Lang-8

You may know that I've been studying Japanese as a way to prevent insanity, however Japanese is not really a good language to do this. I'm now more insane than ever, less social, yet more tech savvy and so I've attached a widget to the sidebar which links to my Lang-8 journal.

What is Lang-8? Well it's a really simple yet amazingly useful idea. When I taught English, one of the truly terrible jobs was correcting student diaries. There seemed an endless stream of them, and most were filled with incredibly mundane entries like "today I didn't do anything, I slept and watched TV, and had something to eat". I mean, sometimes they would write these sorts of things every single day. Do any thoughts at all go on in English student's heads apart from the basic necessities of life? Were they unable to at least tell me how they felt, and I don't mean physically, I was hungry, thirsty, sleepy, I mean their true secret deep thoughts, the ones which they dare not speak of, only hurriedly scribble down in a flurry of passion and guilty emotion? Why couldn't they let me in on their loves, their dreams, even their dirty, dirty secrets? I thought diaries were kept locked up, saturated in juicy details, leaking information to the minds of ingenious siblings bent on exposing who Katie 'really likes'.

Anyway, I digress. Lang-8 is an online diary writing website aimed at language learners. You write a diary in the language that you are learning, and native speakers from that language correct it for you. In return, you correct journals in English. It's basically an honour system, you aren't forced to correct diaries, but as you gain friends and notoriety you kind of feel obliged. So yes, I'm now correcting diaries again, and I'm not getting paid.

It's a great idea, it's free, correction is much faster than writing a post yourself so it's not a big deal to edit a few, and best of all, people write interesting stuff about their lives, their thoughts and cultural differences which they find puzzling. It's addictive to read these short, pithy opinions about this and that. You can leave comments on each journal entry, so often you get correction and discussion, which is marvellous. Also, it allows you to still interact with natives no matter where you live. I know it's not as good as speaking to a language exchange partner, but it's good to have the discipline to keep coming back, writing something and then checking where you went wrong.

So if you're a language learner, try it out. Especially if you speak Japanese, kick my grammatical butt if you feel the need to.

You could also search for my nickname on the site (phauna) and add me as a friend, please. Unless you are my enemy. Don't do that if you are, soon I'll find you, when you least expect it. Expect me. Although you won't know when I find you, just expect that I *will* find you, sometime, when you least suspect it.

Wedding Dinner

Rebekah wanted me to put this photo of our wedding dinner on the blog.

Kanji

I haven't been posting much lately because I have been trying to learn kanji. These are the Chinese characters that are in use in Japan, and once a Japanese person has left high school they are supposed to have learnt a select 1945, although there are many more. These kanji are the most commonly used and are usually taught in order of difficulty. It takes six years, I think, to learn them all and the main method is copying them out hundreds and thousands of times.

Suffice to say I don't have six years to spend trying to get literate. I think most Japanese learners initially think to themselves that they can just learn the speaking part, or at the very least the two alphabets which are used in conjunction with kanji, hiragana and katakana. However, it seems apparent that to read anything at all you need to learn them. All of them. They are mostly used in combinations of two or more, meaning learning individual ones now and then won't help much.

So I found a method, and am studying hard. I know it sounds surprising, but I think anything done on a computer is enjoyable, so it seems not so bad.

I am using this book, Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig, and his method is to learn them all at once, by making up an imaginative story containing the smaller constituent radicals in the kanji. The characters are often made up of combinations of other kanji, and through these you can invent a mnemonic. This is quite normal and common, I think, however he also advises not to learn the Japanese readings at first, but just to link it to one single English word, which contains at least one of the meanings the kanji conveys. To learn everything about one kanji is too difficult, so you kind of break the work down into meaning and reading.

So, I'm almost there, amazingly. I've learnt how to write 1400 kanji, and learnt one single meaning in English for each one, and it only took six weeks. I'm giving myself until March to learn the other 600. However, just using this method with pen and paper would be almost impossible, so this website comes into play; Reviewing the Kanji uses a Leitner flashcard system, which tests you on the keywords in progressively longer and longer intervals. This means that cards you are good at don't get tested often, saving time, whereas those which you have trouble with seem to come up very often.

