Yearly Archives: 2008

Another approach to the textbook

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I haven’t been spending as much time as I’d like on the textbook project and I think I’ve figured out the reason why. It’s just not turning out the way I like and therefore I don’t feel any excitement about working on it.

I’ve been approaching it the traditional style, basing the dialogue on lesson themes such as introductions and greetings. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to make any kind of interesting dialogue with those kinds of themes. How many more books do we need with the same old dialogue as below?

A)　おはようございます。おげんきですか？
B)　おはようございます。はい、げんきです。Aさんは？
A)　わたしも、げんきです。

I think I’m going to take time to think about another approach. One idea I had was to write all the dialogues first and based the book around them. Each chapter would break each dialogue down and work on practicing and expanding the concepts and grammar within the dialogue. Each dialogue would also build upon the previous one and grow more and more advanced. I know, it’s probably easier said than done, but I think my first goal should be creating a large selection of useful and interesting Japanese and less on the explanations.

Ultimately, my goal is to grab the reader and get him hooked from the very beginning. And what I have now just isn’t cutting it. Any suggestions for topics, characters, and story lines?

By the way, some of you may have noticed already but I added a new Feedback page. It’s currently empty but I hope to build it as a page for your feedback (duh).

It started with a language requirement

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I have this bad tendency of never looking back in the past. As a result, I often have an extremely spotty memory of past events and the order in which they occurred. I also have another bad habit of never keeping anything around. Looking back, I really wished I had kept a journal of my Japanese studies so that I can better remember how I personally learned Japanese. Instead of crying over split milk, I decided to dig into my crusty memories and document what I remember before I forget it any further.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m trying to show off or anything. My intent was to write an interesting account of my personal experiences with Japanese. Feel free to share your own experiences with learning the language. You also might want to think about starting a journal and keeping all your old material together so you don’t end up in my position now.

Holy crap, class every day??

I started learning Japanese in my sophomore year in the fall of 2000. I had considered taking Japanese or Chinese during my freshman year but balked at the fact that unlike every other class, language classes met every weekday and often as early as 9 IN THE MORNING.

I had thought I could squeak by the language requirement by taking a proficiency exam in Korean. Then I spoke with a fellow student whose Korean was 10x better than me. I was freaked when she told me how hard the test was involving reading articles, writing essays, and other crazy activities in Korean. Unluckily for me, the college recently hired a Harvard grad from Korea to teach East-Asian History and he took over the role of conducting the test. So in my sophomore year, I bit the bullet and prepared myself to take Japanese class every weekday and IN THE MORNING so that I could graduate.

I sucked most of the first year

Don't use this

Don't use this texbook, trust me

We spent about 2 weeks learning Hiragana and I remember how difficult it was to memorize all the characters. I spend hours practicing on the whiteboard and would still space out on certain characters like 「ぬ」. I also remember lamenting the fact that 「学生」 sounded like “gaksei” instead of “gakusei” on an audio quiz.

I personally went through all the stuff I complain about in this blog. The Japanese curriculum recently switched to Nakama, which is not a very good textbook (though there are worse textbooks out there). It was weeks before we even learned any verbs and we started out with the freaking masu-form. I was also very confused by the “emphasis” explanation of 「んです」 and completely baffled when the teacher wrote 「Aさんは、何が好きですか。」 since it used both 「は」 AND 「が」. My poor knowledge of Korean certainly didn’t give me much of an advantage. Finally, casual form and slang wasn’t taught in that class nor in any of the more advanced classes.

Anyway, I was a pretty big slacker in Japanese 101. The only time I went to the Japanese club activities was at the end when “tea night” became “sake night”. The second and third year students spoke some stuff to me in Japanese and I was like, “Oh god, where’s the booze?”

I think it was somewhere between Japanese 102 and 103 (we were on trimesters) that I really started to pick up the pace. I really wish I could say what got me started putting so much extra time and effort on Japanese but I think it was for a number of reasons that came about gradually. I started hanging out with the Language Assistant and still remember our conversations about Japanese while walking around campus. It was from her that I learned casual speech and that you can do amazing things like modify a word more than once, for instance 「みたくなる」. I also asked her to coach me to make sure I was pronouncing every sound correctly, in particular 「つ」 and 「ふ」. (I have to admit Korean did help me with the 「ら、り、る、れ、ろ」 sounds.)

Even though we did end up going out for a while, I’d like to stress that it was my insistence on constantly asking questions and trying to speak in Japanese as much as possible that really improved it. I also asked her to correct my mistakes every time and took her corrections with the utmost appreciation and followup questions unlike other students who just got annoyed and brushed it off.

I think it was so easy to talk to her in Japanese because she knew exactly what I knew and how much I could understand. She was also very good at “dumbing down” or simplifying her Japanese for me. So I was very lucky to have such a tailored teacher and conversation partner. The only drawback was my girly Japanese since everything I knew about Japanese was from a girl.

