Category Archives: Personal

Personal, Travel

Update: Japanese

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I am on day 259 in the Duolingo app; meaning I have used the app for 259 straight days to learn Japanese, but my progress isn’t very far… I’ve mostly been doing my 2 lessons a day, and for the most part, it’s been maintaining my progress…

Recently, they’ve added a “dark mode”, and about a month back, they expanded the Hiragana/Katakana section. I did make the leader board a few time while I finished those off! But now it’s taking effort to learn more/improve. And you’d think with self-isolation and the crap going on, I’d fine more time it… Just need to prioritize it.

I started my journey by listening to a podcast about learning Japanese prior to starting Duoling… It started with the basics, and led me to downloading apps to help learn Hiragana/Katakana — that helped a lot! I have downloaded one for Kanji, but haven’t been working on it as hard… After that, I realized the need to start a vocabulary spreadsheet (seen above)… I’ve spent a few hours here and there to curate the list, but haven’t created flashcards or spent hours of memorization on it yet… And I’ve avoided tackling verbs… something I know I just need to buckle down and do!

Stepping back, I think I’ve got a lot of good resources, including the internet. Between the quizzes and flashcards in the apps, the repetition, the spoken lessons, the spreadsheet, etc. some things are sinking in. I catch myself picking up words spoken in some Anime… feel like I’ve gone from a 0.1 – 1% word recognition to about a 3 – 5% word recognition. Sounding out words in Hiragana/Katakana is still slow, and I still doubt myself, but some small improvement…

What still freaks me out, when I watch a really good art-detailed Anime, with lots of street signs, train/bus time tables, or close-up views of things you’d use for navigation, I’m still like, WTH? Just watched a scene in Love Hina where two of the main characters buy a high-speed train ticket to Osaka — there was a few shots of the tickets used to find their seats… very quick scenes, but I’m wondering if (when we travel) will I be able to understand enough to find our car/row/seat to find our seats? We screwed this up once in France, figure need to make a better effort next time we travel anywhere by train…

One of the things I know I’m going to fail on is pronunciation… I should probably be repeating the spoken Japanese. But a lot of times, I find myself parsing the spoken Japanese for context, and find myself tripping up on spoken contractions… I’ll catch the first few words, then something that doesn’t sound quite right, then ends with a verb… Just like English with contractions and spoken shortcuts, I’ve noticed that in the app with some of the spoken sentences… and slowing it down doesn’t all ways clear it up. it’s taken a little more time to recognize the contractions, especially around how the particles flow from/into the next word… something I think I’d pick up a little better with learning from an actual teacher.

Personal

私はマイケルです。

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So my Japanese studies continue with Duolingo. I feel a little bit better about hiragana and katakana; I’m just a little slow at reading it. And using the app, I’m picking up some kanji. I need to go back learn more kanji, but right now, I’m working on sentence construction and telling time — it’s been a slow process.

The one app I’m using for learning kanji is a little annoying — it forces you to write correctly (which I’m fine with), but slight deviations can make you miss a character… the line detection is a little buggy. Like my angle might be a little off, so it considers it a fail.

Which brings up an interesting point; my hand writing isn’t the best. I can write in cursive, but I’ve settled on something that’s about 1/2 cursive and 1/2 traditional letters — depends if one letter flows nicely into the next or not. There’s a little “art” when it comes to writing in Japanese with the more complex kanji, any my pragmatic writing style gets in the way sometimes.

The other thing I’m realizing I need to spend more time on is listening… I watch anime in Japanese whilst reading subtitles, but it’s not until recently that I read a word in English and try to pick it out in Japanese. Like the other day, I heard 行く, meaning “to go”, but picked up the conjugated form. Fun, but feel like it’s just the tip of the iceberg (氷山). (heh, that’s ice mountain)

Anime, Personal

Fall Time

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It’s fall time, which means I’m down with a cold or sinus infection… Which means that pumpkins are starting to appear at Walmart… Which means a new season of Anime has started…

In the spirit of Maker Faire, I’m thinking I might try doing a LED-lit pumpkin this year… down the street from us, someone has created a Halloween display that looks like a web of pumpkin vines, with carved plastic pumpkins hanging in various places… I’ll try to get a picture of it later. Think Jack-n-the Beanstalk x Pumpkin patch… I should try creating a halloween based mythos and try executing on it…

So this season of Anime is interesting; there’s two anime that I’m trying to figure out if I’ll continue watching. One is where a person from this world is summoned to another world, but instead of immediately jumps in feet first, starts training, and training, and training… he’s overly cautious. The other one is where a professional wrestler is summoned to another world, but doesn’t want to kill monsters, but to open up his own pet shop… I’m thinking the whole “summoned to another world” genre has played itself out?

Otaku, Personal

Japanese Progress

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I’ve completed learning hiragana and katakana, but I’m finding some kana in katakana to be a little similar and confusing. Kanas like シ (shi) and ツ (tsu), or ソ (so) and ン (n) have very subtle differences — the brush strokes are different, but depending on the font type (or if it was written), don’t know if I’ll be able to tell the difference, unless in context. And other kana have similar appearances, like ウ (u), ス (su), ヌ (nu), フ (fu), ラ (ra), ワ (wa), and ヲ (wo). I probably need to spend another 20-30 hours of drilling and writing to get the strokes right.

