Week Two, Panda style

Not the kind of parody I was looking for, but hey. you get a panda dancing to the song. You get what you pay for!!! Though, I may have a new youtube subscription!

So anyways, Week two for pa-pa-pa—-pannnnnnnn-da! I have continued to do my kana, read the kanji review for kana, and wanikani. I recently did about 40 lessons again back to back and am a little burnt out. I was going to start to do some vocabulary on the side, but right as I started to do that, my laptop literally died. And, I keep my anki desks on my laptop! So, Maybe that was a sign from the bamboo gods that I shouldn’t start that yet.

At this point, I know all of my kana and really should start reading. Sometime this week, should mikoto chan be available, We’ll be getting our personal read on. Hopefully in the next week’s post, I’ll have a horrible wonderful recording for you to listen to.

As far as shadowing has gone, my ps3′s crunchy roll app keeps freezing up on me. I’m not really sure why other than the fact that it is, and it’s ONLY crunchyroll! My englishfriendlyNetflix and other programs are unaffected. So in other words, it’s been a little slower this week than week 2.

The whole, speak words that you know, sorta slowed down as I haven’t been able to converse with many people this week. I had the cheat sheets in my onenote, which I am no longer able to get. So I’m going to have to physically print them out and keep them on my end table by my couch.

In case you were wondering what I’m doing as far as cheat-sheets:

Textfugu’s adverb sheet

ANND of course, the rest, now that I’m trying to look at them again, are all word documents that I can’t open on this computer anymore.

However, to explain it:

It was words like, good_(part of day)__, Hello, goodbye, I understand, What is ___, colors, numbers, and other basic phrases and things like that. Nothing too crazy like what the disk rotation along the x axis is.

Having a basic phrase sheet, and such, nearby (and using it correctly) is a great way to help you practice your kana, and to help cement basic phrases. Using them over and over again

A quick search can help you find online sources that compiled these typical phrases. Another way to do it is: Think back on your day to day life. What are some things you commonly say. I say Hello, what’s up, how’re you, be right back, later, going to bed, i am _adjective__ . Sorry, Thanks, You’re welcome, Please… Stuff like that. Then you can research those exact phrases to see what a good Japanese equivalence is. Don’t rely solely on Google Translate!

 

Week one for Me (again!)

I wanted to break down exactly what I’m doing so that those who need a restart, or those beginning for the first time, can get some guidance on how this ol’ パンダちゃん does it!

I created a schedule for my days so that I don’t fall into ruts or not do something. This includes cleaning, crafting, Japanese, exercise, and so on. I have schedule this past week with 2 full hours of concentrated Japanese study every day. The rest of the day is immersion type studying. I broke it up this way:

Wanikani (please read　みことちゃん review and recap of it.). This was picking up where I had left off before because I was lucky enough to get into the beta testing.　３０ minutes in the morning and 30 in the afternoon

Kana: ３０ minutes in the morning and 30 in the afternoon

1. I wrote all of the Hiragana (as I already have learned it, and just needed a refresher) using Tae Kim’s Guide.
2. After finishing all of that, I then restarted my Read the Kanji account. I did this by creating a new account! I’m sure there is a way to wipe your old account, but I had no access to that email account anymore either, so it worked out.
3. I will do Read the Kanji for 2 more days for hiragana, and then I will repeat for katakana.

Immersion: So this is what I listened/watched.

1. Crunchyroll: 07 Ghost, 5 Centimeters per second, Polar Bear Cafe, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sword Art Online, Chi’s Sweet Home, ( I honestly can’t remember the last one, but it was under the ‘popular’ category.
2. Spotify: I used a Japanese pop radio station and listened for a short while. Unfortunately as soon as I told someone about it, I got nothing but English music after that. I will look into last.fm in the future.
3. Youtube: I have an old Japanese playlist that I created
4. Iphone/itunes: I have purchased a couple of my favorite artists’ albums and have them on my phone.
5. Passively reading: I have a couple of books that my friend キャサリンちゃん gave me, and I’ve recently purchased　a couple (more like 30) books on my kindle. I also have a craft book, and obviously the internet!
6. Active shadowing (both verbally and reading). I haven’t done this as much, but I do it once I hear phrases that I know. I figured, start small, start comfortable.

