Move Complete!

Yes, for the probably 10th time in 5 years, I have moved! I’m sooo nomadic, in fact this time I moved up 4 states into Ohio, USA. So for those that don’t know that’s roughly 12 hours away (unless you count all the daughter’s bathroom and food breaks) from where I use to be. Sorry for the post delays  now I can sneer at my authors posts and tell them to fix things for your view-able pleasures! (JK! hehe)

I’m super happy here too, in case you want to hear some randomness. My daughter and man-slave are behind me watching some Naruto. I love that even still she loves watching Japanese things with us. There is snow here, and I’m in love! I’m pretty sore from all the moving, but once I get all the Japanese joy around my place, I’ll truly feel at home.

On the horizon for Mikoto would be yet another move! (yeah we’re just in a temporary home for about a month until we find the place we want to stay at for a while! hahah)

I got an ipad, and its already getting overran with Japanese apps and videos and music and what not! buwahahaha! reading Japanese on it is sooooo nice and easy. Nothing compared to the mega squinting I have been doing with my itouch. My love for holding books isn’t completely full filled but its a vast improvement, and after much internal debate on what tablet device to get, I got the one that would make my daughter and me both happy. My ipad is already filled with coloring and educational apps.

Well I hope you are all in a good place too, and look forward to a post later today or tomorrow!

 

Welcome to the New Year

明けましておめでとうございます!

For those making some resolutions, good luck for you. For those of you working hard already for the new year, good luck to you. Here at Mikoto and Friend’s Adventures in Japanese we’re looking to accomplish the following this year:

1. More Reviews of Sites, learning resources, youtube/twitter people
2. More on fun subcultural things in Japan, like we did lolita
3. More Study techniques
4. More children book reviews (Yes I’m going to get on top of this)
5. Starting of the Monolingual section

While I cannot guarantee extensive blogs, as lots of things are happening (like me moving over 4-5 states away and that ensuing chaos) or the fact that I have 18 credit hours, or perhaps just the standard I have a three year old stuff, but hopefully between the three of us authors we can get some posts in .

I’m thankful to all my readers, please continue to read!

And now a fun related Japanese video on Zodiacs!

 

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 27,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 6 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

 

The End of an Era—Delenir’s 3 month update

Seeing Victory Road makes me want to be the very best, like no one ever was.

With this post, my 3 month journey comes to an end. It’s really quite amazing how much transformation and progress can take place in just 90 days! But first, here are some of my highlights from November!

• Moved away from Read The Kanji temporarily. This isn’t because it’s not working, but rather for a change of pace. What I switched to was this…
• Using Japanese video game walkthroughs 攻略(こうりゃく）for games I’m currently playing. I would learn the vocabulary for where I’m at in the game using Learning With Texts, and then play that section. This makes playing the game much more enjoyable, and it’s also a huge confidence boost!
• I also purchased some bilingual Japanese storybooks which are very useful, namely Read Real Japanese Fiction, and A Treasury of Japanese Folk Tales. I even use them too!
• I’ve been getting back into reading manga, especially The Legend of Zelda thanks to my lovely wife.
• I’ve recently gained access to iOS devices, which have really amazing Japanese support. Most apps and many games in the North American markets are available in Japanese, as well as the entire device interface. On that note…
• Games are very much up to personal taste, but some of the learning apps I’ve used the most on iOS are Anki (of course), JLPT Study, Qpen.net’s Japanese apps, and Kanji OK.
• Last but not least, I’ve started to exercise in front of the TV with shows that feature native Japanese subtitles. This is a habit I’m still trying to develop, but it certainly makes it more interesting!

When I first started this 3 month project, I had 3 specific goals presented to the readers. Here they are again, with the results:

• Reached a total of 1000+ Anki cards. Currently, I have 1300 cards in my deck. This is even after a lot of weeding out cards that I didn’t like the looks of!
• Spent 30-90 minutes of Japanese reading every day. This is difficult to keep track of since reading isn’t usually done in timed sessions for me, but I certainly have increased the amount of reading time I get in. I play games in Japanese on various devices and consoles, review LWT texts on my Kindle, read raw manga and bilingual books, and all of this is in addition to study with Anki and other apps. Definitely a success in this department!
• Done everything on my immersion environment checklist. While some were more useful than others, I have gone well above and beyond the initial items I had laid out for myself. The best part was realizing how much my environment had already transformed into being simply a part of my lifestyle.

Overall, I think I’ve come a long way. The greatest success in all of this has been going from just thinking of how to go about things, to actually getting into action and doing Japanese every day. I feel like I’m finally scaling that wall of the intermediate level, well on my way to future success!

I’ll be taking a break over the December holidays, but hope to return full force (and then some) in January! In the meantime, you can follow my Twitter feed or even get ahold of me on Facebook! Good luck to everyone, and see you next year!

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

A wonderful member of our team has a birthday today! GRATS ON GETTING OLDER! may the wrinkles stay away! teehee

 

And for some reason her skype says she turned 105! buwahahaha

 

九月: September is Here!

こんにちは、みんな！みことです！元気？

Old semesters over, new semesters already started, hope everyone is studying well. Finally team ADVENTURE united in brain pulling power to bring to you the following posts that will be lovingly displayed for your viewing pleasure.