The other subtle problem I’m having is recalling the right appearance of the kana when given the romanji. Recalling (n) in hiragana is easy, katakana is a little harder… but will just take time & practice. The other issue I’ll have, until I become better a listening, is the difference between short and long vowel sounds — a word like famous, 有名, or ゆうめい. There’s a subtle long (u), that if someone said the word, I’d accidentally omit it.

I need to start learning some vocabulary words next. I don’t feel like I’m at the point of sentence construction or verb conjugation… And with speaking, I find certain sounds to be difficult to say…to go from one sound to other certain sounds doesn’t feel natural yet.

Anime, Otaku, Personal, Travel

犬を飼っています

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So earlier this year, my wife showed me that tickets to Hong Kong were less than $1,000/person round trip. This got me thinking that I wanted us to take a trip to Asia within the next few years… And with both of us being Disney fans, we talked about maybe doing Hong Kong or Tokyo or Shang-hi…

And with being a little disappointed in our trip to San Francisco, we talked about doing a LEGO event outside the US, maybe in Asia… There’s been a LEGO fan event in Japan I’ve been following via Facebook for awhile, and a new fan event in Korea. I’ve always been impressed with the LEGO builders in Hong Kong (HKLUG) since the 2008 Olympics, so that gives us a few possible dates for travel (after Golden Week, before the hottest time of the year) and possible people to try to meet up with…

I can almost read what’s written in hiragana!

I’ve been a bit of a Japanophile/Otaku. Wrote a high school thesis paper on the Japanese educational system. I took a Japanese culture class in college. Dropped out of a Japanese language class — too much on my plate at the time. Probably watch too much anime. So it’s no surprise that I’d like to go to Japan first.

With that in mind, I’ve been listening to a podcast about learning Japanese; I started with the 30 day challenge from 2 years ago… Each episode is about 4-5 minutes long, covering a variety of topics. After about the 4th or 5th episode, it reminded me of why I dropped out of the class; and reminded me of the horrors of taking 3 years of Spanish — with verb conjugation, vocabulary words, etc. It reminded me that some 20ish years ago, I meet with a tutor, a gentleman from Japan to learn Japanese for a brief time; and talks of making flash cards, and advice that I should get a Japanese girlfriend if I really wanted to learn Japanese… But this time, I ended up sticking with it with a new determination, continuing listening to the lessons, with a plan to go back over the 30 days once I learned hiragana/katakana and some kanji. I would try to soak in some of the context, with out stressing out over memorization… I think I’m up to episode 57, some 20ish episodes past the 30 day challenge.

Given that I tried this before the advent of podcasts and smart phones, I feel like I’m a little further along than I expected. I haven’t started with vocabulary words, or sentence construction, I’m just focusing on learning hiragana. I’ve found 3 apps that have been very useful, the first one teaches me how to draw the kana/symbol properly with the correct brush stroke order and say it, then it shows me a romanji version of the kana, and I have to pick out the correct kana from a list of 4. Finally, it shows me a blank screen to draw on, with the romanji version of the kana (and sound), and I’m to draw it with the correct brush strokes. Multiple times a day, I review what I learned, until I get it right — it’s a little frustrating when (especially with ‘ね’) where my brush strokes are slightly off. The 2nd app is just a simple quiz/flashcard app. It either shows me the romanji version of the kana, and I have to pick out the right now, or it says the kana or a word in Japanese, and I have to pick it out from a list. The final app is more of a speed quiz, same as the second app, but I can choose what kana I’ve learned and it will drill me on those only… the goal is to get 100% each time, in the 20ish seconds I get to pick the correct symbol… the 3rd app is a little more nerve-racking, but by not being able to adjust the guessing time, I’ve gotten quicker.

… I don’t know where this will take me. I’m hoping by a year or two of study, I might be able to read signs and maybe have a basic grasp of conversation — maybe end up being JLPT 4 with a stretch goal of JLPT 3.

Personal, Travel

Manatee Watching

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Erika and I went to the Orange City Blue Spring Manatee Festival. Staring out, I didn’t have high hopes for it, but we wanted to do something different this weekend. As a side note, when I see “farmers’ market”, I think produce being raised and sold in lots of booths in an open air market, not one booth of produce and 50+ booths of arts & crafts — so with that in mind, I didn’t expect a “festival” of the same caliber of ones in Ohio.

And I was right. Maybe 40+ booths of arts & crafts, a few food vendors, some carny style games for the kids. And a long line to the shuttle… and really didn’t know what the shuttle was for. Come to find out, the shuttle took you into the Blue Spring park, to a location great for seeing manatees! This was the hi-light of the event & well worth the $8 of admission… and it goes to a good cause, the park. 🙂

Standing in line, one of the marine life (manatee) experts talked about what to expect & the “curiosity” of manatees. What I didn’t expect to see was so many! Gracefully swimming up and down the waters from the springs into the river. From what we overheard, there were 100+ spotted in the area, earlier that day… I thought that was an exaggeration, but I lost count after about 40. The manatees were curious… Erika and I were standing out on the of the piers, just by ourselves, everyone else had moved on. We stood there quietly for a few minutes, when momma and her two babies came swimming right for us… Then people started screaming with excitement. Momma turned tail and swam away from us… the marine life expert said, the best way to attract them was to be really calm & quiet.

Personal

Love Bugs

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Erika & I have been in Florida since the September before, but for some reason, I don’t remember the love bugs — now we see them everywhere. From what I read, they swarm twice a year, spring time (April-May) and fall time (September-October)… more swarm in the fall, than in the spring. They’re just annoying & their dead acidic bodies are covering the car… Can’t wait till the love bug season is over!