Mikoto And Friends' Adventures in Japanese

Monthly Lolita: Sweet (甘ロリ)

PandaChan — Tue, 21 May 2013 19:27:33 +0000

Here we are wrapping up our monthly lolita overviews. Free not little minions, for Panda will not leave you abandoned in the sea of Lolita! I plan to go back and do another overview with more Japanese terms and Japanese perspective to help further your Japanese learning (after all this blog does focus on LEARNING Japanese, not just dressing for it). Also, there are a LOT of other styles of lolitas out there.

There are also a lot of readers that are interested in making their own lolita clothes on a budget, so I’ll try to come in and give some tips, tricks, and know-hows. But that’s for the future! Back to our monthly lolita broadcast.

Sweet lolita is sweet, with sweet things. Imagine a candy bar wrapped in more candy. Sweeeeeeeeeet!

Anyways, back to the real description. Unfortunately, sweet lolita, although beautiful in its own right, is what westerns and nay-says think of when they hear lolita. There is a lot of negativity to this style and lolita in general because it is more on the younger side, using pastels and child-friendly motifs. People who are unfamiliar with the real meaning of Lolita feels this style (and lolita in general) appeals to pedophiles and children lovers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Please remember that just because it is innocence, doesn’t mean that women are trying to be childlike or appeal to gross men and women. With all Lolita styles, it’s the modesty and innocence that is trying to be reclaimed along with femininity. ANYWAYS: I’ll get off of my soap box.

As stated, Sweet lolita uses light pastels and child like motifs( Fruit, flowers and animal themes) to make up the bulk of its design.. Sweet lolita also includes fairytale designs, such as Alice in Wonderland, and princess themes. Sweet lolita encompasses just everything sweet and delicate.

To dress your hair for sweet lolita, be sure to include bonnets or bows in your hair. As far as your hair style goes, do soft curls or waves, or straight with a slight curl at the end. Putting your hair up in half pigtails are also equally cute.

Accessories include handbags in the shape of fruits, animals or other cute shapes. Parasols are often used in photo-ops as well. Have to keep that skin youthful and beautiful!

Makeup needs to be basic and more for a basic coverage to correct blemishes and even skin tone and small highlighting of the eyes. Blush is allowed, but don’t go drag queen heavy on it. Lips should be a light pink stain or lightly tinted gloss.

Panda’s outfit:

raindream.deviantart.com

Purse iId love to own:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/16623353/sweet-lolita-peach-n-cream-cake-tote

Mikoto’s Outfit:

Love it! Sweet Lolita toned down just a bit for everyday!

Taking The Plunge

Delenir — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:38:45 +0000

For a while now, I’ve felt a bit stuck at the intermediate stage. I’ve already written about the various things I’ve had to give up in order to make better progress, I’ve done a lot of research about good study techniques and learning resources, and written about many on this blog too. But now I think the time has come where I need to stop reading about learning, and even stop writing about learning, and truly give actual learning everything I can. I’m ready to take the plunge.

In the beginning, I firmly believe it’s very important to read about how to learn, so that you can have an effective approach to your linguistic endeavors. After all, I still want you to enjoy the posts we’ve made on this wonderful blog! And certainly I would never have discovered things like self-immersion, Heisig, Anki, URL shufflers, media resources, or even some wonderful friends had I not taken the opportunity look at different and radical ways to learn Japanese.

I really enjoy writing for the blog, and being part of a community of learners. I would never want to say so long to that. So instead, I want to take a journey into getting much better at Japanese, so that I can come back to that community not as someone who’s still struggling with the process, but as someone who has attained competence in the language and can help others do the same. In the meantime, I would love to stay in contact with readers. I still reply to personal messages by e-mail and Facebook, and I will likely be posting some great finds on twitter more so than I do now. Best of luck to everyone, and I hope to see you all again soon!

Monthly Lolita: Punk

PandaChan — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:33:18 +0000

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Ok, couldn’t resist the punk panda. I mean, who doesn’t love a little punk in their life right (and a little cute panda momma)

So, if you haven’t noticed, this week we’re going over Punk lolita! Our overview, I realized, had some major typos in it. Meaning, it just stopped mid description! Thankfully we’re going back and going over all of these so that you little punksters out there can see the true meaning of Punk! yaaaaaah.

