"He is a Basketball"
I had a great day yesterday. Busy, but a good kind of busy. I went to five classes and two of those were elementary school. That's a record for me. I barely had time to breathe. But good times were had by all. Of course, the best part of the day was with the 3rd year elementary kids. God, I just wanna squeeze 'em! We learned weather words and then played an old favorite of mine: Super Janken. Third years, in my opinion, play Super Janken the best. Man, elementary school rocks... except for the Tokano 5th years. I am NOT looking forward to that class at the end of the month. Just tar and feather me and parade me through town and that would be less humiliating than teaching the Devil Class of Death. Actually, getting tared and feathered and paraded through town sounds pretty fun...
Anyway.
Did I mention there's a new English teacher at Sakawa? Well, she's not new really; she started at the beginning of the year. But anyway, she's only 22 and this is her first year teaching. At first, her classes were a little boring, but she's quickly growing into her role. It's amazing to watch this happen. And I've really come to like her teaching style. She makes a point, when teaching new vocabulary, to write down the part of speech for each word. At first I thought this was kind of unnecessary, but now I find it's actually very, very useful and makes figuring out the meaning of sentences easier. And because the placement of certain words, especially verbs, is so important in English, you can more easily distinguish the difference between a command sentence such as "Watch the TV!" and a statement like "You watch TV." I think her classes are ahead of where the second years were this time last year, which is good because... yeah, um, the second year's English is kind of really not that great.
In other news, autumn has arrived! The weather is gorgeous! Plenty of sun and the air is so light and crisp that I feel like I could run a mile and not even break a sweat. It's too bad that this weather will only last another three weeks or so before it begins to get bitterly cold. T.T BAH COLD! I really, really hate winter. I hate how I can't hear anything chirping or croaking in the night. I hate how it gets dark at like 5:30. I hate the schools' no-heat policy. D: Stupid winter.
BUT! That isn't for another few weeks. Right now, I am going to enjoy this beautiful weather to the fullest! I am walking and biking everywhere and soaking up the sunshine. Yay autumn!
I've been playing Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix recently. The dialog's in English, but the text is in Japanese. I'm learning a ton of new kanji. Most of it's kind of useless, like 了解 (ryoukai: kind of like saying "Rodger that") and 魔法 (mahou: magic), but some is very useful. For example, I learned 心配する (shinpai: to worry) and 合う (au: to become, suit, look good on.) And I'm learning new ones all the time. I think playing video games is actually a much better way to learn Japanese than by just watching TV. I'm learning so many kanji this way, like at least two or three new ones a day. Of course, I'm learning combinations and not the actual meanings of each individual kanji, nor am I learning the different pronunciations, but it's still good. After all, its not like I plan on entering any "obscure kanji pronunciation" contests any time soon.
I've played KHII before, but Final Mix has a crap ton of new stuff in it. There are these glowing puzzle pieces to find, you get to fight every member of Organization XIII, there are these 13 black mushrooms to search for and mini-games play with them, a couple new keyblades, and brand-new cut scenes having to do with Kingdom Hearts III. It's too bad that the KHIII-related cut scenes are only in text and there's so many kanji that it would take me hours to translate one two-minute-long scene. D: I'm sad to say that I don't even have the gist of these dialogs. Boo. But I'm going to play again (there's still proud mode and even one mode above that!) and I plan to take pictures of the dialog and sit down with it when I have free time and really try to figure it out. I think I have most of the grammar down-pat, it's just that damn kanji.
And since I've been on such a video game kick lately, I've been thinking about buying a PS3. I haven't even really done any research or anything on it yet, so I'm not even really serious at this point. I wouldn't even consider it (I mean, it is quite expensive and the games are about $70 a pop on average,) but the PS3 has something on the Wii: the PS3 apparently has no region codes. Meaning I can play both Japanese and American games on it so when I go back home it won't become a door stop. And I can afford it if I save for a few months. What's more is that my local Yamada Denki has started selling video games (just not PS2 games, unfortunately. D:) so I can use all these points I've racked up to buy a PS3 and then use all the points I'll rack up from that towards the purchase of something else like a camcorder. Wow... I didn't realize that I've become so materialistic. lol But first, I need to do some research into this alleged no-region thing and find out what kind of games are out/coming out for the PS3 that I simply MUST play.
