Update of sorts for those who have nothing else to read.

I’ve been going back to my usual hangout after a few months of not going. I didn’t speak as much Japanese with the staff this time round. Mostly due to shyness creeping its way back in again. Oh well.

I decided to rewatch some “let’s play” videos by a Japanese YouTuber that I really enjoyed. The first time I watched them (a long time ago) I understood maybe about 30-40% of what he was saying. Now I understood about 80-90%, which quite frankly surprised me. I had done zero studying up to this point, so I have no idea how I managed to do that.

I’ve always wondered about this, simply because I was doubting whether or not listening to stuff I couldn’t understand at all was helping me in any way, and was beginning to feel like I was wasting my time. Good to know it’s beneficial even without completely understanding it.

Now my problem is figuring out how to keep it consistent. While at work I sometimes sneak my headphones out and listen to some podcasts, but nowadays it’s getting harder to do so, so I spend several hours and sometimes the whole day without being able to listen to a word of Japanese.

I would say that your comparison to “ain’t” is a pretty good example (insofar as Japanese can be compared to English). I’ve heard くないです countless times, enough to know that it’s most certainly considered valid, even if it’s not “technically” correct in the grammatical sense.

I’ve even heard it said in cases where the person would be required to speak quite formally (specifically it was a worker speaking to a customer).

Personally I think this illustrates that corrections on Lang-8 should sometimes be taken with the tiniest grain of salt, even if it’s by native speakers, as I’m sure Japan has it’s fair share of “Grammar Nazis” just as we do in English.

So since I’m on a “classic games” kick, I started playing the Japanese version of Final Fantasy IV for the SNES. So far I haven’t got the slightest idea what’s going on, but hopefully I can at least harvest some fresh vocab from it, if not much else.

Haven’t really studied per se, but I have been trying to tune my pronunciation. Specifically, I need to work on my pronunciation of ください.

I don’t usually admit to being good at something in Japanese, but one thing I’m proud of is my pronunciation, which I feel safe in saying is almost “perfect” (or at least, quite good), but I always get tongue-tied when saying ください.

So far, I have to say it very slowly and haltingly and it sounds out of place with the rest of my speech. Otherwise it keeps coming out as “kuthasai” with a soft D sound.

Very annoying, but it gives me summat to work on. Getting my pronunciation to be as perfectly-tuned as my inferior gaijin mouth can manage and destroying any trace of an accent is a high priority for me.

Good on you, mate, you and I share the same reasons. :)

Another little victory I wanted to share. X)

Today a Japanese customer came into my store. I’d seen her before, she occasionally comes by with her two kids. She can’t speak English very well so she rarely asks for help, and I’m always too chicken to try helping her in Japanese.

She asked me for help today, finding some stuff for her daughter’s back-to-school list. I found her the item but she asked me if there was anything cheaper. Noting that she was struggling, I asked “もっと安いですか？” and this look of utter surprise and relief came over her face as she asked “に、日本語？”, even her little daughter seemed surprised. I smiled and replied “ちょっとだけ、ですね” and we continued in Japanese.

Finally she gave me a very emphatic “ありがとうございます” and went to go check out. Like that last time at the restaurant I posted about, it made me feel amazing. And since I’ve had a very rough week after going through a car accident among other things, it was a much-needed boost to my morale.

Hopefully if she comes back to the store she’ll remember me and ask for help again. XD

Not sure if this counts (as it was hardly a proper attempt at transliteration) but within the Transformers fandom, there was an artist by the name of Patrick Lee working on the Transformers comics who became particularly notorious for being, well, an arrogant twat.

He decided it’d look really cool to “transliterate” his name in katakana on his website. And his super-cool transliterated name was? “ミチヤメノテヒ フナナ”. Yes, Michiyamenotehi Funana. Clearly the sad result of using a “katakana” font that switched Latin characters with kana:

ミチヤメノテヒ　フナナ
ＰＡＴＲＩＣＫ　ＬＥＥ

And many lulz were had.