Japanese Me

There’s a neighborhood in Kawasaki called Mizonokuchi.  At first I thought it was Mi*zu*nokuchi, or literally “mouth of the water”… maybe where a creek emptied into a river, or a river into the ocean.  Romantic.  Poetic.  Then I looked up the kanji: 溝ノ口 It turns out mizo actually means “ditch”.  Mouth of the ditch. Not [...]

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When I first started studying Japanese I watched a lot of anime. I got hooked on the likes of Cowboy Bebop, Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, and Escaflowne, all with English subs. Some fansub groups write transliterations of song lyrics so you can sing along even if you can’t read Japanese.  It can be hard to follow, [...]

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Haven’t felt much like blogging lately.  I’ve been on a real study kick, trying to squeeze a bunch of new kanji and vocab into my brain.  I’ve taken to tackling lists of things I think I should know – government ministries, planets, major organs.  I’m discovering some neat things while I’m at it.  Example: I’ve [...]

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合格（ごうかく, goukaku） means “pass”.  As in, I passed level two of the JLPT, the test I failed by a few points last December.  Woo!  No time to rest, though – on to level one! Not my certificate – my score wasn’t quite that good. Photo by MrWabu

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Surgery went well – I love my doc and my hospital.  Just about everyone in dermatology is female, really good vibes there.  A couple of points I wanted to write down before I forget: – In the States a doctor says, “This shot might sting a little bit” to get you ready.  There’s usually a [...]

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Today the longest total solar eclipse of the century will pass right over Japan.  A few lucky people on some very remote islands will get to see the full shabang but near Tokyo we’ll still get roughly 75% totality.  Not bad.  That is, if we could see it.  The view from my window not five [...]

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The JLPT is over and I couldn’t be more happy.  I haven’t had a drink in a long time (I had to keep my mind clear to study!) so tonight it’s plum wine, knitting, and mindless tv.  Woo! Thanks for your well wishes, I think they did me some good!  I’ll let you know the [...]

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..and studying. Adding cards to Anki, an amazing open-source flashcard program.

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The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験、or JLPT) is coming up in 11 days so I’ve been hitting the books pretty hard.  I passed a practice test but I want to give myself some more breathing room so kanji and vocab it is. I originally thought reading was my problem but when I looked at the [...]

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Now that I’m typing more Japanese I’m finding I make different kinds of typos.  In English I mostly make letter order mistakes, such as liek for like.  Every once in a while I make a “visual” typo like replacing a p with a b. Here’s a Japanese phrase I was trying to punch in just [...]

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