そうよ！その時は本当にひどかったよ！

In the summer, I stayed on campus to do an internship for an internet startup in Minneapolis. I didn’t do much at my internship (it was during the bubble) but I picked up what meager Japanese material I could find at the library and studied with Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC. I quickly went through all of Nakama 2, which we started in Japanese 103 (you can imagine how boring 204 and 205 became after that) and waded through “An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese“, which was pretty challenging. By the way, I don’t recommend either book though the latter wasn’t that bad as self-study material. However, the grammar explanations for patterns such as 「にとって」 and 「として」 are confusing and didn’t really help me much. My housemate also kindly lent me some comics to study, specifically 烈火の炎. I never got too far with that however because it was still too advanced for me at the time.

I think this was also the time I really started learning Kanji not by themselves but along with the vocabulary. I remember going to the school library and spending hours on the blackboard writing out the words I encountered in Kanji.

Also, for about a month, a bunch of students from 中央大学 came over to do an English summer program at my school. Hanging out with them after work was one of the best times of my life and really motivated me to improve my Japanese. The fact that I couldn’t understand any of their conversations was also another factor. They once tried to explain 「やばい」 to me because I kept hearing it all the time and I never really did get it until much later. (Hint: It means “dangerous”!)

At the end of the first year, I would say I was at a low intermediate level. I could speak Japanese but my vocabulary was limited and I still couldn’t understand many conversations in Japanese at all. The sad thing is, in terms of college courses, the fact that I could even speak at all put me past Japanese 204, 205, and 206. Needless to say, I had no trouble getting straight A’s in all those classes except 206, which I skipped for an advanced elective since 206 wasn’t part of the language requirement. (I got an “A” in that too by the way.)

Fluency in 2 years before setting foot in Japan

My second year was pretty much a continuation of my studies using what I could get my hands on and the WWWJDIC. When I had no internet, I used JWPce on my laptop instead. The fact that I had absolutely nothing else to do and was bored out of my mind during most of my breaks really helped

I really don’t remember what I studied but I think it was just random stuff of no particular interest. I didn’t have access to a lot of Japanese works to study from and didn’t know where to find them. I think it was mostly anything I could find in Japanese at libraries and a 「きまぐれオレンジ☆ロード」 light novel I picked up somewhere, which I never even came close to finishing anyway. I’m sure I looked at some random stuff online too though I didn’t have the skill or dedication to read any Japanese news. I also installed Windows 2000 on my laptop so that I could install a Japanese version of IE/Explorer and other Japanese programs. I think every little bit of Japanese studied here and there really added up, even if it was just a paragraph or even a sentence.

I also spent a lot of time with the International students from Japan and the Language Assistant (which changes every year). Though we were just friends, I even unofficially helped her grade the workbooks from time to time.

At this point, after having met some really great people from Japan, I was determined to do study abroad in the fall of my senior year. I applied to the Waseda program as part of the ACM (finally, a good thing about going to a Midwest college!) and was soon on my way to go to Japan for the very first time.

After the end of the second year, I would say I was at a high intermediate level. My vocabulary (with Kanji of course) was greatly increased and while I didn’t understand everything, I could speak pretty fluently and understand the gist of most conversations.

Studying abroad and getting a job

Taken during study abroad

Taken during study abroad

I arrived in Japan for the first time in my life in the fall of 2002. This was after staying a month in Korea with my Aunt and a full 5-10 lbs heavier from pigging out on the amazing food. I was nervous and excited but also pretty confident in my Japanese. So I was shocked when I couldn’t understand a word when I went to stores and restaurants. It took a little time before I could adjust to the unique language such as 「店内でお召し上がりでしょうか？」 and the speed in which they spoke.

One of the first things I did in Japan was buy an electronic dictionary. Due to my student budget, I selected a cheaper, low-end Casio EX-word. Though the WWWJDIC and edict dictionary were long time pals, I could finally do some studying without having to use a computer or laptop. I really wish I know how many words I’ve looked up in those tools. I would guess somewhere in the thousands or even tens of thousands of words.

Anyway, all that studying must have payed off because when it came time to take our Japanese placement exam, I managed to finish the entire test while most gave up early as the test got progressively harder. Our Japanese language classes were divided into a total of 13 levels and I passed into level 13 for both Japanese and the Kanji classes. We didn’t even get any textbooks like the other students because most of the material were articles and documentaries such as プロジェクトX 挑戦者たち. The only other person to make it through level 13 in our ACM group had actually gone to High School in Japan! In total, there were 5 or so additional students from the GLCA and other schools and all of them had lived in Japan at some time before.

Needless to say, the class was insanely hard but I still managed to get through 3 months with a B+. After another month in Korea during Winter break, I returned to Minnesota to finish up my Computer Science degree. I also continued taking advanced Japanese electives, which seemed like a breeze after my ordeal at Waseda and continued to boost my overall GPA. I’m pretty sure this is also when I started writing my guide to Japanese grammar.

