October 31, 2008
LOL
日本語でのブロギング
最近とても疲れた。よく寝られないからだね。ちょっと病気な気持ち最近は。昨晩も２，３時まで寝られなかった。それから頭もお腹も痛くて学校へ行った。JTEと英語の授業が二回教えた。そうでも、本当に大変だった。給食の後で小学校の授業ある。あのハロウィーンのものをかばんに置いて自転車に乗っていった。小の先生僕を迎えた。今日は二年生だった。すごい準備できた。みんな変装して本当のジャッコランターンがあってハロウィーンの言葉も覚えた。びっくりした。一緒にtrick or treatingの会話を練習した。その後で子供たちが回ってキャンディーをもらった。それからフルーツバスケットした。楽しかった。でもその後で本当に疲れた。普通の時間に仕事から帰った。ついでにレデイで薬を買って西村ジョイで植物をかった。
今晩休むと思う。日本語でもちろん。明日アパートの掃除やガーデニングなど。
PS. To English speakers. Sometimes I'm going to start posting here in Japanese to give me a place to practice. Sometimes I'll translate what I wrote or give a synopsis. Today I wrote about feeling a bit sick and tired this week and not have a great day until I went to elementary school and had a great Halloween lesson. But afterwards I was even more tired. So now I'm home relaxing. ;)
October 27, 2008
Language is more than copying
Recently, he posted a video that he participated in. I disagreed with part of it and left a comment about it and someone else disagreed with me. You can find this below the video. I wrote a response but it ended up being 2 pages long. So I only posted part of it there and said I would put the rest here. So it may be boring for some of you. But this is the kind of stuff I get passionate about. Hence the 2 page response.
I think you missed my point. Yes, it was an ad hoc video. Yes, his answers were off the cuff. But I figured the fact that he stuck with the copying/mimicking connection long enough to leave an impression on me was enough for me to post as I did. If you take a better look, you'll see that I too agreed with his general point and I simply took issue with calling it copying/mimicking. Language is much more complicated than that.
I thought maybe I should have rewatched the video before posting, but I gave listening to Japanese priority to watching another 30 minutes of an English interview. I also figured it would be unfair to rewatch to nitpick it given that it was unrehearsed, unplanned, and unedited. Given your comments I decided to rewatch it to see if I was off base, and I actually found I disagree in whole with Khatz’s relating language acquisition with copying in the way he did. Language is not copying. It is actually highly creative.
(It's not really fair to Khatz to analyze what he said too closely considering it was an unexpected interview and he might not have stated everything he wanted to just as he wanted to. So the rest can just be taken as my take on language acquisition vs. copying rather than a criticism of what he said. That's all it is after all. Just me expanding on my previous comment which I still agree with.)If we're looking to somewhat recreate a child's experience acquiring their first language through input, then let's look at their baby step's towards fluency.
"Want ball"
If that's not creativity, I don't know what is. And it's not copying. It seems redundant to say so, but I think it's important considering Khatz's statements about mixing and matching the copied parts creatively. Statements I agreed with above but, after thinking about them, have come to disagree with now.
If you are copying, then you are trying to be conscious about your language use (this is different from being conscious about the content of your language). If you are being conscious about your language use, then you are not speaking with fluency. The definition of fluency is not thinking about the language when you are using it. It simply falls out of your mouth and sounds natural/good/correct to native speakers while expressing the ideas you want to express.
If we look at what someone has said, we probably will be able to see how the different parts of the sentence have come from this or that source of input, and maybe this grammatical structure was "copied" but used with this other "copied" structure and used with different vocabulary, etc, etc. But it's actually not copying. This is descriptive linguistics. This is looking at language after the fact and analyzing it and describing it. Language looks like a bunch copied and interchanged parts. But this is not how language works in the brain. And this is not how language is created in a given utterance.
I do understand Khatz's warning about not producing on your own or being creative with the language. It's because you're not a native speaker and you'll like create unnatural phrases. This is at the beginning of your acquisition phase. Eventually, you'll hopefully have had enough input to trust your brain's ability to put together the language in natural sounding ways that correctly represent your ideas.
And I think I just got what perhaps went unsaid or was implied but I didn't catch in the interview. Maybe Khatz can clarify. At the beginning of your acquisition process, you should resist being "too creative" with the language. You're not a native and you haven't had enough input to just produce the language. If you want to talk, try copying what you've heard. If you have to use Japanese in your life, this maybe this is a good idea. But if you don't, then it's probably a better idea to not speak until the words fall effortlessly from your mouth. (Just like your native language.) Until that point, you might have fun or get by using copied phrases. By copying correct phrases you won't be risking the fossilization of incorrect grammar or unnatural wording. But eventually you shouldn't be copying. And you should be able to use the language creatively. That's what being native or near-native is.
Speaking to your nash equilibrium (I had to look that up... I'm not a gamer) time and today's political boundaries and high mobility have created language barriers where they once rarely existed if at all. We have identifiable, distinct languages. Take a look at all the dictionaries and grammars. They're so tangible. But language is not tangible. The fact is, even with something as tangible as a spoon, your spoon is not the same as my spoon. Language, after all, is the imperfect representation of one's ideas. And my mental image and definition of a spoon are not the same as yours. We use the same word and can get along in a conversation about a spoon because our mental images and definitions overlap enough to have mutual comprehension. But if you were at my house and you heard "get the spoon" you might be confused since no soup is in sight, but I would know that one of my siblings was talking about getting a whooping like when we were kids. We got the cooking spoon at my house. To sum up, depending on how you define it, every person speaks a different language from everyone else. It's just that there's enough of an overlap for almost 100% comprehension for everyone who lives within a certain community that we recognize what they're speaking as a single, distinct language. If the meanings of words were copied from person to person, then there would be no difference in meaning at all from person to person and there would be no change in meaning over time and space. This is not so.
