Japanese Audio/subs on US Blue Ray Disks

If you were like me, and completely unaware of it, it might upset you just a hair to know that beautifully done Japanese was within your fingertips for potentially some of your favorite movies, or at least movies you’re willing to watch. A handful of BD( Blue ray Disk) movies from America is set up with pesky ‘hidden’ audio tracks in a few more languages.

So First off, here is a list of some well known blue ray movies from America that have hidden Japanese audio(sub) tracks presented on a forum that I’ve pulled here.

• Appleseed Exmachina : Audio
• Batman Begins : Subtitles / Audio
• Batman Gotham Knight : Subtitles / Audio
• Beetlejuice : Subtitles / Audio
• Blade Runner : Subtitles
• Bourne Trilogy, the (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Constantine : Subtitles / Audio (need to put player settings to Japanese)
• Dark Knight, the (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Death Race (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Broly double feature : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Dead Zone/World’s Strongest : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z History of Trunks/Bardock Father of Goku : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Tree of Might/Lord Slug : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Cooler double feature- : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13 / Bojack Unbound : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z: Broly Triple Feature : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn / Wrath of the Dragon : Audio
• Diebuster : Audio
• Dirty Harry : Subtitles / Audio
• Eraser : Subtitles / Audio
• Every Which Way But Loose : Subtitles / Audio
• Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete : Audio
• First Knight : Subtitles / Audio
• Freedom : Audio
• Gauntlet, the : Subtitles / Audio
• Gunbuster : Audio
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban : Subtitles / Audio
• Hellboy II (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• How the west was won : Subtitles
• Hulk (2003) : Subtitles / Audio
• Interview with the Vampire : Subtitles / Audio
• Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade : Audio
• Kill Bill Vol 1 : Subtitles
• Kill Bill Vol 2 : Subtitles
• Kingdom of Heaven : Subtitles
• La Haine (EU) : Subtitles
• Letters From Iwo Jima : Audio
• Lost Boys; the : Subtitles
• Matrix Ultimate collection, the : Subtitles / Audio (need to put player settings to Japanese)
• Mummy Trilogy, the (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Natural Born Killers : Subtitles / Audio
• Ocean’s 11 : Subtitles / Audio
• Ocean’s 12 : Subtitles / Audio
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest : Subtitles
• One Piece Movie 8: The Desert Princess and the Pirates – Adventures in Alabasta : Audio
• Outbreak : Subtitles / Audio
• Paprika : Audio
• Perfect Storm : Subtitles / Audio
• Samurai 7 : Audio
• Serenity (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Shinobi Heart Under Blade : Audio
• Signs : Subtitles / Audio
• SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers The Next : Audio
• Speed Racer (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Sweeney Todd (EU/HK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Tekkon Kinkreet : Audio
• V for vendetta : Subtitles / Audio
• Van Helsing (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Wings Of Honneamise, the : Subtitles / Audio
• Wanted (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Yukikaze : Audio
• Zodiac – Director’s Cut (EU/AU) : Subtitles / Audio

You can also, simply search the Blue ray web site and use filters to find dvd’s from your country with Japanese audio and subs.

Out of these, I personally have bought V for Vendetta and Batman Begins, because that is the only ones in the store from the list. They were a lowly $10 a piece. That’s a nice price tag for Japanese language, movie I like, and quality of Blue Ray.

However, now I shall talk about the more saddening parts. When I came home super excited about watching Batman and V, I popped them in my play station 3 without any hesitation.

Where was the Japanese? I got really upset, I couldn’t find them, on either video. So I went online, and most people who could see it had either a Japanese region Blue ray player, or had set their PS3 to Japanese. Well, this is where I was getting sad, simply because I had my PS3 set to Japanese. I decided not to give up, as many people wouldn’t talk about it if it weren’t true, so I delved into my PS3 settings and realized there was a setting for default language of the actual Blue ray disks themselves. After popping that setting in Japanese, my disks then played in Japanese and had both audio and subs.

I wasn’t impressed with the subs for V for Vendetta because they weren’t exact subs. The audio was really good however, and didn’t distract me from the goodness of the movie. I really like the voice actor for V too. I haven’t watched Batman Begins just yet, but I’m looking forward to see who they have voicing Batman.

So if you have a BD player that isn’t from Japan, go ahead and check to see if there is a language, default setting, that can switch it to Japanese, and make sure to set the BD settings in your PS3 to Japanese as well.

