Basketball.

Ok so I've got about 500 pictures to go through since I didn't really make any blog updates in the past 6 months thanks to the kanji shenanigans.

Anyhoo, I thought I'd start with a quick summary of my basketball career in Japan.  During a party with some baseball folk, they mentioned that they also played basketball for the town team and since I'm tall they invited me to a practice.  Apparently the practice went well because they kept inviting me back all throughout October and November.

Also I think it's worth noting that there is no indoor heating for the gyms, so the basketball courts were always around 0 degrees and it was common to practice in sweat pants and sweat shirts for the entire time. 

So they invite me to a tournament in December and the games reminded me why I hate basketball games.  Playing with friends and practicing is awesome, but I feel like basketball rewards dirty play way too much.  It's the only sport where you can sit there and try now to foul but still get called for tons of fouls.

Anyhoo, the first game they put this guy on me who clearly has been playing basketball for his entire life.  He knew every trick in the book.  Whenever there was a rebound opportunity, he'd do this weird arm wrap thing where he wrapped his arm around mine until we were in a elbow/elbow tie, kind of like how you walk down the isle for a wedding or something, and then he's jerk his arm down (and mine with it) right as I was about to jump, but from the ref's point of view, it looked like I was leaning on him and preventing him from jumping so that really got on my nerves and I played terrible the whole game.   So the game actually really came down to the wire.  We were down by 7 with 4 minutes to go.  But we took a time out at the 4 minute mark, then quickly went on a 10-0 run to go up by 3 with a few seconds to go.  The other team had a pretty good look at a 3 pointer at the buzzer to tie it up but it was a little short.

Anyhoo, this guy:

He's about my height and twice as fast and much better at shooting, he pretty much dominated.  We actually won pretty easily, but I was reminded why I don't like basketball too much.

The next two games didn't have much to note, pretty standard games.  Not much dirty plays and lots of easy rebounds.  The games weren't very close.  We end up 3-0 and winning the championship.  We also got a really nice trophy;

Blood and Germs

Been a while since a post on differences between America and Japan, but with the start of spring bringing me a few bloody noses, I think it's interesting how Japan treats blood and germs differently than America.

In America:

For germs, some people are perhaps a little too germaphobic, and some people could use a few more hand washes during the day, but for the most part people at least turn their head when they cough and sneeze.  People also are pretty good about washing their hands after going to the bathroom. 

When people are sick in the US, there usually isn't much that they do differently.  Kids come to school when they aren't feeling well all the time.

As for blood, I get bloody noses pretty often and when they happened during school, the teacher would usually get semi-freaked out (rightfully so because usually a bloody nose happens because of a fight or something, but in my case they always just start randomly for no reason), on the way anyone seeing a bloody napkin under my nose would instantly give me plenty of room in fear that a drip might jump out on them at any time.  The nurse would put on gloves and just tell me to keep pressure on my nose until it stopped bleeding.  After, they make sure all blood was completely washed up with lots of soap and cleaning fluids and such.  All Kleenex's were thrown away in a separate bin and instantly taken away so that there weren't any bloody napkins just sitting in trash cans.  Once I got literally one tiny drip of blood on my shirt and the nurse wouldn't let me go back to class until I changed into my gym uniform.  Up until I came to Japan, I figured this was pretty standard practice, and with all the blood-borne diseases that humans carry, completely understandable.



In Japan:


For germs, lets just say the majority of Japanese people I work and hang out with would probably be considered very rude in America.  No attempt to cover up the mouth when they cough or sneeze.  After the bathroom, I'd say less than 25% of folks wash their hands.  But I mean, everyone uses chopsticks to eat everything from hamburgers (what they call hamburgers in Japan are usually Salisbury steaks in the US), french fries, and apple slices.  So since nobody really touches their food, I guess hand sanitation isn't given too much attention.  But when someone starts going on a coughing and sneezing frenzy right next to you, it isn't the most fun.