While I was preparing for my senior CS presentation and exam, I realized I needed a job. I thought, “What a great idea it would be to advance both my CS career and Japanese by working at a Japanese tech company!” My great idea brought on some stressful times as I had to fly twice to Japan (the first time at my expense), and stay with friends and host family to interview in Japan. This is all the while I was still taking classes. I actually did my paper midterm exam (take-home obviously) from my friend’s computer in Japan. Fortunately, it was all worth it as I finally got the job after anxiously waiting a month after graduation for all the paperwork and whatnot to go through the monster that is Hitachi.

At the end of my third year, I was at a very Advanced level having close to an adult vocabulary and able to successfully interview (multiple times) in Japanese to land a job with a Japanese company. I could also live comfortably in Japan and do day-to-day activities. However, I still didn’t have those native ears and had trouble understanding people in very noisy environments or middle-aged men who mumbled. I also had little experience in business Japanese. Obviously, this wouldn’t be a problem for long.

The death of a salaryman

Though the next three years working as a salaryman in Japan were very stressful times, it certainly did improve my Japanese. At first, it was embarrassing that I still couldn’t understand a lot of what my bosses were saying because they spoke so quickly and with almost no enunciation. But after a couple years, I got used to it and even started sounding like a middle-aged salaryman myself. And what do you know, I got some good job skills at the same time. I even mastered the dreaded phone!

はい、日立製作所でございます。・・・はい。・・・恐れ入りますが、鈴木は只今会議中で不在ですけれども・・・。・・・ええ。では、戻りましたら折り返しをさせていただきます。もう一度、お名前をお伺いしてもよろしいでしょうか。はい、わかりました。では、失礼します。

I finished up the remainder of most of the grammar guide during this time. I also took the JLPT level 1 just to have something to prove I knew Japanese. Thanks to company policy, I also took the TOEIC every year and got a perfect score but I don’t think that’s going to help me with anything…

Also, my trusty Casio EX-word finally died and I replaced it with a Korean-equipped EX-word XD-H7600 just in case I wanted to study Korean ever. Unfortunately, this never happened. Around my 5th or 6th year, I also began to take an interest in Chinese and bought a Canon wordtank G90 to study Chinese. I do still use that one for my Chinese studies but not as often as I’d like.

After 4 or 5 years of studying Japanese, I’m at a near-native or 帰国子女 level. I can follow all conversations even with the most hard to understand people even with dialects and in crowded situations such as the cafeteria or 居酒屋. The only part I’m still missing is a lot of cultural information such as famous actors, locations, history, etc.

Not much going on now

Now that I’m back in the States and after almost 8 years, I really don’t do much in terms of learning Japanese. Sure, I read the occasional novel and buy One Piece every 3 months, but my Japanese has been pretty much the same for the last 2 or 3 years even while I was living in Japan. The major difference is that I’m missing out on recent and popular culture that I was finally starting to accumulate.

Lately, I’ve mostly been thinking about effective ways to teach Japanese and why the success rate for mastering it is so low. Of course, I also spend a lot of time on this blog and increasingly more time on the textbook.

I’d also like to improve my Chinese but I’m leisurely taking my time (started several years ago and still not at my first-year Japanese level). Maybe that will change if an opportunity involving China turns up.

Did my experiences shed any light on mastering Japanese? I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to start studying Japanese today with all this new stuff such as podcasts and social networks. In particular, I wonder how much my own grammar guide would have helped me if someone else had wrote it 8 years ago. What do you think?

DocBook sucks…

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I wrote my original grammar guide in clean XHTML by hand. The beauty of XHTML validation is that it’ll easily catch your boneheaded tag errors automatically. Also, I was already comfortable with HTML, CSS, DOM, and Javascript and so I could easily tweak the content exactly how I wanted it including mouse-over popups and practice exercises. Finally, having it all in XHTML made it incredibly easy to move around and share. No database or language runtime to install, all you needed to do was put the files on a web server. The clean markup made it easier for others to modify for the language translations as well.

The only drawback is that it is not easy to port into other formats. The pdf version is not very good and RTF is pretty much out of the question. But it’s ok because it was pretty much built for the web anyway and that’s where it will stay.

For the textbook, I wanted it to be not just for the web but for a variety of formats, including (as the word “textbook” suggests) a printed book. That’s why I went with DocBook, which seemed to serve my purposes. Unfortunately, now I need an XSLT processor and have to mess with XSL to make any kind of major tweak which is a huge pain. Still, since the original document is XML, it’s still portable and shareable. I also really enjoy the ability to easily reorder content around because I’m still trying to figure out how to arrange everything.

Unfortunately, I’m finding some annoying issues with DocBook that lies with the purist mentality that absolutely no formatting should be in the document itself. Can you believe that there is no built-in support for freakin’ line breaks?? So when I want to write a dialogue, I either have to use “literallayout” which means I have to mess with the whitespace therefore completely ruining my prettily formatted xml or I have to add my own custom tag and XSL template, which means it’s no longer docbook and I have to carry around my customized XSL forever.