Writing: I am trying to actively write words that I know in Japanese. Common phrases that I hear/use a lot, and then some off the wall ones for fun. I have a ‘cheat’ sheet, and I’ll be adding to it. Thankfully, my immense re-immersion has reminded me of a lot of those terms. I can say them, but can’t spell them yet. I will be working on that in the next upcoming weeks.

Have any questions or comments? Please post them!

 

(Japanese) Rosetta Stone Studio 1

こんにちは、べりーさん！これは何色ですか？

あの。。。。。。。。。これはあかです。。。。？！

That’s how my studio started off! You may be asking, WHAT THE CRAP IS STUDIO?! Read on my little minions!

Well, first, let me give you some background information! Mikoto-chan and I both have subscriptions to Rosetta Stone’s Totale system (mostly for experimental reasons). This is the mobile and online version of their language learning platform.

First you may say, Wow, Way to go panda, being a tool! Why would you spend money when the INTERWEBS IS SO FREE AND HAS SO MUCH ON IT!?

Well, crazy readers, that may very well be true. But, as a language learner blog author, I like to push the boundaries. I like to see whats out there! I like to spend my monies, learn the ups and downs, and report back to you so you can spend your monies! I mean, learn better! I did an introduction post to Rosetta Stone here.I plan on going back and going more in depth with the certain aspects of the program. Thanks to my lovely persuasive writing skills, Mikoto-chan decided to buy the program as well, and thus began the wonderful journey of “who’s doing better when!”

No seriously, nothing says I love you like cut throat competition!

As mikoto wrapped up her level 1, we decided to schedule a Studio lesson/session at the same time. This way, we can be supportive to each other and make each other feel less… stupid! Luckily this turned out well as it was just her and myself and of course the wonderful Mari-san (our coach).

To be honest, I was so scared. More than scared! I was crazy chicken scared. However, this morning (As it was a 5:30 am appointment) I WAS READY TO DO eeeeet! It’s ok to be scared. Don’t let that stop you.

15 minutes before the lesson/session opens, you can click the “Attend button” This allows the program to load and to work out any kinks. They have live help (and by live, I mean less than a 15 second wait for help) who can help you. It’s very general information such as, log in and out, clear cache, change browsers, but nonetheless, it was QUICK! I Can see this being helpful to the non-computer savvy people as they can quickly explain how to do such things. You may ask, panda, how do you know of this lovely service! Turns out, RS studio HATES chrome and Mikoto uses chrome. It’s a known issue and they will straight up tell you just to change the browser.

So, the session/lesson starts and The Ultimate Supreme Mari-san says hello, pronounces your name in Japanese (かわいいね) and gets to business! As mikoto wasn’t yet in the studio, she aｓｋｅｄ me all of the colors that I should know. Of course, and this goes without saying, NO ENGLISH! I did explain in English  that mikoto was logging in and had difficulties as I had no idea how to say that in Japanese. No idea. I said sorry probably 8 times around saying it though. And she responded in Japanese of course.

Anyways, I regret not screen capping the crap out of this, but I was afraid of infringing on the instructor’s rights as she was on webcam. (I know my logic doesn’t make much sense, but I couldn’t very well ask in Japanese if she didn’t mind).

Anywho, anyways again, the layout is such,

The webcam with Mari-san and our names are on the left. On the right is the interactive graphics side. Mari uses a VERY over-sized mouse picture, shown below, to point at things. Sometimes she types in the box so you can see how to spell it.
As I was the first one listed, I was the guinea pig and was able to discover what she wanted to know first. This is a scary but fun position. She is so energetic and helpful, so don’t feel embarrassed. She whispers hints, types hints, and cheers you on. As soon as I started talking, I felt more confident and comfortable with her. It felt like I knew her for a very long time.

Sorry, I have to take a moment to laugh at my sketch of the studio session. It does not give the real thing justice.

So, the studio doesn’t follow the core lessons exactly, but it does cover information that you should have some grasp on at this moment. It combines information in such a way that it pulls from everything and pretty much combines it into one sentence. However, this studio focused on questions like:

これは何ですか？What is this?

