Future Diary, Volume 2 by Sakae Esuno
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Still not in love with this story, but am interested enough to continue reading to see what is going to happen to the #1.
Future Diary, Volume 2 by Sakae Esuno
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Still not in love with this story, but am interested enough to continue reading to see what is going to happen to the #1.
So I’ve pretty much taken a break from my Japanese studies due to my excitement for the Read-a-thon this weekend and also because of the crazy new sheep breeding feature in Farmville (guilty pleasure). But… I will get back to it next week full force. In the meantime, I’m just working with my Pimsleur MP3s in the car on the way to and from work. That way I don’t forget EVERYTHING! 🙂
In the meantime, I’ ve currently been working on learning the different pronunciations of the numbers with their counters and all. Here is a fun video for the counter for people…
And here is a cute little song for learning how to count objects:
I admit it, I’m addicted to my Droid phone and getting more so every day. My latest find, and possibly my favorite app ever, is Mango. This app is for reading manga on your phone. It is connected to multiple sites that contain insane amounts of manga. You can find out more information and get the download here. They are planning to have a pay version of the app next month for only $3.99 and I think it’ll be well worth it with the added features. If you’re a fan of manga and have an android, this app is a must have.
My first read with the application is a horror series titled Mirai Nikki (aka Future Diary). More about this in a future blog post once I’ve finished the series…
Realized in my previous post I should’ve inserted the days of the week in Japanese rather than just posting them as normal, so…. here’s a quick mini-lesson. I’d type one out myself, but I need to get back to studying so I’ll cheat with a YouTube video. 🙂
So in my last post I talked about all of the things I’m using to learn Japanese. My problem is, though I think I have picked a good group of “tools” to work with… some days I just feel completely overwhelmed and don’t know what to work on first. This would be one of those days. So… I’m taking a moment to type up a blog post and try to sort my thoughts. At the end I’ll have questions for any other people out there currently learning Japanese.
The current list of stuff I’d LIKE to accomplish this week that is still outstanding:
Unfortunately, it’s already Wednesday and tonight I’m feeling so overwhelmed I’m thinking of just giving myself a break. However, I don’t want to do that so I’m trying to talk things out here to see if I can’t work out some kind of tentative schedule for all of the stuff listed above.
Wednesday – Genki chapter 4, Katakana lesson 2 & Kanji section 3
Thursday – Genki Chapter 5 & Kanji sections 4 & 5
Friday – Genki Chapter 6 & Japanese Demystified
Saturday – YesJapan 2 & 3, Japanese In Mangaland, & Kanji section 6
Sunday – Basic Kanji 3-5
Okay… so that’s a goal! If I fall behind I won’t get mad at myself since I don’t really have any kind of deadline, but it’s best if I keep pushing forward! I’m trying to not go any days without SOME kind of homework involved as I’m afraid I’ll get off track completely and stop the process altogether. So, a little a day will go a long way. However, I don’t want to leave it at just the Pimsleur stuff as I want to be able to read and write it as well so back to the homework I go!
Just wanted to tell a little bit about how I got interested in Japanese and how I’ve gone about learning the language thus far. When I was at the end of my college career I was dating a guy that played a lot of video games, including RPG games from Japan. I was never a fan of the games but loved the artwork. So… he bought me an anime dvd to try. Offhand I can’t recall which one that was but I loved it and wanted to see more. I became obsessed with then and also started buying manga to read as well. After watching anime after anime with subtitles (because the dubbed versions are more often than not painful to the ears) I decided I wanted to learn Japanese to lessen how much reading of subtitles I had to do. Also, I really wanted to go to Japan to visit (and still do) so I wanted to be able to speak fluently enough to get by without having to point at pictures and such all the time in order for people to understand what I am saying.
So… after graduating college I went back and took two years of the language at the same college. Our class text was Yookoso! (books 1 & 2). I also managed to pick up the Nakama textbook from the college bookstore at one point, though it wasn’t used in my classes. Unfortunately, the class I was in didn’t pick up very quickly and I was working a full-time job & teaching a dance group so I didn’t really have time to focus on the subject as much as I’d like. I learned how to write hiragana, katakana, some vocabulary, and a little bit of grammar, but I honestly didn’t feel like I knew much after coming out of those classes. I tried continuing on my own at the time, but life was just too hectic so after a few months, I gave it up.
For several years after that I really didn’t watch anime or anything and got more involved with other hobbies and such. Then this past year I got a sudden interest in anime again and with that, the interest of wanting to learn the language came back. I already had a ton of books to work with at home and without having to teach the dance group of an evening I figured I might actually have a bit more time to do it. So a couple of months ago, I threw myself head first into it. I had to basically start from scratch as I had forgotten most everything I had previously learned. Hiragana came back pretty easily, but I’m still struggling with the katakana. I honestly think I may have not had a good grasp on that before either since it’s really not used all that often.
Note: If you’ve made it this far into this blog post I congratulate you as I’ve got a habit of rambling…
My biggest struggling starting out this time was deciding what book(s) and such to start with as I had collected numerous ones over the years. I initially had decided on Japanese For Busy People 1, but then when I was at the local Half-Price Books one day I lucked into finding the first Genki textbook and workbook really cheap. I read that it was the series of choice by most people so I was quite excited about my lucky find. I’ve gone 6 lessons into the book so far and have started to get overwhelmed so I’m backtracking and focusing on memorizing more of the vocabulary that I had skimmed over and re-doing the workbook sections thus far to get a better grasp on the grammar. I figure I’m in no hurry since I’m not in a classroom so I’d rather get a strong foundation of the material before moving any further.
I’ve also added more resources into my study schedule to learn other things and also to see some of the same things taught in other manners. Here is a list of other materials I am using. Once I’ve completed some of these I will start to write up reviews to hopefully better help future self-teachers in determining what are the best “tools” to use (though I’m sure everyone learns differently).
So… that is how I’m going about things at this point. I additionally browse numerous websites/blogs/etc… but will post some examples/recommendations of these in future blogs.
I think that’s enough rambling for now. Hopefully this will help someone and I will follow up in the future with more details on how these tools are working for me as well as the reviews I’ve promised.
Still playing around and testing things here at my new “home” on the web. Figured this song went along with the title of my blog… or rather it was the inspiration for the title of my blog.