Kindle Paperwhite: Powerful for Japanese Study

 Education, Foreign Languages, Japan, Japanese Language, Technology, Travel  Comments Off on Kindle Paperwhite: Powerful for Japanese Study
Jun 052014
 

I finally bit the bullet and bought a second Kindle Paperwhite, this time for my Japanese language library. And I don’t regret it one bit. It has become an incredibly powerful tool for improving my Japanese, because I read more books, faster, with the Paperwhite than I have with any other reading platform.

And I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to read Japanese books.

Note that some of these are perfectly fine for English language books, but I’m judging them on their usefulness as Japanese learning tools.

I have tried:

  • Paper Books and an Electronic Dictionary.
    • Disadvantages:
    • Not portable
    • Slow lookups disrupt reading
    • Tiny text kills my eyes.

 

  • Vertical Text Viewer (for Android).
    • Disadvantages:
    • Lookups are easier, but require an external app, which can’t search online dictionaries if I’m on a plane, so EPWING dictionaries have to be added.
    • Only Aozora Bunko formatted e-books work with it. That means I can access a library of out-of-copyright books, but nothing current. (Not legally, anyway.)

 

  • OCR Manga Viewer (for Android). Takes images, OCRs selected text, and offers a list of possible definitions.
    • Disadvantages:
    • Supported file format is scanned images, so no legal way of getting current titles, unless I scan every book I buy page by page.
    • Constant dragging and selecting finicky text selection tool gets annoying after a while.
    • Even if there are scans, if the scan quality isn’t perfect, the OCR software will have issues, so I’m back at the electronic dictionary stage again.

 

  • Amazon Kindle App (for Android). Updside: You can save a lot on shipping, and you can make text bigger. Long press on a word to look it up. (See disadvantages!)
    • Disadvantages:
    • There is only one dictionary. It’s Japanese-Japanese, and you better like it, because you can’t use any others with the simple long press function. The other option is search in another book, which is slow.
    • Most books are text files, but a small portion are scans. If you wind up with a scan of a book you want to read, you will have no way of looking up words inside the program.
    • The dictionary search function does not de-conjugate verbs, which makes the dictionary useless.

 

  • Google Play Books and Magazines App (for Android). Updside: I couldn’t really find one.
    • Disadvantages:
    • No dictionary I could find.
    • Couldn’t find any current popular Japanese books in the Play store. Couldn’t access the Japanese Play store without a VPN, and even then, Google sent me back to the US store.
    • The only books I could find were all scans of out-of-copyright books, or books I’ve never heard of by publishers I’ve never heard of.

 

Why Paperwhite?

So there you have it. Nothing really works the way I want to, well, except for the Kindle Paperwhite. Kind of. The Paperwhite is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall I think it’s the best way to read Japanese books on an electronic device.

The Paperwhite has the long press to look up a word feature that the Kindle app has, which it turns out is incredibly useful, because you can add extra dictionaries to the search. So if I can’t find a word in one dictionary, I can select another and another, as many as I have on the device. And I’m not limited to just Japanese-Japanese, I can get Japanese-English, etc. (I recommend getting one of the EDICT-based Japanese-English dictionaries. They’re cheap and good enough.)

Also, the Paperwhite will de-conjugate any verbs it comes across, making the dictionaries useful again.

The e-ink display is incredibly easy on the eyes, even for long-term viewing, and doesn’t guzzle battery, making it a good choice for long flights. Text can be enlarged, too. It looks really good.

It comes with a 単語帳, which records every word you look up, and lets you go over them as flash cards. Not as versatile as Anki, but a hell of a lot less fussing is involved. And it automatically shows you the sentence you were in when you looked up the word! If it only did SRS, it would be perfect. Oh well.

Using it, I’ve been plowing through books at an alarming rate. Alarming in that I’ve never been able to read Japanese this fast before.  I’m being serious here. I’ve tried a whole bunch of different ways of going about it, but this gives me the most enjoyment with the highest overall comprehension. And I can try books that may be a little too hard for me, because I have the dictionaries to fall back on.