"A building site" vs. "A building place". Good example of grammatically correct and dictionary-ly correct, but dead wrong. Again, to come to a level of ability to make the correct word choice here you need to have lots of input. It's not copying. If it was copying, then it means you've memorized this phrase. And unless your willing to memorize a million other such phrases to sound natural, copying won't work for competence in the whole language. Input, input, input.
In a movie, you may consciously take note of a certain phrasing. You hear it later in a conversation. You make a mental note to use that phrase just the same way next time you need it. A week later you have a natural opportunity in a conversation and you think to use the phrase. Great! Good for you. That's one phrase. Assuming that the rest of your conversation went smoothly and wasn't entirely made up of copied phrases, you can thank your input for your ability to get by in the conversation and not your ability to copy.
Sorry, I'm a big old dork and I like linguistics and feel strongly about good methodologies in language teaching/study. Basically, I took issue with calling language acquisition copying. I don't comment all that often here. Sometimes, to agree, sometimes to say thanks, sometimes to expand on a point with my own point of view, and sometimes to disagree. The reason I comment, even when disagreeing, is to keep an intellectual dialog going or to create one. Khatz asks us to comment, after all.
October 21, 2008
Octopus Fishing!!
fishing on Sunday! We took a boat from Tadotsu, a town not too far from me, out into the Setonaikai (inland sea) and dropped our hooks in the water and snagged up some of those eight-legged creatures.Pretty fun day in all. We left around 10 30 in the morning and stayed out until 2 or so. I would have thought that you catch octopuses with traps at the bottom of the ocean. But nope. We all were given rod and reel to catch them. We didn't even need bait. Apparently, fall is the season for fishing for them. And they must be just crawling along the bottom in the thousands upon thousands. Seriously.
And when we were done, all the octopuses were put together and divvied out. So I came home with 25 of the little buggers. We were given a quick demo of how to remove the ink sac by driving your thumb in and ripping it out. (By the way, the demo was done with a live octopus.) So, I had to do this 25 times. At least mine were dead by the time I got home. At least I think so. Some of them were still changing color, like they do. Then I boiled them up and invited my friend Matthew over to enjoy some tako tacos. Yes, I'm even corny with my food.Here you can see just how easy it was to catch them. These three guys all snag them up in this minute long video. Crazy.
This video is after about 15 or 20 minutes of trying to take the ink sacs out. It was really hard and you can hear me getting frustrated. I would have posted all the videos but it takes so long to get them uploaded. I just chose a few to give you the idea of the whole process. WARNING: Gross video! If you don't like dead things or are squeamish, you might not want to watch this!
Here you can see me finally done de-inking them and boiling them. WARNING: Again dead things. General ickiness. Beware.
And here is the result of boiling them for 20 minutes. They look pretty cute. Like little dancing octopuses.
And voila! The tako tacos! Well not really tacos, but best I could manage in Japan. Even though they look like Pringles, they are corn chips and have the right taste. See if you can spot some tentacles!!It was quite delicious. I did cheat and mix in some beef, but I didn't think just octopus meat would be enough or have quite the right flavor.
October 15, 2008
GRE
About two and a half weeks ago, I talked with another JET at a party who I knew was planning on taking the test and she said that it she was taking it in a week (so, last Saturday in September). This got me thinking about the application process timeline. And I realized deadlines are already approaching. I think many schools are already accepting applications with deadlines sometime in the winter. I've got to think about having my test scores ready as well as all the accompanying application materials. My friend Alana who lives in Osaka where one can take the GRE was already asking me to come up for the weekend of the 11th (this past Saturday) since another friend of hers was coming to visit. So I decided to check if I could manage a test appointment and luckily there was a spot on Saturday morning, so I could get it out of the way early and enjoy the weekend with Alana and her friend.
I had bought a book for preparing for the GRE back in March I think. But of course I hadn't really started studying with it other than taking a practice test and starting to look at the strategies they suggest for a couple days before getting distracted and putting it aside. But I figured if I waited to sign up for the test until after I'd prepared, I would never get it done. So, I gave myself two weeks to prepare and that was it.
I think I did ok. I'm pretty happy with the score the computer showed for the verbal and math sections. The official scores will come in a few weeks and will include a score for the essay portion. That section was a bit of a mess. There are two parts. The first is an essay in which you analyze a quote of some sort and explain your position related to it giving support with details from your knowledge of the world, literature, history, current events, etc. etc. The second part is an analysis of a brief paragraph usually describing someone's idea for a plan of action or a change in a given situation. You must analyze the quality of the reasoning behind the idea. You have to point out the faults while explaining what sort of information would strengthen the argument.