So, first things first! Punk’s general style has tattered clothing, plaid, safety-pins, chains, ties, and what have you. We incorporate this into Lolita by toning down the femininity and making it more neutral. This style of lolita is common for both male and females because of that. However, just because it’s toned down doesn’t mean it’s not fun!

Be punkish but still conform to some of Lolita’s rules (I know oxymoron and all): be put together. If you’re going to do this, make sure you put your heart into it and really embrace it. Keep the silhouette that we’ve talked about, but make it not as defined. Polish the look with boots or even keep to the Mary-Janes. As always, accessorize! Fishnets also go a long way. Lolita is not just about the clothes, but the over all image and taking command of it.

As far as make up goes, it’s unclear but to follow the trend of other lolita, you want to enhance your natural beauty, but bring out the punk! Go heavy on your eye line and a pop of color on the lid. Be sure to consider what you’re wearing and try to match somewhat! The lips can be a pop of color or just simple tinted gloss. I read somewhere that punks draw shapes on their faces, I know sometimes cute lolita do hearts, so why not the punks do stars and other… punk.. icons? I don’t know! Have fun, this is after all probably one of the most relaxed in terms of rules.

Pandas outfit:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/punk%20lolita

mikoto’ Outfit:

Where to buy:
Punk seem to be more exclusive than all of the other styles. Just keep a look out when shopping for gothic and EGA.

Week Two, Panda style

PandaChan — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:35:27 +0000

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!

So You Want To Be The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was? [Pt1]

Delenir — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:25:31 +0000

“Welcome to the world of Pokémon!” This is the introductory line that begins so many fantastic adventures in the Pokémon franchise. When I say franchise, and not game series, I mean it. The world of Pokémon is huge, even bigger than you may realize…

Choose wisely

There are so many different forms of Pokémon media to enjoy, and since it’s all within the same world, each one helps you better understand the other. Here are just some examples of how much of a multimedia franchise Pokémon is. It includes…

Core video game series
Spin-offs
Crossovers
Multiple manga series
Anime series
Feature-length movies
OVAs, and other shorts
Children’s story books
Educational and puzzle books
An insane amount of merchandise

Comparing existing Pokemon areas to their actual Japanese counterparts.

What does this mean for your Japanese? Well if you’re already a Pokémon fan… everything! You have an instant, massive library of multiple types of media at your disposal, with the advantage of being familiar with the franchise. Whether you want to read picture books or manga, play a video game (most have kana/kanji options by the way), watch anime, or even research rare merchandise, you can do all of it with a Pokémon-based education. There are even vocabulary lists based on the games to help you along. I can guarantee being familiar with the media will make you feel all the more comfortable with it, and all the more pumped to stick with it.

Pokémon media is EVERYwhere

Here’s my personal experience using the franchise to help me with my Japanese. So back when Red and Blue came out in North America, I jumped on with Pokémania and played Blue all the way through (in English) with my trusty Squirtle. Years later, it was mostly my only exposure to the franchise except for a few anime episodes. That was until I met Animom, the Pokémon queen. With a rekindled interest in the world of catching them all, I wanted to try my first full length game in pure Japanese. So I picked Soul Silver for Nintendo DS. Had this been my first time in the Pokémon world, with my level of Japanese at the time I would have been quite lost.

Gentlemon, let us master the Japanese language!

So right away, knowing how the game mechanics worked and what the general plot was provided a huge confidence boost and got me very excited to jump into my first JRPG in its native language. Then when I came across some Pokémon picture books, I already had context on my side before I even opened the front cover. Same goes for the manga and the anime. Because I was familiar with the world of Pokémon, I was able to easily have fun trying out all the different types of media it has to offer.

You too can get this feeling learning Japanese with Pokémon!

Even the overall theme of dedicating yourself to the journey you have set out for is very inspiring. I can’t think of many other franchises that offer this much variety within the same world. And because it’s normally aimed at a younger audience, I also find it to be an incredibly accessible universe to immerse yourself in on your own Japanese journey to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Coming Soon to Animaritime 2013!