When people feel even the least bit sick in Japan, anything from a headache, to a sore throat, to a cold, or anything, they will wear those surgical masks that for some reason haven't caught on in America.  I really like this part of Japan, it's super good for those around you and helps prevent your throat from drying up.  They also sell some masks with some antibiotics on them.  I really with this trend would catch on in America.  For whatever reason, Americans seem to think people who wear the masks are super germaphobic, but in reality, they are just sick and don't want you to get sick.

And blood, I get a bloody nose at school and instinctively went to the nurses office.  When I got there, she was like "ah bloody nose..." I was like "yea, I should probably get away from people, wait for it to stop, then wash up my face. " She takes a tissue and rips it into four pieces, crumples up one of the pieces and hands it to me.  I had no idea what to do with it, so she takes the bloody Kleenex from under my nose (not wearing gloves), and takes one of the four pieces and motions to me to like shove it up my nose and I'm like "what in the world is going on."  But I was in no position to argue, I take the little piece of napkin and shove it up my nose. 

She notices some blood on my face and a decently large drop on my cloths, so she takes the general-use towel (there weren't any paper towels next to the sink, just an actual cloth towel) and gets it a little wet (no soap) and just rubs my face and shirt until all the blood is gone.  After, she runs the bloody parts of the towel under room-temperature water until the red is off the towel and then rings it out and hangs it right back on the hanger for the next person to use and then sends me on my way.

Final Score Card

I definitely think the way germs and blood are taken care of in the US is much more sanitary than in Japan, but when people are sick, Japan wins with the surgical masks.

More fantasticness

In the last 36 hours I've gotten e-mails from people from:

Sweden, China, Holland, Israel, Ireland, Puerto Rico, USA, Japan, England and Portugal.

Not gonna lie, I thought like 10 of my friends might e-mail me after for requests after I posted the video, but it's actually been 1 person I know and 36 people I don't know.  The point of the video was to make sure I stayed motivated after I finished up all my family members and this has definitely worked.  It's barely after 2:00 here and I have a solid 4 hours of studying already under my belt today and probably going to do another 4 or 5 before I go to bed.

<3

So...many...questions!!

This is absolutely fantastic.  Seriously I would say my favorite thing to do is answer questions and help people understand things.  That's why I became a teacher.  I freaking love answering questions.  And wouldn't you believe it, I've gotten a lot of questions in the last day or so and although I love answering questions, answering them over and over isn't the most fun, so I'll put a compilation here.


Q1: I was also wondering, when you write the kanji, do you know the pronunciation for them, or are you just writing for practice? 
 
When I write the kanji, I am either listening to a sentence and then trying to write out the sentence, or just going through Remembering the Kanji, where I just read the English meaning and write the kanji.  So to answer your question, around 50% of the time I know the pronunciation.

Q2: What kind of graph paper did you use? Have you changed your methods since you started with this (for example, found certain pens that are more useful etc)?

I use 8mm and 10mm graph paper. 8mm when writing sentences, 10mm when writing just kanji. I haven't changed much, but I started out just picking out two random pens with no reason, and now I at least check the color wheel to make sure I'm choosing either complementary colors, or at least not two colors next to each other. As for pens, I started with a 10 pack that cost me a dollar and it was a waste of a dollar. I had to press down so hard on the paper and my hand got tired really easily. I tend to like easy writing pens, I got about 10 erasable pens and they were great, but they ran out very quickly. I actually just went to the store today and got a bunch of .5mm pens in hopes they'll last a little longer.

EDIT

My .5mm pens aren't going down very fast, but I don't like the thin lines they make, they make my kanji look much more messy. The fatter the better as far as looks. However, I got a 1.1mm pen once but it didn't even last me 2 days (maybe 5-6 mosaics) so it was fun while it lasted. I think these .5mm pens will last a while...not sure if I'll go back and buy some .7mm ones or not, I miss my fat kanji.

Q3: Do you know all of the kanji you wrote down by heart, or did you use a book to write some of them. If you know 100k kanji, you're a beast!

I know the stroke order and English meanings of about 2250ish.  I know the pronunciations of about 1000 or so.

