Dragon Boat Disappointments...
Sander and I headed up to Taipei yesterday hoping to catch something 'Dragon Boar' related (even though most of the festivities happened during the weekend) but sadly our efforts were more than a little wasted. Instead, we were treated to a very 'exciting' event which saw hundreds of green plastic or paper frogs float downstream. I'm assuming it was a competition or something as there was a prize for the person's whose frog crossed the finishing line first, but this was not quite a dragon boat race. We thought we'd hang around to see if anything else would happen but it seemed that things were being packed up for the day.
So, disillusioned and disappointed, we headed for the ever-trusty 101, treated ourselves to some lunch in its foodcourt (I opted for sushi, as always!) and bought a few books at Page One. We grabbed the Lonely Planet city guide for Kyoto and I splashed out on two books for my Japanese study. I was quite surprised to see how few books used kana or kanji! What's the point of learning a language and yet being illiterate in it? The Japanese don't tend to write in romaji so learning hiragana, at the very least, is essential.
Thankfully I found just what I was looking for...Japanese For Busy People, Book I. It made use of the two kana alphabets and seems to be quite a comprehensive introduction to Japanese grammar. It seems to be aimed mainly at business-people but it will still be an invaluable textbook for my study. The best part is that there is NO romaji so it is very useful for recognising the kana. On the downside, kanji is hardly used so I will have to supplement my study with the various websites and online courses I've found.
But enough about language study. After our sojourn at 101, we headed to Ximen to have a look around the shops. Sander wanted to look for this anime store so we spent a bit of time looking for that and subsequently browsing through its merchandise. We also stopped off at the nearby Starbucks to get out of the rain and excessive air-co of the stores before venturing out again in search of some other anime store Sander was after. This quest was somewhat unsuccessful so we decided to call it a day and made our way back to the coach station and back to Hsinchu.
We spent the rest of the evening playing around with Tomb Raider Legend. The controls on the X-Box are a LOT smoother than on the PC, although I still have to get the hang of swimming and learn to align my jumps a little better. Sometimes I yearn for the easier controls of the previous games but the graphics are just out of this world and some of the new moves are a lot of fun. Nothing beats taking down a bad guy with a Matrix-style slow-mo move. ^_^
Today has been somewhat unproductive. I woke up pretty late (12:30pm) so that put me in a bit of a sour mood. I did a little Japanese study before switching on the X-Box and playing some more TRL. I've managed to progress fairly quickly...the Tokyo level was way too short and fairly easy. I'm now stuck in West Africa as there's a jump that I really cannot get to work. It involved jumping for a rope but I've somehow missed it so many times that I've given up for the moment rather than waste my entire day. I'll be giving it another shot later... ^_^
So, disillusioned and disappointed, we headed for the ever-trusty 101, treated ourselves to some lunch in its foodcourt (I opted for sushi, as always!) and bought a few books at Page One. We grabbed the Lonely Planet city guide for Kyoto and I splashed out on two books for my Japanese study. I was quite surprised to see how few books used kana or kanji! What's the point of learning a language and yet being illiterate in it? The Japanese don't tend to write in romaji so learning hiragana, at the very least, is essential.
Thankfully I found just what I was looking for...Japanese For Busy People, Book I. It made use of the two kana alphabets and seems to be quite a comprehensive introduction to Japanese grammar. It seems to be aimed mainly at business-people but it will still be an invaluable textbook for my study. The best part is that there is NO romaji so it is very useful for recognising the kana. On the downside, kanji is hardly used so I will have to supplement my study with the various websites and online courses I've found.
But enough about language study. After our sojourn at 101, we headed to Ximen to have a look around the shops. Sander wanted to look for this anime store so we spent a bit of time looking for that and subsequently browsing through its merchandise. We also stopped off at the nearby Starbucks to get out of the rain and excessive air-co of the stores before venturing out again in search of some other anime store Sander was after. This quest was somewhat unsuccessful so we decided to call it a day and made our way back to the coach station and back to Hsinchu.
We spent the rest of the evening playing around with Tomb Raider Legend. The controls on the X-Box are a LOT smoother than on the PC, although I still have to get the hang of swimming and learn to align my jumps a little better. Sometimes I yearn for the easier controls of the previous games but the graphics are just out of this world and some of the new moves are a lot of fun. Nothing beats taking down a bad guy with a Matrix-style slow-mo move. ^_^
Today has been somewhat unproductive. I woke up pretty late (12:30pm) so that put me in a bit of a sour mood. I did a little Japanese study before switching on the X-Box and playing some more TRL. I've managed to progress fairly quickly...the Tokyo level was way too short and fairly easy. I'm now stuck in West Africa as there's a jump that I really cannot get to work. It involved jumping for a rope but I've somehow missed it so many times that I've given up for the moment rather than waste my entire day. I'll be giving it another shot later... ^_^