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Ahh Parks and Rec… tonight I shall see you again…
As for running out of memory… search for eidetic memory. Don’t worry, your memory blocks have plenty of space– your ‘lack of memory’ is either a conditioned mental block or actual brain damage. When I was around three years old I would remember entire movie dialogues after watching just once which scared me quite a bit later on when a teacher said Einstein died “of a brain explosion”. Oi.
This is my advice to everyone however: stop worrying about memorizing things. Next time you study, don’t get finicky if you don’t recall something you just did or something you did a while. Stop, steady your breathing, close your eyes, whatever, and really concentrate. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, but things stay in your memory naturally. Accessing that memory easily is something that most people have to (re)train themselves how to do.
Learn all of them. It’s one of the easiest parts of learning and should be one of the first things you do to avoid the romaji crutch. As soon as you start to get them down you can practice speaking, grammar, etc. much more naturally. If you naturally systematize things then it should take no time at all, as modified characters (w/dakuten) are easy to understand and the strokes are simple.
Call me an enabler (I’m reformed– all such expenses are now classified as “research” since I occasionally make notebooks)…
http://www.jetpens.com/ Pretty much your source regardless of the quest. Used them since grade school when consumer pen technology had only just broken the .3mm milestone. IF you’re curious, look for some of these pens at your local stationery shop, and order a few that you can’t find. The Pilot Hi-Tec pen is really popular in Japan (and certain circles in the US), even to the point where individual entrepreneurs have gotten funding for custom fabricated pen bodies that take Hi-Tec refills… Sliccis are popular too since they come in .25 and have a narrow shaft…. both of these feel very brittle though and tend to stop unexpectedly. I SWEAR by the Uni-Ball Signo .28mm– I bought out all of Sekkaido’s stock in Yokohama and Shinjuku. http://www.jetpens.com/Uni-ball-Signo-DX-UM-151-Gel-Ink-Pen-0.28-mm-Black/pd/295
But since you asked for notebooks, Croquis is pretty popular. In the US and even on JetPens you’ll only find the brown sketchbook, but they make many kinds and they’re very durable with nice paper inside. It’s too easy to geek out on notebooks. Just get yourself a regular gridded notebook that you can use for anything. You won’t have to juggle all those grade school kanji practice books, you’ll have lines to follow for writing sentences, and you’ll appreciate it by the time the kuzushiji sets in. ;)
Edit: Oh but that’s right– you don’t NEED anything! Just start. I have my own studio and half the time find writing on printer paper to be most effective since I can keep what I want, chuck the rest, and not feel bad about anything.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by
Ian Smith.
On the individual kanji pages you might want to link to any radicals or component kanji to encourage people to stay engaged. Still, it’s a nice improvement!
Your native language is Spanish but you’re taking it in HS? Daaamn! Find a community or local college that has Japanese– as long as you do more than one semester it’ll almost definitely give you elective credit towards a CompSci degree. If you’re persuasive you could even get out of HS Spanish so it would count towards HS and college. MMMmmmm :) Anyway, welcome!
Well the discussion elsewhere has ballooned since it was posted to the Economist, so reddit, Debito, Hikosaemon, etc. are all over it. Lots of unknowns and, well, just talk since the “article” is about as haphazard as the events.
tl;dr: White guy who has been a journalist in Tokyo for over 15 years goes to Korea to report on some stuff, comes back, gets thrown into Narita’s dungeon without being told why, guards threaten him and extort a pricy one way ticket, deport him to Canada and completely screwing him and the legal grey area of airport international zones. Oh, and the popular theory at the moment is that he was cheating on his visa by using a tourist visa, but this just sounds to stupid to be true and everyone is trying to get more details.
