Category Archives: Misc.

Digital Divide

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I’ve dealt with a mix of many different types of technologies in the process of building up this site: firebug, ssh/sftp, perl, HTML, DOM, css, javascript, Drupal, XeLaTeX, PHP, MySQL, akismet, and most recently jquery. Of course, the technology itself isn’t really that important compared to a solid understanding of core programming concepts (especially in procedure and functional languages) and basic networking concepts such as IP and nameservers. Lucky for me, I’ve had 4 years of college learning this stuff and 6 years of professional web development experience. But what if I knew nothing about computers and I wanted to build a site about learning Japanese on the internet? I would be stuck with some platform such as wikibooks or wordpress.com where I would lose a lot of control both in terms of my data and how it’s presented.

Considering how important the internet is becoming to our daily lives, don’t you think it’s ridiculous that I have to pay every year for my domain name and mostly likely for hosting if it wasn’t for ibiblio.org just to have my own website? I also think programming skills are becoming just as important as basic math and writing skills and should be part of every kid’s curriculum. What do you think?

Soul Eater

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I’ve been watching Soul Eater on youtube the past few days.　It’s pretty good and great for keeping up your Japanese. (The subtitled version of course!) But they stopped uploading new episodes in a かなり微妙なところ. Now I need to find more episodes somewhere else, I guess.

Google Wave

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I got an account on Google Wave, which is still in limited preview. I watched the video and I get that it would be a nice tool for online and real-time collaboration. Problem is I don’t really have anything to collaborate on since I’ve mostly been working solo. One idea I did have was on compiling a lot of example problems and exercises for a workbook. Does anybody have any good ideas for an online collaboration project for helping people learn Japanese?

Though I don’t know what it does or how it differs from my email address but my wave address is taekim.japanese AT googlewave.com

今日、GoogleWaveのアカウントをゲットしました。紹介ビデオを見て、オンライン上、複数の人数で作業するのに便利なのは分かりましたけど、個人的には大体一人で作業しているから、何に使えばいいか分かりません。ひとつ考えたのは、日本語の問題をいっぱい集めてワークブックを作ることぐらいだけど、皆さんは、日本語学習のために何かいいアイディアありませんか？

なんのために使うか分かりませんが、一応私のウェーブアドレスは、taekim.japanese AT googlewave.comです。

ibiblio, you rock!

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I didn’t notice this until today but the guide to Japanese grammar is featured on the front page of ibiblio! It has brought in about a 100 visitors a week for the past few weeks or about 0.5% of overall traffic with a bounce rate of 44%. :-)

Well, that’s not bad considering a non-targeted audience from a online library archive site. I’m proud to be part of Ibiblio’s mission. They’ve been a truly great hosting provider kindly serving up www.guidetojapanese.org for free since the beginning with unlimited space! I did write this in Notepad++ though because the site was inaccessible due to DNS nameserver issues. Heh.

Anyway, this post is to thank the great folks at ibiblio, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, IBM, and AMD for having me on their servers. Thanks!

And thank YOU for all your kind comments, support, and interest in the Japanese language. I hope you enjoy the new site and the new content I’m trying to put out as fast as possible.

Memorable Moments in Language Acquisition

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  1. When you aren’t sure what language a conversation was in. Oddly enough, you can recall it in both.
  2. When you have a dream in your target language.
  3. When you no longer remember what the language sounded like when you didn’t understand it. (Note: Learning a language because you like the way it sounds is a self-defeating goal.)
  4. When you realize how terrible most translations are for Japanese movies, animes, books, etc.
  5. When you inadvertently use the target language for reflex words such as, 「痛っ！」 or 「よいしょ」.
  6. When you use the body language of the target language, such as waving a hand to beckon someone over.
  7. When onomatopoeias actually start sounding like the sounds they’re supposed to represent. (Hint: They sound nothing like the actual sound, your brain has just been brain-washed.)
  8. When you somehow knew the meaning of a word without ever actually having learned it (my favorite and most baffling moment).

Feel free to share your own memorable moments.

Japanese TV

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Here’s a funny blog post about Japanese TV:
http://www.gaijinsmash.net/archives/drivel_in_a_box_1.phtml

Looks like Japanese TV has remained pretty much the same since I’ve been there.

I actually like Japanese variety shows, or to be more specific, the segments they show during it. It’s fun to watch a Japanese dude staying with some tribe in Africa hunting lions or cute, newly-wed housewives around the world cooking their husband a home-style breakfast in their cuisine.

One particular interesting bit I remember was when they compared the total monetary value of gifts （called 貢ぎ物） given to Shinjuku’s top host and hostess. It looked like the top host would win with a luxury car when at the very end the hostess remembers, “Oh yeah, that condo I’m living in was also a gift.”

What I CANNOT STAND in variety TV is watching the reactions and discussions by celebrities after they watch the segments. WHY AM I WATCHING OTHER PEOPLE WATCHING TV?? Maybe I should gather some friends and make a video of us watching celebrities watching TV. Then I can make a video of us again watching that video. Geesh.

