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Like I said in my earlier post, just kinda tool around, really. :)
Gonna see/do the things I’d most likely be seeing/doing if/when I end up living there. Naturally, I won’t be working, but I can go to grocery stores and look around, go to shopping centres and look around, eat at those neat fast-food joints that were posted on Tofugu, explore the ubiquitous konbinis, enjoy a walk about town, watch some Japanese TV with a bowl of noodles, et cetera. Maybe I’ll even meet some interesting new friends along the way (not likely with my craptastic command of the language, but it’s worth a shot).
Granted, it probably sounds boring to some, but to me as a potential migrant, experiencing the daily life stuff in the country I’m interested in sounds 1,000x more fun and exciting to me than the usual stuff people do on holiday in Japan.
Basically, I just wanna soak in the atmosphere and immerse myself in the “real” Japan for a month. It’s a first sort of “sample” to see how the experience affects me and if migrating is something I really want to pursue.
Hehe, that’s the point, there’s no advantage to be had! I already made peace with the notion of being stared at, but if I’m gonna be stared at, I’d rather they stare at my face, and not, er… everywhere else.
Trust me, I’m doing them a huge favour! If someone like me were to show up at an onsen, the “NO FOREIGNER” signs would go back up in a flash! Hell, they’d become law! XD
@ Missingno, indeed, I’ve been trying to make some friends there, but it always ends up in a dead end. My Japanese is nowhere near good enough. The fact I’m naturally shy doesn’t help matters much, lol.
For now the only Japanese friends I have (and they’re not like, super close friends or anything) are expats who live here.
@ thisiskyle, my issue with the onsens is not really so much the touristy-ness of it, to be honest. Even if I was already living in Japan, I vow to never set foot in one. It’s a personal issue, but suffice it to say that I find it traumatic even going to my neighbourhood pool, let alone a communal bath in a country where I’m ALREADY conspicuous enough as it is. It’s a luxury I’ll learn to live without! lol
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This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by
Gigatron.
Well, as for what I want to do, basically just kinda wander around. It’ll most likely be Tokyo, though I’m not 100% on that (might end up picking someplace else if it’s a lot cheaper). The geek in me does wanna see Akihabara at least once, though. I probably won’t even leave Tokyo except maybe to go see Saitama real quick (it’s one of the places I’m considering living in).
My “sightseeing” will basically consist of convenience stores, supermarkets, petrol stations, train stations, department stores, local hangouts, etc, and basically just soaking up the street scene. No temples, no onsens, no museums, no conveyor-belt sushi. I wanna see the “working man’s Japan”, lol.
I first got the idea after reading Danny Choo’s story of his first trip. That seemed like such a great way to “sample” Japan for the immigration-minded, and looks like it’d potentially be a good motivator.
What I really wish I had was some friends to stay with like Missing, though. Apart from the savings, nothing beats the immersion of staying in a proper house.
@ Missing and KiaiFighter, cheers for the info, mates.
That’s a pity though. I thought I’d have enough. Not sure if I can scrounge up 10 grand in time…
Though, I really don’t mind being spartan about it. The main objective is not so much a holiday as it is a “hardcore immersion” trip of sorts. If I have to forgo souvenirs and stick to only food/transport, then so be it. As for lodging, I don’t mind hostels or anything really cheap. I’ll be out and about most of the time, so all I need’s a bed to sleep on.
Eating cheaply is the plan, I don’t wanna visit anything remotely like a fancy restaurant. I wanna eat at convenience stores, train stations, fast food joints, etc. The point’s to get a taste of “regular life” as much as I can.
So if I skip on the shopping, stick only to cheap food/transport, and pick a cheap hostel, what do you reckon? Could I get away with $5000 for a month (November), or might that still be too low?
So I’m planning a trip to Japan, intending to stay for one month (at least). No touristy stuff, I wanna immerse myself in the daily life over there (insofar as a visitor can, anyway) and get my first real taste of life in Japan.
I’m shooting for November of this year, if not sooner. I’ve planned to save up as much as I can, with a goal of (hopefully) around 4,500-5,000 USD (minimum 2,000 USD). I do intend to shop a bit while there (and of course, I’ll need to eat once in a while over the course of a month), but I’ll be traveling light, so I won’t be buying very much.