4th      Month Opening
5th      Children’s Nursery Songs
7th      Monthly Lolita
11th    Evernote: a review
14th    Technical Speak Series Introduction
18th    So you Wanna Read
21st    Music Melodies
25th    Interview
28th    Ending Roundup

So please as always, look forward to some posts this month. Just to explain a few of them, we’re hoping to start a new series for technical Japanese, as well as continuing our you wanna read, music, and lolita series. Not much left to the lolita however there is still plenty of music and books to discover.

Please complete the poll below to tell us what kind of job technical speak you’d like to learn about!

 

Return of the Mikoto

Okay, so summer semester down! Gotta round up my minions and get us on track again! I suspect they’ve been writing up some good drafts and waiting for the official mikoto stamp of approval, one of which I’m super excited to see from Delenir about mapping out Japanese learning.

For those who’re just now going back to school (just like me, on the 20th) are pretty excited, and I wish you luck. I’m also going to talk about a few more studying techniques to apply to Japanese and who knows, maybe even let you in on the first little trek of my exotic naughty kana technique that I created for a friend of mine. Thought I’m not sure I can share such naughtiness here on the web where there might be youngins around!

Thanks for the patience and hope to get some good posts flowing!

 

Mikoto’s gotta hiatus

hiatus until the 10th! sorry guys but its finals time and I gotta put the nose to the grindstone! Though I do hope the other two writers maybe do something

 

2012 3rd Quarter Resolutions

Mikoto

Recap of Last goals:

1. review 10 kanji a day
2. blog weekly and do tadoku
3. structure days better
4. make some posters

As for how it went: 

1) I was doing this really really well until the day of great sorrow. Yes, that silly day in which my kanji deck was deleted with the absolute stupidity of stupid queens in stupid land wearing the royal hat of …well….stupid. And what really made me stupid wasn’t that it happened acidently (because junk happens) but that I let it get me down, and it totally halted all progress with kanji as I tried to figure out what to do. How to get going again. Thinking about alllllllllllllll that kanji that I had to add back and re-review was just….heartbreaking and overwhelming.

2) Blog has been updating nicely, keeping on track and seeing visitors has been awesome. Thank everyone who  reads! Tadoku, not as much as I’d like, but I found a way to get into it just recently even more with visual fun!

3)lastly in utter fail land, was structure days better. I like an over zealous idiot (seems i’ve been taking dips in the stupid pool this summer) decided that I should take 5 classes! Why not! well, all that ended up doing was making me drop one, and then figure out how to shove the 4 in my schedule while keeping my daughter happy, keeping some japanese going and learning, and not being completely exhausted out and sad. Well, I think its been a failure…At least, in the original sense that I had hoped to get down. Lately everythign has been screwy as I’ve been toilet training my daughter. Its kinda hard to get into anything knowing you have to stop in 20 mins to take a 10 poddy break. hahaha.

For those who are parents, this is my advice for poddy time. Make some activities up for the bathroom. Heck, when poddy training, you’re going to be in there a long long long time throughout the day. So having fun posters and flash cards and what not set up in the bathroom makes this time period not so boring, and not so *insert native language*.

4) Make some posters: I’m proud to at least say I did this much! haha, well if you could a giant kanji poster complete with glittery paint and what not, celebrating every new 100 kanji I reach. Its a lot of fun and sorta motivational to do it that way. I’d like to make some body part posters and food ones, but I’ve been lacking in the fundage department since I didn’t get any school summer aid.

Resolutions:

1. Get My kanji deck fixed
2. posters for poddy time
3. work hard on my reading project
4. work hard on my learning project
5. start up my savings for trip to Japan!

Panda

Recap on goals:

1. pick up back where I left off.
2. structure days
3. include more immersion and shadowing
4. mini goal of more game playing

How I did:

1. I did finish up my kana and can read very slowly with some mistakes. I did not however get back into a routine with my Kanji.
2. I do structure my days with an app on my phone called Life Planner iAd edition (free). It places your day into a pie chart so you can see how much time visually you’re spending on things. I don’t get up at 4, but I do follow my schedule once I do watch up.
3. Besides the music that I listen to is Japanese when I work out, I don’t really immerse or shadow.
4. I have played reading games with friends but haven’t played any kanji games. I do play games on RS with strangers.

3rd Quarter resolutions

1. Include 15 minutes of immersion per day, 15 minutes of shadowing, and review kanji for however long it takes me.
2. Spiritually connect. I’m studying  Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism and there is a local center of SGI. I want to take advantage of it. I want to be able to chant properly (in Japanese).
3. Include 3-30 minute sessions of RS a week, monthly Studio sessions.

 

June Roundup

Another Month, some more fun posts. I hope everyone has been enjoying posts from our new author and of course ours as it is. There are a lot of fun projects and stuff coming up, but for now, lets round it up!

• How Esperanto Gave new Life to my Japanese
• Rosetta Stone V4 Totale Japanese: Panda’s Review
• Extensive + Intensive Reading, the Ultimate Combo
• So you wanna read, Eh? Project Intro
• Monthly Lolita: Elegant Goth Aristocratic Lolita
• Review of paid subscription of ReadTheKanji.com

While July marks the start of a new quarter for resolutions or goals, it also marks our new author’s marriage time! So because we love our author, he will be stepping out for July to enjoy his wife and all that fun stuff.

Upcoming Posts:

• 3rd Quarter Resolutions
• Rosetta Stone Meeting
• Monthly Lolita
• So you wanna read, eh?
• Rosetta Stone Studio Experience
• Its time to embrace your inner Drama Mama
• Pandachan’s Music Melody
• A few Books worth Getting
• July Wrap Up