Early on, manga looked bad on it. Really bad. But lately, publishers have gotten on board, and while it’s not as good as holding a real 単行本 in your hands, it’s good enough for travel. You can even zoom in on images with a comic reading mode that isn’t too bad. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s getting a lot better. (I wish Amazon would come out with a bigger Paperwhite that did manga at a bigger size for ease of reading.)

I’m saving the biggest plus for last: what I’m saving on shipping and space taken up by books. It’s incredible. Oh, sure, I’m a bibliophile. I am surrounded by books. But I am not against using an e-ink device to read material like fiction. I just don’t care much about that. (Art and music are different. I like those on paper. Same with manga. Give me paper books… unless I’m traveling. Ugh.)

Now, it does not come without drawbacks. And they may be deal-breakers for some of you.

What it won’t help you with.

For starters, setting up an account with Amazon Japan in order to get access to the books takes some work. Amazon US has Japanese books, but the selection is a mess, and all the titles are in romaji, making it a big useless pile of nonsense words to me. I don’t do romaji, and nobody should have to in order to read Japanese books. Also, Amazon US doesn’t have anything I’d even want to read if I could find it. We’re back at the publisher problem. 20th century business practices in the 21st century. Ugh.

Also, if you already have a Kindle Paperwhite and use it with another Amazon, like Amazon US or UK, then go buy another one. The only way you can use one Paperwhite for both accounts is to constantly wipe it and reset it. Yes, I think that’s dumb, too, but there you go.

And don’t try buy a Paperwhite from Amazon Japan. Even if you use a service like Tenso, they will send you a polite warning never to do that again, or else your account will be closed for good. It’s odd, but they don’t care if you buy anything else and have it shipped to the US by a third party, but if you do it with a Kindle, there’ll be hell to pay.

The device itself tends to get slow over time. Hold down the power button and reboot it if it starts acting sluggish. I usually have to do it once a week or two.

Sometime Amazon Japan will have issues with my credit cards, for no apparent reason I can find.

I can’t find a good way to get at my 単語帳 outside of the Paperwhite. That kind of sucks. I’d love to be able to export it to Anki. So much for that.

There are a lot of books not available as Kindle versions yet. A lot of books I really want to read. And some Kindle versions don’t come out until a month or two after the print version. But with patience comes big savings, and it also keeps me from over-buying. I only buy what I intend to read right now.

Finally, the DRM. It’s annoying. But it’s the trade-off I knew I had to make when going Kindle for Japanese. On the upside, as soon as a book is available in the Kindle store in Japan, I can be reading it if I so desire, at a fraction of what I would usually pay for having the real book shipped.

Summing it up.

So my advice to aspiring learners of Japanese is to get a Paperwhite. But first set up a test account with Amazon Japan and make sure you can buy books from them. Maybe try it on another device first, like an Android or iOS device.

Were I Amazon, I would publicize the heck out of this as a learning tool. The Japanese government is desperate to get new workers into the country, and to help teach people Japanese. This device would be a great tool for that, while also giving overseas fans a legit way to buy into “Cool Japan” without hassle. Everybody wins. Really. Everybody. (Well, except for DHL.)

Postcards From the JBPP Edge, How to Read Japanese Food Labels

 Food, Foreign Languages, Japan, Japanese Language, Photos  Comments Off on Postcards From the JBPP Edge, How to Read Japanese Food Labels
Nov 282011
 

Today was the final exam for my N1 grammar class. I think I did okay. Not great, but good enough. JBPP takes up a lot of time, as do my regular classes, and daily life eats up another chunk. I’m taking this more as an introduction to N1 level grammar, because I know that there’s still a lot I have to learn, so I’m not worrying too much about it right now.

We’re starting to do a lot of reviewing for the upcoming big tests in the main classes on Wednesday. Fun.

I’m a little tired after all the traveling this weekend, but it was fun, and I feel recharged.