I think I did fine on the second essay. You have less time, but you're just working with information that's provided. The only stuff you have to come up with is how to make it better. But the first essay, I was stumped. They have two quotes to choose from and I made myself choose quickly. A good step. But then I spent 15 minutes staring at the quote and making a few notes on paper and then typing a few ideas on the screen. Not a good step. Finally with only 2/3 of the time left, 30 minutes, I started really typing. But unfortunately, I only got 2 full paragraphs done and a sad excuse for a third clearly unfinished paragraph. Later when I was thinking about what I wrote, it seems that I had been making a connection in my head (a connection between what I was writing and the original quote) that I don't think I very clearly defined. They say that it's not just about great writing given the short time. But I really don't know if I showed enough of the kind of analytical and academic thinking that they're also looking for in my writing. We'll see.
Anyway, this is the first step to graduate school. But I'm not sure that's where I'll be, come next August. The possibility of staying in Japan a 3rd year has crossed my mind more than once. Right now I'm trying to keep my options open. I don't know if that's good. I think I'd do best to make a definite decision soon and work to accomplish whatever goal I set, rather than half-heartedly go through the motions just to "keep my options open". Being wishy-washy will just have wishy-washy results.
October 5, 2008
A hair.
It's a hair. On my earlobe. Just one hair. But it's a peachfuzz hair. So it's light blondish. But it's freaking an inch long! Sticking straight out from my ear. I only saw it cause the light hit it just right.
Of course I plucked it. And of course I was wondering just how long it had been growing to such a grotesque length. Thought you might like to know.
That and I went to my second bonsai lesson. I didn't really learn anymore. Just finished up clipping the tree I started last week. And then I started a new tree. Well it's Matt 1's tree. He couldn't take it home with him.
Then I met Hashizume-sensei for dinner. She's the music teacher who retired. But guess what, she's working again! I knew she would find something to get her out and working. She likes being busy. She is filling in for an elementary music teacher on maternity leave. She'll be there for a year she said. But she also has to teach math. So she wakes up at 4 in the morning.
I know, she's crazy. She spends the time getting dressed and then studying the math assignments since she isn't good at them. (Even though, she co-teaches math and the other teacher is the one who takes the lead.) Then at 5 she prepares her and her husbands breakfasts/lunches. I think at 5 30 is her 1st year NHK radio English lesson for a half hour followed at 6 by the 2nd year lesson. Then, she finishes up and heads to school. She cooks 4 nights of dinners and freezes them on Sundays, so when she gets home (maybe around 7 30 or 8) she only has to defrost them. Her husband has taken over some of the cleaning and laundry that she had been taking care of. And she goes to bed at 10 30.
I would say this isn't an uncommon schedule for many Japanese people. They work a LOT. I often hear about teachers who are trying to finish this or that and stay up until 2 in the morning only to get up at the normal time. And there isn't really any sleeping-in ever. That's why there's so much sleeping on the train, I guess. And for the women, it's perhaps a bit tougher, because even they've moved into the workplace as much as in the states, they still are VERY much the person in charge of the kitchen and many inside household duties. And even if some of the responsibilities are shared, it's almost universal that they are expected to get up early to cook breakfast and make dinner when they get home after work. The kitchen is the woman's place. Men here in general have no interest in cooking and never cook (unless they are in the restaurant business).
Well, I guess that post grew longer than I meant to. But yeah. A freaking inch-long hair! Sticking straight out of the side of my ear lobe.
September 28, 2008
My first bonsai lesson!
It was great. Nothing big, but a lot of fun. There's a nice couple, Yoichi and Kana, who are running the family business. I saw Yoichi's father today, so he's still working around the shop. And then there are the other staff, including a Frenchman, Xavier. He's actually the only other person I've met who works there. I think more people work out in the bonsai fields.
So anyway, I showed up and they weren't expecting me because they hadn't understood my text message and it was so late (sent this morning). But anyway, we started off working with a white pine, goyoumatsu (specifically ginyattsufusa). Yoichi ran through the basic yearly care cycle for the white pine. How often to water, when to change the pot, when to prune the dead leaves, and when to wire it. October is when you usually prune it, so that's what he showed me how to do.
It looked simple enough. You look for the older needles, generally lower than the newer ones and a little yellowed, and snip them off with some scissors. At first, I said, "This is nervewracking." But mainly because he was pretty quick with the demonstration pruning and I was slow and Yoichi and Kana were right there watching my every snip. But after several snips, I started getting the hang of it, and they felt satisfied enough to walk away and before long I spontaneously said, "This is relaxing." It took a second for me to realize how opposite that was from my first statement.
It really was nice. I got into a nice snipping mood. And that was all I did for about 2 hours. I didn't finish the tree, so I will follow up next time. I wish I had taken a picture so you could see. But next time.
They have a website. And before you freak out, click the English link. And they also have a blog. They posted a picture of when I went last time with the other Matt. (Matt from Kanonji who has already returned to the States in preparation for his new job in Singapore, I think.) By the way, I'm マット２. (That means Matt 2.)
September 17, 2008
What a trip!
It's already back into the old routine. (Get to school barely on time, remind the teachers I have class with them, find out what we're doing while we walk to class, etc.) It feels as if I haven't even been gone. But during the trip it felt like time was stopped. In a good way of course. It was one of those trips where our days were just so long and filled that we thought two had passed in one.
Anyway, I'll update again with pictures when I get a chance to breathe.
Whew!
September 13, 2008
Okinawa
Already got caught in a downpour. Bought cheesy souvenirs. Ate goya champuru. Drank shiquasa or shiquasur.
Still need to get out and see some sights and eat some other well-known foods and drink some awamori, the lethal okinawan sake.