Q4: You took one of the kanji from a person's family name, and filled it in large on one page. And the other, smaller kanji on the same page are...what, exactly? All possible combinations you can make with the larger kanji? Do the smaller ones go before or after the larger one?

Ok so I have a sheet of graph paper that is 15x22 squares. Say I have a teacher who's name is 田中, I will draw the 田 on one side in one color, maybe using about 100 or so of the squares. Then I will fill in the others with different colors. On the other side, I'll do 中 the same way. All the little kanji are the same size. It's like making a mosaic of pictures, each of the little pictures is the same size, but they combine to make a bigger picture.

Q5: What was your strategy for counting these? Did you count the squares that the big kanji would require, or did you count them after you wrote the kanji?

The graph paper A was 15x22 (330 boxes) or graph paper B was 19x28 (532 boxes) so I just had to count how many sheets of graph paper I had of each and then multiply.

Q6: How do you feel this approach has helped you? Do you think it is an effective / efficient way to study these kanji?

I can't think of a better way.  If you know a quicker way to learn kanji, let me know :)  I started with Remembering the Kanji, but I think Kanji Damage would have been better.  Right now I just listen to sentences and try to write the kanji.  I usually take sentences from One Piece or movies so they stay fresh and aren't as bland as textbook example sentences.  


Q7: Can you tell us what the song was?

If you do not know Jonsi, I suggest listening to the entire "Go" album before doing anything else.

Q8: Do you find that hand-writing the kanji noticeably increases your retention rate? Have you always practiced writing them, or is that something you only started to master after learning their readings/meanings first?

I don't think it makes too much of a difference these days for the easy kanji.  I mean by now I've written all of the elementary kanji well over 100 times each and so writing them any more is probably a waste of time, but for the newer kanji I don't know well, if I really focus as I write and think hard about the pronunciation, it'll stick in my head for maybe an extra 3 seconds.  I have pretty bad ADD so if I didn't write it, each kanji would probably only be in my head for a second or so.

I'm fairly certain I have never written a kanji incorrectly.  When I first learned their English meaning I practice the correct stroke order and it always just makes sense, except maybe for 右　and 左.  I don't know why the first two strokes are different, but I learned them from the start so I never gave myself the opportunity to write them wrong.

Q9: What kanji in particular do you use to make up someone's name? Is there a pattern or significance, or do you just fill it with random kanji to fill the grid?

The kanji that I write are just whatever comes up on my anki deck.  They have no meaning other than helping me learn.

Kanji Project!

At long last, I'd say somewhere around 1000 hours of studying and video editing, I have finished the biggest project of my life.

For those of you that just want to see the video, here it is On Vimeo On Youtube

For those of you who want to hear the story, read on (be warned, if you don't know much about Japanese, it might not make sense.  And it's pretty long and boring.)

What the Mosaics Are

Each single mosaic is made up of 532 or 330 individual kanji.  I start by writing out the kanji for my coworkers names, usually one big kanji per side, then fill in the other squares with a different color.

They're kind of hard to explain, but basically if you want one I can make one for you and so you can see for yourself.  Anyhoo, if you are reading this then you are clearly an awesome person and so please don't hesitate to ask for one.  Just send your mailing address to corcorantm28@gmail.com along with your name, and if you have any favorite colors I'll do them. English names are fine also, I already made them for most of my family members so no worries.  I can translate any English name to Japanese (although since Japanese lacks a R, L, V and TH sound, some of the pronounciations will be off, but it's so cute to hear  "Bahbahla" instead of "Barbara"）

 
How They Came About

I arrived in Japan not knowing the difference between hiragana and katakana and kanji but I was absolutely fascinated by the thousands upon thousands of mysterious little pictures that Japanese and Chinese people use as their written language.  I began my time here as a JET (August of 2010) with a strong motivation to learn, but no idea how to learn.  I thought you just show up in Japan and you learn Japanese, right?  Oh how wrong I was.