In JBPP, we started working on how to mail letters. Snail mail is still important every now and then, so I have to know how to send letters properly. And it’s the sort of skill that transfers over to email as well.

Souvenirs!

Here are a few photos of the souvenirs I bought for everyone in Kyoto. I’m actually posting this from the future, but it fits with my “Kyoto Arc” here.

The cookie/wafer things came in two varieties:
Souvenirs from Kyoto

A fall leaf motif:
Kyoto Souvenir 1

Some kind of grass motif?
Kyoto Souvenir 2

Anyway, they were a big hit with everyone. People like getting stuff.

How to Read Nutritional Info on Japanese Food!

Since I’m just tacking stuff onto this post, I might as well tack this on, too. It’s a really important survival skill in Japan if you have any dietary needs. That skill is how to decipher those labels!

Let’s start with the nutrition info from my cheese slices:
Japanese Food Labels, and How to Read Them 1

So the 栄養 bit above the box is saying “Nutritional Information.” 1æžš means one slice, 18g 当たり means approx. 18 grams. (Well, it means exactly 18 grams, but realistically, it’s approximately.)

Now, let’s analyze the stuff in the box:

  • エネルギー this is “energy,” measured in calories. (They use the more accurate kcal, for kilocalorie, but we just call them calories in the US.)
  • たんぱく質 this is protein.
  • 脂質 this is fat.
  • 炭水化物 these are carbohydrates.
  • ナトリウム this is sodium.
  • カルシウム this is calcium.

The last bit, the 食塩相当量 bit, is just telling you the table salt equivalent of the sodium in the product. So each slice has roughly half a gram of salt in it.

Let’s apply this to convenience store food, because I eat a lot of it. (It’s probably bad for me!)

I bought some butajiru udon the other day. (It’s pork soup with udon noodles in it.)
Japanese Food Labels, and How to Read Them 2

Okay, the 11.11.23 bit is the “best by” date. 2011, November 23 is how you read it. The プラ bit means that the whole thing is recycled with the plastic trash.

Below that, you see 1600w and 500w? Those are cooking times depending on your microwave’s wattage. One minute and twenty seconds for a 1600 watt, and four minutes for a 500 watt. (Useful!)

Now, under that is the actual nutritional information.

  • 1食当たり we saw something similar before, but basically it means “one serving.”
  • 熱量 is our calories again, just using a different way to say it.
  • 蛋白質 is just another way to write たんぱく質, except they used kanji. It’s still protein!
  • 脂質 is back again. It’s still fat.
  • 炭水化物 is also back again, still carbohydrates.
  • Na refers to sodium by its periodic table name.

Everything else is the list of ingredients, and the address of the maker.

Hope this helps you figure out what’s on your plate!

The Daily AIJP/JBPP Life

 Foreign Languages, Japan, Japanese Language, Travel  Comments Off on The Daily AIJP/JBPP Life
Oct 132011
 

The way classes are taught here is interesting. It reminds me a bit of high school, but it’s much more thorough.

We have 3 50-minute periods of class in the mornings, from 9-9:50, 10-10:50, and 11-11:50. Then from 11:50-12:40, we have lunch. After that, from 12:40-1:30 we have the last AIJP class of the day. That’s followed by a 1:40-2:30 and 2:40-3:30 block each day for electives.

Oh yeah, we have to pick electives NOW. It’s more of a big deal for me because I missed a few days.

I’m probably going to go with only two, although I can do up to four. JBPP will fill in that last 2:40-3:30 block every day… except when it doesn’t. Sometimes we’re going to have long classes that go from 5th through 6th period, and sometimes we’ll have class during 5th period only, but that’s usually on Fridays.

It’s a little confusing.

Anyway, picking electives isn’t too hard. Because of JBPP I only have a few choices. There’s a writing class I want to try, as well as the N1 and N2 grammar classes. N2 will be good review of stuff I should already know, and N1 will hopefully cover stuff I desperately need to know. The main downside is that they only meet once a week up until the JLPT, then they end.

We’ll see where I wind up!