No ferries out to the island we wanted to get to due to the typhoon. So we're playing it by ear on the main island. Wish us luck!
September 8, 2008
School's Back in for the Year
Not even sure where I last left off. Well, August was 夏休み (summer vacation) but, as you know, that just means kids had no class. Everyone was still at school doing stuff. I had grand plans to study Japanese everyday, organize my desk, do some lesson planning for the new semester, get back into working out, go to some club activities, take a couple trips, etc. Not very much of that happened. I took a couple trips. But a lot of my time (and mostly my energy) went into saying goodbye to my friends who were heading home and then very quickly after, saying hello to all the new friends that were coming. Dinners, parties, nights out, short train rides here and there, out til all hours. I just never had the energy to do much when I was "at work". I studied 漢字 (kanji) each day, but that was about all the studying I did.
On to the trips. I went to Osaka for a week to hang out with Alana and our friend Erin (my friend through Alana who had moved from Atlanta to New York and was visiting for a couple weeks). I was there for the last 5 days of her trip in Japan. It was great fun hanging out together and exploring Osaka. Erin and I took a trip to Arashiyama and the monkey mountain when Alana had work one day. We ate Mexican and Indian and Mexican and American and Combini. We went to a city pool. We laid in a park and read books and drank a beer. We rode a red ferris wheel on top of a building. Alana and I had grand plans for a trip to Hokkaido after Erin left, but due to our utter lack of real planning and an unforeseen lack of energy due to Alana's crazy schedule leading up to that point, we opted for hanging in Osaka. Had a couple lazy days watching movies and hanging out. Took a trip to a beach which was a lot of fun. Then I headed home.
Actually, it went like this. Night out on Friday in Osaka which went until after midnight (not quite sure of the time... probably later). Up before 7 maybe for my 4.5 hour bus/train rides + 10 minute w
alk home. Showered and had maybe 3 hours to myself and then took an hour ride with the music teacher down to Awaikeda in the neighboring prefecture for a festival. They dance the Awaodori there. The same dance as in the big city, but just a small town festival. We were meeting some of my friends (and friends of friends) before the festival to get ready. The teacher had brought traditional festival clothes for me to wear. She helped me and my friends get out our clothes. She pretty much took over that part of the evening. When I get a sec, I'll post the picture. I had on a yukata (what we would call a kimono probably) and geta, the raised wooden sandals. I carried my traditional bag and a fan. I was styling. I even got a "かっこいい" (cool) from this restaurant owner.Let's see. After that we went home. The teacher said she would maybe sew me a yukata. (At this point, she's already bought the fabric and will probably have started on it. She said it might take a whole year though.) She's a handful. I need to talk to her. It's been a while.
The next weekend, I went to basically the same city, just one town over, for a friend's house party. That was quite a night. I was up til maybe 5 or 5 30. Got up at 9 the next day and (barely) made the train (are you surprised). I literally broke into a sprint for the last 3 minutes. The train wasn't taking me home, but to the other side of Kagawa where there was a festival. It was on the beach, so some of us met early to enjoy the beach and swimming and a lot of others joined later throughout the afternoon and evening. Eventually we had probably more than 30 people in our group. It was a crazy night. I couldn't quite enjoy all of it since I was soooo tired. I ended up crashing at a friends around 1. Then made my way home the next morning. (By the way, I had found out at the party Friday night that my friend Sandra's goodbye dinner with the teacher would be that Sunday around 5.) So anyway, I was up in the morning early enough to get the train that would arrive at 12. Guess who called me right at 12. Yes, my friend, the music teacher. She wanted me to come over then to help make a cake. I absolutely couldn't. I had to get home and decompress for a moment, maybe take a nap. Definitely a shower. I managed to be ready to go over at 3 to help prepare. The cake couldn't happen since I wasn't able to help because she had everything else to prepare. :( But it was a great night. It lasted forever and of course ended in tears when the teacher gave Sandra a handmade apron with Japanese fabrics. It was really beautiful.
Since then...
Sandra had her hands-down-best-party-ever goodbye party. We went to an izakaya followed by karaoke. We had 20 people? more? Insane. Insane. And tearful at the end. She was really gone the next day. :(
School has started up again (last Monday) with my list above of things I wanted to do still looking about the same.
Planned a trip to Okinawa which leaves in 4 days.
Registered for the fall ALT tournament for the following weekend.
Spending my afternoons helping students for the speech contest.
Restarted my Japanese tutoring.
Today I got home and did a lot of cleaning and work and still only got through half my to-do list. Trying to get ready for my trip. Leaving Thursday night in preparation to get to the airport for the flight on Friday. I have elementary classes every afternoon starting tomorrow through Thursday. Speech contest practice every afternoon after elementary (which means biking hurriedly back to the junior high). Tutoring tomorrow for 2 hours. Wednesday packing/preparing plants for my absence. Maybe racing for a train on Thursday.
Anyway, that brings us up today. And I even got a picture up (despite my computer trying to foil me by not producing any text in my file browsing windows whenever I really want to use them).
I hope all is well with everyone. Mwah! Miss you all!
August 6, 2008
1 YEAR!!!
Time really flies.
People I run into keep asking if I'll stay another year and I say yes. And then they ask why. It's funny because I don't really know why. JETs who knew that I was wavering on my decision back in January/February ask me if I regret signing on for another year. It's hard to answer. Parts of me wish I was already back in the US but other parts are perfectly happy being here and have plenty of things to do before leaving next year. Sometimes I have pangs of "Why did I decide to stay!!!" But just as often, I think... "Maybe I could stay for 3rd year."