In my area, a lot of these bds were between $10-20 a piece. That’s a pretty decent price, if you consider what it would take to get a Japanese BD from Japan sent over! I hope everyone enjoys this knowledge if it is new for you, as I certainty was super happy to find out myself! Interview with the Vampire up next! yay!

 

Experiments With Reading

Today’s post is going to be a short one… well maybe not. As I speak, my darling slave editor is typing this for me. I am currently on my way to the Grandparents’ house and really wanted to get this post up. If you’re new to the world of reading, despite your hesitations, you really should start. There are hundreds of sources out there that can explain why reading is so great for language learning but I am here specifically to report on the progress of two Japanese Babies.

The first Japanese Baby is someone who recently learned their Kana tables and currently knows roughly 300 kanji. Her journey in Japanese has only just begun recently. So I decided to experiment with her fragile Japanese Baby heart. One day, after much encouragement, I was able to get her to start reading some Japanese children books aloud. Just like many Japanese babies, she experienced an intense amount of anxiety. On her very first page, she stumbled on every single character. Despite her need for a few corrections, she kept at it. After her very first page, which only contained 4 sentences, she was ready for a break. I didn’t let her give up and after reading a few lines myself, I asked her if she’d like to read again. With a wavery “I guess so”statement she commenced reading again. There were moments we laughed and moments of serious discussion on pronunciation and grammar. Despite the struggle, she decided to read yet another  book. To spare you the details of the roughly 4 hours to put in to read two books, not only her pronunciation improve, the speed she was able to read quickened and she was also filled with confidence.

As a self conscious Japanese Baby, it is hard to gain confidence but reading aloud was able to instill some speaking and reading confidence. After her third book, I did not even have to correct her Hiragana. Then she was able to encourage the second experimental Japanese Baby to read.

The second Japanese Baby, despite knowing 500 kanji and having a very basic grasp on her Kana, was put on the spot. Even though surrounded by supportive friends, this little Japanese Baby was full of lots of fear and frustrations! We decided to read the same book as the first Japanese Baby did. And despite her immersion being in Japanese being longer, her fear of making a mistake caused her to do terribly. I wouldn’t let her give up and I pushed her to read a little more and she experienced similar problems as the first Japanese Baby did. After finishing reading  half of the sentence, she stumbled on four kana and began to break down in tears. Of course the first Japanese Baby and I were vexed–but the second Japanese Baby muted herself and ran off– so there wasn’t anything we could do. Eventually, the second Japanese baby came back with renewed determination to read. So a day had passed, I could tell she had gone kana rep crazy as her ability to recognize kana had greatly improved. This time, she allowed herself to feel less frustration by working harder to keep calm and by the end of the book had made significant progress in pronunciation, grammar, speed and flow of reading. And thus ended, so far, my experiences with Japanese Baby 1 and 2.

I’d like to point out that neither Japanese baby had ever read aloud before.When asked how they felt about their reading skills at the end, the first Japanese Baby didn’t see the huge improvement that she made. The second Japanese baby felt about the same, but calmer. I personally feel that for them this was overcoming a huge hurdle that most beginners experience. Learning to read Japanese aloud was able to give them more drive and confidence in other aspects of their studies. The first Japanese baby has found momentum and felt her previous efforts were paying off. The second Japanese baby began to make word to sound connections from words she had previously learned to say, but never knew how to read. She proceeded to spam my skype with how happy she was.

If you have never read aloud, I recommend you doing so. While it has always been a standard practice for me to read aloud whenever possible, this concept is rarely ever spoken about in the Japanese online community. I did not learn how to speak Japanese and then read aloud rather after  one year of pure unadulterated Japanese on Japanese immersion that I decided to read aloud. Even when I participate in Tadoku, I read aloud.  The best scenario is to read in front of a Japanese native but when you can’t, reading in front of a person much more advanced than you is the next best thing.

If nothing at all, reading aloud allowed these two Japanese Babies to gain courage, calmness and motivation. While I cannot tell you who the first Japanese baby is, the second Japanese baby is no other than our own PandaChan! She is so graciously serving as an example to all of you out there who doubt yourself, experience extreme fear and even humiliation, can over come that and can gain a peace to allows them to truly begin to excel in not only studying Japanese but becoming Japanese. I’m sure there are a good handful of prodigies who fell out of the proverbial womb being able to read Japanese well; however, we are the ordinary and proud of each hard earned step on our path to fluency.