Another example is the complete lack of support for strike-through text. Apparently I should use subversion or something to track revision changes. This is a perfect example of purists thinking they know better than you. But have they considered that maybe I want to show readers what doesn’t belong in a sentence and should be deleted? Nobody can imagine all the uses people have for various formatting so they shouldn’t try to second-guess what you need them for.

For now, I’m not going to let it bother me and just concentrate on the content. Worst case, I can always port the stuff to whatever I want by hand. Or maybe I can just run a cleanup perl script at the end. I don’t even want to think about PDF conversion right now. I evaluated FOP at Hitachi when they needed documents with dynamic data and format customized for each company. I told them to forget about it and go with Big Faceless Java PDF Library. Even with a crazy name like that, it’s probably the smartest thing I ever did there. The funny part is that took a multimillion dollar company MONTHS to license something that costs several hundred dollars. We almost released the tax modules with “DEMO” written in large letters across the back of all the documents.

I don’t know. Maybe I should try LaTeX or something? I know next to nothing about it except that you have to compile your document!

Explaining the long vowel sound

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In a previous post, I talked about the surprising complexity in explaining long vowel sounds. Since then, I’ve made a little progress and decided to separate the /ei/ and /ee/ long vowel sounds completely.

The decision finally came with a realization late in the night. (Yes, I probably spend way too much time thinking about this stuff.) I though about Katakana and its simplified system of using 「ー」 for long vowel sounds. I thought about words that are obviously long /e/ vowel sounds such as 「ケーキ」 versus /y/ vowel sounds such as 「メイク」. You see, the fact that 「メイク」 writes out the 「イ」 instead of using 「ー」 proves the fact that there is a significant and important difference between the two sounds. You can’t see this in Hiragana because 「ー」 isn’t used for long vowel sounds.

This convinced me that improved pronunciation was worth the little extra complexity it takes to explain this. But really it wasn’t that bad. Here’s what I ended up with.

Before we go any further, we need to revisit Hiragana to talk about a very important aspect of Japanese pronunciation: the long vowel sound. When a sound is followed by the corresponding vowel sound: 「あ」、「い」、「え」、or 「お」, the combination forms a single, longer vowel sound. It is very important to fully extend the vowel sound for correct pronunciation. The table given below illustrates what matching vowel sounds indicate a long vowel sound.　The rows in grey are very rare combinations found in only a few words that will be pointed out as we learn them.

Table 1.6. Extending Vowel Sounds
Vowel Sound Extended by Example Pronunciation
/ a / あ まあ maa
/ i / い いい ii
/ u / う くう kuu
/ e / い せい sei
/ e / え ねえ nee
/ o / う とう too
/ o / お とお too

I plan to replace the ローマ字 with links to the actual pronunciations once I get to adding sound.

Now, this still glosses over the issue the combinations don’t always make a long vowel sound. You also have to consider how the sounds line up with the Kanji. For instance with 「経緯」, the long vowel sound is in the first character: 「けい」. In other words, it should be read as 「けい・い」 and not 「け・いい」. Another example is 「問う」, which obviously can’t be a long vowel since the 「う」 is outside the kanji. But given that I’m explaining long vowel sounds for the first time much less anything about Kanji, I have no choice but to skip the more intricate aspects. Besides, you better know some kanji if you’re advanced enough to actually use words like 「経緯」 and 「問う」.

Yahoo! ポッドキャスト

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I was recently informed about Yahoo! ポッドキャスト and added it to the links page. I just started listening to various podcasts there during work and am having a gay old time. I thought I’d share some of my favorites so you can too.

What I’m listening to

In particular, I’ve been enjoying 眞鍋かをり’s podcast, which is talk radio about random topics such as 「こんなものに、はまっていました。」 I like 眞鍋さん’s voice as it’s bright and clear without being too girly. If you visit the show’s blog, you can also read an intro to each show, participate on various アンケート, and send messages that might even be read on the show. You may want to skip the first 3 or 4 minutes which is the Proactive promotion section of the show.

In addition, I’m also enjoying humor shows, in particular the aptly named JUNK podcasts and their 下ネタ（しもねた） about sex and what-not. There are even some semi-sexy shows that are pretty interesting. Who says the Japanese are conservative?

Now that I’m living in the States, I find these podcasts great for maintaining my listening comprehension and vocabulary. I’ve also been learning new vocabulary here and there by looking up words that I didn’t recognize.

Too hard? Try the reverse approach

If you find that the all-Japanese podcasts are too difficult to understand at your current level, you might want to try a reverse learning approach by listening to Japanese shows for learning English. It’s still a bit advanced but at least you’ll have some English to give you some clues and you’ll still get the learning benefit of listening and getting accustomed to real spoken Japanese. For the less advanced, I recommend ECC 英会話 because there’s quite a bit of English in the show itself, most of which is interpreted by the Japanese speaker. In addition, there’s 毎日ちょこっとリスニング特訓~podcast~ and melody.の『Oh！カンチガイ ENGLISH』 was also interesting for learning strange カタカナ usages (unfortunately, that show is already over). In any case, I suggest you browse through the list of popular podcasts and find what looks interesting to you. Here’s also a list of podcasts related to English.

