No post yesterday? Your *#$%^% right there wasn't... and Japanese I COMPLETE!!!

There was no post yesterday because, put simply, I didn't study. I started Pimsleur, but stopped. I started Remembering the Kanji, but stopped. I totally skipped Rosetta Stone Why?

After my realization Tuesday night that I was about to finish Japanese I of both Rosetta Stone & Pimsleur and freaking out about not having much in the way of advanced self-learning I did some research yesterday. To my surprise, no one had anything good to say about either. In fact, everyone was pretty much calling them crap and a waste of time. This made me second guess what I was doing.

I studied Japanesepod101.com for a bit instead. Many people said it was a better alternative to Pimsleur. I checked it out and It has its merits, but it just spits info at you in my opinion. Pimsleur, if you do it right, makes you repeat things over and over and recalls previous lessons right when you are about to forget them. I decided that they both have their ups and downs and since I'm already almost done, I would stick with Pimsleur. The gripes against it don't out weight the value I see in it.

Most are of the opinion that Rosetta Stone is a huge waste of time. Complaints range from no explanations and lack of cultural sensitivity (what??). Rosetta Stone teaches languages like you are a child growing up with out people who speak English around to explain things to you. The idea is that is how we are meant to learn languages. I'm no language learning expert. but my fluency in reading, writing, and listening have increased greatly as a result of using it. I get my knowledge of the why from my independent research. You can see in my previous post where I have looked up things I had questions on and linked to the answers. I kinda like it that way.

The complaint about cultural sensitivity... ok... Many of the pronunciation sections are filled with English loaner words. And why not? A TON of modern Japanese nouns are loaner words (not all of them from English). The complaints about the lack of Japanese people in the pictures? Well, this is a PLATFORM (singular) for learning LANGUAGES (plural). I think the images are fairly diverse as far as races go. I don't think there are too many white people, but I might be seeing through the filter of being a white male. I dunno. I don't think that makes the platform any less valuable for learning the language. There are 6 voice actors (3 male and 3 female) who are all native Japanese Speakers. It's a good system for learning how it should sound.

In the end, I decided NOT to modify my curriculum at this time. And, as a result:

Today I finished both Rosetta Stone Japanese I and Pimsleur Japanese I!

I'm excited about this milestone. I plan on taking a few days off from both. I will continue on with Remembering the Kanji tomorrow (2 days off is going to hurt on those Anki cards.. eek). I believe gaps in learning are essential and healthy. I value practice and that's why I will continue with my Kanji learning in the meantime plus, I have a ton of Anime to catch up on so it's not like I will be devoid of Japanese. I will resume my normal schedule on Monday or Tuesday (I think I'm catching a cold and that may make speaking difficult so an extra day may be needed).

For now...

私におめでとう！

Maybe I'm studying a little too much?

Here is a break down of today's lessons:

30 minutes with Pimsleur
15 minutes reading Remembering the Kanji
30 minutes reviewing new and already learned Kanji with Anki
20 minutes researching various questions about Japanese on the internet
1 hour and 30 minutes with Rosetta Stone
Another 20 minutes internet research.

3 hours and 25 minutes. And that's just the Monday-Wednesday schedule. I spent 9 hours self studying on this past Saturday.  This also doesn't account for the other various things I look up or learn during the day when a  question pops in my head.

I looked it up today and Rosetta Stone recommends 30 minutes a day and that at that pace it will take about 3 months to complete a level. If I do everything I plan to tomorrow I will have completed level I. I'm also close to finishing Pimsleur's level I. I started all this just a few weeks ago.

Maybe I'm going too fast? Or maybe since I have been exposed to the language for so long this is an OK pace? I don't know. I do know that I can have full conversation in my head and my dreams are swimming with Japanese and Kanji.

I don't know what's good and normal. I'm not feeling overwhelmed. I'm highly motivated to learn and I haven't shied away from anything yet. But I'm afraid I'm going to run out self learning material In 2 months (with the exception of Remembering the Kanji which should last me about 6 months at 20 Kanji a day). I'm not sure where to even begin for advanced learning on my own.