The way classes are done here in general is intense. We start off just about every class with a quiz, except JBPP. The first class in the day is usually taught by my homeroom teacher, M-sensei (different from the M-sensei in JBPP), who is amazingly nice. She teaches two blocks or so, which is grammar and vocabulary, then in the third block (usually, not always, the schedule changes every week, or so I’m told), another teacher will come in to teach stuff like speaking or reading or writing. Then after lunch, it’s either M-sensei or another mystery block of somethingoranother.

The class is impressively diverse. America, Germany, Greece, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Brazil, and India are all represented. I’m probably forgetting someone. I apologize.

But Japanese is our common language. It’s easier that way.

The cold is almost gone. I still feel a bit lousy, but it’s not nearly as bad.

JBPP: Can I Has Meishi Koukan PLZKTHX!

One of the most important things in Japanese business is 名刺交換 (めいしこうかん, meishi koukan, or business card exchanging). It’s so important that it’s one of the first things we’re learning here. There’s an order to who offers their card first, and to whom, how it’s held out, how it’s received, what you say, and most importantly, where you put it.

The trick to understanding the whole thing from the Japanese side is understanding that business card = person. Once you understand that, many of the rules that seem kind of exacting make sense.

Also, understand that while visitors are treated as socially superior in a non-business setting, they’re not necessarily so in a business sense. If you’re coming to another company to ask for something, you need to show some humility, I guess. This is different from going into a store as a customer, because customers = gods in Japan. (Who else is going to spend money in their stores?)

Also, there’s the senior/junior dynamic as well. Seniority rules. Even if the boss isn’t going to do anything, if the boss is there, then the boss has to lead the ceremonies because s/he’s the boss.

The Basics

Ok, so the basics of meishi koukan are:

First, the order of who offers cards. (For this example, we’ll use a group of people visiting a company.)

  1. Visiting company goes first. (You’re introducing yourselves, after all!)
  2. Seniors first– company seniors, that is. So the most-senior visitor goes first, followed down the ranks to the most junior.
  3. “Home” company goes last.
  4. Again, the highest-level manager goes first.

Okay, that’s not too hard to remember.

So how do you do it?

  1. Offer your card out with both hands, facing upside down to you. (So the other party can read it!) Don’t forget to bow as you’re holding it out.
  2. Introduce yourself as you’re holding out your card, saying what company you’re from, who you are + douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu, or the proper polite variant.
  3. The receiving person receives the card with both hands while bowing as well.
  4. The receiving person takes the card and says arigatou gozaimasu or whatever variant is required due to politeness level required.
  5. Receiving person has to look at the card and study it for a few seconds. Really, take the chance to learn the other person’s name, or ask them about the kanji in their name, etc. Great icebreaker.

Wait, there’s more! Remember, I said that a business card is considered the same as the person you’re dealing with, so a few “don’t”s are in order:

  • Don’t put it in your pocket! (Especially your back pocket!)
  • Don’t use it as a tool! (Especially to pick your teeth!)
  • Don’t write on it!

So we have these precious business cards… uh… what do we do with them?

Okay, now what? Where do we put the cards? The answer depends.

If it’s just meeting on the street, or at a convention, and there’s no meeting afterwards, then put them in a business card case. (You can get one for cheap at an office supply store if you need one.) You’re showing the other party how you value their card, and them at the same time.

If you don’t have your case on you, put it in your wallet. Don’t just shove it in a pocket.

It there’s a meeting afterwards, then lay them out on the table in front of you, like a little seating chart. It’s really useful that way, so you can keep everyone’s names straight. It also shows that you’re trying to learn their names. It’s very courteous to do it that way.

Anyway, you get the drift.

In the US, we use business cards like disposable ads. They’re tossed all over the place, and are only used to keep track of contact info. We write on them, pick our teeth with them, sit on them, you name it. We only see it as a piece of paper that’s handy to have every now and then… but not much more than that. (Hence the numerous goldfish bowls used to hold business cards for raffles.)