Well, most of you know, but just to set the record straight, I won't be coming home this summer. It would really be a major expense and wipe out all of the savings I have managed to accumulate (since I started saving in December after I realized I had spent more money that I had made in Japan by that point). Not to mention my family and friends are now all over the map and just traveling to Atlanta wouldn't provide me with the opportunity to see everyone. I'd want to go to Arizona, Savannah, Pennsylvania, London, Sweden, etc. and that just can't happen. Plus summer is the easiest time to travel home for an extended period, but it's also the time when I have to say goodbye to the leaving JETs and I get to welcome the new JETs. And if you recall from last year, it's the time when there are summer festivals EVERY weekend. I'm getting to see ones that I didn't get to see last year. And I'm going to travel up to a big music festival in Osaka and possibly Hokkaido!?! Still working on those plans. I'm a little upset because I'll be missing Tokushima's Awa Odori Festival. But I did get to go last year and I don't get to see my Osaka friend Alana very often. She's a blast to travel with.
I'm still working on getting pictures up on the blog and picasa and facebook. My friends here are always mad at me because they see me take lots of pictures, but I never put them up on facebook like everyone else. I just need to start making it a habit. I think I may try to use mainly the picasa albums online and just link to them rather than trying to post on all three sites. I'll let you know when that gets started.
By the way, I just took over the eikaiwa (English Conversation Class) in Takase that Dan used to teach. He's gone home now and so I've got the job. It didn't go how I thought it would last week. They have been doing it a certain way for 2 years and they don't really want it to change much. Every time I try to stretch my teaching wings here, it seems someone is there trying to cage me back up.
Anyway, It may be a while before I post again. I've got a lot of cleaning and packing to do before Friday. That's when I head to Osaka and who knows where, after that. I'll be gone until the 18th or 19th. Then a couple more weeks of summer vacation and then 2nd term starts at the beginning of September.
Good luck to all my teaching buddies back in Cherokee who are starting a new school year!
July 16, 2008
Me on a webpage!
http://www.city.mitoyo.lg.jp/forms/info/info.aspx?info_id=4004
2 weeks later...
The day of that last post, I actually tried to get pictures off my camera to post on here. But my computer is messed up. After it's been running for a while, all the programs get a glitch. The glitch involves the pop-up windows within a program. Like when you click for options or tools or something. The window will open, but all text is missing so I don't know which buttons are which and or in some cases the box is completely misshapen and unusable. I can sometimes get things back to normal by simply rebooting the computer, but it's not a definite fix.
Anyway, hopefully pictures to come soon. Not tonight, though. I'm tired.
Let me tell you that I am better though! It was about 2 weeks of unpleasantness. But by last Friday I was feeling almost normal again. Which was good since Saturday was our Sayonara Party. It was pretty fun, especially after being cooped up in my apartment for 2 weeks. We basically take over an island for a couple days. I got there around 2pm and left at 1pm the next day. It's just a great beach day with most of the JETs in the prefecture. Grilling, swimming, talking, dancing, drinking, bonfire, fireworks, etc. I finally got to use my underwater camera feature again. I'll try and post some of those on here. I didn't get to sleep until about 3 and even then the really drunk people who stayed up all night kept me up. And then in the morning around 5 or so, it was quiet and winding down. But that's when the crows or something started cawing right above the tent. I couldn't believe it. And then the whole sleeping on a slant started getting to me and I was up at about 7 I think. But I stayed and enjoyed some swimming and frisbee until about 1. It was sooooo nice to be outside and on the beach. I LOVE the beach and swimming and being out and active. I really need to do it more. Since the soccer tournament I haven't really been running and working out. I need to get back into it.
Hope all is well with everyone back home. Love and miss you all!
July 1, 2008
Sick Day
I'm really sorry for not posting a lot. When I first got here I was posting at least 3 or 4 times a week it seemed. Now it's been a month since my last post. I've been thinking it might be easiest for me to just do a sort of update through pictures instead of writing about all the stuff that's been going on. You guys know how long winded I can be. But even that's going to take time. I haven't uploaded pictures from my camera in a while. But I think I'll get started on that in a bit. I'm just moving slowly today, not having slept really the past two nights.
Anyway, I'll just get started by doing a post about the past weekend. Which really started on Thursday night. And, of course, is probably the cause of me being sick now.
Thursday I had class at the closest elementary in the afternoon. But when I got back the young new teachers were learning the school's sports day dances. (It was weird I thought that the new teachers to the school that are older don't have to learn the dance). I never got to learn them last year. So I went in and tried learning them, too. But they had already been going for an hour so I didn't really get it. Afterward, us young teachers played a few games of badminton which was surprisingly fun. That evening we all went out to an izakaya. It was pretty fun. One of the young new teachers is an English teacher, but I didn't have to ask her to translate everything for me. I was able to mostly follow along and even participate sometimes in the conversation. It was nice. This place we were at is called Yamacho, 'mountain bird'. It's probably because they specialize in sashimi chicken. Yes, that's raw chicken. And of course, I had to try some. I had breast, thigh, heart, and liver. The liver had a very complex flavor that was amazing. The thigh was the easiest to eat and tasted good.