That's all for now. I'm sure it was riveting.
Anyway.
Did I mention there's a new English teacher at Sakawa? Well, she's not new really; she started at the beginning of the year. But anyway, she's only 22 and this is her first year teaching. At first, her classes were a little boring, but she's quickly growing into her role. It's amazing to watch this happen. And I've really come to like her teaching style. She makes a point, when teaching new vocabulary, to write down the part of speech for each word. At first I thought this was kind of unnecessary, but now I find it's actually very, very useful and makes figuring out the meaning of sentences easier. And because the placement of certain words, especially verbs, is so important in English, you can more easily distinguish the difference between a command sentence such as "Watch the TV!" and a statement like "You watch TV." I think her classes are ahead of where the second years were this time last year, which is good because... yeah, um, the second year's English is kind of really not that great.
In other news, autumn has arrived! The weather is gorgeous! Plenty of sun and the air is so light and crisp that I feel like I could run a mile and not even break a sweat. It's too bad that this weather will only last another three weeks or so before it begins to get bitterly cold. T.T BAH COLD! I really, really hate winter. I hate how I can't hear anything chirping or croaking in the night. I hate how it gets dark at like 5:30. I hate the schools' no-heat policy. D: Stupid winter.
BUT! That isn't for another few weeks. Right now, I am going to enjoy this beautiful weather to the fullest! I am walking and biking everywhere and soaking up the sunshine. Yay autumn!
I've been playing Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix recently. The dialog's in English, but the text is in Japanese. I'm learning a ton of new kanji. Most of it's kind of useless, like 了解 (ryoukai: kind of like saying "Rodger that") and 魔法 (mahou: magic), but some is very useful. For example, I learned 心配する (shinpai: to worry) and 合う (au: to become, suit, look good on.) And I'm learning new ones all the time. I think playing video games is actually a much better way to learn Japanese than by just watching TV. I'm learning so many kanji this way, like at least two or three new ones a day. Of course, I'm learning combinations and not the actual meanings of each individual kanji, nor am I learning the different pronunciations, but it's still good. After all, its not like I plan on entering any "obscure kanji pronunciation" contests any time soon.
I've played KHII before, but Final Mix has a crap ton of new stuff in it. There are these glowing puzzle pieces to find, you get to fight every member of Organization XIII, there are these 13 black mushrooms to search for and mini-games play with them, a couple new keyblades, and brand-new cut scenes having to do with Kingdom Hearts III. It's too bad that the KHIII-related cut scenes are only in text and there's so many kanji that it would take me hours to translate one two-minute-long scene. D: I'm sad to say that I don't even have the gist of these dialogs. Boo. But I'm going to play again (there's still proud mode and even one mode above that!) and I plan to take pictures of the dialog and sit down with it when I have free time and really try to figure it out. I think I have most of the grammar down-pat, it's just that damn kanji.
And since I've been on such a video game kick lately, I've been thinking about buying a PS3. I haven't even really done any research or anything on it yet, so I'm not even really serious at this point. I wouldn't even consider it (I mean, it is quite expensive and the games are about $70 a pop on average,) but the PS3 has something on the Wii: the PS3 apparently has no region codes. Meaning I can play both Japanese and American games on it so when I go back home it won't become a door stop. And I can afford it if I save for a few months. What's more is that my local Yamada Denki has started selling video games (just not PS2 games, unfortunately. D:) so I can use all these points I've racked up to buy a PS3 and then use all the points I'll rack up from that towards the purchase of something else like a camcorder. Wow... I didn't realize that I've become so materialistic. lol But first, I need to do some research into this alleged no-region thing and find out what kind of games are out/coming out for the PS3 that I simply MUST play.
That's all for now. I'm sure it was riveting.