Studying Japanese Language/Literature/History

ladyfaile wrote: try the resources thread we've got going here, lots of great links there to help you study.

thanks!

i feel the same way with my progress/lack of... discouraged yet motivated to get over that hump all at the same time. i don't think i'll be conversational by the time i go to japan next year, i want to be realistic so i'm not disappointed lol but hopefully i can get to the point of not making a total fool of myself. my future sister in law's parents want to come here to visit and meet everyone sometime between now and the wedding next year, and i don't think they're very fluent in english. i wouldn't feel confident enough to try to start a conversation with them by then i don't think but maybe i can at least understand them a bit and help with a bit of translation ^_^

haha that's true. when my mother in law went she embarassed herself quite badly and now it's a big joke in the family that gets brought up a lot. she's french canadian, it's common for french to say "chin chin!" instead of cheers when drinking together, she said it loudly when out for drinks with my brother in law and all his friends and coworkers (many of them Japanese)... they were all very shocked at first, eventually figured out it was a mistake and laughed about it and now she'll never live it down (if you don't know what chin chin means in Japanese you'll have to look it up, Skye might hurt me for posting it haha)

ladyfaile wrote: haha that's true.
when my mother in law went she embarassed herself quite badly and now it's a big joke in the family that gets brought up a lot.
she's french canadian, it's common for french to say "chin chin!" instead of cheers when drinking together, she said it loudly when out for drinks with my brother in law and all his friends and coworkers (many of them Japanese)... they were all very shocked at first, eventually figured out it was a mistake and laughed about it and now she'll never live it down
(if you don't know what chin chin means in Japanese you'll have to look it up, Skye might hurt me for posting it haha)

LOL now I got curious:p I bet it´s something....weird:p Ok I will look it up then^^ Ahhhhh I wished I would have been there.Hahaha now she is always know for her mistake:D

EDIT:OK it´s really weird.....lol how embarrassing it must have been for her

Mirichan wrote: My parents don´t want to let me to it becazse they are still worried about radiatic thuff there...Did you notice anything of it? I hear many different opinions and I am not sure weather everything is true:(

I can understand why your parents would be worried, especially since you are still young, but it is really not that bad here, or at least so they say. I don't know... the US Embassy never issued a warning to leave Tokyo, so I never did. Levels in Tokyo never really rose that much, and places west of Tokyo never had to worry (especially out where boutux is). All (or at least most) of the reactors are currently offline. Still earthquakes are always a reality of Japan, but one you have to accept if you ever want to come here.

my brother in law and his fiancee are home from Japan. they landed tuesday, tomorrow they're going to visit the city they might move to, they might not be back til tuesday or so, then next weekend we're having a huge bbq at my other brother in law's house so all the relatives can come and see them (easier to get everyone in on one day rather than them having to go visit each person individually and waste half their trip)
i think the 18th is when they leave, she goes back to Tokyo and he goes to Europe for 4 months *jealous*
he asked me yesterday to share what apps i use to study Japanese, and it turns out we're using the same app lol. i started describing Tae Kim's guide, and he said he's had it before but didn't really know what to do with it so he'll have to try again, then we both started talking about Kotoba without realizing we were talking about the same app. his looks a wee bit different since it's on an iphone and mine's ipod (or it's possible he downloaded his from the Japan itunes store so it could be a slightly different version) but they're the same. haha so much for that, we both thought we'd get some fun new apps to play with. it sounds like we're at about the same level though, he's pretty well mastered katakana and hiragana and is trying to learn kanji now, i was telling him with Tae Kim's guide you learn grammar and sentence structure first and it introduces some basic kanji as you go along, so he should really try it again.
i'm way behind with mine... but i like how it uses the same few kanji often in examples and whatnot, before you realize it you can totally recognize the kanji for 'fish' and 'to eat' really easily. it's difficult to study and memorize them just on their own, but put into context it's so much easier to just let them sink in naturally :D


right now i'm torn between wanting to study and wanting to watch Rooftop Prince though LOL


RE our last few posts about the safety concern in Japan...my BIL says they travelled up north to visit his fiancee's grandmother, she lives in one of the small towns that was hit pretty hard... he said that you can barely tell that anything happened. they are so efficient that everything is mostly rebuilt in the areas that weren't totally wiped out. he says the roads in some spots are still damaged but the buildings show barely any evidence. they took pictures but we haven't gone through them with him yet... but life seems to have gone back to normal.. except of course in the towns on the coast that were totally washed away, they will take a long time to recover i imagine, if they ever do. i'd guess most of those people have moved further inland for fear of it happening again, while some will still want to go back to their home towns eventually. time will tell i suppose.

ah and things have started washing up in Alaska, have you all read the article about the soccer ball? i'll find it and post it, it gave me goosebumps


http://www.king5.com/news/quake/Japanese-teen-identifies-soccer-ball-lost-in-tsunami-found-in-Alaska-148507725.html

Mirichan wrote: But still it´s great you are there and you can learn it too:) My parents don´t want to let me to it becazse they are still worried about radiatic thuff there...Did you notice anything of it? I hear many different opinions and I am not sure weather everything is true:(
The first two years I think I always watched my Dramas late at night and therfore I did wath it with almost zero hearing of them speaking in japanese.Only recently I began to watch it with full volume because I enjoy them like that more! Therefore my language skills are still poor>_< Stupid,stupid,stupid me well I can´t change anything about that now.But I remeber a lot of words from a few Dramas too.For example in Gokusen I took the word "Fight-OH" with me:p It isn´t just japanese but I use it often.
And it depends of the Drama/Movie if I can watch mostly everything of it in RAW.I can´t do that in every Drama and I only do it when I am desperately waiting for the subs:D

i'm not on the japanese main island Honshu. I'm in Kyushu which the island south of the Honshu. I'm very very far from the tohoku region. so i do not think i'm exposed at all. i did see a documentary on nhk that was discussing what went wrong at fukushima nuclear plant. They had experts from america, switzerland and germany talking about nuclear plant structures and what the japanese did wrong. luckily they subbed the english, swiss and german in japanese so i was able to understand what the english experts were talking about. and basically from what i gather the swiss and germans the blames the japanese unwillingness to change or try new innovations in the structural designs of the plant as the reasoning for the nuclear fallout (don't quote me on that). other than that i've heard nothing else about radiation or exposure since i've been here. maybe the reason for that is because i'm so far away or i'm more or less illiterate here.

speaking of illiteracy. i went to karaoke for the 1st time last night and it was fun but i had one major issue. as a huge arashi fan i wanted to sing an arashi song as my 1st ever karaoke song in japan. problem is i memorized all the words in romaji so it messed me up to see the words in kana and kanji and it moved so fast i had to pull out my ipod quick and sing along from that. and it annoyed me. but it also motivated me as well. i'm thinking of changing my approach to learning the language. i'm wondering if it will be possible to start over from scratch at an elementary school level and by that i mean find japanese elementary textbooks and use them as my learning resources and level up as the text books level up. plus being here in japan i have quite a few ppl i can turn to to check my work or explain things for me. i'm pretty sure that even japanese babies that can't talk yet have a better understanding of japanese than me lol, so i'm not sure this would work. but my previous and current methods have not been effective enough. what do u guys think?

Use 皆の日本語 Shouldn't use an elementary textbook. Better to use a book meant for adults who already have knowledge of a language.