Friday was a long day since we were out until midnight and I had had 5 drinks. On top of that, I had a special lesson at an elementary and I had to ride my bike there and back. Then, in the afternoon, I had my regular elementary lesson. By the way, these elementaries are the 2 farthest and most uphill of the 5. After, that 2nd lesson, I went out to another izakaya with some of the teachers from the first elementary for an otsukare (good work) dinner. I wasn't going to drink but then was convinced by the principal to have a beer. I only had two though. She was also determined to "challenge" me with different foods. So, I had sashimi (fish, this time) which I've had before. I tried some raw squid that had been in this weird sauce. Not that good. I also had whale for the first time. (For you save the whale types, apparently, there is a time period when it's ok to kill certain types of whales, and usually the meat comes from whales that have been collected by scientists for testing, etc.)
Saturday morning, I went to my friend's apartment and she helped me buzz my head into a mohawk. I'd been wanting to buzz my head, and why not have a mohawk for the weekend. (A mohawk wouldn't go down well at school, or I might have kept it.) After that, I went to a friend's photography exhibition closing party. I even got the retired music teacher who cooks for me sometimes to come with me. But she was shy about speaking in English and didn't really try. But we had a great time anyway. Lots of people were there. Afterwards, we went to an izakaya. The teacher was quite the center of attention there. She kind of does that. She went home and the rest of us went out to karaoke. By the end of the night, I kind of wished I had gone home. I had a great time, but I was regretting having stayed out so late and that I wouldn't get to sleep in my own bed. Sunday, I was up early and already feeling a bit sick and so went home, but I felt well enough to meet everyone again to see the new Indiana Jones movie. It was ok. Didn't like the ending so much. Then did some shopping. By the time I was heading home I was really feeling tired. And that night is when I started feeling really sick.
I went to work yesterday because I felt fine in the morning. But after a couple hours, I could tell I wasn't well. But I was lucky because it worked out that I had only one class. So I figured I'd tough it out. But just after lunch I started feeling really hot. Near the end of school I asked the school nurse to take my temperature and it was 38.7 C (101.6 F). I didn't really know what that meant at the time, but she said it was a fever and so one of the assistant principals took me to the hospital and I got some medicine to get me better. But last night was no better than Sunday night so that's why I'm home today. No real sleep in two days (actually three since I only got about 4 hours Saturday night) really sucks.
Anyway, so obviously this past weekend was really busy. If you can imagine, about the past 4 or 5 have been this busy. And during the week I've managed to stay busy as well. Hence, the slip in posting. I'll try and do better though. I love and miss everyone back home.
May 30, 2008
Soccer Tournament
As usual, sorry for not keeping up like I should. And sorry for not staying in touch via email and real mail and calls like I should. I'm trying to get that into my habits.
Also, I don't really need to do the kanji countdown anymore. I finished. I did all 2042. But the last few hundred are still quite shaky as usual. It would take about a week or two as I went along for the kanji to really stick. And unfortunately it's been the busiest week ever right after finishing the book of kanji and I haven't been reviewing like I should be. So I will have to relearn a bunch. But I have gone ahead and started my first novel. I'm trying to keep it mostly in Japanese. I'm trying to consult my children's Japanese/Japanese dictionary first before using my Japanese/English dictionary. I've gone about 2.5 pages in about 2-3 hours. A lot of that time is taken up by looking up definitions and then looking up definitions for the words in the definition and on and on. It's kind of fun. And it's really helpful because eventually you get a circle and you can use that to create connections in your mind for the various words. It's exciting to find entire sentences that I can read and understand without the help of a dictionary, too.
Anyway, I really gotta get going. Train leaves in 15 minutes.
By the way, I'm driving a rental car to the island. That should be interesting.
May 13, 2008
All Japanese, All the Time
Enjoyed this post. Am still enjoying exploring the vast reaches of this site.
I’ve been in Japan since last August. I came on the JET Program.. somewhat on a whim. (How much of a whim considering the 9 month long application->arrival period.) My real goal was to live abroad and learn a new language. (I studied French high school to university and taught it for 3 years.) But then I got here and some culture shock set in. I think a big part of it was the “what have I gotten myself into” factor since I never really fully considered the consequences of such a move.
Anyway, my studies thus far:
- 8 week community class for business Japanese (cost $300, got through 5/6 lessons of Japanese for Busy People, learned a few counters, basic greetings, and a very simple understanding of how the grammar works, ie particles, sentence-final verbs, etc. - oh in addition to the cost was having all my CDs stolen and paying for a broken window - the class was in downtown Atlanta.)
- Learning the kana on my own before arriving.
- Self-study since then - mainly through a semi-decent beginning text provided by JET
In October, I was recommended Heisig’s kanji method, and I jumped on it after reading the forward. I made it pretty strong through 500 in a couple of months. In December, around 600 or so, I started fading. Then I made the decision that I wanted to focus on input (what I based my teaching of French on). That didn’t really work. The problem was a lack of comprehensible input (and I think I was just stuck in some winter blues and lost motivation. This was also the time when I had to decide if I wanted to recontract, and it was a difficult decision.) In March, I got back on the ball. I got a library card, and I’ve been devouring the children’s books. (Written mostly in hiragana, occasional furigana-ed kanji) End of March or so, I was recommended your site. I was wary at the description at first. There are lot of programs out there that claim a lot but deliver little.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that you were basing your study habits off of the same research that I based my pedagogy on. Most prominently, Krashen’s input hypothesis. (The method I used was TPRS, or more commonly storytelling. You might check it out.) After finding your site, I was actually really upset at myself for simply complaining that I didn’t have access to a teacher who used the method I used so that I could acquire Japanese the “right” way. I knew I needed input, but I didn’t really know how to go about it. And the whole needing kanji to access most things written in Japanese was a huge obstacle of course. Duh, on my own, without a teacher, I’m going to have to put more effort forth, and I’m going to need to find already translated input or establish meaning of the input on my own.