これは何色ですか？What color is this?

これは何人のですか？(not sure if i wrote that right!) How many are there?

And of course, the students would respond in like. One time she asked what was it and I didn’t have a clue how to say it in Japanese, so I said it was black and she giggled and responded yes, but what is it? There was only one time I was completely lost, but she gave us a quick little grammar lesson and it fixed that!

Mikoto and I both agree that we enjoyed studio. This is because the answers are truly open ended. You can mess up, correct yourself, and still be ‘right’. We all have brain farts and we all stumble. She tends to not be hyper critical of you because you are a JAPANESE BABY. However, what we don’t like is she types in romaji. That’s probably because the program pretty much supports mostly romaji in the games and such. It’s unfortunate, but mikoto and I are planning on asking her to type in kana the next session we have.

If can’t tell by the tone of my writing, I am in a very good mood. This is because, as a beginner, I feel like I rocked it. Maybe it’s because I got all of my worrying out the night before, but mikoto-chan even commented that I sounded very confident. I would say, despite my pauses, I just ran with it. I messed up. I’M SURE I DID! I kept saying ですこ instead of ですか I totally discarded 彼は sometimes. Sometimes i just said あの, tsktsktsk (the sound). I tried very hard to replace all of my ums! and I say um a lot!.

That also being said, mikoto rocked it as well. She definitely picked up on stuff faster and her mistakes were milder and normally just a usage thing.

My advice? Do it. Of course, I  mean if you have the program and am scared of doing the studio. It’s a wonderful experience to talk to a native speaker if you don’t have the chance to in every day life. Especially someone as kind and cool as Mari-san. It’s also an added bonus that she’s female and I can listen to the way she words and says things. Just as there are ‘manly’ things in America, there are ‘manly’ phrases in Japan.

But you can make Japanese friends and get this experience anyways, but this is a great way to speak with a native in a learning capacity about things you’re actively studying.

Overall experience, from adogidag to 13,049 (adogidag being the lowest) I would say I’m around a kgoudgu. I would be at 13049 if it was only in kana/kanji. Also, just throwing it out, Mari-san likes cats. I agreed because I couldn’t say dogs are better. but next time she says Cats are cute, I’m throwing that out there. Dogs. Are. Better!

ありがとうううううううううううううううううう(get it, like a howl?)

 

Rosetta Stone ｖ４Totale Japanese: panda’s review

This Review is up to the first Milestone. It covers unit 1, chapter 1, lesson 1-4.

Anyways, I have finally cracked and bought the Rosetta stone program. I chose the v4 Totale program, which is the mobile version of Rosetta Stone. It costs $20US a month for a minimum of 12 months. So you must commit to $240 purchase, and then after 12 months, you are free to cancel your $20 subscription at any point. So far, I access it through the browser format but I know I can get it on my phone and kindle (I believe at least for the kindle).

Overview of style of teaching:

• Speaking: Sometimes you repeat exactly what they say, sometimes you use deductive reasoning to figure out what to say.
• listening: You listen, without the text, and must match the phrase to the correct picture.
• grammar: A sentence will be shown and there will be a little drop down box showing two or more options, you must choose the correct option.
• writing(typing): Shows you the romaji for the kana. You must spell out words that they give you.
• matching: Phrases to pictures.
• Milestones (covers the entire said unit): Prompts you and you must say the result, or prompt the computer and they say the result. SOOOO MUCH FUN. You actually realize how well you know how to say things and sometimes, you’ll amaze yourself.

Initial Impressions When I bought it:

• Holy COW, it’s a lot at once. You speak, read, listen all at once. If you know some kanji, it’ll help you. I’m up to 500something and I could read some of the kanji to help me.
• I recommend you knowing kana. It’ll help you during the speaking sections. (Though there is romaji /sigh)
• It’s HIGHLY ADDICTIVE. I’ve gone through almost a full ‘chapter’ lesson and not been bored or tired. A lesson consists of a lot of mini lessons, each consisting of even smaller sections. It goes by pretty fast.
• It’s forced me to repeat and to speak. This has always been my weakest point. I however still struggle with saying the phrase in the time allowed. I’ll also only get one part of the phrase down and forget the rest. I wish they broke it into smaller sections sometimes.
• You can change the output language between kanji, romanji, kana, and kanji with furigana.