The one thing that was consistent with both Japanese Babies was how little faith they had in themselves in the beginning. Although they still don’t think they’re great, they now know that all it will take them is continuing to take those steps. So have  a great weekend, get off your duff and read aloud to a Japanese person if you can!

 

Enter New Author

It is official. We have finally sucked in another soul! I mean, added another author to our midst! You already know him because he’s been a guest from time to time, his name: Daniel!

Yah, so no longer a guest, now he is a co. He deserves his own post for his assimilation into our blog-sphere!

If you didn’t’ know, some basic stats:

Location: Nova Scotia, Canada

Languages: Advanced French, Fluent English, Intermediate Japanese

Sorry girls, he’s taken, and also has an adorable bundle of joy whom is already being indoctrinated in the ways of the technological world.

His salary from us: His current salary times 100… (yeah now current salary being 0 btw XD)

Anyhow, we haven’t figured out the new posting schedule yet, and how that will work with out new author, but I suppose we’ll end up with even more posts perhaps, or just keep the same schedule and just cycle. Who knows!

.

 

 

April Roundup

These past two weeks have been pretty intense for some of us! I had finals all over the place, projects, quizzes, and last minute, omg do this! type of stuff for school going on. We’ve had some fun blog posts this month too:

2012 2nd Quarter Resolutions

LWT: Tricks of the Trade

Lolita Subculture in Japan

How I study: Mikoto’s Tools

LWT: Daniel’s Guide For Japanese Usage

It’s Kana Time

Now for the next month of May. Due to my taking an extreme maymester semester, which means an entire class is covered in three weeks, there will not be any posts from me on the 11th, 18th, and 25th! I know that’s pretty much every Friday gone but the 4th, but it is important that I’m studying for this class, due to its intensity. However there are some things to look forward too.

Karaoke Post (yeah i know its late )

Kana Game of the Month: Pandachan’s Creation

Its reading time: An experiment in getting others involved

What to do when you’ve neglected your daily studying: Pandachan’s thoughts

Hope that those of you getting done with your classes have a good time, and your soon well earned break, or those about to embark on the crazy, lets do it! And for those either working or in grade schools, keep up the good fight!

I might do a post on how I’m fitting parenthood, school, and Japanese all together after this summer’s classes, due to a huge experiment I’m about to perform on this summer semester. Hopefully it’ll be a good one, and that I can share that and make all our lives easier.

 

Its KANA TIME!

For those new into the world of Japanese, you might not know some basics about the Japanese written language. Just to sum it up, written Japanese is a syllabic based writing system, where every character has a sound associated with it, rather than letters that combine to make sounds like in English.

So for instance, the word for flower is はな (hana). For our language, it consists of f l o w e r, which combine to make the syllables, flow – er. In Japanese, it is two characters that are syllables は,　な, ha and na which combine to make　はな (hana). Here is a pretty representation done by Amarisl using a Fruits Basket character.

There are three ways Japanese words might show up as well. ひらがな (hiragana)　カタカナ (katakana)　漢字 (kanji). While the kana tables have roughly 41 base symbols in each of their table, there are additional kana that are voiced and aspirated ( は　ば　ぱ　ha ba pa) and combinations to create some more sounds such as　ひゃ　(hya). It might sound complicated compared to only 26 letters to learn, but kana never change the way they’re pronounced like English does. Here is another chart that shows the additional forms via TextFugu!

Long and detailed story short, kanji was brought over from China and adopted into use. Eventually some of those who were valued the kana sounds were broken down to create the two simplified kana tables of 1-4 strokes. While there is also a variety of odd ball kana that shows up here or there, they aren’t as well used, and I wouldn’t worry with it till you run across it.

While I’m sure a lot of you out there are just as glad as me that kana were simplified, they come with the price of learning how to memorize them with less to work with like people use for RTK, so the following resources should hopefully help you out, followed by the way I went about learning.

Stroke Orders and Charts and Informational Resources:

Wiki – Kana – Hiragana – Katakana - Kanji

Know of a well documented website or book that explains the history and usage of kana/kanji? Link below!