On a related note, I’ll be doing my first public presentation ever at Animaritime 2013, along with Animom. As you may have guessed, the topic is Pokémon and its evolution as a franchise. If you’re attending this event, please leave a comment or send me a message. I would absolutely love to meet a reader in person! There will even be a section on Japanese-only elements of Pokémon, so if you’re in the Fredericton, NB at the time, please say hello!

In this series we’ll be covering the various Pokemon merchandises out there and how you can pull fun Japanese from it, and so forth. Stay Tuned for our next segment on the anime side of Pokemon.

Power Up Your Japanese

Delenir — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:10:17 +0000

At last, the day has come for me to walk down the monolingual road. Basically what this means using a Japanese dictionary to look up unknown Japanese words. This is an experiment I’ve been doing over the last little while, and now that I have a system that’s working, I’d like to share it with you, the wonderful reader. It feels like I’ve just powered up to a whole new level. Perhaps in time, it will be kinda like…

This could be you.

I admit, I really did think of the whole Super Saiyan transformation seen above while undertaking this project. In all seriousness though, if you’re looking to make this leap, I would highly recommend having a good handle on kanji meanings, and having a vocabulary level of at least JLPT N4 or Core 2000. If anything, the kanji is the most useful because it will give you a general idea of what’s going on. While taking this plunge, I also took the advice I’ve seen on many blogs: start by looking up words you already know. This is why I dubbed my experiments The Journey of 公園 (public park). This was a word I already knew, and I liked the symbolism of it. It would be like a walk in the park…

Miller Point 公園

How did this journey begin? Well, it’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Learning With Texts. It’s a huge time saver, and more effective on top of it. So naturally, I adapted LWT to monolingual use. A lot of this stuff can easily be done with just an SRS like Anki, it’s just that something like LWT will take a lot of the tedious steps away for you. If you do use LWT, first you’ll want to change your dictionaries. Have a look at my LWT post for how to do that. There are a few good ones out there, but Yahoo dictionary is my personal choice, and is really all I use. The URL for the monodic version of Yahoo! is: http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/detail?p=###&stype=0&dtype=0. (As you’ve probably noticed, you just replace the term being searched with ### in the URL.) If you’re doing this manually and not with LWT, you want to select 国語 as the dictionary type. You could also try out Goo, Wikitionary, or Sanseido. First let’s take a look at what typical monodic results look like on Yahoo…

For example…

So first you have the term itself with the reading, まつり and then with kanji 祭り. On the far right are other terms that contain the word or part of the word in it. It can be good to check that first because sometimes the results don’t always show what you’re looking for. After the term you see a numbered list. These are various definitions of the word. Some of the ones that have text in green after them are rare literary definitions so you likely won’t want to include those. As a guideline, I only include 2-3 definitions per term. You’ll also see some example sentences in 「brackets」. Take note that the word itself is replaced by a ― in the examples. This seems to be quite common in Japanese dictionaries. In the case of verbs and other words that change like that, only the root is replaced by a ―. And that’s the quick and dirty on how Yahoo!辞書 works.

Now the magic begins. Start with a sentence that contains only words you know. It can come from anywhere, even a Google search. Enter that one sentence into LWT, and look up each word with your monolingual dictionary to create the terms. I make sure to have the definition and reading as separate fields, unlike I used to do. I’ll show you why later on. Once you start adding terms, you’ll probably have some words in the definition you don’t know yet. There are a few ways you can go about this

Selecting a term.

One way is branching (jumping). This basically means you look up the word in the definition you don’t know, and find the monolingual definition to that one, and look up words in that definition you don’t know, and so on… The problem with trying to create extra SRS cards this way is that this branching can get out of hand. For example I ended up getting something like 40 cards based on one sentence. If it works for you then go for it, but if not…

Bird is the word when it comes to branching..

You can also try a transitional sort of card for your terms. If the monolingual definition makes sense to you, then great–leave it that way. If you’re still not sure of what the word means, most words in the 和英 (Japanese->English) dictionary actually feature short bilingual definitions of the word in question. The best part about this is while the English part is usually a rough translation of the word, the Japanese part tends to be an actual explanation. Not only does this still include Japanese text, but you can often get the nuance of the words this way and hopefully get an aha moment when reading it. Even when doing this, I often add the full J>J definition first, as seen below.