Several months in:

• I took a break from RS because I didn’t know my kana. Now that I was a little forced to read in kana, I quickly learned a lot of it in a short amount of time. Now, I can finish phrases and understand what’s going on most of the time. I am learning how to not only say things, but write them now as I understand kana, I can understand components of the sentence.
•  I can now speak the phrases more correctly as I can read them aloud. I have learned when it’s proper to pause and when it’s not.
• I dislike the chapter openings. They include a little of everything that you will learn in the following lessons however you aren’t taught it before you’re tested on it. It gives me a headache but it also fun in a way to be pushed completely into the unknown. The chapter openings tend to also be very long and I think should be at the end of the lesson, not before it. It would make a great review.
• Milestone: Right before finishing up this review, I did my first mileston. As you read before, It really excited me but was also very challenging. I didn’t know exactly what to say or how to say it, but I got enough of the phrases right to move the story line on. If i was just CLUELESS, after two tries, the program will give you what to say with the sentence. I loved this and this will definitely keep me practicing.
• I discovered that the program will make you repeat lessons on or after a certain amount of days from the original trial. This will insure you remembered all of your lessons.

Games and addons:

• You can schedule studio times, and game nights, but I’m a little too shy to try those out for now. I didn’t practice regularly and feel I have way too many gaps. I will report back on another month for level 1 unit 2, and maybe studio/game times.
• There are multiple game levels at the bottom of the home page. They include stories, which you must unlock by studying certain units, and memory games.
• Memgo: You must match the Japanese word to the correct picture. They’re all faced down so you not only have to remember what Japanese word is, but you have to remember where everything is placed!
• Picari: Told and shown a sentence, must match picture to it.
• Buzz Bingo: You play bingo while a native Japanese speaker reads a story (I think it’s a story!) and you must click on phrases you hear. It’s all in Kanji, so thankfully because I’m up to 500, I was able to follow along. Had it been in Kana, I would have been much faster. Out of the three, I find this one the most fun!

Mobile Totale Companion (On Iphone):

• Does not sync with the online version as far as I can tell. You must know which level, unit and lesson you are one. You pick the lesson.
• You have to download lessons from their online server. Doesn’t take too long but you will need either wifi or a nice data package. First download I did, I had an error. However, when I retried, it started at the % that the error occurred. This happened several times unfortunately. I have full bars for both the phone and 3g but my wifi was turned off. Did not run into any difficulties once I turned wifi on.
• You cannot minimize app while download it happening, this causes it to pause.
• There are glitches in the Japanese mobile version. Kana is  is supposed to be in Kana only, contains Kanji. Switching between Kanji, Kana and Romaji causes your attempt to be erased and you must do it again.  I plan to report this bug to see if it’s updated in the future.

Feedback and error reporting:

• If you are logged on to the browser platform, there is a link at the bottom to leave feedback and error reporting. Under all of the pages that pops up has an option to start a new case. I’ll report back with how long it takes (submitted at 8:15am 5/10/12)
• Update: I received a response at 5/10/2012 12:59 PM stating  to uninstall the app and reinstall it. I tried and it’s still showing Kanji instead of Kana only, I will call the support team to see if it’s a programming issue or an issue on my side.

 

What to do after neglecting your studies! Panda’s step back into Japanese

Quick little insert about why it’s good to learn a foreign language, apparently (if you’re a native English speaker and you’re flexible with causality.)

“The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer
heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer
heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer
heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer
heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats
and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

CONCLUSION:
Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.”

Had to share that nugget of wit before starting on topic!

Mikoto’s gently nudging me to get back into my studying by making me write this for our audience. . I started in Japanese a very long time ago and I go into  sprints and then quit for a short while. This is how I tend to be with ALL things, however. I don’t get a toe wet, I get my entire house wet and then some when jumping into new and exciting things. After so long, I get a little burnt out and quit. I do this with games, cleaning hardcore, excerising  and so on. If you’re like me and like to sprint, or am getting burnt out on Japanese learning, please follow along for some tips.

