Well, I didn’t do what I wanted.

But, I still did manage to get some stuff done. Not enough to really work with, but it’s a start. I still need to add Kanji too, but it’s late and I’m still working on shifting my schedule back.

I kind of need to keep this post short, as I need to head off to sleep, and I still have some stuff to do around here before I can do that. Still, I can spare a minute to type something up.

Well, I got a search result today from someone who apparently finished Rosetta Stone, but they’re not sure where to go from there. Well, given that I’m stuck in a similar position, it seem my page didn’t help them. Still, you wouldn’t think something like this would be as difficult to accomplish. I think once I finish this review, I’m going to try to look into what are all of the options for someone who doesn’t want to tutor or formal courses. I mean, there are bound to be some books or web pages that can cover some more stuff without just leaving people dead in the water looking for their own solutions.

Alright, that’s all the time for today. おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

Going to have to add Kanji too.

Well, it’s slow going, but I am managing to pound some of the basic Kanji into my head (I just wish they’d make a better mallet =P). Looks like I’m going to have add another set of Kanji to my flashcards in addition to new vocabulary. Not a difficult task, but somewhat time consuming. That’s where good music comes in, great for activities like that. Course, I tend to listen to music during all of my Japanese practice, so this isn’t really a special circumstance. =P

I didn’t actually get much done today, as I spent most of it hanging out with a friend. What can I say? I tend to get distracted easily. Alright, so I might be somewhat putting off building the lesson plan. It’s not that I wouldn’t love to have it, but it’s a pain to work on, and when stuff like that comes up, I find myself making many excuses to delay it. Alright, I’m going to (barring any unforeseen happening) dedicate quite a bit of time to getting enough lessons up that I can really get started with my vocabulary again (and throw in some Kanji while I’m at it =P).

I think once I start actually really working on my Japanese again, I’ll be all fired up to do this work. Right now it’s a lot of work with nothing really changing, and that can be somewhat “disheartening”. So, the best thing to do would be to suck it up and get it over with as quickly as possible. Course, I already knew that and I’ve still been putting it off. It’s the procrastination in me, an integral part of my very nature. But, come tomorrow I shall fight my very nature and actually get this done, that way I can start progressing at a decent rate again!

Alright, it’s getting a bit late here, and I’m still trying to bump back my schedule, so it’s off to bed with me. I don’t know if I’m going to start up my review tomorrow, I’ll guess we’ll just have to see how much of a typing mood I’m in. I am a writer, of sorts, so I need to wait for that inspiration to strike (totally not just me putting it off, nope all about that inspiration). おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

So, I guess I should come up with something interesting.

Course, I say that a lot, but that’s only because it’s true. I was actually thinking about only writing something short and heading to bed, as I’m trying to shift me schedule a bit, but the page for my PbP D&D game is currently under maintenance (gotta love when it does that just as you hit send =\), and will be for the next 20 or so minutes.

So, since I have some time to kill anyway, I might as well try to entertain everyone here. Course, I could get started on my review instead, but that wouldn’t be as fun. =P

Well, I started putting together something with Anki, but it’s rather hard to decide what specifically to cover, and then I have to try and verify the information. It’s a slow, but hopefully effective process. Besides, it might end up working out really well for me. They say, “if you want to learn something, try teaching it to someone else.” I’m not sure how well this actually works, as I’ve never actually tried it, but it does seem like an interesting idea.

So, what’s new, exciting, and Japanese related with me? I’m working on my pen-pal ad again. I still haven’t gotten a reply from my current pen-pal, which makes it 22 days since I sent last sent a message. I thought it was going well, but there’s little I can accomplish by worrying about that.

What did I learn from my last/current language exchange partner? I really need to make sure I share more interests with the next one. Sure, with my current one I could chat about various things going on in the world, or what’s new with each of us, but I think having a shared hobby would be better.

