesting short stories on this online literature magazine called 「破滅波」. I just learned a new expression today: 「音を上げる」 and here 「音」 is read as 「ね」 not 「おと」. It’s from a story called 「僕はガードマン」:

ガードマンという仕事は肉体的にも精神的にもとても疲れる。アルバイト情報誌で時給の高さに惹かれてやってはみたものの、あまりの過酷さに音を上げる毎日だった。

Unfortunately, it’s in Flash so I’ve been using the IME drawing pad to look up Kanji.

One word I thought might be tricky is on page 8:

これは対応を誤ると大事になる。

Here, a group of yakuza is approaching the guardman. By context, 「大事」 doesn’t mean “important” and instead should mean “a big matter” so it should be read as 「おおごと」 and not 「だいじ」.

It’s a fairly short story in an ordinary everyday life setting about how the supposed best people in society act in the worst way and vice-versa.

New Kanji (for me): 憤懣
Category: Everyday life observations
Difficulty: 3/5
My rating: 3/5 stars

Feel free to share any interesting reading you’ve come across.