Mixed definition, mostly Japanese.

Every term I end up with has two different card formats in Anki. One tests me on the reading of the term, showing the meaning etc in the question portion. The other type tests me on the meaning of the word, showing me the reading in the question portion. This is so I can handle these two elements separately There’s an idea that every card should only have 1 question and 1 answer. By following that idea, I find I can learn cards quickly and effectively. At the moment about half my cards are pure monolingual, and the other half are transitional.

Reading

Meaning

So when you don’t have any English to compare your answer to, how do you grade yourself? What I came up with goes something like this: If you understand the definition, and your idea of what the word means makes sense in the example sentence, then it’s correct. Simple as that. If you follow the guidelines above for deciding between pure monolingual and transitional cards, then really every one should be a winner.

Can you tell I really like the whole “road” imagery when it comes to learning Japanese? This is the 公園 behind Desbrisay Museum.

Now time for some bonus stuff! If you’re looking to quiz yourself even further in a monolingual environment, give Yahoo!きっず学習－漢字 a shot. There are lessons on other topics like science or even English on there to test yourself from a Japanese perspective. Or maybe you’ve got enough 国語（こくご） and your goal now is to cut down on English? Start by figuring out what your biggest time suckers are and either limit or get rid of them altogether. For example, I know certain websites are after my time, so I’ve become a big fan of Chrome Nanny and Leech Block, for Chrome and Firefox respectively. Use it wisely!

Week one for Me (again!)

PandaChan — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 01:19:29 +0000

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

I wrote all of the Hiragana (as I already have learned it, and just needed a refresher) using Tae Kim’s Guide.
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.
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.

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.
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.
Youtube: I have an old Japanese playlist that I created
Iphone/itunes: I have purchased a couple of my favorite artists’ albums and have them on my phone.
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!
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!

Steam Powered Learning

Delenir — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:17:36 +0000

If you’re not familiar with Steam, it’s a digital distribution platform for games on PC, Mac, and Linux. And it’s available in Japanese. Unlike with many consoles (except the Playstation 3 and PSPs, thank you Sony) there are no region locks of any kind when it comes to playing games in Japanese. It’s simply a matter of changing the language.

One thing to keep in mind though is while many games are available in full, beautiful Japanese, not all titles are. And where some games such as Skyrim have 100% Japanese text and voice acting, others like Portal 2 for example, only have text translated. Then you have the rare Japanese developer, ie SquareEnix, where the titles are actually originally in Japanese. As shown in the picture below, you can always check this before purchasing a title, or even try a demo if one is available.

The * indicates languages that also includes voice acting. Notice that 日本語 is present, but isn’t starred.

This is a really great source of games for people learning Japanese, not only because of the lack of a region lock, but also because delivery is instant. I remember looking in the mailbox every day in hopes of my order of 二の国 for PS3 being in there. With Steam, you can be enjoying the time sucking vampire that is The Sims 3, in Japanese, within minutes.

If you need some titles to get you started, here are a few I’d especially recommend, along with how Japanese they are.

Skyrim (Full voice acting, all text and menus translated)
The Sims 3 (Voices are in Simlish as always, all text and menus translated. You need to do a little hack to get Japanese to show up though.)
Civilization V (English voices, all text and menus translated)
Portal 2 (English voices, all text and menus translated)
The Last Remnant (Demo available, full voice acting, all text and menus translated.)

Being able to get Japanese games on Steam without having to worry about region locks or even shipping has made my gaming time skyrocket. May it do the same for you!

All Hail the Alicrab! A Peek into WaniKani

mikotoneko — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 01:55:22 +0000

Since I was a wee kanji learner, I have gone upon the mountains and lo, preached the goodness that was the world of Remembering the Kanji and all the RTK followers would rejoice on high…that is until the Almighty Alicrab appeared and toppled RTK over the hill.

Wanikani is crack where RTK is caffeine, picking off where RTK does and going a step further. I found that after RTK there was a sort of deadening space where you lose a little motivation, but mostly because though you can see soooo many kanji everywhere and understand that gist (which is an awesome feeling) it is sorta a little browbeating to sorta ‘start from scratch’ in terms of getting sounds to the kanji. RTK’s 2nd book supposedly addresses this issue, but never have I really heard any good comments about RTK2, nor have I even been remotely interested in it.