I guess I will cross that bridge when I get there.

Todays Trouble Kanji. (kanji: 160/2042)

河 , 活 , 江 , 沼 , and 永 gave me trouble today. 河 for river is easy for me to remember when I see the kanji, but when I'm given "river" I keep coming up blank as for what the Kanji is.


活 is "lively" but i keep failing to remember that water on tongues makes for a lively party. I just need to think of it as drops of acid instead of water. A bunch of  people dropping acid on their tongues is a very lively party. I think i will use that to remember it.

江 for "creek" wasn't too bad, i just kept drawing a blank on it. If i see the Kanji I have it but not the other way around. You "craft" "water" into a "creek".

沼 as a "marsh" I just couldn't get. With 召 being seduce (but me remembering it as blowjob) and 沼 being water seduced maybe if I picture it as a marsh filled with slobber from  sloppy blowjob i will remember it. The book did say to be evocative with your memory.

永 as "eternity" was just being stubborn and not sticking in my head.

は vs が & 石 vs 右 kanji: 120/2042

Before I started my Rosetta Stone lesson for today, I did some reading the /r/LearnJapanese. There was a post asking for help with は vs が. Anyone new to Japanese will soon encounter Japanese particles. Particles function similar, but not exactly like, prepositions in English. They help identify where an action is taking place where someone is going to, who said what, etc. They are tough to grasp at first because there is no English equivalent and depending on the usage of preposition may change which particle you will use in Japanese (for example, playing a game in a house and living in a house will use て and に respectively even though they are both translated as "in").

は and が are perhaps the trickiest to grasp and even more so to explain. I know that が is supposed to be used for the subject of the sentence and は is supposed to be for used for the Topic of the sentence. The problem lies in English not really having an equivalent to a Topic. The first comment to the post mentioned before links to this article. Let me tell you, I have read many explanations of how and when to use は and が and this article was the best.

I thought I had it covered until today's grammar lesson in Rosetta Stone.

あなたは鍵がいりますか
vs.
あなたは鍵を持っています

"You need the key?" and "You have the key." Why did the key become the subject in the "need" sentence but an object in the have sentence? Does the key produce the desire within the topic maker? I dunno.

Today's Kanji were fairly easy. 石 vs 右 threw me for a loop though. 右 is right and 石 is stone. They look pretty close. 石けん is soap. So I was thinking soap had something to do with the right hand or something. Turns out 石けん is from 石鹸 (also means soap) which is something like salty stone. So I just need to remember that 右 has a line at the top.
　

A Rosetta Stone "Gotchya"

This is something that had been bugging me in Rosetta Stone that I hadn't figured out until today.

After you complete all the parts of a lesson but before you move on to another unit you will, at some point, be prompted to take a review for that lesson. I find it is usually after I finish the next lesson's vocabulary. After you have completed the review it will tell you that you will be prompted to repeat the review in a few days.

I thought this would be automatic, but it is not. I have been trucking along doing a lesson a day including all of the lesson activities it prompts me to do until it prompts me to do the next core lesson. Some of these activities include activities from previous lessons. But I had not been prompted to review the much older lessons from other units I had already completed.

The unit 1 lesson 1 review was supposed to prompt me to re-take after the 18th. It is now the 23rd. I was starting to get worried because it had already passed time for the lesson 2 and less 3 reviews to prompt as well. I could not find anything in the settings to make those prompt.

What you have to do is from the home screen, navigate back to all the units you have already completed and THEN it will prompt you for the reviews due in that unit. Silly me.

So, before you start a core lesson, navigate back to the previous units and complete whatever review work you are supposed to do. This will keep the older content fresh in your head. Even though Rosetta Stone works heavily by reincorporating what you have already learned into the new knowledge, these reviews contain the core knowledge that is important to take away from that lesson. If you mess up you should go back and study that lesson again.