We spent a lot of time in class practicing business card exchanges, with a variety of scenarios. It was challenging at first, but I got used to it.

Still, there’s a lot of cultural stuff for me to learn just surrounding business, and we’re only at the point of exchanging business cards. I can see that I have my work cut out for me!

And So It Begins…

 Foreign Languages, Japan, Japanese Language, Travel  Comments Off on And So It Begins…
Oct 122011
 

Finally! My real first day of class!

I still feel like hell, but my fever is gone, so I didn’t really have an excuse to stay home and lounge around. Besides, we’re on the fast track here at Yamasa. Every day I miss is like missing 3-4 days of Japanese at a univeristy. Keeping up is hard work.

I got a giant pile of printouts to work on from when I was sick and missed three days of class. I have no idea what to do with them.

I got my textbooks, too. They have zero useful information in them. I have better info in my Japanese grammar books. I think we’re using them for the readings? I don’t know. There’s a ton of information in the printouts, though.

It was a bit overwhelming for me, coming in sick and clueless. But everyone is kind and helpful, for which I am grateful.

Unmasked.

I tried to use a mask, but my classmates told me to give up on it. They didn’t care if I used it or not. So I bagged it. It was miserable, anyway. My glasses were completely fogged up, and it was difficult to breathe.

I had lunch at Domy (the nearby grocery store). At noon, everyone runs down the street there to buy something to eat. I headed to the bakery and got a sandwich and dessert. I went back to Aoi Hall on campus and bought a drink there, so I could quietly eat and feel miserable.

Then we had more classes.

The main part that sucks is that I missed those first few days to get to know my classmates. Of course, they all seem to know each other pretty well, because most of them have already been here for a while, so I’ll have to deal with that as well.

I already missed the first two days of the JBPP class due to my cold, so I have some catching up to do here as well. There are only four of us in the class, but it’ll be exciting. One of my classmates is in my main class. She’s from Singapore, and really nice.

The other two people are another American, and a guy from Malaysia, who speaks Japanese really well.

The class is team-taught by two teachers, I-sensei and M-sensei, who teach on alternate days. Today we had M-sensei, and we plunged right into introductions and keigo review.

I need lots of keigo review.

After class, I got some money out at the post office and got some food at the conbini. I’m too tired to cook. I’ve been buying a lot of conbini sandwiches. I’m not really getting the most out of my Japanese cuisine experience, am I? Oh well. Food is food, and the sandwiches are pretty cheap.

But I have a lot of scrambling to do to catch up in class.

Stupid cold.

Placement Test!

 Foreign Languages, Japan, Japanese Language  Comments Off on Placement Test!
Oct 032011
 

Today was my last private lesson.

But first, we had a placement test at 9 a.m. I knew were going to have it, but I didn’t know it was such a big deal.

When I came to Yamasa four years ago, right after I got off the train and came into the teachers’ office, I was given a placement test. It was relatively short, and not too difficult. It pretty much confirmed that I knew some Japanese, but needed a lot of work.

So when I heard that there was a placement test this time, I was thinking, “Oh, it’s probably like the one I had four years ago. No biggie.”

Boy, was I ever wrong.

If I had known that it was going to be that thorough, I might have actually studied for the thing.

Note: If you’re reading this while considering going to Yamasa, you should study some for the placement test. It’s a whopper.

First off was a monstrous grammar test, the likes of which I hadn’t seen in a while. It seemed to just keep going on and on… I think if you do bad things in a Japanese language school and die, this is a bit what Japanese Language School Hell would be like. This test. Over and over.

The questions started off pretty easy. And then they kept increasing the tension until something in my brain snapped.

I have no idea how well I did, because they never told me.

Then we all sat in a room and watched Howl’s Moving Castle while we waited our turn to be interviewed. I never did find out what happened in the movie. I suppose I need to rent that sometime.

So I had an interview test in Japanese with S-sensei, which I floundered through. He’s a very nice guy, who did a good job of pointing out that I really don’t speak Japanese all that well at all, despite what random people may tell me.