Guides: TextFugu’s Hiragana (free guide to) – Katakana (member’s only)

Stroke Order: TextFugu’s Hiragana chart

Yoshida Institute – Hiragana – Katakana

Heisig didn’t leave you hanging, his very own, Remembering the Kana

Practice/Drill/Game Sites:

Real Kana

ReadingtheKanji (has option for kana reviewing)

Kana Teacher

Usagi-Chan’s Genki Resources

Iknow – has both a review/drill section and a game section, sounds, and stroke orders

Kana Invaders – review game

Many Thing’s Kana games and tests

Play Hiragana – slightly eye killing but for for speed lovers

Youtube Videos of Fun:

ひらがなできるかな？

カタカナ

Japanese Kana Games:

Also, there is a wealth of Japanese games for children that deal with kana on the web, here are some search terms that can get you far: ひらがなゲーム、カタカナゲーム。

Kids Study

Shimajiro

Kodomoclick　－this site tests your vocabulary and kana, fun for some easy reviewing

How I Studied Kana

Back when I studied kana, I didn’t know about things like SRS, and I didn’t know about how to make it really easy for you in terms of the various memory aids. Instead, I owned kana, one grueling kana at a time. I made some basic flashcards, with kana on front, sound on back, and flipped through both the front way and the back way. I constantly flipped for about 4 weeks total, wrote the symbols out whenever I could,and began typing up on the internet to start using them.

I can’t say this way is the best, but I don’t have any big issues on remembering them, and I can still write them without  much hesitation here two years later, with no real studying to keep my practice up.

Once I did learn about SRS tools, I made an audio clip with the sounds on the front of the card and the symbols on the back. But I found that even then, it was far more beneficial to listen to random strings of Japanese and look it up the old school way, since hearing them in use is better.

Share your story down below! Got a site you use that is awesome?

 

How I Study: Mikoto’s Tools

No one learns a language on their own, and no one source of goodness out there is enough to truly learn either. Here are the following tools that I put to use in order to get lots of Japanese goodness around me.

Media Players

VLC – I don’t watch with subs, so I do not have the issues that lots of those with subbing complain about. I’ve not had a single problem watching anything in vlc, and I love that I can set the language to Japanese, and pin it always on top of the screen (meaning even if I’m typing up a post here, I can keep watching the show!).

WMP – only because I have to on some streams, otherwise I wouldn’t use this. Its unable to play pretty much anything. :/

Electronic Devices

Nintendo DS – Awesome thing here, set in Japanese language, it’s region free, so I play Japanese games and what not from it.

Play Station 3 – The blue ray player can play blue ray movies from Japan, and it can read Japanese version of video games too. As far as I know, regular dvds from Japan don’t work in it, so I haven’t even tried.

Computer – My primary source of action, to get, use, watch, read, and so on of Japanese goodness. Sadly, win xp (soon soon I’ll get ultimate 7 set in Japanese) with IME setup for Japanese.

Ipod touch – My secondary source of action to get, use, watch, read, and so on of Japanese goodness on the GO! I love this thing… (and no I’m not an apple fan girl, I could write novels on what I hate about them)

Programs

Pimsleur CD – While I don’t use this now, I did buy an 8 cd set for conversational Japanese. It was a lot of fun, and a good little intro into proper Japanese greetings and what not.

Anki – SRS goodness

AJATT – I put this here in the program because though it spawned from a website, the concept of 10k hours/sentences is a type of program to learn Japanese, so to speak.

LWT – Even though this program is based online, I feel its more of a program. Very useful, and I have some posts about it if you want to check it out.

Websites

AJATT – I participate in the forum part more so and have pretty much stopped reading the main blog, but whenever I need a source of encouragement, I browse it.

ReadTheKanji – I use this primarily for reviews on kana. I think one day I may start using it for the kanji too.

CrunchyRoll/Youtube/Soku/NicoNico/Dramacrazy and so on – These websites offer lots of Japanese videos, some with subtitles and some without. I personally subscribe to CR to get rid of subs.

SURUSU – I use the URL shuffler from this site. It comes in really handy for a URL hog like myself. It’s convenient that you can press a button on your browser and have it save, delete, or shuffle automatically.

RevTK – I keep my stories for RTK on this site, and very super very rarely look at the forums for some insight. I use to use their flash card system, but I found that I prefer an SRS over the box system.

Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide – I use this for quick look ups and what not.

To spare the list from being ridiculously long, check the Link’s page up top. I use a lot of them from one point or another, and are ones I personally recommend. Also web posts about various dictionaries, shadowing sites, and so forth have many of the links I’ve used over time as well.

Browser – FireFox

I’ve been using Mozilla for a long long time now, especially since IE is horrible with Japanese (At least I feel that way). There are lots of add ons you can use in FireFox to help your Japanese get along. You can even set it in Japanese!