Still, in my opinion, Japanese TV is way better than US programming. Also, I think they were doing reality shows before they really took off in the US and it never seemed to descend to the level of trash like “Flavor of Love”. For instance, 「あいのり」 started over 6 months before the first season of Survivor (ugh).

By the way, my wife LOVES London Hearts.

Being realistic with your schedule

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Wow, I haven’t posted in a while.

This post is about schedule management. I’ve had many personal projects I’ve wanted to do. The latest is my private Japanese lessons, which, in my opinion are going VERY well. (My students may or may not agree, hehe.)

I’m learning a lot and it’s very interesting to see the various strengths and weakness people have. The most enlightening part is how everybody can quickly pick up and learn Japanese, even the parts that are supposed to be “hard”.

Personally, I’ve totally debunked the “Japanese is hard” myth not only for myself but for everybody I’ve had a chance to tutor so far.

Anyway, one of the original hopes of teaching lessons was to get some inspiration and additional material for my textbook project. This really didn’t pan out as I had hoped. This is a mistake I and I’m sure many of you make; that is to magically hope that you can do more in the same amount of time.

So let’s do some simple math, shall we?

Hours in a Week: 168

Constant
Day Job with commute: 50
Sleep: 63
Preparing Food+Eating: ~12

Variable
Spending time with Family (Wife+dog): ~30
Japanese Lessons: ~4
Errands: ~5

Total time left: 4 hours.

If you add in new things that I’ve started such as yard work, my pool of free time rapidly dries up. It’s no wonder I don’t have time to work on other projects such as updating this blog or learning Mandarin. Compare this to list of responsibilities when I originally wrote the Grammar Guide.

Classes + Homework (except for Spring/Winter/Summer breaks) + Eating.

The rest of the week was just drinking and goofing off.

Based on current trends, once I have kids, you can expect to never hear from me again.

Update: Wow, I suck at math.

Here ya go, another resource for y’all

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Oops! This was published by accident before I was even halfway done!

If you’ve read my earlier posts, you’ll already know that I’m a major advocate of primary materials. This includes reading actual novels and other reading material that regular people read. I learned a whole bunch of stuff as a boy reading the Hardy Boys, Hercule Poirot, Chronicles of Narnia, and even (I’m ashamed to admit) Piers Anthony novels. Unfortunately, as an adult learning the a foreign language, a lot of the easier literature are geared for an audience of which you’re no longer a member of. While Agatha Christie is always good, I would hardly be able to stand the Hardy Boys now. And personally, reading children’s books in Japanese doesn’t really entertain me. Unfortunately, the adult books which are interesting are way too difficult to read for most people who are new to the language. So it’s nearly impossible to find reading materials with the right mix of difficulty and interest level. Don’t even get me started on the fake dialogues and boring readings in Japanese textbooks.

So I figured I’d try to write more stuff in Japanese to maybe fill in some of the gap. I can’t promise it’ll be interesting but I don’t think it’ll be any less interesting than the stuff in textbooks. I always feel some trepidation when I write in Japanese but I haven’t heard any crazy complaints and have received even some comments that it reads like a native wrote it. So I think it’s in pretty good shape. Even so, I can still use a lot more writing practice so it’s like killing two birds with one stone. Corrections are always welcome as always. Enjoy!

このブログをよく読んでいただいている方は、もうご存知だと思いますが、私は、外国語を勉強する時は、原文を読むことを強くお勧めしています。私自身も、「Hardy Boys」、「Hercule Poirot」、「Chronicles of Narnia」、 「Piers Anthony」など、色んな本を読んで非常にいい英語の勉強になりました。ただし、もう既に大人になってから外国語を勉強することになると、子供向けの作品は面白くなくなってしまいます。「Agatha Christie」の作品は大人向けなので、まだいいんですが、「Hardy Boys」は大人として読むのはちょっと辛いでしょう。それと同じように日本語で書かれている童話などは、個人的に興味ありません。しかし、大人向けの小説は、外国語を勉強している方には、たいてい難しすぎるのです。度々単語を調べないといけないのに、単語の漢字すら知らないし、熟語の読み方も当てなければいけない。単語ひとつだけを調べるのに何分かかってもおかしくないというのに、知らない単語だらけの文章を見ると、さすがに諦めたくなります。日本語学習者向けに適切な難易度で、かつ面白い読み物が少ないのが大きな問題だと思います。日本語学習者向けの読み物といえば、たいてい教科書に載っているわざとらしい会話やつまらない読み物ばかりです。

だから、その穴を少しだけ埋めるためにこのブログに日本語でもっと書こうと思います。面白さは保証できませんが、少なくても教科書に載っている物よりましかと思います。私ももっと書く練習をする必要があるので、一石二鳥です。訂正することろがあったら、ご遠慮なく教えてください。