Japanese - Mountain Climbing!

Hello All,

This post is one day late, so apologies for that. I did intend to upload this last night, but i started watching the Family Guy episodes that had been slowly filling up my Sky+ box and was some-what distracted until really late. Better late than never though...

The lesson i studied yesterday was another of Japanesepod's beginner lessons, this one being part of an occasional series revolving around one of the native language speakers, Natsuko, going on blind dates with 3 different men. This is the second of the 3 men, and this one is a mountain climber. I was actually laughing at various points during the dialogue for this episode as the man in the conversation did not seem to understand that Natsuko had never climbed a mountain, nor enjoyed doing so, and just carried on anyway.

I am still revising the notes from this lesson, but i have picked up the majority of the phrases, partly due to learning a few before, so am almost 100% confident on this lesson.

Without further ado, here is the picture of my studies:

I am going to my wife's grandparents for lunch today, so i will have a lot less time to study today, but i do intend to revise the Kanji i have been studying, as i haven't looked at them for a couple of days now, and then i will post the kanji i shall/have learnt today aswell.

Matanei

Japanese study - Types of Weather

Hello All,

Just a quick post to show a part of my studies for today. Once again I learnt some new vocabulary with a Japanesepod101 Beginner Lesson, and this lesson was mainly to do with different types of weather. Oddly, i did seem to know most of the vocabulary but did not know the word for 'sunny' (up until now, I had only been able to moan about rain, and not be happy about sun in Japanese lol).

I had also tried reading a manga that i bought from one of my friends, called Densha no Otoko (Train Man) that i had been having quite a bit of trouble with mainly due to my Kanji knowledge, but I now seem to be able to read a lot more of the book, so hopefully I will be able to read the whole book in the next few months.

And without further a do, here is a snapshot of my studies for today:

p.s. If you cannot read Katakana or Hiragana (or my hand writing ^_^) i may start posting some notes on these writing systems as it is a LOT easier to pick up the language knowing these while learning the vocabulary aswell.

Nichiyoubi Update

Hello all

I have been rather busy for the last few days, so i haven't had much time to update my blog, but that doesn't mean my studies have stopped. I have been studying Kanji a bit more frequently this week, as it dawned on me that there is less than 5 months for my JLPT5 exam, and even less time to get my entry in for the exam. The kanji characters have always been my downfall, so i thought it best to study those a bit more as i tend to not have much trouble picking up the vocabulary.

Today however, i have been studying some vocabulary whilst doing some housework and cleaning my car. This gave me around 2hrs of study time, and although it wasn't dedicated time i still picked up a lot of the words.

I am going out shortly and hope to update my blog again later with my written studies. Also, i still need to complete those reviews i keep mentioning, if only there were more hours in the day!!

Until next time, またねい！

p.s. if you are unsure on the title, nichiyoubi is the Japanese word for Sunday

Kanji revision, and then 5 more

Hello All,

Just a quick update today as work has taken it out of me today, so I am quite tired today, but I wanted to start posting at least once a day on here as a sort of online journal of my studies, and so that if anyone else is interested in the Japanese language they can read this and see what I have learnt and maybe use this as revision for their own studies.

Today I listened to the next lesson in the beginner series of japanesepod101 (lesson 58 if memory serves me correctly), and then this evening I revised the kanji that I had learnt previously and then learnt 5 new kanji characters. This takes my known kanji upto around 50 characters, and seeing as you only need to know around 100 kanji for the JLPT5 examination I am halfway there.

Time for bed soon, where I shall relisten to the japanese lesson from earlier, so I shall post again tomorrow.

A change of pace (and lesson)

Hello everyone,

Today I did not manage to complete as much Japanese as I would have hoped, but the main reason for this is the lesson I was studying from was just repeating the vocabulary that I already knew. Therefore, the next lesson I am going to study will be from the Beginner section of Japanesepod101.

I also had another look at some Japanese textbooks that I have been contemplating buying for a few days now, and as I get paid on Thursday I think I may have to buy one or two of them then :)

I did however get sidetracked at work on my lunchbreak. Me and one of my work colleagues have started playing table football (or foosball, depending how you wish to pronounce it) on most of our breaks, but as we have played against eachother quite a lot now our games take even longer as we know how eachother play, so my intended quick burst of Japanese on my break did not go to plan.

I am hoping to complete some Japanese before I go to bed, but if not I shall listen to the listen whilst laying in bed so I can write some notes tomorrow.

Cya tomorrow :)

p.s. I am lining up a few reviews of things in the next few days, being for films, books, and games, so look out for them :)

It's been a little while, but about time!!

Good Evening / こんばんわ
It's been a little while since my last post, the reason for this is that my job has been hectic for the last week as one of my colleagues had been on leave so I was covering for them. This was quite stressful and made it difficult concrentrating on my studies, so I have not managed to study hardly anything in the last week. My colleague is however back tomorrow so I can get my studies in order :)
I managed to complete two lessons today, both of them in the Newbie section of the Japanesepod101 website. I am beginning to think it may be best to move on to the Beginner or Intermediate lessons as I started the 2nd season of beginner lessons and it appears to just be going over the old material again.
Without further a do, here is my infamously bad handwriting and the notes I made from the lessons today :)

Just a quick Saturday update

Hello again,

I've been a little busy for the last couple of days, so haven't had the chance to post anything, nor learn as much Japanese as i hoped.

I recently decided that i want to study for around 2 hours a day, be that solely learning new vocabulary or a combination of new vocabulary and revision, which hasn't gone to plan as much as i would like it to recently. For example, today i have completed around 45mins of revision but no new vocabulary at the moment. The reason for today is that i had a dentist appointment for a filling and hygienist in the middle of the day, and had other bits of housework to do, like cleaning out our rabbit hutch, which has collectively taken all the energy out of me today so haven't been able to put my mind to work as easily as normal.

