Welcome!

I’ve got a few chats in now so I thought I’d mention this for new people thinking or unsure of teamspeak.

to quote missing;

YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO SPEAK JAPANESE OR SPEAK THROUGH MICROPHONE – WE HAVE TEXT CHAT ALONG WITH VOICE CHAT.

What can you do? Benevolent users such as primal and bbvoncrumb can assist you with your technical problems with anki and stuff, give personal advice about how to study japanese, and help out with some questions that you have about grammar. But to be completely honest, we usually talk about other stuff thats not related to japanese at all (which is alright of course!). Thats where tubatime comes in and rants about how he can change politics for the better and how i brainwashed him into mass purchasing idol merchandise. 洗脳成功！

You can type if you want or use a mic, or just hang out and lurk around to see what it’s all about. A mic will really help unless you type fast, but you will get people responding to your comment no matter when you post it. We’re here to chat, right? ^^

Don’t worry about not knowing much Japanese and getting lost or not ‘fitting in’. They do talk about it if someone asks or wants advice, or missing wants to chat in Japanese… lol, but that’s not all that is being talked about and it can change if someone asks something else. Also, don’t take the conversations to heart. There is a lot of joking and messing around if you start getting in on the usual politics or religion but the usual stuff is just normal conversations you’d see anywhere ( yes, it’s PG :P ).

It’s a chat room and they chat about anything with the bonus of having people who have studied Japanese and were once in the situation that you’re currently in now. They can give you advice or just chat. Everyone should check it out even if it’s only just to see what it is about. The best times seem to be 9(ish)pm EST until anywhere to 5am EST but people can be found online all day. Check it out and if no one is online check back that night or just yell at missing for being AFK until he responds, hehe.

Here’re some Japanese DS carts that I’ve either collected or have my eye on;

Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten
It’s a translator/dictionary. You can write in English or Japanese and get the translation for that word.

Anpanman to Asobu: Aiueo Kyoushitsu DX
You’ll practice drawing kana and identifying objects with flashcards.

DS Bimoji Training
It has a dictionary and mini games but it’s mainly designed to help with your handwriting.

Kaite Oboeru – Dora Gana
Teaches hiragana and katakana as well as some kanji, the brush strokes, speech (although I’m iffy on this) and mini games.

Kotoba no Puzzle: Mojipittan DS
Puzzle game kinda like scrabble, you build words with tiles against an opponent.

Mind Your Language Learn Japanese
Mainly word mini games to help you build your vocab

Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu
Teaches all 1,945 elementary and middle school kanji.

Nihongo Kentei DS
Basically an exam that tests your knowledge of Japanese. This can get hard, it was used to test native Japanese but can be used to test your knowledge (6 different levels). It’s unlikely you’ll outgrow this.

Shikakui Atama wo Maruku Suru – DS Kanji no Shou
This has roughly 6,000 questions and tests at the elementary school level (Japanese grades 1 through 6). It uses reading comprehension to test but you can also practice writing and play mini games.

Kageyama Method: Tadashii Kanji Kakitori-Kun – Kondo wa Kanken Taidaku Dayo!
This teaches the meanings, readings and vocal of kanji including all the official jouyou kanji (1,945).

Zaidan Houjin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentei Kyoukai Koushiki Soft: 200 Mannin no KanKen: Tokoton Kanji Nou
(ok, that’s one long name but it’s really called 「Tokoton Kanji Nou」)
Think Brain age meets kanji. Also one you may never outgrow.

Zaidan Houjin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentei Kyoukai Kounin – KanKen DS 2 + Jouyou Kanji Jiten
This Kanken exam involves reading, writing and stroke order. This is another Japanese proficiency test that you may never outgrow, i.e. it’s hard.

Mind you I’m not ready for all of these just yet, but this is my wish list of sorts.

I’m not surprised to see Rosetta Stone Inc. supporting SOPA one bit. AFAIK they are one of the most pirated software out there, I suspect right behind Windows itself. Mind you mine was a legitimate copy (hand me down and I almost upgraded to V4 because of the iPhone app) but many of the review comments were ‘just torrent it’. If I remember right even the Tofugu Alternatives to Rosetta Stone Japanese YouTube video has a ‘torrent it’ top comment.

SOPA… DMCA… This all makes me think of Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny… The scene groups seem to be moving to Russian, Canadian, or the like, servers and advising their American friends to move their DNS provider. Security techs are starting to really push people to use encrypted VPN tunnels for all their internet traffic. You can’t stop it but you sure can make people smarter (both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people) about security and their data. Just look at what happened to Go Daddy.

For or against doesn’t really matter to me, I’m outside its jurisdiction.

Is there a “Search” function for the forum?

There is a search function but it seems that the current search form excludes the forums.

You could always use Google to search the forums while they work out a system that includes all of TextFugu. Here’s a link for Google that searches the forums, just add whatever you’re looking for after the space in this Google search box.

Hello! Great to see another Canadian here :)

Doesn’t the teacher give handouts every class for notes or assignments? Every high school around here (SW Ontario) either has text books or leaflets for lessons. If I remember right one of the schools here uses the same text book for German that the college uses, but it was a few years ago I saw that and college/university tend to update every few years so…

Most of the colleges here also offer (paid) exchange programs if you wanted to try and add another trip to Japan (or two) in there ;)