It’s my first time traveling on my own, so I’m very green at this. My questions are, is this a realistic amount of money for a one-month’s trip? What should I keep in mind for my stay? How can I cut costs as much as possible?
For me, the little loop on ね reminded me of a cursive “e”, such that the character just somehow looked like it should be pronounced “ne”. れ kinda reminded me of a cursive “R”, and わ… well it was the leftover of the three, so all I did was remember it wasn’t “ne” or “re”. :P
If it’s any consolation, I’ve also found watching adverts to be very addicting.
Look at it this way, at least you were immersing yourself in your target language, which is like a sort of “indirect study”, if you will. Plus, it’s a good motivator and self-test to see what kind of stuff you can and can’t pick up.
Personally I found that what more or less worked the best (for me) was just learning it through vocab.
I was finding that even without really “studying” the kanji themselves, that just by going through vocab my brain was unconsciously remembering the readings, such that when I found a new word with kanji in it that I’d seen before, I’d say around 6 or 7 times out of 10 I was able to correctly guess its pronunciation.
Mind you, that’s considering I wasn’t actively studying, just playing games and taking note of new words.
@Yggbert, fair enough, and I won’t lie, I also used to hate on “weeaboos” a lot in my youth (long before I even cared about Japan), and even now I still wouldn’t consider myself part of that “fandom”, as it were.
But honestly, I could say the same about sport fans. A lot of my mates are obsessed over sports to a comical degree and (personally) I find it more than a bit annoying how they carry on (sometimes it’s almost embarrassing). But, at the same time I can’t condemn them for it. I figure, “different strokes for different folks”.
While I won’t deny, “weeaboos” do come on strong, I gotta give them at least a little credit for being passionate about summat, which is more than I can say for myself, and they genuinely seem to enjoy themselves, so I really can’t fault them for it.
That’s just my own opinion, though. :)
I don’t see why it’s so bad for someone to want to learn Japanese on account of anime anyway. By and large Japanese-learners seem to look down on anime fans for whatever reason. Not liking anime is almost treated like a badge of honour.
I’ve known people who were learning German/Spanish/French/etc just to watch foreign cinema from those countries, and they don’t catch nearly the same flak for it that anime fans do.
That being said, I myself disliked anime before embarking on learning Japanese. Once I’d started learning it, I began to watch it more and then became a big fan. Now I am no longer studying Japanese, but I remain an anime fan nonetheless. So I guess in my case it was backwards; I didn’t try to learn Japanese ’cause of anime, but I liked anime ’cause of Japanese. :P
Livemocha has something similar to this, but it’s done as part of their lesson structure as an exercise. So you’re not actually speaking about whatever you want like in Lang-8, but just reading/translating what they ask you to for that particular lesson.
I agree, it’d be a good idea though. It’s very hard for many people to find a good language partner with whom to practise speaking, so that’d provide a good alternative.
Though personally, I’d have been far too embarrassed for it. It was hard enough for me to do it with writing on Lang-8, but actually recording myself bumbling my way through the language would be too much for me to attempt. :P
I’m actually not sure why I put official in speech marks, to be honest. XD
As for the question, I actually couldn’t think of any words with ぢ in them. I had a quick browse at a dictionary and all that came up were archaic words/pronunciations one isn’t likely to hear any more, and the word 地境 which can be pronounced ぢざかい but is more likely to be heard as じざかい.
I reckon that ぢ is just simply not very common and/or largely obsolete. BUT, I am probably the farthest thing from an expert on this site or anywhere else, so take that with a whole shaker of salt.
By and large, I’ve seen that Japanese tends to use じ most often to represent the “zi” sound. Case in point, the word “zigzag” is rendered ジグザグ. In my (extremely limited) experience, I’ve not seen ぢ used that much.
In any case, the “official” name for Godzilla in Japan is ゴジラ as it appears in all of his movies and related paraphernalia. So Godzilla can rest easy knowing that this is how he should spell his name. :)
Name one of them Shamisen like the cat in Haruhi. :P
Or Doraemon. XD
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This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by