It seems kind of obvious when you think about it, but I fell into the trap. See, when they list things like liking movies or anime, it doesn’t necessarily mean what you think. I’ve actually watched quite a bit of anime since I started studying Japanese. It’s one of the few sources I have for regularly hearing people speak in Japanese, and it’s helped me at picking out various words quite a bit (and even learn a couple). But, someone who puts that they like anime might only like One Piece and Naruto (don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Naruto, but I was hoping for a little broader range of discussion).

I’ve also got an extensive movie collection, a truly massive list of VHS tapes (for the younger audience, it’s what we used before DVDs =P) from every genre. Course, I like older movies, so someone who says they like movies might only watch the more recently released theater movies, which I consider to generally be lackluster.

So, I end up somewhat struggling with things to talk about. It’s not that they aren’t nice, but we don’t have nearly as much in common as I was hoping. The sad thing is that if we both fluently spoke each others language I don’t think this would be a problem at all. When you don’t have things like television shows, games, or just plain hobbies that you both like, it becomes rather difficult to find things that you actually can discuss. I’ve found it’s rather difficult to talk about things like the economy, world events, and religion when we’re both so new with the language. Sure, it can be done, but it’s slow going, and I found it somewhat difficult to get a good conversation going.

Ah well, I guess that’s the dangers of searching for a language exchange partner. The worst thing is, there’s little you can do about it. Unless they specifically mention what they like, they’re likely to pick a broad category and you’re stuck guessing. So, my goal is to write an ad that’ll hopefully show off my interests well enough to find someone I can get into a good rhythm with. It’s funny, in English, I can find something to talk about with anyone, but it’s much harder to do when I lack the vocabulary. =P

Alright, it looks like my message board should be back up by now, so I’m going to head off to sleep. おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

So very tired.

I think the only reason I’m still up is because I’m too tired to do everything I need to before bed. =P

Sorry, but today isn’t a very interesting day to type about. I managed to get a whole 3 hours of sleep, so my day wasn’t very “eventful” as far as Japanese studying went. I still went over some old lessons and my Kanji flashcards, but I didn’t do any work on setting up a lesson plan. I should have time tomorrow, so I’ll get to work on it then.

For now, I’m going to take off for a bit. I know last night’s post was short too, but I just don’t have it in me to come up with something better at the moment. =P おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

Looking at very little sleep.

But, I’m used to that. Course, today has been kind of rough like that. First I got a headache, and now I have to leave here in a couple hours, and I still haven’t gone to bed. At least I got in some Japanese study, now all I have to do is jump in the shower and attempt to get as much sleep as possible. =P

I haven’t gotten around to setting up a massive new lesson plan yet. I’ll try to do it “tomorrow”, but I’m not sure what kind of shape I’ll be in for that after only 3-4 hours of sleep. がんばります！

Well, I’m off to get some of this done. おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

Very interesting… I think. =P

So, about a year ago Level 5 announced a new RPG for the DS called Ni no kuni. Now, what makes this game so special? It’s a joint project between Level 5 and Studio Ghibli, which is famous for creating many different animes including Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and my Neighbor Totoro. The Tokyo Game Show trailer is here:

Now, this does look like it would be a solid, oldschool, handheld RPG. Well, I found out today that they’re making another version of the game… for the PS3.

While I found the DS game to be somewhat intersting, I also didn’t have to decide whether or not I cared, since I don’t actually own a DS. Now I’m in a rather different position. I actually haven’t seen many Studio Ghibli movies, in fact, I’ve seen one. *Ducks to avoid stones* The only thing they made that I’ve actually seen (so far) is Princess Mononoke.

Now, I’ll be honest, I thought it was a good movie. It was very well paced, had great animation, and the characters were enjoyable enough to bring the movie through, but this doesn’t mean that I agree it deserved all the praise it got. It had a rather generic storyline, and to make matters worse, I think they were trying too hard with the symbolism.

Still, I’ve heard great things about many of their other movies (Grave of the Fireflies, Spirited Away, Gedo Senki, Kiki’s Delivery Service, etc…) and I do want to actually check these out at some point. So, there’s no denying these games will be artistically amazing (because that trailer does look amazing), but then we get to level 5.