So I went though August and September basically learning nothing and not knowing how to learn.  It became worse because I was constantly meeting people who have been here for 3, 5 sometimes even 10 years and still didn't know anything besides a few basic greetings and then it hit me that I actually have to study and work hard if I want to learn this awesome language.

Around November I started learning the hiragana and by the middle of December I had a decent grasp of hiragana and katakana but kanji was a whole different story.  Hiragana and Katakana are alphabets of 40 or so characters...Kanji is like 20,000 (but only around 2500 or so are used frequently in Japan) So I was starting to get to the point where I thought I wasn't going to learn kanji since by December I had been here 4 months and barely got the basics down.

My wonderful fiancee Heather came to visit in December of 2010 and it was a changing point for me.  She asked me what everything meant and after living here for 4 months, I couldn't answer a single question she had, I knew nothing.  It sparked a fire that has yet to go out.

She left on January 7th, 2011 and I immediately went to work studying kanji.  I went through all of the book Remembering the Kanji by the end of January and learned all of the meanings of kanji in English thanks to a great program called Anki and 10 hours of studying every day for 20 days or so.

Then comes the hardest part, learning the Japanese readings for them.  I went through February trying to keep up with my Anki reviews and constantly falling behind and lacking motivation.  I knew the English meanings of the kanji, but there are so many compound words (words made of 2 or more kanji) that when I went to the library to read children's books, I couldn't understand anything.  It was soon March and I had gotten very discouraged that my Japanese was still terrible despite putting in all that effort for learning all the kanji.  I had a strong desire to learn the readings, but I lacked motivation necessary to do such a task and I didn't study nearly as much as I should have from mid February to April.

When I would get around to studying, I would just write kanji in these little dollar store graph paper notebooks and hammer out a few reps of anki before getting bored and quitting.  Despite Khatz's best efforts to keep me motivated on AJATT I still couldn't get get myself to study very much.

Then one time I was around half way done with a piece of graph paper when I lost my nice 3 dollar black pen and had to resort to using a red pen that I use for grading papers.  After I finished it with the red pen, I was like "whoa this is kind of sweet with half red and half black, maybe I can make other pictures with these sheets of graph paper."  Then before you know it, the teacher sitting next to me, her name was 金野先生 and so I was like "what the heck, I'll make her name" then I finished it super fast and had a great day of studying and boom, next thing I know I'm making these for everyone in the office and I couldn't wait to open up anki and study Japanese so I could finish these pictures.

So now that I have been studying pretty hard since around April of 2011, I have gone from not being able to understand children's books to being able to get most of the details out of newspapers.  I have somewhere around a 6th to 7th grade reading level, so I still have a long long ways to get fluent, so this is where you come in.  Now that I've finished making them for most of my family and friends, I am worried I will start to lose motivation again, so if you shoot me an e-mail and ask me for one of these, you'll help me stay motivated to keep learning, and you'll be the recipient of a piece of paper with your name written in 330 Kanji.

Thanks for reading!

Sooooo close!

So first of all, somehow over the past 3 months of never updating this, I have gained a faithful reader.  There seem to be three people that check this every day, so I'm very sorry mom, pop and Heather (I'm pretty sure it's you three?) that you guys keep checking and finding nothing new.  Well that is about to change.

I have almost finally finished this stupid kanji video that I've been putting off so much.  You'd think after a year of working on something that it would be fantastic, but whatever it's finally done.  I stayed up until 2am last night putting the finishing touches on the video and so all I have to do tonight (I'm at school and can't edit here) is change one little part that will take about 10 minutes then render it and upload it then tomorrow I'll write a longer blog entry devoted just to the video. 

My next project now will be going through the like 1000 pictures that I have on my computer and writing stories about them.  That will hopefully not take me too long since I can go through a few at a time and then when I want a study break, instead of checking Facebook, I'll post a picture and write the story behind it.  I have a year's worth of adventures that I haven't been blogging about because I thought that I should be working on the kanji video instead of blogging, but what ended up happening was that I would not work on either.  So anyhoo, this is a pointless entry and all I want to do is say sorry for never updating but you'll find out the reason in about 16 hours or so.