WTF Rosetta Stone! Kanji: 100/2042

No Pimsleur today. I wrapped up lesson 4 of unit 3 in Rosetta Stone today and completed the milestone for unit 3.. kinda.

So the first milestone for unit 1 was fairly understandable and somewhat easy.  Unit 2 had a few oddities added to it, such as figuring out what question to ask based on the answer given. It wasn't difficult once I figured out what they were trying to get out of me. This continued in the Unit 3 milestone and wasn't so bad until the last question.

I'm supposed to ask a question to which the answer is "washing the plates because they are dirty from the guests eating on them." So I ask

何をしてますか?

And it tells me I'm wrong. What? What the hell am I supposed to ask? Up to this point I have been at a dinner party and had all kinds of conversations with people about where they work and when they play soccer. Everyone has left. I see my friend at the sink, but can't really see what she is doing. The only I can logically think to ask is "what are you doing?"

I had to cheat and press the speaking help button. to my surprise, I'm supposed to ask

どうして皿を洗っていますか？

"Why are washing the plates?" What? We just had a dinner party and I'm asking my friend why she is washing the plates? I guess I'm pretty forgetful. Oh well.

I'm glad I didn't up the number of Kanji per day. While learning new ones becomes easier and easier, retaining the older ones becomes more difficult and the Anki session start taking longer.
But it is rewarding. I know at least 100 Kanji now (slightly more as I still know quite a few from my other studies that have not appeared in Remembering the Kanji yet).

My favorites from today are 召・昭・則

 召　is to call, beckon, or "seduce" It easy to remember because 刀 is sword and 口 is mouth. Imagine a sword as a penis and it is being seduced by a mouth. I lovingly call this Kanji "blowjob".

Then 昭 shining becomes fun too. Like, someone "shining" the a light on a blowjob.

則 is rule, because a shellfish with a sword "rules" in my book. Similar to how 貞 is upright because a shellfish with a magic cane is a mighty "upright" shellfish in my book.

A Mighty Upright Shellfish

Micro-Practice: Counting at the Gas Pump, Cash Register, Car Milage

Yesterday I shared that I had successfully counted to 99,999,999. One of the micro-practices I have been doing is to read numbers in Japanese whenever I can. As an example, yesterday I was filling up my gas tank and I was alternating between counting the total sales amount and the number of gallons.

The Pimsleur lessons provide lessons on filling up your tank at a gas station.

満タンにしてください。

Is basically "fill 'er up, please." Japan, like most other countries in the world, uses the metric system. So instead of gallons, practice saying リットル instead.

Filling up on gas is a perfect time to practice counting and a bit of conversation. If you are lucky enough to be alone at the pump, you can count the numbers out loud, ask the pump to fill your tank, and thank the pump. If there are others around and you don't want to appear like crazy person talking to yourself and a gas pump (what fun is it if people don't think you are crazy??), you can simply practice in your head.

I make a mini-game out of seeing how fast I can keep up with the scrolling numbers. It's a decent challenge.

You can also practice reading the numbers on the cash register or translating what the cashier says is your total. I really recommend doing math completely in Japanese for your totals and change. I'm pretty strong in math, but doing it in another language was difficult at first. Having done it for a few weeks now, I feel it has definitely contributed to my confidence in Japanese number. It is definitely easier than translating the numbers in your head, doing the math, and then translating the answer back.

To practice counting large numbers, you can count your mileage. My car happens to have over 150,000 miles so that is a conveniently high number to work with right now.

From this, hopefully you can see where practicing numbers can be done in other similar situations.

Finally Learned 100!! 80/2042 Kanji

No Rosetta stone today, but Pimsleur finally came through on counting. Today I finally learned 100 (百) that means I can now count all the way up to 99,999,999! An odd thing about 百 is that it changes pronunciation from ひゃく to びゃく for 三百 (さんびゃく), 六百(ろっぴゃく), and 八百(はっぴゃく). It does make them a little easier to say.