I have to be honest, I kind of hate level 5. I truly hated the Dark Cloud games. I could spend hours ranting about everything that’s wrong with them, but I don’t think that’ll get us anywhere. To make matters even worse, the only real games they’ve made recently (that I’ve heard of in the last few years, at least) are Rogue Galaxy (yeah, not exactly recent) and White Knight chronicles, which didn’t get the best reviews. To be fair, I have heard nothing but great things about the Professor Layton Series, but since I don’t have a DS, I can’t really comment on them (my understanding is that it’s a puzzle game series, but I could be wrong).

So, here I sit, with what could be the trailer for a true masterpiece of a game, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I want Level 5 to impress me, I even wanted to like Dark Cloud (but I really, really don’t). My only concern with studio Ghibli’s involvement is that the story might be a bit childish, as some of their movies seem to be. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed playing through Kingdom Hearts and going back through all those Disney movies I grew up with, but that was nostalgic for me. It’s not that I couldn’t sit through one of the Disney movies I grew up with today and even enjoy it, but when it comes to a turn based RPG, that I should be spending at least 30 hours with, I expect a story that will grip me and make me want to play all the way through.

Still, I’m very glad to see some more turn based RPGs being released for the PS3, we need them, no matter how they turn out.

Alright, that’s enough for tonight, I’ve been rambling on for quite a bit. おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

O.O

I just realized what time it is, so I’m not going to stay up long for this. I think I’m going to start my review tomorrow, but no promises as to when it’ll be complete. =P

Well, that’s it for tonight, sorry. おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

Getting ready to start my next review.

Wow, I haven’t spent all that long playing with Anki, but this thing is VERY powerful. I’m surprised that this thing can do audio too, I might even start recording my own pronunciation tracks. =P

I think with the pre-made decks, plus my own ability to start pulling content that’s new/common from the Internet, this is likely to become my next major tool for learning Japanese. Sure, it doesn’t have lists of vocabulary for me to learn, but people have already created those for me to download. Everything from 8555 Example sentences taken from a popular set of dictionaries to sentences/vocabulary specifically built around each JLPT level (and absurd amounts of Kanji decks).

It’s kind of funny that I’ve been using it so long, and didn’t really bother to check out everything I can do with it. I just wanted a basic flashcard program, no bells or whistles, but with some prep, this might just speed my language learning back up. It’s very frustrating to have it slow to a crawl like this, so I’m going to get to work on creating some fancy custom lessons. Granted, it’s still not as good of a method as the one provided by Yan and the Japanese People, but I don’t think I’ll ever find a language learning tool that I like as much as those. =P

Well, as much as I’d like to try creating something fancy, which I have no doubt will help with reviewing how easy it is to use, it’s getting late/early here. おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

Well, I promised to make this post more entertaining. =P

Course, now I need to figure out how to do that. =P I guess I’ll just have to pick something to rant about. =P

So, what will my topic be? Learning Japanese, actually. Well, not learning the language, more about the lack of ability to learn the language. I’ve checked out a lot of these different programs, hoping to find something made for a person at my skill level, and it just doesn’t exist. It’s almost like the entire market is designed with the idea of teaching the basics, and they pretty much forgot everything else.

Oh sure, I can still learn Kanji, pick up new words, even start watching/conversing in Japanese, but my progression with the language dropped by a staggering amount. There’s just something lacking in this method, it’s too haphazard. =\

So, what do I plan on doing about it? Well, I’m gonna fiddle around with Anki some more tomorrow, see if that’ll help things out. If it doesn’t, once I finish this review (and possibly sooner), I’m going to start combing the Internet for something that’ll take the place of my old lessons. It’s not that I don’t enjoy learning the language the way I am, I just feel like I’m not getting enough done.

So, now that my rant is over with, it’s about time for me to be heading off. I might get started on my Anki review tomorrow, but no promises. =P おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-

Boring, very quick post.

Sorry, but it has to be done. I have to get up early tomorrow, and I’ve stayed up too late as it is. I promise to come up with something better tomorrow night. おやすみなさい！ =D

-Felirc-