Well, since the beginning of April, I’ve been back on the kanji train. My goal is to finish by June 1st so I can start mining sentences in earnest. I was at 670ish beginning of April. I’m at 1340ish as of today. できるかな？I’m still reading the children’s books. It’s helping my kana fluency at least. That’s something. And it’s helping me get a feel for the grammar and flow of sentences. In the meantime, I’m continuing with the JET text though I’m more just skimming the grammar points, using the dialogues for input, and attempting the exercises without really thinking too hard.
Also, I’ve got my first J-J dictionary, one for 小学生. When reading the kids books, I try to be sure to check there first and only if I’m stumped resort to a bilingual dictionary.
The only thing I’ve yet to do is be 100% AJATT. I’m growing my music list, I’m searching for audio, I’m watching more J-TV (which I’ve fallen in love with!), and I’m re-organizing my bookmarks with all Japanese websites right at top.
Basically, me saying “hey look at all the stuff I’m doing” is really my way of saying 本当にありがとう。While I knew about input and was trying my best to get it, your site has provided me with confidence. Your words have shown me what true dedication and self-discipline are. You have reminded me that acquiring a language is really difficult and requires many hours of work (that can be fun) and that if you want to acquire quickly, you must change the way you live. I’ve had access to all the Japanese I could ever want all around me, and I’ve been living in an English speaking bubble. It’s time to pop it.
By the way, I’m never concise. ごめんね。
May 11, 2008
日本のテレビ （Japanese TV)
It’s for a mother’s day special. But the thing is, they have show’s like this alllll the time. They aren’t doing it here, but often, they’ll have a famous person go out and experience something and film it. Later, they’ll play it for a bunch of other famous people to watch and comment on. And that’s the show. Sometimes, they make it a game, like showing a sequence and then pausing it and asking them what will happen next.
I just love it. I still don’t understand all the Japanese but I usually can catch enough and with the actions get a good understanding of what’s happening. And I can justify sitting around watching TV as my study time. Except when I’m watching the movies. They show dubbed English language movies fairly often on TV. But all TVs now have buttons that allow for them to be heard in Japanese, Japanese over top of the English, or English (or whatever the original language is; I just watched Shaolin Soccer the other day which is a Chinese movie). And you can watch certain news shows with English translations. It makes life a little easier when I need it to be. Except, oh yeah, I’m going all Japanese all the time. By the way, kanji countdown: 800 to go.
Anyway, I’m really going to miss Japanese TV when I leave. Maybe I’ll import it somehow.
(((((Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!!!!)))))
May 5, 2008
Japanese Study 日本語の勉強
It's sometimes frustrating, because I'd like to learn from a teacher using the method that I used to use in class. But that's just not available. And that method isn't really adaptable to self-study. So I've just been going the traditional route with textbooks, etc. Also, lots of listening to the Japanese spoken around me (but most of it is still out of reach).
I was recently suggested this website, alljapaneseallthetime.com (which is actually based on this website ). The method described there is based on the research that the method I want to learn by is based on. It's not the same and isn't ideal, but it looks like through a lot of hard work, it can be effective and much more interesting than a textbook and grammar exercises (even though I secretly love that stuff).
The first step is learning all 2000 or so common-use kanji. Remember, kanji are the Japanese written characters. (They are actually from Chinese, but I hate it when people call them Chinese characters because they are really different at this point.) Anyway, you need to memorize how to write and recognize them and attach a single meaning to the character. In reality, each kanji represents a general idea that might have several different words in the actual language that it can be used for. But the first step is just knowing a single meaning and the writing. The next step is just getting out there and reading as much as you can and taking the time to figure out the various readings for the kanji as you go. You also will pick out various sentences from what you read and input them into a computerized flashcard program that you use daily to reread the sentences and slowly absorb the grammar and the readings of the kanji. Though you start with reading, once your vocabulary is advanced enough, you move to listening to music, news, TV, radio, etc. from which you can also pull sentences. The goal is about 10,000 sentences. Once achieved, your language skills should have developed "like magic"with no real need for studying explicit grammar rules. Of course, it's not magic and will take a LOT of work. But I think I'm up for the challenge.
I had started the process with the kanji back in October or so. I can't remember. But by December I had decided to put it on the back burner and just do a textbook lesson once a week and just pick up the language from hearing it. So when I decided to get going again, I just had to review the ones I had done and then move from there. It took about a week I think, to work back through the 600ish that I had done. Now I'm around 950. My goal is to finish by June. (Well that was my goal when I counted up the days on my calendar and found that I could reach that goal by doing 30 a day. Not very difficult and a pace that I kept up with for more than a week. And then, the other day, May 1st actually, I realized that I had counted that overlap week that shows up at the end of April and the beginning of may as two weeks instead of just one. So, while I'd like to finish by June 1st still, since that's what I told people my goal was, I'd be ok with June 15th. I know that's more than the week I miscounted by, but I don't want to feel totally stressed to finish. I want to keep a nice pace, but not feel like I have to rush. )
Anyway, in the meantime, while I'm working on learning all these kanji, I've been checking out children's books at the library. They usually contain no kanji or only a few kanji with the pronunciation printed just above (furigana). It's been a great confidence booster to go from real picture books with maybe 5-10 words on a page to books with smaller pictures and 5 to 10 sentences per page. I still need to have a dictionary at hand, but I'm often able to grasp the story without the dictionary. I just use it to make certain and to help add more vocabulary.