One difference about the Japanese numbering system is the use of a 10,000 grouping. In English we get to 1,000 and it is the same all the way until 1,000,000. 999,999 is nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. Thousand is the highest grouping in that lot. But in Japanese, 万(10,000/まん) is used. so you get to　九千九百九十九(9,999) and then go to 万. So one million is 百万(ひゃくまん）. The next grouping is 100,000,000 which I have not learned yet. So, that means Japanese numbers are grouped in 4's making commas (grouped in 3's) in the English counting system annoying and translating between the 2 difficult. I could more easily hear a number, write it down and then say the English for that number than I could trying to direct translate.
 (For more I recommend reading this).

so I can count from 一 to 九千九百九十九万九千九百九十九 (1-99,999,999).

Watchers of One Piece will likely remember 百万ベリfor those pirates who had bounties over 1,000,000 beri. It gets repeated quite a bit.

Pimsleur only covered up to 千 (1,000). But my Remember the Kanji has taught me 万 (10,000) today. So I can go ahead and use it. Just to check if I was right, this site has a convenient chart of all the numbers (I didn't cover it here, but notice the changes in the pronunciation of 千). Now, counting to 99,999,999 is all well and good, except the words you use when counting different items changes. I don't know all of these yet but some examples are:

一人「ひとり」 1 person
二人「ふたり」 2 people
二日「ふつか」 2 days
三日「みっか」 3 days

Also, for anime watchers, if you have ever heard someone itemize points (1st, 2nd, 3rd) you will hear a different one (I haven't those yet, I only know them when I hear them). We do this in English all the time too and take it for granted (couple, single, triple, first, second, etc). One way you can tell a native from a non native English speaker is how they handle counters. One step at a time.

Anki and kanji: 60 down, 1,982 to go... still??

No Rosetta Stone today and Pimsleur is still introducing directions. So I decided to try and adderess something that was pissing me off about Anki.

Anki is a great flash card program. Don't get me wrong, so far I have loved it. But, the deck I got for Remembering the Kanji only shows cards with English words as questions and the Kanji as answers. This is helpful for people who want to learn how to write kanji, but I think it is detrimental to those of us trying to learn to read. So, what I wanted to do was show Kanji as questions and English as answers. I figured it would be a simple process. It is not.

This video did help me get it straight, but now I will be stuck doing some odd reviews for awhile as my "backwards" cards get caught up to my "forwards" cards. Oh well. At least it works now and I found I actually have a pretty damn good recall of what these Kanji mean when I look at them.

Remembering the Kanji does not have the pronunciation of the Kanji (which can change based on which meaning of the Kanji is being used anyway). But, remembering the sound of a word and what it means is easy enough to attach it to the Kanji. My ability to take a document and read it aloud in Japanese will probably suffer for awhile, but my ability to read and understand it and even translate it will be pretty damn good. Which is perfect seeing as I don't think I will be giving speeches written in Kanji any time soon.

The fruit of Today's Combined Lessons & I Finally Can Say What I'm Doing

So between Pimsleur covering the directions （右・左・真直 more on those another day when I know more） and Rosetta Stone hitting hard with numbers, I think I'm really getting some of the basics down. I feel comfortable with my number up to 99. Why the fuck did they skip 100 and go to 1000? I know how to count from 1-99, 1000-1099,2000-2099, 3000-3099.. notice the huge lack of fucking 100's? I guess I could go study it on my own, but I just find it odd I have these weird gaps in my ability to count simply because I haven't learned 100 yet.

So, if you are new or confused in the number system, this is how it works. You have your normal numbers 1-10. To go over 10 it is spoken and written like 10-1 (十一), 10-2 (十二), 10-3 (十三), etc. The you get to 20 and it becomes 2-10 (二十). Then it goes on as 2-10-1 (二十一), 2-10-2 (二十二), 2-10-3 (二十三), etc. So all to way up to 99 (九十九) I got. Then you would use the character for 100, except I don't know that yet.

It's a damn easy system and it makes learning counting numbers easy. But then you have to throw in Japanese counters when describing objects and people. That is a discussion for another day. I still only know a few anyway.