Oh, and here’s a tip for navigating through the Japanese interface. Click the button that say 「聴く」 next to each podcast to listen. That’s it!

Does anybody know a similar site for Mandarin?

A (late) intro to the original 電車男

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I was looking through my old blog for fun and ran into a post about 電車男. Though the post is over 2 years old and the height of 電車男’s popularity is long past, the original story (with some commentary) as it unfolded in the 2ch BBS is archived and still around for anybody to read for free (on a geocities account no less).

If you’re not familiar with the immensely popular 2ちゃんねる BBS, it’s basically an non-threaded forum where everybody posts anonymously. There are no “fancy” features like registration and passwords. You can put whatever name you want, so most times, you have no idea who is saying what. This and the crappy UI from the 90s makes for an experience I’d like to call “craptastic”. Fortunately, the archived version of the original content has been edited and neatly organized for us.

In this post, I’ll take a quick sneak peek of the beginning to introduce you to the story. Before you decide to read it for yourself, I should warn you that it’s full of internet slang that would probably be useless anywhere except… the internet. Ok then, let’s look at the first section!

Mission.1　めしどこかたのむ

731 名前：Mr.名無しさん 投稿日：04/03/14 21:25

すまん。俺も裏ぐった。
文才が無いから、過程は書けないけど。

このスレまじで魔力ありすぎ…
おまいらにも光あれ…

It begins with a cryptic message from Nameless-san on a random thread in March 2004. It’s impossible to know what he’s talking about without the previous messages but we can discern that he betrayed something somehow （裏ぐる is apparently internet typo/slang for 裏切る）. The commentator helpfully adds that it was just an “ordinary thread with nothing special” anyhow.

たいして内容のないこのレスが、この後絶大な支持支援を得るスレに発展しようとは、誰も想像しなかったに違いない。

His first message saying he can’t say how he betrayed [whatever] because he has not talent in literature gets people wondering what happened. One person asks whether he got a girlfriend. He replies no but it’s a big chance. He’s obviously flustered because he then retracts his earlier statement and says he needs to calm down.

733 名前：Mr.名無しさん 投稿日：04/03/14 21:28

きになる

734 名前：Mr.名無しさん 投稿日：04/03/14 21:28

>>731
彼女が出来たのか？

737 名前：Mr.名無しさん 投稿日：04/03/14 21:33

>>734
違うけど。でも大チャンス
こういうこと続くとネタにしか聞こえないよな
とにかくおまいら外に出てみろ

738 名前：Mr.名無しさん 投稿日：04/03/14 21:35

ごめん。よく考えたら大チャンスじゃなかった…＿|￣|○
冷静になれ俺…

Finally, somebody tells him to give all the details. キボン is internet slang for 希望.

739 名前：Mr.名無しさん 投稿日：04/03/14 21:36

>>737
これを打つのも何度目だろう、

　　詳　細　ｷ　ﾎﾞ　ﾝ

Finally, he reluctantly agrees to write about what happened. Because he has been only 「ロムる」ing, meaning “Read-Only Member” or what we call a “lurker”, he asks that he not be laughed at.

740 名前：731 投稿日：04/03/14 21:38

>>739
上手く書けないけど
ちょっと書いてみる。
ロムってたばかりの俺だからさ…
笑わないでくれよ…

At this point, he isn’t even known as 電車 and is writing as 731, the number of his first post (remember they’re all anonymous).
Here’s how the story begins.

749 名前：731 投稿日：04/03/14 21:55

今日は秋葉に行ってきた。特に買う物無かったんだけど
帰りの電車の車中で酔っ払いの爺さんがいた。
その車両には座席の端で座ってる俺と爺さん以外は殆ど女性。
２０代～４０代くらいかな。

その爺さんが、周りの女性客達に絡み始めた。
最初に若い女性に絡んだんだが、その人はすごい気が強くて
爺さんを一喝して次の駅でさっさと降りていった。
その時、俺は迷惑な奴だなぁとチラチラ様子を見てた。

爺さんは次に俺の座っている座席に来て、真ん中らへんに
座ってるおばさん数人に絡み始める。
「携帯使ったらただじゃおかねーぞ」
みたいなこと言ってビビらせてたと思う。
おばさん達は（´･ω･`)←こんな感じで押し黙ってしまった。