Well, that’s what I came here for, so I’m not shocked or anything. I’m glad he was honest with me, and I hope they fix my bad habits.

I went back home after that.

The test started at 9, I got done at about 11:30. It was very thorough. At least this time I wasn’t jet-lagged like I was four years ago. But it would have been better if I had studied a bit… and could speak better.

I wish I had known how big a deal the placement test was going to be, just for my pride’s sake. But it’s kind of tricky– if I study for the placement test, then I might wind up in a class I really don’t belong in, because I don’t really have all of the previous material mastered, instead I know it just well enough to pass the test.

After the conversation test and my talk with S-sensei, I realized that I needed to get into a section that would help me with my speaking a lot. It was rough. So I’m not going to get too worked up over where I wind up. The main reason I’m here is to get better.

Then after I had lunch, I came back to campus for my last private lessons. More tutoring in things I have forgotten (mostly speaking), and then a CALL session, but the teacher wasn’t there. We’ll have to make it up or something.

Tomorrow we’re free to do whatever.

Me? I dunno.

Nagoya? Probably.

Eye Yai Yai

 Food, Foreign Languages, Japan, Japanese Language, Photos, Travel  Comments Off on Eye Yai Yai
Sep 282011
 

I had the hotel’s breakfast again, then went straight to the front desk to take care of two things:

  1. my eyes, which now hurt like hell
  2. and finding someone who can do something about the stink in the bathroom. Seriously, what is that? It’s not me. It was like that when I got there.

A nice young woman at the desk told me to go to the JR Hospital down the street a block from the hotel, and she helped me write a short paragraph in Japanese, explaining just what the heck is wrong with my eyes.

Yeah, I know, I’m lame. But I haven’t studied medical Japanese at all. I did learn the word 眼科 がんか ganka, which means ophthalmology.

Anyway, I had to hustle, because they stopped seeing patients at 11 a.m., and it was already 10. So I rushed over there, and started working my way through the Japanese Health Care Delivery System. And it IS a system.

A Hospital Is Approaching, Please Stand Behind the Yellow Line

First things first– it is the JR Hosptial. Yes, that JR, as in Japan Rail. Well, I’ve seen stranger things, I guess. But I can’t complain. The treatment I got was first-rate, just like pretty much everything Japan Rail does. (Except maybe some of the train station bathrooms… some of those can be kind of on the icky side.)

First I had to ask around to find the non-emergency clinics. Clinics found, I got handed around by a bunch of nice women, some of whom spoke English, some of whom did not. Eventually, they found a medical translator, and she helped me get through most of the forms, and helped me get my hospital card… which had my name spelled wrong in both English *and* in Japanese. Quite a feat, but not surprising. My last name isn’t easy for native English speakers, either. They always screw it up. Can’t say I was surprised.

The translator led me to the ophthalmology clinic, then I got a number, and got down to some serious waiting. And waiting. About 40 minutes of waiting.

I finally saw an ophthalmologist who spoke near perfect English, and she told me that my eyes were inflamed. (Which I kind of knew.) She gave me some prescriptions for some medication, answered my questions, and sent me on my merry way.

Then it was off to the cashier to pay, and then to the pharmacy department to pick up my meds. And I was done.

From “I’m coming to your hospital with my sick eyes,” to “Here are your eye drops, now get out,” it took about 2 hours, and cost about 11,000 yen.

That’s pretty good, considering that it usually takes me anywhere from 7-10 days to see my eye doctor in the US. By then, my eyeballs are trying to explode in my head. Maybe they can fit me in that day, maybe they can see me next week, or the week after. It’s not a sure thing.

To be honest, I like the Japanese system of coming in early, taking a number, and seeing the doctor that way, but I don’t think it would work in the US. It would be a mess. The doctors would just get totally swamped.

Oh wait, we already have that sort of thing, it’s called the Emergency Room. But it’s ridiculously expensive.