Rikaisama/rekaichan – These are streamlined dictionaries. But moreso that than, rikaisama even makes adding cards to Anki easier.

I use browser …shortcuts? Blah, I don’t know the word to use, but basically its kind of like how, you can do the tinyurl by having a button out as if it were a website, but it does something instead. Anyhow, a lot of them are things like the URL Shuffler for surusu and anki.

Books

Japanese for Busy People – I got this way back in the beginning! I must say, I still like it, even though it focuses on the business orientated aspect of Japanese. I also liked it a lot because it was all in kana/kanji. I didn’t get the romanji version.

Genki/Adventures In Japanese – I got these to sentence mine

The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary – I use this one when I’m on the go and need to know what a kanji is about. I don’t use this all that much because I’m near my computer for the most part, but on that rare occasion…

Japanese The Manga Way – I also use this one when I’m unable to get online to look some stuff up grammar wise. I love this book and the examples!

Well that’s all I can think of now that I use very often. Due to time restraints, I’ll add links to the page a little later. Any comments, questions? down below

 

LWT: Tricks of the Trade

Part 3 of the ongoing LWT posts. If you haven’t heard about LWT check these posts out: Part 1 (Intro) ; Part 2 (Guide for Japanese-Mikoto).

If you’re like me, and you’ve done a good bit of Japanese, or you know a great many vocabulary words, or phrases, you’ll be at a disadvantage in a way, simply because you’ll have a lot of grunt work to do, so that you’re up to date on your particular knowledge. Here are some tips on how to address it in a fast as possible kind of way.

• create a new text, and within it add in any vocabulary you know really well by do any combination of the following:

1. taking your anki lists, surusu lists, or other exportable files into a spreadsheet and merely copy and paste
2. look up websites that will have common phrases (like beginner sites)/word frequency sites (if you learned this way)/jlpt vocabulary lists/or vocabulary listings of text books you use. Websites make it easier because you can just copy and paste
3. or manually type in words/phrases you know

• Once you’re done stuffing this text (save and open), you can do either

1. go word/phrase by word/phrase adding in definitions/pronunciations, marking how well you know it, and make a time of it
2. or just click the “I know all” at the top. This will not put definitions or pronunciations on the words, however, if you know them already then it might not bother you for them to not have it, but clicking all words known means that they will not show up as new/unknown words in the future, and will not bother you. You can always go back and add to it later if you forgot, or need a reminder.

• From there, you can start with a pretty solid base of words that you wont have to worry about, and doing it all at once can help prevent your flow from being stopped.

I did this, in fact the example pictures is taken from a beginner phrases text I made. I went scouring on websites out there for the basic phrases that I’ve known for a long time, and it helped me get rid of a ton of stuff. Its annoying, but the ‘i know all’ is pretty straight forward way to get it out of the way.

If you’re new you will not have this problem all that much. Adding a separate text for phrases might be helpful, but otherwise, the purpose of LWT is learning with texts, not arbitrary lists, so leave the vocabulary lists at home.

So if you’re new, or now you have your base vocabulary/phrases done, and ready to start, now you have to find the texts to learn with! Here are some great resources to use!

• Learn Japanese By News: This site is awesome! Not only do you get small, easy to digest articles, but you can view the kana and kanji forms of it, and you get native audio. This site is screaming, USE ME!
• Wikipedia in Japanese: This site my be bashed for its academic uses by naysayers, but for learning Japanese, this is the mother-lode. You can learn about anything you want while learning Japanese! What is better than that?
• GOO Lyrics: Do you love to learn with music? This is the site for you! Tons of Japanese lyrics to solve all your lyrical needs (and maybe discover more songs and artists)

Beyond these few that I recommended don’t forget:

• News sites in general: Sometimes these can be a little difficult to learn with, kanji heavy, but a lot of sites out there has audio to go with it, so its worth looking into.
• Children’s websites: These sites tend to have less kanji, but are simple to understand.
• Books: Kinda…self explanatory : Sites like those Liana lists, or Aozora Bunko are useful.
• Blogs: Perhaps another giant resource of texts, from subjects about animals to food, from sports to technology, blogs are a new medium. The draw back to blogs however is there can be typing/grammar errors.
• Educational sites: (Japanese for Japanese People) There are tons of epic sites out there that are focused on teaching fellow Japanese people about things. Whether its about how their public systems work, or their taxes, there are lots of sites out there.
• Official guides for fellow Japanese people: There are tons of traveling web sites out there meant for Japanese people and not just foreigners.