なんか長くなりそう。

766 名前：731 投稿日：04/03/14 22:23

おばさん達はそのままじっと下向いて
「関わらない方が良い」という感じだった。
すると、爺さんはまた訳の分からないことをわめきつつ
「女は黙って男に使われてりゃいいんだよ」
みたいなことを言って、手をおばさんの顔に持っていって顎を掴んだ。
俺はさすがにマズいと思って、勇気を振り絞ってちょっと叫んだ
「おい、やめろよ！」と。きっと声震えてた。
俺、喧嘩とかしたことなかったし。
それでも爺さんに聞こえてなかったらしく、反応無し。
「おい！あんただよ！やめろっていってるぎうこｈくえほｐ！」
必死にもう一度叫ぶ。そこでおばさんが「いいから、大丈夫だから」と
立ち上がった俺を制する。爺さんはようやく気付いたらしく
俺の方を向く。
「さっきからジロジロ見やがって…」
と睨み付けられた。

千鳥足で俺の座席の前までやってくる。
「あぁん、お前幾つだ？」
「２２だ！」
「俺はなぁ６０こいえおヴぃえそいｖ」
何言ってるかよく分からなかったけど、大体「若いくせに生意気な」
みたいな感じのことを言ってきた。
「なんだ？やるのか？やるのか？」
爺さんはもう喧嘩腰だった。
「ﾊｱ？何をですか？警察呼びますよ」
「警察でもなんでも呼べじょふげｇ」
そうのたまりながら、手を振りかざしてきた。
手元が狂ったらしく、俺の隣に座ってる女性に手が当たった。
と言っても、平手がかすったくらいだけど。

どうやって文章って短くするんですか…？（´･ω:;.:…

772 名前：731 投稿日：04/03/14 22:37

「キャッ！」とその女性客が後ろに退いた。
俺は無我夢中で立ち上がって爺さんの両腕を掴んだ。
その隙におばさん達の一人が車掌さんを呼びに行ったのが見えた。

その時、騒ぎに気が付いた隣の車両にいた２０代後半くらいの
サラリーマンが助けに来てくれた。揉み合う俺と爺さんを見るなり
爺さんを後ろから羽交い締めにする。
「あぁ、わかったわかった。そんな若い子に絡むなよ」
さすが人生の先輩だった。刺激せずになだめる事を知ってる。
「俺が押さえてるから、君はもう座りなさい」
俺もかなり興奮してたから、そのサラリーマンについでに
なだめられてしまった。爺さんはそのサラリーマンには
全然脅しかけないでやんの。自分より強いと思ったからなんだろうな
俺は舐められてたんだなと何故か悔しくなるヽ(`Д´)ﾉ

俺が座る隣の女性が
「迷惑な人ですね」
と、俺に声をかけてきた。
「本当迷惑です」
もっと気の利いたこと言えよ俺。＿|￣|○

疲れた…＿|￣|○

Whew! And that’s how he first met the person we’ll only ever know as エルメス. I think that’s enough for now so I’ll end it here. But to sum up, at the end of the incident she asks him for his address and later sends him a thank-you gift for his braveness and chivalry. More importantly, the receipt for the delivery has her number on it! What will you do 電車?!!

Conclusion

I think it’s really cool that parts of the original threads are still available for free online especially since I believe there’s a book out as well. If you don’t mind weeding through internet slang and banter, I’m sure there’s a lot of good primary reading material here. Otherwise, be sure to check out the drama and/or movie. I haven’t watched the movie but the drama was pretty good. They sure did pick a nerdy guy for the main character.

電車男 is one of those perfect nerd fantasies where the main character meets a beautiful women in a chance encounter and through luck and perseverance ends up 「ゲットする」ing the girl. What makes this story special is that it was originally told on an internet forum and with input from regular netizens along the way. Plus, it’s real as far as I know. I think we’re all curious about what エルメス looks like!

In addition, the time and effort people put into cheering 電車 on is very touching. The graphics are simply amazing as well! Who says you need fancy features like image uploads or BB code?!

Let me know what’s going on now!

Japan is a country where everybody goes from one crazy fad to the next such as ヨン様 (ugh…), Hard Gay, and 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱. 電車男 was certainly a media phenomenon in its day spawning a book, movie, drama, manga, and even appearing in theater.

I haven’t been in Japan in over a year and I’m a bit out of touch so please let me know about any new fads going on!

Japanese textbooks: I may complain but I understand

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I’ve complained about the the current state of most Japanese textbooks for quite a while now. My chief complaints include using ローマ字, teaching polite form before the dictionary form, and poor to no grammar explanations. But as I try to write my own textbook, it’s all too clear to me why this is the case. Writing a textbook that comprehensively covers vocabulary and grammar with context and practice is hard.

In fact, just like it is for learning, writing about Japanese is hardest at the beginning. I have a feeling that once I can get the first few chapters done, the rest would be quite easy. But for the complete beginner, where do you start? You have to explain the difference between polite vs casual form, the topic particle, sentence structure, and the incredibly tricky copula before you can even make the most basic of sentences. It’s just too much information at once and you just have to make shortcuts somewhere and not explain all the intricate details.