I read quests as “requests”. And here I was all excited about telling all of you to give me 2141 push-ups for 2141 kanji… ;)
一、二、三．．．齢．．．死ぬ！
I got that impression as well, though it is a known issue and there are plenty of reports from Amnesty International that reflect the same issues. As the event is quite recent it’s not surprising and honestly, understandingly hot-headed reaction to the situation. As well the author has been an investigative reporter for Reuters and the AP. Edit: The “flare” is probably a result of his past in television and fiction, but doesn’t get in the way too much. I’m sure this story will be rewritten once his head clears a little and it makes its way to publication.
The part of the story that is most effective is how he describes the interaction between the security official and the older Japanese policeman. That, while you may be a perfectly agreeable human being, the culture of abide first, inquire later can lead to quite the sticky situation with little to no cause.
Edit 2: Sorry, I’m in a cafe now with pretty slow internet. I’ve been researching immigration customs while looking into my visa options. I don’t remember exactly what my webtrail was, but I saw it the other day and had it added to my reading list and he just revised it a little today before I posted it. It was either from Google or one of a few expat forums, perhaps the r/Japan subreddit?
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This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by
It’s a party in here already I guess… hello Brazil! Welcome Vinicius, Daniel, and Maria!
I thought about posting a new topic but maybe I’ll just drop it in here…
http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/06/anime-for-the-apocalypse/
Seeing this on CNN was just too strange to not post.
Rakuten! Otherwise in person: Kinokuniya, BookOff, Mitsuwa Marketplace, Zakka, and the various grocery stores (Sunrise, M2M primarily).
Edit: Coincidentally, while browsing something completely unrelated I stumbled upon an ad for this: http://whiterabbitexpress.com/ Might be handy!
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This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by
$1800 for a month (incl. airfare), with accommodations covered by my fiancée and her family. I didn’t get much in the way of souvenirs, but I did manage to visit Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Tokyo, and a couple islands (Awaji and Miyajima) with some pretty good meals sprinkled in here and there. $5000 is quite comfortable even for more of a tourist. I’m a serial hitchhiker and general wanderer, but if I were advising friends or family I’d estimate $5000 for two people for two weeks being a reasonable (and quite enjoyable) budget experience.
To clarify: most of my expenses were books. We ate at a few nice restaurants but mostly convenience stores, MOS Burger, and bakeries. Obviously if you’re limited to the city and normal tourist destinations the cost is much higher than if you’re more into exploring the outskirts and slightly less urban areas.
I don’t believe there is any Japanese on NHK World, but I could be wrong.
http://jptv24.com/ – Check it out, the quality’s alright but the selection, well…
http://www.freshverse.com/ – Wasn’t working for 3yrs or so but apparently it’s back… really good quality, no selection though. (Also, they might still require invites…)I’ve been trying for a number of months as well but the outlook is rather bleak.
I’ll admit to a little facetiousness… ;) Meaning-based names are perhaps the most traditional and therefore most common method, but it’s good to realize that the are other ways to start at least which are pretty common in modern Japan. On the other hand, my fiancée’s mom’s name has no kanji (deliberately).
It isn’t a different set of kanji, rather the joyo kanji are a subset of “all” kanji. Joyo kanji came about simply as a means for establishing a baseline for general literacy while also standardizing (to an extent) the teaching of said kanji. You can find much more complete explanations elsewhere (wiki), but suffice to say that the ~2000 joyo kanji are pretty much the minimum for native adult speakers. Names are definitely a common way people pick up non-joyo kanji (or unusual readings)– particularly place names, though they’ve been busy integrating those into joyo. So basically the more friends you make, the more kanji you’ll learn! As for the number of characters, there is no designated length– 新（あらた）is one example (last name).
Oh, and as for how people actually get their names, well… unless you have a more meaningful method (naming in honor of someone else, for example) people can basically browse kanji until they find a few which they like the sound, look, or meaning of, at which point they can be smushed together in various ways until the desired effect is achieved. Fun, right? Single character example: じゅん can be written a variety of ways: 純, 潤, 隼 to name a few. Assuming you like the sound, which kanji you pick is up to you! :)
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This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by