But, the fruit of everything today is:

私は日本語を勉強しています。
「わたしはにほんごをべんきょうしてます。」

"I am studying Japanese." How very apt.

And on that note, こんばんは。

Kanji: 60 Down (kinda), 1,982 to go

Ok, So this morning I was mentally reviewing the first 20 Kanji and I realized I couldn't draw 6 六 or 8　八 in my head. I need to remember that 6 is a classy animal with a top hat and that 8 is two wide open lines. Needless to say, I spent some time reviewing these.

Today's Kanji had some tough ones. 昇 to rise up, ascend it kind of tough. I just need to remember it is the sun rising over 1,00 needles and I will be fine.

博　is for doctor. I like this one. 専 (10 rice fields glued together by a specialist) is specialty and to remember 十 as needles, 博 is a needle specialist a doctor. this is the  はく　kind of doctor, not the 医者kind of medical doctor. More like a PHD kind of doctor.

Kaniji continued: 40 down, 2,002 to go

Today's fun kanji： 自・白・胆・胃・旭・千

 自 and 白are easy for me to visually mess up. 自is oneself (eye with a tear drop) and 白 is white (a drop of sun). The extra line is, for some reason, harder for me to make out in 自.

 I had to repeat 胆 (gall bladder) a few times. Flesh before sunrise. I'm just goin to imagine gall bladders get taken out before nightbreak.


胃for stomach, flesh that support the brain. I dig it.

旭 (rising sun) I had the second hardest time. But, the baseball rising in popularity in Japan is good way to think if it rising the sun.

And, I love 千(1,000). It's an eye dropper trying to get 2 more 0's on 10.

These exercises really don't take long. Compared to the 2 hours of Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur combined. I think I could up this to 30 or 40 a day, but i want to wait until I have seen some tougher kanji to make that decision.

Two more from Rosetta Stone today:
月居日・　げつきょび　Monday.. moon-day. Really easy to see that one.
日居日・ にちきょび　Sunday.. see the pattern.
I got nothing on the rest of the days of the week though.

Dekomori vs. Milk

Today's Rosetta Stone lesson includes the phrase:

この牛乳はますいです。

Which translates "This milk tastes bad". I was immediately reminded of Dekomori from  "Chu 2 Byo". In fact, Dekomori is how I remember 牛乳(milk).

Back to studying.

Today's kanji lessons begin. 20 down, 2,022 to go.

Today I'm taking a break from  Rosetta Stone because I had a mentally exhausting day at work and I don't have the patience to focus on it. I might give it a shot here in a bit if I suddenly get more energy. Instead, I started my Kanji lessons. I'm using Remember the Kanji and starting with lesson 1. As the intro to the lesson suggests, I already knew most of these. 一,二,三,四,五,六,七,,九 and 十are the numbers 1-10. I have actually been acquainted with these since I was a child as we had to call them out and write them for karate (It pays to have had a Japanophile 先生). But, I like the way the book shows how to memorize 四 as a mouth meeting with 2 animal legs.

Which brings me to the next set. 口 is a mouth. It's a wide open hole. 日and 月I know from Rosetta Stone as being the sun and moon respectively. 田 I had already learned as a radical, but I guess I just don't understand how important a rice field will be in the grand scheme of things. 目for eye is... odd. You have to think of the center block as an iris/pupil and the outside blocks as the whites of the eye. I can see it.

古 for old is kind of morbid and awesome. Think of a tombstone.. the book says to think of old text on the tombstone, but I'm just going to imagine it marking where an old person is burried.


吾 as I. Hmm... I can't seem to translate it that way. I'm guessing that when it is mixed with stuff it it will have the usage of I. But there are 5 mouths/holes in your head.　(Figured it out, me/oneself is a better translation than I, but I will keep using what the book tells me to).


冒as risk is fun. an eye looking up at the sun is risky bidness fo sho.