For example, even explaining all of Hiragana is a bit overwhelming. With my “learning by doing” approach, I want the reader to learn Hiragana by using it as soon as possible. But not only do you have to memorize all the characters, you have to learn the voiced consonants, long vowel sounds, and small や, ゆ, よ, つ. So if I want to push some vocab and grammar lessons without spending forever on every aspect of Hiragana, I have to make do without being able to use long vowel sounds or small や, ゆ, よ, つ. I can work temporarily without Kanji or Katakana but have you tried to make any sentences without long vowel sounds? It’s practically impossible!

And even when I do get to long vowel sounds, that topic itself is pretty complex. For instance, how do we categorize the えい vowel sound? It’s actually a slurred combination of the /e/ and /i/ sound that sounds more like the /y/ vowel sound. Therefore, a word such as ええ has a different sound from a word like 営業 (えいぎょう). But do I really want to go over this when my audience is still trying to learn Hiragana? Can you even really hear the difference anyway? Probably not. And besides, the only words with a true long え vowel sound I can think of off the top of my head is ええ and おねえさん anyway. So do I just simply treat えい as the long /e/ vowel sound and pretend that the true long /e/ vowel sound are exceptions? I can see why it’s just so much easier to give them ローマ字 and be done with it.

Writing the guide was much simpler because it is intended to be self-study material. I don’t care how long it takes to get to the level of being able to say anything meaningful. But when you want enable learners to use what little they know to provide context and practice, it’s really difficult when they don’t know anything.

Textbook writers, I understand your pain. But we can do better!

Till now and beyond…

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Till now

I started writing the Guide to Japanese grammar… oh I don’t even really remember it was so long ago. Maybe about 6 years ago? I took me about 3 or 4 years to gradually cover most of the topics I considered most important. After that, I set up the forum, originally to discuss how to improve the guide but it turned into a great place to seriously discuss anything about Japanese. There are some great regular members and the general atmosphere of the forum is friendly and focused, just the way I like it. Around that time, I started getting offers for translations and thanks to the amazing work from many volunteers, the guide is available to some degree in 10 different languages.

I also started the blog on 3yen which has become the blog you’re reading right now, and started learning Mandarin about 2 years ago. All of this was done in my spare time while pursuing a career in software (primarily web) development. So where do I plan to go from here?

The Guide

The guide hasn’t been updated since September of 2006 and that’s because besides some minor topics that I still want to cover (such as 〜たまえ or 〜てから）, the only major piece is to finish the practice exercises. However, while certainly useful, they can be produced by anyone and are no more than basic drills anyway. The other major piece, Kansai dialect, is a huge topic that I’d just rather not go into right now. I still do want to do the conjugation tables though but laziness and tedium is the major issue.

The Textbook?

I’ve always wanted to publish something but I have no idea how to go about it and putting stuff online is so much more accessible anyway. Especially since you can print it out yourself for a lot less money. (Well maybe not, how much is it to print 237 pages at Kinkos?)

However, a textbook is a different story because printing and binding several copies is not very convenient. And having a rough printout may not a big deal for yourself but you want a nice printed copy for others. In addition, while audio can be more easily integrated online, physical distribution has the advantage in that you don’t have to download potentially large amounts of data.

Writing a complete textbook for Japanese including vocabulary usage, grammar, and reading material has been a pet project of mine for a very long time. However, my vision of the textbook changed gradually in the process of writing this blog and interacting with readers in the comments. So far, I haven’t even finished the first chapter and progress is slow because it’s really hard. That’s because my vision of the ideal Japanese textbook facilitates learning by doing and learning how to teach yourself.

No Japanese textbook can ever be complete

Virtually every Japanese textbook I know of has a critical flaw. It tells you exactly what to learn and there is no discovery. This works great in most classes such as algebra where you can take a class and once you’ve passed, you can reasonably claim that you know algebra. However with languages, you need hundreds of hours of reading, writing, and conversation practice. You also have to memorize thousands of words. In essence, you have to learn a different version of everything you already learned in your lifetime. So it’s pretty presumptuous of textbooks to think they can tell you to learn this and that and you’re done at the end of the book. No language textbook can teach you everything you need to know.

As a result, the expectation ends up being, “You can learn some stuff in class but you’ll have to go to Japan to learn how to speak Japanese for real.” This is unfortunate because it’s not true and I know because I passed into the highest level of Japanese for my study abroad without setting a foot in Japan. All you need is somebody who can speak Japanese you can practice with on a regular basis. Here’s what you would need to do and how a great textbook can help.

Learn how to learn

Teaching somebody how to learn Japanese is relatively easy. Somewhere in the textbook, it should teach you how to use dictionaries and the new technologies available. Dictionaries have come a long way since the days of looking up each Kanji by guessing the radical and than guessing which readings are used in the compound before you can finally find the word. (In fact, I can’t even imagine how people learned with this method.) The textbook should also teach you how to learn Kanji because again, no class can ever cover every Kanji you need to know. At some point, you have to start learning them yourself.

