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.

Ball-Shaped Onions

Here's an ad which caught my eye. It says "with the power of onions, a healthful life." I've never thought of onions as a wonder food, and have thought even less of them as a delicious drink. I suppose the ad execs were thinking onions are cheap, they aren't bad for you, and voila, new health food.

They have a lot of faux health products in Japan, as do Western countries, however a lot of them centre around the amazing properties of regular food. For example, pills which contain the equivalent of 25 sweet potatoes. Just try and eat 25 sweet potatoes a day. You can't, can you? Well just throw back one of these pills. And then there are the testimonials, some old man saying he tried to eat 25 sweet potatoes a day but couldn't carry them all home from the store on his bike. So he takes these pills, and he's not dead yet. Proof of their efficacy.

Oh and they still have those vibrating belt machines which supposedly wobble off fat. They had those machines in gyms in Korea, and people used them.

Origami Cup

I'm sure you may have some idea how to make an origami cup from a square of paper. If not, try it out, it's quite handy and easy to learn.



Bek got this particular origami paper with her health check papers. If you want health insurance in Japan you need to undergo a yearly physical. Of course a physical requires some analysis of your body. At least some parts of your body. And if you note the colour of this paper and it's prescribed use you may guess that there is also some analysis of your bodily fluids.

The instructions ask you to use this cup to hold your early morning urine. Bek at first thought they meant to carry it from home to the doctor's office in this cup. A mighty feat on the Tokyo subway, to be sure. Of course that seems unlikely. However I think it's amusing that your origami skill somewhat dictates your ability to collect your sample. And the square seems quite small, resulting in an even smaller cup.

Luckily I'm allowed to be unhealthy as I like without having to pee into a tiny, leaky square of folded paper.

Pollution

Today there was a pollution warning broadcast in Japanese and English from a loudspeaker somewhere outside our apartment just now. It was spoken in really slow, stilted English, but I think it said the warning was coming from some government office or other, and it was in effect. Of course not knowing what this entailed I didn't know what to do. I just shut the windows. However, I think it was Jerry Seinfeld who said "doesn't the air in your apartment come from the air outside your apartment?" The warning was in effect too long to hold my breath though.

Mural

These are in a subway tunnel connecting two stations somewhere on the Yurakucho line. I love how they have lanes and doors covering the actual doors. This looks like some back street in Italy.



A leafy tunnel to a beautiful meadow.



A car space and a back door view.

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.

Cabbage

I didn't think cabbages grew on trees, but I stand corrected.

Sandwich

I had heard about this delicacy but only today got to try one. It tasted like strawberries and cream. I was going to dump all over this in usual fashion, but I used to make potato chip sandwiches, and cheese and Vegemite is also somewhat unusual.

Necessities

All Japanese toilets need to be plugged in. However, you can't pay for stuff with a credit card. I don't get it at all.

Combo

A hamburger made with pancakes, rather than a bun. More nausea can be induced by noticing the shrimp and mayonnaise pizza at the top left. From the America House restaurant in Yokohama.

Annual Gift Man Lives on the Moon

We went to Ito-san's house for some pre-Christmas fried chicken and strawberry sponge cake. Alice got a big boot filled with lollies.

The dogs got into the spirit of Christmas, too.

On Christmas day we invited Nao, Atsuko and Ema over for a roast chicken and pudding lunch. And presents, of course.

Alice was rolling around on the floor and Ema wanted to get Alice to sit on her head for some reason. Hilarity ensued.

One of Alice's cool presents was a mini revolving sushi conveyor belt. And sushi. Oh and it's Hello, Kitty branded. Too much Japan is never enough.

Paper

We found this at the Ueno Zoo shop. I can't read it but the pictures make the process quite explicit.

• Elephants eat leaves.
• Elephants sit on enormous toilets and poop.
• Someone unfortunate boils the dung.
• Another unfortunate mixes it in a huge cake mixer.
• All elephants are recycled after providing their offerings.

Arboreal Clothes

It's so cold in Korea in the winter time that they have to insulate some trees to keep them warm, or they will die.

Looks like a neuron.

Bek suggested these resemble coral.



Handle-less mops and brooms.

Korean English

We had to get our business visas recently, so we flew to Seoul where we could get them the next day. The same service in Japan takes quite a few weeks. Bek still had to work so Alice and I walked around all day in the freezing cold.


This sounds nice, but also meaningless.

I can appreciate the niche marketing approach to fashion. Just what us skinny guys need.

I have no idea what's in these boxes. It says, 'Soup Performance Feminism Fashion, Sweet Soup so lovely so pretty.' So it's fashionable soup for feminists, right.



Japan also seems to like the idea of riding horses inside in the name of fitness. Imagining ways to exercise which require little to no movement is an unending supply of revenue for quite a lot of companies. The ads for these contraptions are quite good, featuring nubile young women 'riding'.

Slow

This little guy replaces those road workers who hold the 'slow' signs in Japan. You can see he even waves his left arm.

21 + 3

Without this juice, Alice would die of malnutrition. It contains 21 vegetables and 3 fruits in, what would have to be, tiny proportions. It tastes awful but babies don't know anything, so she drinks it. Listen to the grossness.

Carrot, some leafy thing, asparagus, capsicum, some other leafy thing, kureson(?), pumpkin, cabbage, broccoli, third leafy thing, beetroot, purple thing, celery, lettuce, hokusai(??), keeru(?), parsley, eggplant, dunno, radish, another sort of cabbage, apple, orange and lemon.

It really hard trying to guess what English word the Japanese are using when it's written in katakana. Anyway, it's terrible, but I've seen many girls drink it on the subway. Maybe it's a diet food.

Human Strength Vehicle

Outside the Sensoji temple in Asakusa you can ride in a rickshaw. The word actually comes from the Japanese word 'jinrikisha', literally human strength vehicle. The men pulling these wear really tight pants that resemble lederhosen, and try to chat up women as well as convincing couples to part with some cash.

Unfortunately they don't try to solicit from people with babies so we'll have to try it another time.

Change Room

A change room designed for Japanese women.

What's for dinner on the 23rd of November?

We found these in Tokyu Hands, a department store with an interesting mix of products. They are housekeeping diaries, so all the Japanese house wives, such as myself, can note down the happy times spent mopping the floor. I thought I couldn't find a greater waste of time than housework but I guess recording completed housework would suffice.

Suspense

Click to enlarge.

What is it? Do you know? Maybe I won't tell you.

Well, okay, it's a way to prevent deliveries such as fast food from being battered. Instead of giving the whole bike better suspension, they just build a frame around the package and hang it on a shock absorber. The added bonus is that as it can swing freely it will always stay level when the rider leans into a corner.