Oh and I also just got a children's Japanese dictionary. So Japanese-Japanese. All kanji have furigana and there are sample sentences for many words. This gives me lots of examples to put into my computer to study from and helps me stay all in Japanese even when I'm reading. Though I'll often have to resort to my Japanese-English dictionary.
I'm just excited about learning Japanese again. If you couldn't tell.
Hackey Sack with the priests
Friday night went out for drinks and karaoke. We did a nomihodai (all you can drink) for 78 minutes. It was about 10 bucks if you ordered a certain amount of food. Good times all around.
Major headache Saturday morning. Not really sure why though. (facetious) Anyway, ended up going to a castle festival in Marugame with Dan. It was fun. Your average festival. Highlights: seeing the black and white Great Dane and saying "Ushi mitai" and making a Japanese woman laugh. ("Looks like a cow") Saying to Dan, should I get a beer? followed by oh if you see some of those fans, I wanna get one as a souvenir. 3 minutes later a man who was with a dancing group walked up to Dan and me to give us each a fan and a beer.
Afterward, we took a nice car ride up to the mountains for the sunset. There's some pretty amazing landscapes around here.
Sunday: up early and did some laundry and studying. I invited Sandra on a bike ride with me. It was supposed to be a nice jaunt out where I was for the Furosatomatsuri last Tuesday (sorry, didn't post about that... maybe later). We did this walking course that day and I wanted to do it again to take my time and enjoy the view more peacefully and to maybe dig up some plants for my ever-expanding apartment garden. Well, when you're walking at a slow pace and stopping every 10 or 15 minutes for pictures or activities, it's different than biking. I also remembered slighter inclines. Needless to say, we got a major workout. We were out for a few hours and picnicked and took pictures. It was nice. Then back to town. She went home to clean up while I got all my plants situated. Then, Dan picked me up and we met Sandra and Brent at Marufuku in Kanonji. Afterward we went back to Brent's for some Futurama episodes. A nice evening.
This morning: up early and studied kanji. Brent trained to Takase and Dan picked us up to go to Konpirasan for kemari. I wasn't sure what it was about. I just knew it was a soccer-like ball game played by priests that Dan just had to see. So we went. By the way, konpirasan is one of the most famous temples in Japan and is more of a series of temples and shrines all the way up the side of a mountain. So we hiked up about halfway to where the kemari games were held. We were early and got some seats up front.
We waited a bit and made friends with the people around us sort of. There was a couple from Kyoto and they helped us understand what we were there to see. One interesting aspect was the court. It was outlined with stone or concrete-a big square. In the corners were four trees. A cherry, a willow, a maple, and a pine. They represent the four seasons. Then, the priests appeared walking through the gate in their traditional clothes carrying a white ball, slightly smaller than a soccer ball with some stitching and a purple tab.
The game consisted of 6 priests entering the court with a ball. Then they stood in a circle to see how many times they could kick the ball while keeping it in the air. Hence, the hackey sack reference in the title. That's what it most closely resembles, even though the Japanese will call it "Japanese soccer".
The only rule was to kick with the right foot only. No left foot. But as with all Japanese culture, special attention must be paid to form and style. You should kick your leg up very high. The ideal trajectory is high and forward. Also, when serving, you step right, left and then kick with your right. You hold the ball between both hands with the purple tab held by your right hand. You must drop the ball and not toss it.
The reason I know these rules so well now is because after they played a few games, they had several people from the crowd play, including me and Dan. It was a great experience. We didn't think they would let people join in, but they were very friendly and insistent that people try it. They helped us figure it out and played with us for awhile. Then, the 6 of us were left to play together. We managed 9 kicks in a row. When the priests were playing, the highest they got was 30 or 31.
After we finished our game, the priest called Dan and I over and this younger female priest and had her explain that this game is played for world peace and happiness and to please come and play again and share our experience with others. It was very nice. There were many pictures taken and they may even send us a book that may have our pictures in it eventually.
Well, as usual, I don't have the pictures and videos uploaded yet. And I'd like to get a bit of studying done before bed. I hope this is the start of more posts. By the way, this week is called Golden Week. This year, it's not actually a week because two of the holidays fell on the weekend. But Saturday through Tuesday are 4 Japanese national holidays. It is a time when almost everyone in Japan who works in traditional companies get time off. These days, 2 or 3 in August for Obon, and 2 or 3 around the New Year are the only holidays they really ever get. So there are many, many events at all major tourists areas all over Japan. And thus my having Monday off for kemari.
May 2, 2008
Random
Like today. Just an average day. But I did get a chuckle just a bit ago. All the teachers and students wear aprons for lunchtime. When I was getting my lunch, I passed the assistant principal. He doesn't usually wear an apron because he doesn't eat with the students and doesn't help prepare the lunch. But today he had on a playboy apron. It didn't have the bunny. Just some black and white design and a very clear PLAYBOY written at the top.
It almost stopped me in my tracks. I thought it was an interesting choice for a school apron.