朋 two moons is companion. I actually couldn't get this translated properly, but I found it is とも　as in ともだち「友達」. that makes sense... except for the complete lack of 朋 in the kanji for friend. In any case, i;m going to remember it as the moon finding a friend in its reflection.
¯\(°_o)/¯

明 as bright. The sun shining on the moon is bright.

That's 20. I went a little further in the book, but the flash cards for today are only the first 20. So, now I have to reevaluate how many kanji I really know. In addition to these 20, I'm fairly sure I can recognize close to 50 more. I guess my initial guess was modest. It wasn't until I actually started counting that I realized I knew so many. But, I officially only know 20. I think I will be able to continue these with the rest of my studies for now. In future posts I wont be listing every kanji, just the ones I found interesting or difficult.

Micro-practice: Driving to the Bar

Pimsleur's Japanese I includes conversations necessary to order drinks at a bar. I find myself practicing this in the car on my way to the bar often. The conversation is fairly simple and at this point in my studies I am confident I could order what I want. Of course, when I get there, there is no one behind the bar who would understand what I'm saying. That's no the point though. You should practice another language as often as you can. Simply following the instructions in any study guide will likely not be enough to master a language. Much of what I have read and experienced first hand when i was learning Spanish in high school, is that it is imperative that you practice as much as possible.

I call this micro-practice, I do it often. I will be including things I do in these mini study sessions during times of convenience in this blog. For now, it's time to go to bed.

おやすみなさい。

今日は！ 私のお名前はマークです。

Hi! My name is Mark and I am learning 日本語. I have been a fan of Japanese culture and language since I was a child. It all began with karate lessons and in my recent adult years I have become a huge fan of anime and manga. I have dabbled with trying to learn Japanese in the past, but after having completed 300 full series of anime, I decided it was finally time I ditched the subtitles and went native.

I'm currently taking a multifaceted approach to learning the language. For listening and speaking skills, i'm making use of the Pimsleur's Japanese I, II, and III audio lessons. Which I do Monday through Friday on my daily commute home from work. I and also making use of Rosetta Stone Japanese I, II, and III Saturday through Tursday for reading, listening, speaking, and typing. Finally, I will begin using a combination of Remember the Kanji I, II, III and Anki to learn kanji this week.

This blog is not really meant to be read by anyone, but I have learned that making language learning blogs while studying a language is super helpful. I also have stumbled across a few others' Japanese learning blogs which I have personally found helpful answering novice questions. Since I don't have a teacher or native speaker to rely on for these kinds of questions answers, blogs like this one have helped fill that gap.

To give you an idea of where I am at in the learning process, I'm an nearly completely proficient at reading hirigana. I have not studied katakana for some time so i still struggle with it. As for kanji, my last estimate was that I'm at about 30 or so. Part of this blog's purpose is to serve as a count tracker for my kanji studies.

My listening ability is warped well ahead of my reading, writing, and speaking abilities as I have been watching anime daily for the past 4-5 years with subtitles. I have picked up on a lot of phrases, nouns, verbs, and even grammar. I realize most of it is impolite and informal, but it has made the ear tuning portion of my learning that much easier. I already have a decent sense of when to use certain particles, even though I have no formal teaching of when they are used.

My speaking ability lag behind all else. This is because I have no one to speak to. I have a friend who plans to start studying soon, but even when they do they wont be at a conversation level for awhile. So, for now I talk to my cats and use Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur. None of which really offer the feedback required to gauge my progress. That is an avenue I will pursue after i have gained a better understanding of the language as a whole.

As for handwriting, I will tackle that after I have finished my goal of 2000 Kanji. I may dabble here and there with hirigana,  but I don't have any immediate plans to focus on this area as I have almost no immediate use for handwriting in general. I am learning and slowly become proficient a using the Microsoft IME. That is really serving as my writing outlet at this time. Stroke order and other such handwriting related knowledge is just too much to fit into the already intense coursework I have created for myself.

I hope anything I write here helps another learner, or at least provides some entertainment.

じゃまた！