Say you’re completely stopped at your Japanese. You’re not even passively immersing!

1)Start slowly and try to put Japanese back into your life. Even if for the first month back into your studies, you do nothing but passively immerse (listening to things in the background without really shadowing or trying to understand it. Sometimes I call watching shows with subtitles passive. I know a lot of learners out there would have my head for suggesting such a thing but hey.. That’s still more japanese in your life than you had the day before.)

2) If you’re on the Kanji stage-

• Get caught back up to where you were when you quit. What I mean is, for example in Anki, it’ll tell you how many you have due. I’m not saying review all 500 you have, just review what’s due. Anki will take care of the other 400~ (depending on how long you quit and what number you’re on of course)
• Get caught up by doing 3 minute sections every day. You can do more, but you want to at least do kanji once a day. I’m saying go slow to prevent you from being burnt out. If you’re like me, and love sprinting through review, Sprint away. Just make sure you’re taking breaks, at least an hour, between sessions.

Run, Kanji, Run!あああああああああ

• Once you’ve gotten caught back up, THEN add more. Go however you did in the past, 0-15 cards a day.
• Be sure to do something fun with the kanji you know. We have kanji games on site, but there’s a ton of things you can do. I like to add pictures to my anki using google! It’s sometimes really fun to see what can visually represent kanji.

3) If you’re in the  Kana stage

• This really depends on how well you knew your kana before. If you were like me and quit after you got to __ it probably wouldn’t hurt to just act like you didn’t learn anything at all (which my retention was practically null, so that worked well for me). I started over with my hiragana and used a mix of Real Kana and Read the Kanji to review.　Plus a　little forced reading with Japanese Baby 1 and mikoto.
• I had to personally drill the kana into my head. The trick is to do it in short bursts. We’re not a long distance runner, we’re Japanese Sprinter Babies! Sprinting means we get to do fun stuff like watch Japanese movies, animes, Iron chef (which the original is a GREAT FUN way to learn some crazy Japanese dishes)
• As a fellow Japanese baby suggested, the trick is once you get a good grasp kana, put it into practice! Read children books, convert websites into kana, listen/read lyrics. You want this to be FUN!!!! This will keep you coming back for more.

4) Shadowing- We all know that I don’t really like shadowing. If you didn’t know that, you know now! I say this because I feel I sound utterly stupid. So, what I try to do to make light of the situation is to mimic the tones and gender of those speaking. It may just make my gibberish sound more feminine or masculine, but it’s fun. Also, if you want to make yourself feel better, record yourself shadowing your native language and listen to it. You’ll notice you stumble over a lot of it and some of it, your mind guesses and may be close. This is because our brain is hardwired in this language and can think faster than your mouth moves. For example:

• “Oh thank _______”
• Your brain will most likely put one of three words in there, God (if you have a habit of saying that), You, (if you’re polite), My stars! (If you’re just.. unique)

I do this all the time singing. Especially if I don’t know the words, our brain makes a conscious decision to try to ‘fix’ and finish the sentence. You may have a rhyming word, a word that could finish the sentence, or the correct word.You’re probably saying, ok Panda, who cares. My point is: Once you reach a certain point of Japanese, your brain will switch into Japanese and try to be 3 steps ahead of the speaker. So, keep with it young one!

5) After a ～month of getting your feet wet back into Japanese, try to get back into a routine that matches how much free time you have. If you can only devote 5 minutes a day, well damn, that’s 5 minutes more than a non learner is learning! I’d like to quote my Professor from my freshmen year (note, this applies to more then just engineering of course).

• You’re doing Engineering. Do you realize how hard that is? Do you realize you’re actually doing it! It may take you 2 years to finish this degree, it may take you 14. You may be fresh out of high school, you may be 80. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how long or how old. You’re doing it, and once you finish, no one can take it from you.

Another professor during my sophomore year

• (Panda), despite your disability, you can do this. It doesn’t matter the road you take, as long as you work hard and you’re honest with yourself. You are doing this, remember that.