The revision i did manage to complete was going over the Kanji i have studied. I recently purchased 'Kanji de Manga' for my kindle after completing the 'Kana de Manga' ebook (my review here) which is where i have been doing most of my kanji revision, but i also have Kanji flashcards that i bought from Amazon a while ago that i use aswell. I will be reviewing 'Kanji de Manga' soon, as it is another ebook i would recommend to anyone going for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) examinations.

Now, i'm off to do some more revision and will be posting again soon :)

'Kana de Manga' - Kindle Review

For the past few days i have been reading 'Kana de Manga' (link), more as a form of a revision, but also to use my kindle a bit more than i had been.

'Kana de Manga' starts off with a small introduction with pointers on how best to pronounce words in Japanese. This is always a useful addition, as this was one of the ways that i discovered the best pronunciation for the vowels in Japanese, especially as to a native English speaker it can be quite confusing for the letters I and E as the sounds are reversed in Japanese.

The book then progresses into displaying the characters one by one, with a small picture and story to accompany this (apologies for the poor quality, it appears to be quite difficult to take a clear picture of the Kindle screen):

The image of the character (be it either the Hiragana or Katakana, which are the 2 basic writing systems of Japanese if you did not know, and Kanji is the 3rd and most extensive writing system) is displayed at the top of the screen, with the correct way to write the character shown aswell. This is because some characters are meant to be drawn certain ways, so just writing the character as you see it is not always the best approach. The order of writing the strokes applies more to Kanji, as it can be incredibly difficult to write some Kanji characters when you have wrote the last line first, for example.
There is also an example word underneath the character, in this case it is 'neko'
 which is the Japanese word for Cat. This serves two purposes, one showing the character in a word, and also teaching you a new word at the same time. Even though i was using this eBook as a revision tool there were a few words that i had not learnt previously in here, so i expanded my vocabulary as well.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone beginning the language, as even if you have learnt the Hiragana and Katakana characters there is quite a large amount of vocabulary that can be learnt from this book. The book may seem confusing at first, as most students would prefer to learn all of Hiragana then Katakana or vice-versa, as the book shows the same letter in hiragana then immediately in katakana, but this may just be my opinion as that is how i learnt both of these systems. Either way, it would be money well spent for anyone seriously thinking of, or already is, studying the Japanese language.

New Phone :)

Hello All,

Just a quick post before I go to bed. I bought myself the sony ericsson xperia x10 mini pro today, which I had been debating to buy for a little while now. After having it for about 4hours now I am definitely enjoying it, and android as a whole, but have yet to try everything out so far so I will have more of a play tomorrow and post another blog post from the phone aswell.

In other news, I studied some more japanese today, the 3rd lesson in a storyline of a man in a coma and the hospital staff treating him.

Time for bed now, cya tomorrow :)

Sunday Laziness = Revision

Time for my first REAL post (after the intro), and it's time for Japanese...

Although it would be, but i ended up going to the in-laws for sunday lunch. So instead i thought it best to type up some notes and revise at the same time.

To start with, when i got up i read my Kanji and Kana books on my kindle (which i will probably write a review about at some point) just as some revision as i knew i wouldn't be able to put in the time i wanted for some serious study. Then once i had come back i started typing up my written notes on to the computer. I find that this really helps me as 1) i have terrible hand writing and even i cannot read it sometimes, and 2) it forces me to read the words again and this then jogs my memory into remembering the words i thought i had forgotten.

I learn nearly all of Japanese from Japanesepod101.com, which i have signed up to a 2 year subscription for so i can download all their material and keep learning even after that period has finished. I am currently using their 'Newbie' lessons at the moment, mainly as a form of revision but surprisingly i am learning some new words even though i wouldn't define myself as a newbie, more a beginner as i have been studying Japanese seriously for around a year now. I am also hoping to finally take my JLPT 5 or JLPT 4 exam this year so i can finally make something more of myself, as i am currently an office administrator but would rather be doing something i really enjoy, and Japanese is really interesting and enjoyable.

I also had a bit of an epiphany while at jury service a few months ago. The defendant needed an interpretor throughout the case, and although the interpretor did not stop talking all throughout the case it made me really want to go into interpretation as a career, which is what i am aiming for now.

I will have to take some pictures for the next posts (my phone is on charge at the moment so i cannot upload any pictures just yet) and i will be able to show what i am learning/reading, and just how bad my handwriting is.

Until next time :)

A Fresh Start!

Hello Everyone,

I have been toying with this idea for a little while, and after seeing 2 of my friends yesterday had created Blogger accounts i thought i would finally take the plunge. I have previously used Wordpress to create my blog, but it always seemed a bit too formal for me and the ways that i wanted to use my blog.

The main reason I started that blog was to keep up-to-date on my Japanese studies and to post them to friends, current and new, to show them what i am up to. The blog started very well, with me posting something everyday about the new words i had learnt, but i slowly got fed-up and stopped posting about 3 months ago. I believe the reason was because it all seemed too professional, whereas i just wanted something informal to show my friends, so now i'm here!!

Just to let you know, i will be mostly posting about the Japanese studies i will be doing, but i will also include other posts relating to games, books, movies and music from time to time, just so i can keep as much interest in this blog for me to post, and hopefully for others to enjoy. I may even post some lessons on Japanese for people if they are new to the language and would like some help from another (relatively) newbie ^_^

Well, that's the introduction out of the way, i hope people will read this blog, and i hope i can make friends with like minded people through this aswell.