This is ultimately why WaniKani is now my beginner ‘program’ of choice when anyone asks me how to start the reading/writing process. It all began with the Alicrab.

What is the almighty Alicrab you say? Well pictures are worth a thousand words.

Just an alligator with a crab body here, nothing to see, move along!

General Thoughts

Though you can see Tofugu’s own post about WaniKani, I’m here to give you a peak at my thoughts. Even though I have completed RTK1, it might not be completely fair to hear my thoughts on the ease of the program. Worry not however, because I forced about 3 people near me who had relativity no kanji experience to use it as well.

Having been a member of the beta for some time now, I’ve seen a wealthy amount of UI changes, even their blog post is quite outdated, however, the changes are like most site changes, some you like, some you don’t. I’ll admit at least for this sensitive eyeballed person here, the newer color scheme is just a tad bit painful and I do hope that it may change soon, however that said, I still enjoy the overall changes and progression that WaniKani has taken on. I’ve seen the levels progress from 7 to now 33, and things like audio and such add up.

I think my favorite things about the site is the system itself, its cuteness of the Alicrab, and the ease of the layout (where you get to see lots of information to fuel your excitement), where as my most hated thing is the lack of sentences and rigidity during reviews (I’ll explain the review section below), but mostly the color scheme (yeah yeah I know, I might complain about it a little more though. Not to say everyone feels the same, lots of people enjoy the color. As a side note, its not my monitor as I’ve viewed it on several computers and my ipad).

Enough of my general talking, let me get down to business.

WaniKani Basics

The Radicals

Like RTK where there are elements that you use to propel mnemonics, so does WK. If you’re into RTK just a little bit, it would not be hard to convert over at all. Even I, who’ve had those keywords in my head for a long time, was almost painless to switch. There were only a few where I continuously miss them due to RTK, such as 日, however I do not see it being problems for those with no heavy RTK influence.

The Kanji (General)

Kanji are usually given the most appropriate keyword for testing periods (SRS), however there are explanations of more within the kanji’s information…center? I’m not sure where he is pulling his list from, but from what I can tell in my own readings and such, the kanji are all relevant kanji you’ll need to know.

The Kanji (Readings)

The readings for the kanji are broken into two sections, the kanji side and the vocabulary side. For some this may seem like a rather odd thing, and at first I was a little eyebrow raising, however I noticed right away the ingenious behind it. Well Played Good Sir, Well Played. If you’re like me, you can never remember the difference between the words, On’Yomi, or Kon’Yomi, however, and though I still don’t think it matters if I do, WaniKani takes on that responsibility of helping you distinguish between when to say what (in general) without you caring to know still. I might of confused you, but when I give an example below, I will point this out better.

The Vocabulary

Every kanji has a vocabulary in which it goes into in the WaniKani side of things, and some even get a handful (especially combined with other kanji). This can be a little confusing, as for kanji’s readings in its kanji only side is sometimes different than the vocabulary side, and can be a little mind numbing if you mix them up and get the review wrong. However, the reinforcement of how the reading’s show up is a blessing in disguise, and it helps hit home that the kanji should never be confused with its vocabulary counterpart (even if, it is a single kanji vocab). Okay, maybe you’re worried or confused now, but I’ll show you below in an example. The great thing however is most of the vocabulary I feel is pretty common and useful right out the gate.

Levels

WK works on a leveling system. The number of radicals, kanji, and vocabulary differ for each level as well. The radicals do not run out however, due to a lot of them being kanji used in other kanji. This is similar to how RTK worked, and perhaps some people have complained about just slightly, since they have to double test on it, however others feel that it is doubly helpful that way.

Home Page

The homepage, where all your information is before your eyes, you can easily see where you came from, where you’re at, and where you’re going. The dashboard is useful, with the ability to always return to the home screen, start your lessons, your reviews, drop down boxes to view your Level, Radicals, Kanji, and Vocabulary.

The layout is prone to changes, so rather than describing it, I’ll just tell you stuff that has remained on there pretty much the whole time I’ve been on WK. You get to see 4 levels of mastery and a burned item. Basically the more you answer correctly your items pass through stages until they’re so ‘burned’ into your mind that you’ll never forget them.