Popular News sites include:

• Asahi
• NHK
• Yahoo!ニュース
• Googleニュース
• MSN
• Infoseek　ニュース
• Goo ニュース
• FNN
• TBSニュース
• Yomiuri　Online　ニュース

Popular Children’s Websites:

• NHKきっず
• きっずgoo
• キッズ@nifty
• Yahoo!きっず
• キッズネット
• キッズステーション
• Kid’s Web Japan

Popular Blog Websites:

• Authority‘s listing of Top 100 Influential Blogs
• Google’s Blog Search: This is epically useful.　Just type in a term that you are interested in, and bam, lots of blogs!
• FC2　Blog Search:　Same principle of Google’s

Helpful Search Terms: If you’re a beginner, your text that you will be using is sort of limited. I would limit my texts to maybe things like Chokochoko’s library, or perhaps a site like Erin’s Challenge (you can copy and paste scripts and add audio) alongside children’s websites. However if you’re getting into it, or feeling adventurous for websites, then the following search terms could come in real handy:

• News:　ニュース
• Children/Child/Kid:　キッズ,　きっず,　子供
• Blog:　ブログ
• Lyrics:　歌詞
• Tales/stories/lore:　ストーリー,　昔話 (folklore), 物語 (legends or fairy-tales), 恋物語 (love story), 奇譚 – (mystery stories), 推理小説 (detective story), and so on

Finally you have your sources, which well, I went out of the way to link a bunch! hahaha! If you have some useful broad search terms or sites that you think is particularly cool for LWT, then put them down below. You’re now ready to put it into a spacer program. I recommend:

Dani’s Space Inserter!

This is an awesome tool to space out those Japanese words, though not always completely correct and accurate, its pretty darn close and can save you lots of time! It helps with LWT very much! I personally use the MeCab setting myself.

Supposedly there are others out there, but I’ve never heard of them, or seen them, or apparently used them. So if you have any to recommend, plug em down below.

More Random Tips:

• do as much Japanese – Japanese as you can. The more you can limit English the better! I personally try and show the kana readings for the kanji first, followed by any Japanese explanations, and then only followed by English explanations if necessary. If you’re just starting out, this is not really practical, as English is still your primarily used language, but when you can start switching into Japanese only, I recommend doing it. Use JP only dictionaries in your options, and so forth.
• Keep one large story by itself, or group small texts according to themes: Blog entries about Cats for instance, News about Technology, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Haiku…
• utilize the exporting feature with sentences for anki, or use surusu’s browser mcd maker alongside lwt
• choose stories that are within your realm of learning. Sorta how you go about choosing things for Tadoku, you choose for LWT. You do not want to pour into a text where almost 100% of the words are unknown (unless of course you absolutely have to because you’re a beginner). Aim for about 75-80% of words known. This helps you guess the other words in context, and allows you to not feel like you’re being bogged down.
• read through text several times before doing anything
• First try to guess what something means based on surrounding info, then look it up.
• For phrases/words/sentences that are giving you a hard time to say, plop that into rhinospeak or a similar site
• don’t forget the wonders of Speech to Text programs for transposing books you own into written format in half the time!

Got any other words of wisdom? Let us know below. I’m still starting out in my discovery of the cool features of LWT and how to manipulate it best for Japanese, and the most effective way of putting into my daily schedule, so all experiences are welcome!

 

2012 2nd Quarter Resolutions

Welcome to April! Another month to make Japanese ours!

To recap my goals from the 1st quarter:

• Finish reviewing RTK1
• tadoku more
• lots of blogging
• webcam

While I’m happy to say, Tadoku has infected my life more than ever, very happy about this, and I did get the webcam and lots of blogging has obviously gone down despite some nasty crazy sickness (especially with the help of Pandachan and guests), I’m sad to report that the first and foremost goal did not happen. For some reason, my reviewing RTK1 has been going super slowly and … did I mention super slowly? So hence,

Mikoto’s

2nd Quarter Goals ( April-June)

