The latter part of the week was largely uneventful ( Read more... )

Saturday: IES volunteer day. Cleaning up the street in Inage Kaigan, followed by a barbecue lunch. In the evening, I went bowling with a few other IES students. I'm horrible at bowling, but it was still fun. Bought a small Mother's Day gift for Kyoko-san ( Read more... )

• Giving a presentation in kaiwa class on the map I made during the visitor session last week. Watching the video of the presentation later was a bit embarrassing. I spoke really slowly during the presentation in order to get the grammar right. At least the visitors who evaluated me seemed to think my pronunciation was decent.
• Far too much kanji. ( Read more... )

Up past midnight again... Tired, and much work to do. At least I don't have class tomorrow.

At least I was up for legitimate reasons this time (working on my Japanese notes), as opposed to last night (watching Death Note).

My backpack is on it's last legs (sadness, since I've carried the thing around practically everywhere for years), but I can ( Read more... )

While in Japan, I have often had the experience of walking into a music store and wanting to buy some Japanese music, but having no idea what to buy. (Not quite as often as my experience of walking into Japanese bookstores and feeling very sad that I'm illiterate, but still.) So, do any of my LJ friends have Japanese bands to recommend? What's

During my trip, I noticed that the tops of a can of Kirin Chu-Hi had something written on them in braille. I wrote down the pattern so I could look it up later. As it turns out, the can says キリン　オサケ (Kirin o-sake; "o-sake" is used to mean anything alcoholic) in Japanese braille. The moral of the story is that I really am a compulsive reader.

My kanji book (A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Kenneth G. Henshall) arrived over break, and is it ever awesome!

The book contains brief entries that excellently explain the etymology of each of the jōyō kanji. Each entry also contains pronunciations, examples, stroke count, suggestions for memorization, and a brief mnemonic. The ( Read more... )

Recap of the rest of my trip ( Read more... )

Yesterday: Took the shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima. The train is fast, comfortable, and quiet, and the views are quite good. However, if you have a non-reserved seat, you might not get to sit down. (Fortunately, I was getting on at the beginning of the line, so I got to sit down anyways.) In the evening, ate Heroshimayaki (quite ( Read more... )

In the comment threads two posts ago, I used the word "gaijin" (lit. outside person; outsider, foreigner) as opposed to "gaikokujin" (lit. outside country person; foreign national, foreigner), and a fellow IESer chewed me out for that, asking me (politely, if somewhat condescendingly) to stop using the word. I'm not sure I have an informed opinion ( Read more... )