Apprentice –> Guru –> Master –> Enlightened –> Burned

I have to admit I miss the images they use to have with the levels, of the demon guy, but the new look is sleek and good too showing a turtle coming out of its egg.

Progression bar on the level for both Radical and Kanji has been there, letting you know how many you need to unlock to move forward. I’ve never paid any attention to this, but its a cool thing to look at if you’re powering towards the next level and need some visual boost to propel forward.

It’s also nice to note that there is a color scheme that matches what the item is. When reviewing, the color of the background changes to help you realize it’s a specific item. For example when you have a kanji and a vocabulary item that is the same, the color will change still. The colors are noted below with the examples.

There has always been a showing of current forum posts and the beta blog for WK, so far as I can remember. There is a forum on the site, but I do not participate in it, but from what I have seen, there are bug reporting places, requests, questions, minecraft information, and of course people talking about Japanese related things like media and what not.

Other things have come and gone on the page, such as now there is a ‘New Unlocks”, “Critical Conditions Items”, like those you miss a lot, and “Burned Items” (last 30 days for the new and burned). Also a when to review now, and a bit from then.

Overall the main points have stayed there, just changes in how it is displayed, with a few tweaks.

Lessons

Certainly the first thing you do on WK is a lesson. A lesson basically consists of the radical, kanji, vocabulary that you are learning to show up, its breakdown (which is what the item is all about), meaning, and reading. These are able to be viewed outside of the lessons as well, and during reviews. The lesson will generally provide you with a mnemonic to use, however you are free to use your own, you just cannot modify it into the system.

Perhaps a first confusion for many is, if you are given more than one reading. In this case, you only need to input one when reviewing, not both/all.

You do roughly 5 new items before it goes into a mini review, and then back again into the lessons. This is helpful to help re-solidify and I enjoy it a lot. It is one of the reasons that I liked iknow as well, which incorporated a ‘learn, review, test’ SRS mentality.

Review

The second main thing you do on this site (and probably actually the most thing you should be doing) is reviewing. WK is an SRS, and therefore, you have to come back and review. Reviewing is pretty straight forward. The review screen will show you what you’re reviewing (and is color coated depending on the item being vocab, kanji, radical) and some options below it.

item at top in colored box
question
input box
option to view Hiragana

Once you enter in your answer, a few things happen. The top right stats will change depending on your correctness, as well as the box. If you get it right, your stats stay closer to 100% rightness, if not, it detracts from that and you get a little red box where the input was. Options to relearn about the item is now allowed to be accessed. Most items (vocabulary) have sounds which you can hear when ever, and keyboard shortcuts are highly usable, making it really nice.

If you need to look up information on the item, at first it will only show you what you missed, so that it does not give away other testable aspects of the word, however, you can click to see more information to allow you to see more if you’ve just completely forgot a bout the item in question.

A few people claim that the strictness of the spelling is very off putting, but the system does allow for a handful of mistyped words, however similar meanings aren’t usually accepted. There are ways to ask for this stuff on the forum, but you have to be reasonable to an extent about what you can allow in these types of input tested programs.

When items are right, of course, your box goes green! Yay! You can still view information though, just in case you need a refresher, and you’ll notice that when items are reviewed in completion correctly, they can be upgraded, and if missed in one aspect, possibly downgraded (like you get meaning right but reading wrong).

Example run through!

So when you’re a beginner, the very first thing you’ll see is a radical. Here is a listing of some of the radicals you’ll see right out, 大，十、口、日　Its pretty straight forward. Once you unlock a certain amount of them, then you’ll be able to see a kanji. Here is where we’ll pick up our example.

Kanji! [Pink Background]

上＝じょう＝above, equipped with the radicals that make up this Kanji, writing it is easy, and the mnemonic brought with it :

Meaning: “There’s a toe above ground. Look at it.”

Reading: “The toe sticking up above the ground is just a little thing… You go up to poke it and then you realize that the toe actually belongs to Joseph (じょう) Stalin. Joe doesn’t like people messing with his toes, so you slowly back away.”

There is more information given in general during the lesson, but this is the most important things to bring from it in the long run.

Then later on you’ll run against its single kanji vocabulary form.