1. Review 10 new kanji a day! Perhaps because I made the goal to open to interpretation and vagueness of how to go about it, I’ll be a little more precise this time. I think sometimes goal making is a skill you learn over time, how to make good goals, versus bad goals. Here in this case, I made a bad goal “finish all this” versus something a bit more…concrete and gets the same results. I know, that I need to do X amount a day, at least, and if I can’t make it, I know to pad ahead for those days. So lets see how that goes.
2. Continue Blogging weekly and tadoku environment! Since this one is going good, but still conscious effort, I want to keep these on my goal list. Especially the tadoku. I cannot express how good this has made things for me. (Lately I’ve been reading manga more than anything, followed by food packaging).
3. Make Some Posters! I had an idea of making a bunch of posters of things I see around me a lot, like foods, body parts, and things like that. Quick little point out guides basically for fun. I know I could just as easily buy them however I’m going to do them myself because I’ll get more out of it from physically drawing and writing myself. They’ll be English free of course, and maybe I’ll post pics of them when I’m done. I want to get them done this quarter, but I’m not really in any rush to make them immediately. I was even thinking of doing a money poster, and pretend to buy things in Yen, and everything from time to time.
4. Structure My Days Better! I’m not sure if anyone else out there was kinda like, I’ll sleep when I sleep, awake when I wake, or rather, when my kid wakes me. I’m going to change this, I’d like to take a little more control over when I sleep and what I do during the day. I am thinking about actually trying to make time brackets of maybe 10-25 minutes, and try to do things in like little waves, hmm, I might be confusing at this point. I want to work this out and maybe get it going before the quarter is out, especially when summer hits. I’ll be doing only a little bit of school work (or maybe none, haven’t decided), so I need to make sure I don’t get really lazy about getting things accomplished. I’ll post more about this if I get a really good system going.

And now I shall hand over the ‘mic’ to Panda-chan! She wasn’t quite a MAJ writer until after I did the 1st quarter’s goals, but now here she’ll kinda let you  know what she’ll be focusing on as well.

Panda’s

2nd Quarter Goals ( April-June)

• Pick back up where I left off before the Move: writing 5 kana a day, followed by a lot of reps with my kana review website. Then I would study any kanji that were due.
• Structure days: I was always very happy when I got up at 4am and was able to start my day without the rush of everyone else. I plan on starting that again as I will be working from 4:30-8:30 every morning and then going to class in the summer. The earlier I start to work on fixing my schedule, the better it will be for my health. I used to structure my day in 15 minute increments when I was going to class full time. I think that’s a little overkill until I start school up again in May.
• Make immersion and shadowing more important: I tend to do very well with written parts of languages and that’s because I put more effort into that. I want to be listening to Japanese and trying to speak it (mumble ahoy) more often.
• Mini Goal: Play more Kanji games with friends. I enjoyed it and it helped me write my kanji out.

 

March Roundup

Hello everyone. I hope that March found you all in good times. This month was a bit rough for me, dealing with some extreme sickness that apparently isn’t over just yet. Thanks to the efforts of Pandachan though, she got at least some posts up and kept things going alright.

If you hadn’t noticed, we’re keeping a good track of what’s to come on the right side widget. So just touching up on that you can expect the following coming up!

April 3: 2nd Quarter Goals (M and P)
April 6: -LWT- Tips and Tricks to get started
April 10: Lolita in Japan – Fashion
April 13: Mikoto How We Study: Tools Posts
April 17: Daniel’s guide to LWT for JP
April 20: Kana Learning Guide/Resources
April 24: Karaoke Madness
April 27: Round Up

We’ll have a guest writer coming back to show his guide for LWT, and of course, we’ll get the Tips and Tricks up, since that was pushed back.

Rounding up what was done this month, in case you missed out was:

Bentoland: Egg Mold by Pandachan – A look at a bento tool for shaping eggs for a delicious and fun treat.

Kimonoland: Culture and where to get one – Pandachan talks briefly about a great place to order a kimono and a brief history.

LWT (Learning with Text) Introduction – A look into a really great program that will help you streamline reading in a foreign language!

LWT Guide for Setting up for Japanese – More step by step information in how to use the LWT program specifically for Japanese.

How I Study: Pandachan’s tools and recap on current affairs – See what Pandachan (a beginner) is using to learn

Bunnies Everywhere! – A quick and dirty post on the Yukata Pandachan bought and a cute debute of her cute Gatsby

Last but not least, the anticipated and most embarrassing:

Shadowing: Three Examples – Want a good laugh? Want to know you’re not alone in sounding bad at shadowing? Then listen up and have fun! Shadowing is a difficult technique that requires lots of practice.