Right, so what good is that, I still can't read. Well now I will have something to hang the sound of a kanji on, namely a story and a meaning. Kanji won't be a tangle of unrecognisable line and dots anymore. Also I'll be able to guess the meaning of words using the individual kanji, and I can write them too. So the job won't be done quite yet. Soon I'll have to read a lot of manga and train ads, etc. and learn how the kanjis sound.

At least it won't take six years. Fingers crossed, only six months, because that's all I have.

Holiday Roundup

We've just been on holidays for a couple of weeks in Australia, and we attended my sister's wedding in Coff's Harbour. Alice had a very nice dress on.





We went to a butterfly house, which is a huge greenhouse because butterflies like it hot and steamy. It takes about five hours to drive from Sydney to Coff's Harbour.

For Rob's buck's party we went fishing and I caught five fish. I forgot to bring the camera, though, so they were really big ones. This is another boat which we went on to see some whales. Karen and Alice were both enjoying it immensely in their own separate ways. We didn't see many whales but lots of dolphins insisted upon not being photographed for most of the voyage.

We also visited the Big Banana, the largest attraction in town. Alice is still small enough to find most bananas quite sizeable.

The other sight to see is the Pet Porpoise Pool, where you can get close to many marine creatures, even if you don't want to. Here's Alice freaking out about a seal kiss.

And here she is struggling to flee a dolphin kiss.

Peacock's arses are almost as attractive as their fronts.

Alice liked the seal and dolphin show inordinately. She was really excited the entire time.

This is Evan, Durand and Asia's baby. This photo is here so my other friends actually know what he looks like, and that he exists.

Australia

Hello, all. I'm in Australia at the moment attending my sister's wedding so I won't be blogging for another week or so.

Finally

On the 2nd of October, around eleven a.m., Bek and I were married at the Minato-ku Ward Office.

Alice and I

It's been brought to my attention that there aren't many photos of me on this blog.

Potatoes

I went to do the walking tour around Shinjuku which I found in the Lonely Planet, but became easily distracted when I found Shinjuku Park. The place was much larger than I imagined a Tokyo park would be. It consists of English, Japanese and French style gardens, as well as a Mother and Daughter Forest, whatever that is.


The English garden was just a big open field bordered by some trees, perfect for teaching the baby independence. I wheeled the stroller into the very middle, careful to avoid all social contact with other parents, and chose a spot equidistant from all the small groups of people. Then I let Alice go and she happily wandered far away from me. I think she is already quite independent, she didn't seem to look back or hesitate. I chased her a bit, and even led her a tad further from me and then quickly ran back to the stroller. She didn't freak out or anything. Maybe I need to up the ante and leave her in the park overnight.


Well, I turned my back on her to watch the huge crows which seem to gather and chatter in all Japanese parks. I see some Jgirl approach Alice and start chattering in similar fashion, cooing and emitting noises to put any crow to shame. She got out a Polaroid and took some snaps, then took another camera out and took some more. I was waiting for her to extract an easel and pallete from her bag when she approached me to give us one of the polaroids. It was a very nice pic, spontaneous and well suiting Alice. I said I'd give it to her when she was older, and she walked away happily. Of course Alice followed her, little attention grabber that she is.


An Englishman came up next with his cute little girl, about Alice's age. He sat down and we talked about the dearth of dads in Japanese parks. He owned a restaurant in Ebisu, and was taking his daughter to the park because his wife was "rubbish at waking up early". He seemed very casually dressed with red socks under his house slippers and a cardigan framing a huge golden medallion hanging from a heavy chain. Not exactly park wear.


I bitched about my new found invisibility in Japan. No Japanese person will look at or speak to me, but they will do anything to attract Alice's attention. Then he told me about 'potatoes'.


He described to me a special kind of Japanese baby which doesn't move much, doesn't react much and rarely acknowledges the world beyond eating. His wife was from Osaka, so he hoped to avoid any Tokyo potatoism in his own child. I asked what might cause it, he didn't know, perhaps it was contagious? We left each other, single serve friends, and I continued my walk around Shinjuku.