Vocabulary [Purple Background]

上＝うえ＝up

Meaning: “When a vocab word is a single kanji and alone, it tends to steal the meaning from the kanji. Same goes for this one too. It means above or up.”

Reading: “When a vocab word is a single kanji and doesn’t have okurigana (hiragana attached to the kanji) it usually will use the kun’yomi. Since you learned the on’yomi reading of the kanji, we’ll need to use a mnemonic to learn the reading of this vocabulary word. —- Above you is a huge weight. You’re holding it up and struggling (it’s heavy!). You look up and try to crane your neck to see how much it weighs (うえ), but you can’t see the numbers on the side of it. How long can you hold it above your head like this?”

So as you can see, there will be a few of these you’ll run across and forget which one went to which one. It can be a little frustrating at first I know, but working through these little small things make it all pretty cool in the end, trust me.

More vocabulary:

As you combine other kanji into your learning, they will combine with other kanji and create even more vocabulary words. Here are some that the above kanji are turned into both within the first level to many later:

上る、上げる、上がる、上手、以上、上司、差し上げる。。。

and many more.

User Created Tools

A cool thing is that every user has a code to their account that contains some general information, like what’s due, lessons, and so on. People have created handy little extensions and what not to use, and If you get into WK I recommend you check them out. They’re mostly about helping remind you to do your work!

Closing Thoughts

Of those that tried it out for me, only a few complained of frustration of some of the exact input spelling for meanings and readings. All in all, we all agree that WK picks up a huge piece that Heisig doesn’t do very well. Perhaps to me, the absoluteness is what bothers me most, and has always been the case with any language to language. Where there are with no doubt words that equal words, that is not always the case, and without sentence examples and usages, the vocabulary words feel a little detached. So it would be my recommendation to combine the sentence mining method with WK in full force from the beginning! Seeing what I have, I also feel that if you were to complete WK, you should go straight to J-J. There is enough background to switch over easily to monolingual, especially if you sentence mined your way through it.

How to get it

As it stands, WK is in the beta phase, so please email sign up! The great thing about beta is that you get started sooner while still helping mold the product. On another good note, you get a discount when going beyond level 2. Yes WK is a paid product, and you can pay by several methods in several time groups. Those who have Textfugu also receive a discount (not stacked). So get in now to get the discounts! Also, it is not known when WK will be released fully and tit is not known how many full levels, though I have heard whispering of at least 50 levels.

I hope that this was helpful, if you have any further questions, or are participating already and would like to expand, comment below!

Monthly Lolita: Qi, Wa, Han

PandaChan — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:39:06 +0000

Hello my fashionistas! This week we’ve combined three lolitas as they are very similar. Qi Lolita is derived from Chinese influences where Wa lolita has Japanese influences. Han thus has Korean influences. All three are traditional outfits of their culture that has been edited to have lolita’s silhouette.

Qi lolita incorporates quipao (left) tailored to the waist length and uses the typical lolita cupcake shape skirt. Similarly, the Wa lolita includes the obi and the the yukata (center) above the waist. Lastly, the Han lolita incorporates the upper half of the Hanbok (left).

It’s really important to keep accessories to the mother country. Such as kinchaku (bag) instead of a purse for Wa lolita. Have hair-pieces that complement the Japanese, Chinese, or Korean styles. Makeup tends to be muted as far as I can tell but can always be coordinating to the outfit. As far colors and patterns, as long as the cut matches the proposed style, any and all colors and patterns go.

All three styles are beautiful and gorgeous to me. I personally own a Wa lolita two piece outfit and wear it at least every 3 months. I tend to get a LOT of compliments about it and just feel so beautiful in it. I think the mixture of strong heritage of the culture with a mixture of modern lolita tailoring adds to make a beautiful combination.

Panda’s outfits:

Fanplusgarden Wa Lolita and Qi; Han lolita from neonpixel.com

Mikoto’s Outfits:

[Mikoto Here: Just want to say I'm saddened by the lack of Han Lolita Fashion available!]

When shopping:

you have to keep a look out for much of the Qi, Wa, Han lolita. Very little brands sell it exclusively and when they sell it, there tends to only be a few to choose from. Be respectful of the culture and of lolita when wearing these and you’ll be golden!