My Advisor during my junior year

• I  have a lot of 40 year old’s who come in and say that the road is tough and long but no one can take it way from them. It’s pride that you knocked something out of the park. It may have taken you 50 swings to finally get it over that fence, but it’s now way beyond the boundaries.

Hopefully you have someone spouting off wonderful, delicious support to you! If not, you need new friends (jk!!!) You have to remember, every day is more than the day before. Build on it and succeed.

KEEPING on track

• ok, So, we’re back into Japanese Happy Land, yey. Let’s celebrate with fun games and knowledge! Ok! We can only party straight for 12 hours for so long!　Be sure to balance your life with Japanese fun. Don’t go too hardcore unless you’re living in Japan of course, haha (you can handle hardcore all the time!). Listen all the time, however, because passive learning takes no effort and can help sink sounds into your brain.
• For things that need active learning, (shadowing, kana/kanji reps) set reasonable time constraints. You work, go to school, have babies? Devote a % to nothing but Japanese. You can do this all at once for the day, or break it up into small portions through the day. Just be sure to say, for the next __minutes, I WILL do nothing but Japanese! You can timebox for the entire day, if you know the exact times you’re taking care of classes and work, or when the baby naps. Make Japanese be your b**** to your schedule, not the other way around. You decide! You Conquer! You learn Japanese! Find that balance that your schedule will allow, that you want, and without getting burnt out.
• Force Japanese to be in your life. Have your phone/browser/computer/whatever be in Japanese. Anything you can turn into Japanese, keep it in Japanese. This will force you to ALWAYS be touching Japanese in some form. Only have Japanese music on your mp3 player.
• Set real and concise goals. Don’t say I want to improve my immersion. Say I want to listen to a minimum of 1 hour a day of Japanese!
• Write a blog or connect to other learns. Share what you find that works for you and what works for others. Share the wealth of knowledge.
• Celebrate the little things! You just learned your kana? Treat yourself to a Japanese children book and Sushi. At least, that’s how I like to treat myself. Food goes a lot way for me. I’m like Pavlov’s Dog, books and food make my mouth water!
• Keep it fun!

 

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!

 

Amigurumi (編みぐるみ) tips, tricks, How-to’s!

Hello all! Today is a quick, cute little post. I asked my friends what I should write about and then it dawned on me, WHY NOT WRITE ABOUT WHAT I’M CURRENTLY DOING (and not studying!). By the title, it’s a little obvious that I’ve been either crocheting or knitting small, adorable little objects and so have my friends. So, Here’s some insight that I’ve gained while working on my projects! This will focus on crocheting although I am a knitter at heart.

Tools:

1) Crochet hoks. Be sure to choose a hook that allows you to maintain the proper gauge. Don’t know what gauge is? Read on!

2) Yarn needle. It’s a plastic needle that tends to be larger and thicker than a regular embroidery needle. It has a large eye to allow you to thread yarn. Yarn needles are used to sew arms, legs, and whatever else together to the body.

3) Polyfill- (or other stuffing) gotta keep that Amigurumi nice and fluffy!.

4)Yarn markers: Used to keep track of where your rounds begin.

5) Light source!

6) Yarn of course.

7) eyes (safety eyes or buttons)

Tips:

1) Start off with a middle color yarn, such as pastels, light colors, and tans. If you want to start off with black, be sure to crochet or knit with plenty of light. Light will help you see the stitches easier.

2) Practice your basic stitches (Single crochet SC, double crochet DC, chain, CH, increase ( 2 stitch in 1), decrease (2tog)) on basic amigurumi or other basic projects. You could go the scarf route but I know from experience that you get a little burnt out on it. Here’s some easy, fun projects!

Triple and Chain crochet project:

Single Crochet in the round, increase, decrease:

You may say, Wow panda, thanks for the lack of arms! Well, the ears on the bunny is to practice how to sew on some attachments. Arms and legs mean more crocheting! So, would start off with head and body shape only.

3) rest when your arms ache, and boy will they ache in the beginning!

4) Gauge is not always important as long as you have a consistent tension and use the same size hook for all parts.

