Gave My Life Meaning This Year

I should have done a post about my supervisor a long time ago.  She is truly inspiring.  She comes to work every day about an hour and a half before her contract starts and is always one of the last to leave.  She averages about 14 hour work days while being a mother to 3 year old twins.  In high school, she was the top student at a large high school in Aomori city.  She constantly talks to me about American news and pop culture events.  Every time I ask her a stupid question, she drops everything she's doing and finds me an answer instantly.  In conclusion, she is awesome.

So today I was just sitting here reviewing my kanji like usual and she comes up to me and says "Tomasu sensei, your kanji study has inspired me.  Yesterday I went to the bookstore and bought a book to study for the kanji test level 1.  Your kanji study gave my life meaning this year.  Thank you very much"

I was floored.  The kanji test that she is referring to is a very famous national test for native Japanese speakers.  There are over 6000 kanji on the test, many are never used anymore and have 10 different pronunciations and meanings and it is just an absolutely ridiculous test  In all of Japan, only about 200 people pass the level 1 test every year, it is similar to getting a perfect score on the SAT or ACT.

Here is the wiki about the test if you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji_kentei

So yea, this made me feel really happy to have inspired someone to take a year of their life (the test is March 2012) and do something they otherwise would not have.  I have no idea where she'll find the time to study but I'm really hoping she doesn't get transferred (lots of teachers transfer schools every year) so I can see her progress and maybe learn some crazy kanji myself.

Fortune Telling

A teacher just plopped down a deck of Tarot Cards on my desk and said "these cards...know how to use?"

Of course I didn't so I said "yes I do."  And proceeded to tell her to pick 5 cards and then lay them out in front of me.

This teacher always complains that she is very busy so after she laid out the cards I said "ahh, in the future, you will be very busy."

She seemed genuinely impressed.  And asked me to tell her how to use the cards and I was just like "no, very complicated...many rules....wakaranai"

My Method for Studying Japanese

I just thought I'd share my study methods in case anyone was curious.  Of course everyone learns differently so this might not work for everyone, but in the past 2 months I have learned far more Japanese than I did in the first 6 months of my studying.  

First a little background.  Before I came to JET, I had a decent grasp of the Hiragana and basic phrases thanks to Pimsleur.  For the first 2 months, I tried learning kanji through the Heisig method using the book Remembering the Kanji.  And I got about 500 kanji into it before I went back and realized that I wasn't retaining any of the kanji.  Basically from August to December I had very little to show as far as Japanese progress and I was pretty disappointed in myself so I started taking studying seriously in mid December and I can tell a huge difference between then and now (mid February).  In December I knew about 200 kanji really well and couldn't understand a thing on TV.  Now I can recognize 2042 kanji and understand some of the questions that they ask on those awesome Japanese game shows.

So heres the summary of how I am going about reaching my goal of JLPT level 2 (The second highest level possible, level 2 is fluent as far as I'm concerned).

First, by far the most important thing, you have to really really want to learn Japanese.  If you are forcing yourself to study and not enjoying it, then you're pretty much doomed.  You have to make time in your schedule to study often and make it productive.

Second, download Anki (which means "memorization" in Japanese), a free online flash card program that is the greatest thing ever invented for learning Japanese.  The rest comes down to finding decks that you enjoy.  For me, it was the deck, Heisig's Remember the Kanji 1-3 w/top 2 community stories.   That deck gives you stories for each kanji and makes them very easy to remember.  Don't expect it to magically do all the work for you though, it took me about 6 hours a day for 20 days to memorize them all.  So you're going to have to set aside around 120 hours of solid study just to get the kanji learned.

Third, my current step, is to translate 10,000 sentences. When you translate sentences, you learn the vocab in context as well as kanji compounds and obviously grammar structures all at the same time.  

But of course it gets a little bland to just sit around translating sentences I'm also doing other things.  Probably the coolest of which is I downloaded a couple of movie Anki decks that show you a picture/video from a movie, plays an audio clip, and shows the Japanese characters on one side, then on the other is the English translation.  This is super awesome.  Already after just a week I can already understand about the first 30 minutes of Spirited Away and it is one of the coolest things  in the world to watch something and hear "blah blah blah" then an hour later watch a couple scenes and follow all of the dialog.

On top of that, I'm working on recognizing kanji (I'm decent at going from English to kanji but I am terrible at the reverse.)  So I have an anki deck that just shows a kanji then the other side has the English key word.

Finally, I also use Rosetta Stone but I find it to be far too boring.  When I get really sick of studying, I throw on the TV and watch awesome Japanese game shows or anime.

Well hope this helps someone out there.  I will finish with a picture from AJATT that explains everything pretty clearly.

