I Think I'm Learning Japanese!
*sniffle*
*nose runs*
*coughsputtercoughhackhack...lung*
Oh my god, I'm gonna die of swine flu.
Okay, not really. But I am getting a cold/allergy thingy that's bugging me. The weather is being contrary and not deciding if it wants to be on the side of summer or winter. Whoever said that America does not have individual seasons has never been here. This is what WKU looks like currently (well, not right now, as it is 4:18 in the morning):
Is that...is that...Rachel?
Anyway, the leaves are all pretty-like and golden-orange-red. I can only imagine what the drive home looks like. Half the way home is through a kind of main backroad that takes me past fields--there's some kind of farm where some guy has a small herd of buffalo--and lots of trees and at one point a good-sized lake that is probably almost drained by now because they drain it before it winter every year because...oh, I don't know why. Old guys still go out there and fish, though.
Enough rambling about the Kentucky countryside.
Remember how I said once you stop posting, it's easy to get into the habit of not posting? Well, the reverse is true. Once I started posting, now I can't stop. But personally, I like my posts to have a point--I've been desperately trying to find critcisms for things other than "it's awesome," but oh, thinking is hard sometimes--and yes, this post does have a point somewhere in here.
This semester, Joe-sensei continued the study session for us people who finished all of the Japanese classes WKU offers (in other words: 2), and it was fun during the summer and even at the beginning of school. Nowadays, though, I don't feel like it's helping much. Even though I learn some new words, Joe-sensei still has it structured where we're getting more INPUT than actually giving OUTPUT. What I mean is that we're still listening most of the time instead of actually talking. Sure, my listening comprehension isn't perfect. Far from it. But I already get tons of input from dramas, movies, and music on a daily basis. My listening and reading comprehension is way above my speaking and writing abilities.
I don't know how to remedy this. It feels like there is a wall in me that's preventing me from being the Japanese language learner I could be. If this wall could just be removed or broken down or climbed over, I feel like suddenly everything would open up. But what can I do? It doesn't help that there are awesome Japanese speakers like this girl out there. She's mostly kidding in this video, by the way.
Click to view*falls down* Sigh...負けた。。。
I've been collecting interesting Japanese resource websites, though (which I should utilize more, I know) like Japanese for the Western Brain, which explains some of the basics of Japanese, even some they don't cover in detail in Japanese classes. David Hallgren's Japanese Page is pretty good for hiragana and katakana practice, and he has printable sheets that you can use to practice writing. He even has vocabulary practice for different stuff like the Genki textbook and the JLPT. Probably the website that has most influenced my Japanese study is All Japanese All the Time, which is a blog/website written by a guy calling himself Khatzumoto. It's got a lot of great articles about motivation and how to change your thinking as well as methods for practicing Japanese. His method is a little extreme, and he says to learn kanji before learning anything else. I even managed to find a link to an online version of volume I of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. There are other fun websites out there, too, like Tofugu.com, who also makes videos. He's constantly pimping EduFire and Lang-8, too, which are good resources if you either want to pay or have time to practice writing.
It's been hard to keep up with Japanese, anyway, due to the workload I've had this semester. Even though it's been fairly interesting, the amount of writing I've had to do is insane and some of it rather pointless. But, it did give me an idea to start a Japanese culture club on campus. All we have right now is RSO (Rising Sun Otaku) which focuses on anime. They also have an aversion to dramas and occasionally find unfunny things funny. We need an actual Japanese club for those of us who like more than anime and want to talk about stuff with other Japan lovers, not just random weeaboo (plural like carabou). I need some suggestions, though. Like what the heck can we do in our first few meetings? What do people talk about in Japanese club?
Ah, work is almost over. Maybe I won't go on a posting frenzy. But oh, I am so addicted to Samurai High School. Haruma pulls off the double role so well.
Ja ne!