Thanks for sticking around and if there is anything you’re wanting to see, let us know in the comments below!

 

Shadowing: Three Examples!

Prepare yourself to laugh at some fun attempts to shadowing. We’ll be shadowing three sources, the ever fun and entertaining show, 毎日かあさん, a drama called 弁護士のくず、which as the title suggests is a drama about a lawyer, and a randomly chosen clip from TV Tokyo.

When shadowing we follow some really basic guidelines and don’t stress to much on it otherwise:

1. shadow less than 5 minutes. In fact, most of my shadowing is 1-2mins, even taking in account lulls where no one is talking
2. mimic them completely. If they’re freaking out, freak out with them! If they’re doing laughs, laugh with them, so forth and so on.
3. roll over mess ups, mumble to keep up, even if what you say is nothing like it, keep trying, do anything but stop talking
4. wear headphones, makes it easier to hear
5. reading scripts when shadowing is fine, tv or movies that have subs is acceptable, in fact wanted!

The following examples will also follow these guideline for you viewing pleasure:

1. The audio has not been listened to before hand, except in passing when the shows were watched. They were not focused on, so our shadowing is like any other shadowing attempt we’d do.
2. we will only record once! enjoy our foolish mumbles and attempts!

Everyday Kaasan : 毎日かあさん

This is an early episode and of the three we shadowed, was the easiest.

mnkaasan.mp3

pandakaasan.mp3

mikotokaasan.mp3

The Lawyer Kuzu : 弁護士のくず

Probably by far the hardest of the three to shadow. This one is full of lots of diverse vocabulary and fast talking!

bengoshi.mp3

pandakuzu.mp3

mikotobengoshi.mp3

TV Tokyo : テレビ東京

Randomly recorded station and program. So it ended up being a show about some businesses and produce and what not, so nothing in particular, a few interviews, and that’s the gist. I would say this is in between the other two in difficulty.

tvtokyorandom.mp3

pandatokyo.mp3

mikototvtokyo.mp3

Deciding what to shadow

There is a lot of controversy about what to shadow, how long to shadow, and so forth. Everyone has to sit down though and make that decision for themselves. But for me, this is how I go about shadowing.

SHADOW ALL THE THINGS!

 I mean it. I shadow anything, everything, all things! There isn’t anything below me, just tons and tons of stuff to shadow. Podcasts, tv shows, anime, dramas, live conversations, movies, music, porn, you name it, I shadow it! The reason I do not discriminate is because all these things are Japanese, all Japanese people can understand and imitate these things too. No, I do not talk like an anime character when I speak Japanese, but I have no problem understanding them either. I shadow boys, I shadow girls, I shadow old gangsters, I shadow anyone. Though I focus on lots of female shadowing in podcasts and live conversation over others, I do not prohibit shadowing just because they are not female, or not of the source I really want. Its all valuable time well spent.

Give a Hand

I personally want to give a clapping of hands to Pandachan at this moment. It takes guts to put our really bad attempts to shadowing up on the web for people to hear, especially when you are as new to Japanese as she is. Pandachan has only been studying Japanese for maybe 2-3ish months. That’s very basic, and while she may now know about 500 kanji, and keeps herself as immersed as possible, she’s still a beginner at trying to make the sounds associated with Japanese, and speak quickly with them. But that is precisely why I wanted her to shadow for us. I wanted to show you a pure example of a beginner shadowier, and what you’re going to sound like. She even laughed at herself in the Bengoshi feed because she realized that this was something she just was seemingly failboating. But the truth is, she didn’t. She said several words in there and that’s better than no words! That’s the start, that’s the way its suppose to be….mumble mumble mumble WORD! I’ve only been shadowing for maybe 6 months on and off, but I’ve had a much longer history of listening to Japanese when taking care of my daughter (about 3+ years worth of immersion to be exact). So my example is of an intermediate shadowier, probably. So if you’re a beginner in shadowing, understand that you will not be mimicking with the greatness, not yet, but you will if you keep with it!

Ps from the Panda. I have to say, I hope that my mumblings–er shadowing!!!– is helpful to all of those beginners who are “struggling” with shadowing (I quote struggling because you can’t really fail at it). Trust me, I know. I suggest you record yourself in the very beginning, maybe once every week. Slowly and slowly you’ll sound better and better . Just compare Mikoto and I!

Don’t have a Mic to record yourself? GET ONE, no seriously. Later on when you want to chat with Japanese speakers, this will come in handy !