5) I write or print out the pattern and mark off where I am.

Getting Patterns:

1) Make sure you’re getting it for your craft, Crochet or knit. It’s harder to find amigurumi in knit, but they are out there! Ways to find it is to use pinterest, google, etsy, lion heart brand. I tend to search Amigurumi, Crochet, (object that I want).

2) See if it’s been tested or not. This is when someone has crocheted it already and provided feedback. Some people crochet and then create a pattern and don’t always test the pattern out again. If you want to be the first, go ahead and try any and every project you come across. However, if you’re like me and have limited patience, be sure to use ones that have been tested. It helps if there’s a lot of comments and questions already answered if it’s a complicated project.

3) Be sure your project gives clear instructions of where parts go/contains a lot of pictures. I personally prefer a ton of pictures!

4)If you’re creating a character that is popular (say My little pony) be sure to look at real images of them to make comparisons.

Do you sew? If so, share some projects!

pinterest

My little pony

Ravelry

lions brand

Knit me

Etsy

 

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.

 

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 !

 

How I study: Pandachan’s Tools and recap on current affairs

Hey everyone. I hope you’ve been enjoying the blog recently, I personally was very excited to learn about LWT because I am getting into the reading stage myself. I have been learning my kana and wanted to test it out. Thank you Mikoto and Daniel for posting such a great overview.

I have recently bought a house (wweeeeeehooooooow? that’s the sound new homeowners have to make because we’re not quite sure to be excited or cream our pants out of fear!) Although, nothing major has happened at our house, we have had some issues with our old rental home.

That being said, unfortunately my Japanese studies had halted around 500 kanji, and about 45 kana. That also being said, I haven’t reviewed in about three weeks because of the moving, lack of internet, and overall closing of the above mentioned home(s)! Right before I moved, I did just receive my Yukata and now that I’m settled, I will be posting a few pictures with it. I also recently ordered/received a Wa Lolita outfit. It’s to die for, to put it simply. Don’t know what that is?! That’s ok, I plan on posting a blog about that fashion trend next month.

How I study has already been mentioned lightly but now are the tools I use to study:

Programs:

• Rosetta Stone Totale System. (An online, fully networked version of the old cd form of RS). I’ll eventually be doing an overview on this program as well.
• Anki. gotta love them flash cards!
• Itunes. I listen to my kana sounds and also podcasts and music.You don’t need an iwhatever to use itunes for podcasts and music!
• TenguGo. Played it on my Kindle a couple of times and really enjoyed it. Kana Practice

Websites:

• Higrana, Tae Kim’s Guide to learning. They have the complete audio section for it and if you click on the chart, it shows the stroke order.
• Real Kana.A customizable practice for Kana->romaji counterpart. I like this over anki as Anki caps me, I can do as much as I like on Real Kana. If you forgot which it is, you can mouse over the character and it’ll show you the answer. I also like that I have to type it out.
• Last.fm music immersion: I personally enjoy the J-pop station and that’s what I linked to.
• Crunchyroll audio immersion: I enjoy a lot of anime and dramas on crunchyroll, check it out!

How I practice my writing

• I have a Lenovo Think Pad x201 series computer. This is a Tablet pc. Which simply means I can turn around my screen and write on it like it was a piece of paper. I have a tablet pen so I can write all over it like it was truly paper. No finger or tiny pointer style, but a good sized tablet pen.
• Now, I didn’t buy this computer for learning Japanese, it’s required at the engineering school I go to. However, I couldn’t be happier that I have it! Makes playing Kanji games online easier!
• My engineering Class also requires a us to do our homework on a specific graph paper layout in a program. I just use that same template for my kana and kanji. The program is Windows Journal, which comes with the computer, and the template is given to us.
• The best alternative to my set up is good old graph paper. You can normally find a ton of it for cheap around the start of a school year.

Books

• RTKanji by Heisig

Getting Anything else

• If I don’t already have it, can’t find it, and can’t buy it, I tend to bother mikoto for it. She is a Google god, no joke! She also has a lot of advice and knowledge as she’s been self studying for much longer than I have.