It should also give you some advice and resources on how to find a Japanese language partner so that you can practice your conversational skills. Technology has given us options even if there are no Japanese speakers in your area. This can also help the teacher in finding conversation partners for the class by providing suggestions such as matching up with a Japanese class learning English via sites like Mixxer.

Think for yourself

The hard part is helping the learner to discover and explore the language. I plan to approach this in two ways. The first is by exploring key concepts in different contexts by continually expanding dialogues and readings throughout the book. In this way, the learner can learn by example how the core concepts are applied to express many different ideas.

The second is by suggesting exercises that require the learner to be creative. In my experience, the majority of workbook exercises tell you exactly what to do in the example. This type of exercise is virtually useless because you never have to actually think for yourself.

For example, this type of exercise might look familiar:

Conjugate to 「たい」 form.
Ex) ケーキを食べたい。

１）公園に＿＿＿（行く）。

But what about this instead?

旅行でどんなところに行きたいですか？どうして？そこで何をしたいですか？

You know why students hate these kinds of open-ended questions? Because you have to think and thinking is hard. But the biggest benefit to having a teacher is so that you can experiment and have somebody to guide you to the right path. Grading the first type of exercise is a complete waste of the teacher’s time which can be spent in far more productive activities. Teachers should be helping you select the most natural words and grammar to express your thoughts correctly. They should not be telling you what to say and how.

To cover conversation skills, you might have the following exercise.

In your next conversation session, discuss what you and your language partner would like to do on the weekend. Submit a summary of your conversation to the teacher.

In summary, the textbook will force students to learn how to read by reading (duh) material that continues to expand while incorporating old material in new ways. It will also force students to express their own thoughts in writing (with the guidance of a teacher) and also to apply their lessons in real conversations.

Other Projects

There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in terms of software, learning methodologies, and communities for learning Japanese. So I feel my best contribution to learning Japanese is to continue to write material that is helpful to Japanese learners. This, of course, means that I will continuing to write in this blog but I’d also like to expend more resources to create a truly great textbook the likes of which has never been seen. It might take a long (long, long, long) time but I hope it’s becomes something truly valuable to Japanese learners even more so than the original Grammar Guide. Now that’s something I would like to get published.

I’ll also continue to study Chinese of course. Not only for my personal enjoyment but also because it helps keep things in perspective and is a great reminder of how hard learning a language is when you’re not used to it.

What do you think?

JapanesePod coming soon?

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Head over to Japanesepod.com and you’ll see a page saying “Coming Soon”. I’m really stoked about this because I’ve been a long time fan of ChinesePod. JapanesePod, not to be confused with JapanesePod101 which was started independently, is by the same company that brought you the original ChinesePod.

I’ve always preferred ChinesePod over JapanesePod101 because the lessons and dialogues seem more focused and serious. The fact that ChinesePod also has much harder difficultly levels in the Upper-Intermediate and Advanced lessons furthers that impression. Actually, to be honest, I think JapanesePod101 itself is fine, I just never liked Peter as a host personally. What’s up with his corny greeting 「相変わらず、絶好調です」 and his bad jokes? Ugh. This is just my personal opinion so don’t read anything into it regarding the general quality of the show.

Praxis, the company behind the site is currently hiring for the show. Man, I’d love to be the Lead Teacher and you even get to work in Shanghai!! Teach Japanese and learn Chinese, that would be awesome! Alas, I don’t have a Masters in Linguistics, Education, or Japanese. o(T^T)o

Only time will tell whether JapanesePod will be better or worse than JapanesePod101. But nobody says you can’t use both and when it comes to language resources, the more the merrier I say. I can’t wait to see what kind of people will lead the show. I must try not to be too jealous. And yes, I did sign up for email updates.

CJK in Ubuntu 8.04

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Encouraged by your comments about getting CJK input to work in Linux, I decided to give it another shot over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised at the much improved support since my last attempt (ver 7.10). Check out this SCIM documentation and compare the instructions for 8.04 vs 7.10. In the newest version, everything is done via the Language Support menu in a few clicks. In prior versions, you had to manually install packages and edit config files by hand. Pretty much where I failed last time.

So I have to give Ubuntu credit here. It really is turning into a fully-featured and intuitive OS with every new release. Now they just have to do something about the default fonts. I wished I saved a screenshot but the Japanese fonts out of the box really are horrendous. The kana and kanji don’t even line up properly! So unless you want to punish your eyes, you still need to download Microsoft fonts as described here. If the fonts are freely downloadable, you would think including them in the distro would be the easiest thing in the world. Maybe there are distribution issues or the developers don’t know enough about Japanese to see how bad the fonts currently are.

So I’m using all three OSs now! Here’s my current setup:
Dell Inspiron 530: Windows XP Home and Ubuntu 8.04 dual boot
Panasonic Let’s Note Light W5: Windows XP Professional (Japanese)
MacBook Pro (Loaned from work): OS X 10.5

By the way, the mouse precision and acceleration is horrible in OS X. I just stick to the trackpad because the mouse feels like it’s moving through molasses.