Great Morning

This morning has been fantastic.  First, I had my first dream in Japanese last night.  I dreamed that the Apache Mall had turned into a giant onsen (hot spring) and you had to swim in the giant pools to go from store to store.  While swimming to Foot Locker, I noticed some of my students and began talking to them in Japanese.  It was sweet.

Then yesterday I tried to make onigiri but ended up just having rice and plum rolls instead of the cool triangle looking onigiri.  So today one of the office assistants brought in some rice, plum, and nori, and gave me a lesson on how to make my very own Japanese rice balls.  I'm pretty sure that the key is to use white rice (I have been trying with brown rice and minnesota wild rice, and they just don't stick together very well.)

And also I understood my second speech from a teachers meeting.  One of my Japanese English teachers stood up and said that she was going on a business trip to a college in Aomori with a couple of students.

Also, we got a new batch of tea leaves at the teachers room and I am already on my second cup and it's super delicious.

And then to top it off, I thought the next work party was going to cost 5000円 (about $60 or so) but when I went to pay for it, the teacher was like "no, only 1000円 (like $13)"  So I get to go to a fun all you can eat and drink buffet for super cheap.

And it's only 8:30 am. Sweet.

update: it's before 11 and I have translated 13 sentences, written 200 kanji and am 1/200th of the way to my next big goal (translating 10,000 sentences).  Such a good day.

And also I ate the Onigiri that I made (with 大丸さん's help) and it was absolutely delicious.

Life Goals

To go along with the Japanese goals, I thought I might as well make some life goals.

• Get engaged to the coolest person in the world

• Get married to the coolest person in the world

• Eat pizza in Rome

• Eat sushi in Tokyo

• Eat a wiener in Germany

• Eat a gyro in Greece

• Eat curry in India

• Eat Chinese food in China

• Stand in the Sistine Chapel

• Visit every continent [Currently at 3, US, Europe, Asia]

• Become bilingual [Currently monolingual]

• Become trilingual

• Put $1000 on red in Vegas 

• Go skiing in Colorado

• Hit an upper deck home run at the Metrodome

• Climb a mountain above 14000 feet

• Meet Joe Mauer

• Visit at least 20 countries. [currently at 6: US, Japan, Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia]

• Visit at least 5 National Parks [currently at 0]

• Eat at the French Laundry

• Finish a marathon

• Juggle 6 balls (12 catches) [current best: 6 catches]

• Beat Through the Fire and Flames on expert

• Get an ace (disc golf)

• Get a Golden Retriever

• Read every One Piece manga in Japanese and understand it [currently at 0]

• Get a picture of me kissing Heather in front of the Eiffel Tower

Hmm, when I first had the idea for this post, I swear there were like 20 more things that I wanted to put on it, but of course I have forgotten them all.  I will add more later.

Quick update

Well I finished up all the kanji and I must say, it is awesome looking at a sign and understand what it's trying to say.  Or look at a compound and know that it says "outside...country" and then know it must mean "foreigner."  I have like 20 of those moments each day and it's awesome.  My latest task is to translate 10,000 sentences.  I hope to finish them up by like Juneish or so.  I finished up the kanji on Sunday and it's been 4 days and I have only translated 20 sentences.  I really need to pick it up, but I kind of got burnt out on the studying what with the 80 kanji per day for about 20 days.  This is kind of my week off before I dive back in full time next week.

I'm hoping all of this studying will pay off, I really want to pass the JLPT level 2 before I leave and talk to Aki and Sugi and Ryo (and their families) in Japanese whenever I see them.  And I want to teach my kid(s) Japanese and would like to teach them non-terribly broken Japanese.  Who knows, maybe I'll get out of teaching and get a job where I can use Japanese too.

But the week off has been good, helped Heather got a new laptop, bought a new pair of Vibram 5 fingers, went skiing a bunch (up to 8 times now, and tomorrow is a school ski trip so that will make 9), and  I finally got my new anki decks figured out and now I just need to get back in my study at school study at work routine and hopefully I start reading these kanji.

Story time;

So I was talking as usual and the kids were talking like usual (the students at Noheji are very talkative), and my super awesome Japanese teacher (Narumi sensei) started dropping the hammer and gave the students a long yelling while I was just standing there not understanding a word of it.  From time to time, the students would say something and I guess I must have had a very strange look on my face and understood one student was like "Tomasu sensei is just standing there and doesn't understand anything.  Poor Thomas."  And I couldn't help myself but give a giant smile and of course this caused the entire class to erupt with laughter literally 5 seconds after my teacher was yelling at them.  I felt pretty bad but the kids were good the rest of the day.