From the Eyes to the Nose

After I got my eyes fixed, I went back to the hotel to see what was up with my room. They were cleaning it.

So I goofed off in the lobby for a while.

I went back to check, and they couldn’t fix the bathroom, so they offered another room.

Hmm. I’m leaving in the morning. Is it really worth it to move all of my crap?

Yes. Yes, it is. The bathroom smells funky. It’s as if someone has peed on the ceiling, walls, and places I don’t even know about, with a musky kind of pee that is just awful.

Yes, I will take your new room!

So I moved to a room on the 6th floor, 639, away from room 1326. (I didn’t like being on the 13th floor anyway.)

Senso-ji, I Have Returned!

After a short break, it was time to head to Asakusa, to Senso-ji, for a little photography break, and to see the Kakminarimon again, among other things.

If you want more information or to see the photos from the first trip, they’re here.

The Kaminarimon is always interesting:

Senso-ji Kaminarimon

Nakamise Dori is still busy:

Nakamise Dori

No lanterns at the Houzoumon this time:

Houzoumon

Back side of the Houzoumon:

Houzoumon

The Chouchin is still impressive, although the paint is starting to crack:

Houzoumon -- Chouchin

Chouchin supporters!

Houzoumon -- Chouchin

The Tokyo Sky Tree dominates the scenery:

Tokyo Sky Tree

Tokyo Sky Tree

Houzoumon and Sky Tree, Combine!

Houzoumon and Sky Tree

The Honden is still busy:

Senso-ji Honden

Senso-ji Honden

Heading out–Nakimise Dori:

Nakamise Dori -- On the Way Out

Kaminarimon on the way out:

Kaminarimon -- Nakamise Dori side

I like Asakusa a lot. It’s a neat neighborhood, and I really like the temple there. Granted, it’s usually choked with tourists, but it’s still fun.

I wandered around there for about an hour or so, and took all sorts of pictures. I thought about heading to the new Tokyo Sky Tree under construction, but it was too close to closing time and… to be honest, it was too much of a pain to get there.

Ameyoko

So I headed to Ueno, with no particular destination in mind, and wound up in Ameyoko-cho. (I think that’s right… could be wrong about that.)

Ameyoko-cho is in all of the guide books as someplace to see “great street life” or whatever. It’s interesting, and kind of useful, if you want to buy fish or $10 watches, or maybe a T-Shirt with some weird English on it, or maybe a random piece of luggage.

See, it’s really hard to pin down what you’d want there. It’s just stuff that people would buy if they live in Tokyo, not necessarily if they’re tourists.

“Hey, Mr. Tourist, I have a really big smelly fish for you! It just fell off of a truck! $5 okay?”

No, that just doesn’t work if you’re staying in a hotel as a tourist, you see?

Now, if you’re local, things change. “Oooo, just *how* smelly is it? Is it ‘peel the paint off the walls’ smelly, or ‘send me to the hosptial again’ smelly? Because I’m thinking sashimi if the worms aren’t too big!”

I wandered. I didn’t buy the fish, nor did buy the watches that were amazingly reduced from 10,000 yen to 1,000 yen for the next 10 minutes ONLY! What a coincidence!

Then it was back to the hotel for some dinner. But first, it was time to hit Takashimaya Times Square’s basement for dinner. Half-price basement food. Yum. Then back to the room to scarf it down.

After that, it was time for a trip to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, to check out some nighttime scenery.

Tokyo Metropolitan Building On the Way Out

The scenery is very pretty, but I forgot my circular polarizer again… doh.

The view from the Tokyo Metropolitan Building

I tried pressing the camera closer, but it still didn’t work:

The view from the Tokyo Metropolitan Building

One decent shot from pressing the lens right up against the glass, but I didn’t want to risk damaging anything (and you can still see reflections in the shot, even with the lens up against the glass!):

The view from the Tokyo Metropolitan Building

Then it was back to the hotel room.

Streets of Shinjuku

Tomorrow it’s off to Okazaki. I hope they have a bed for me instead of a futon plank. I never heard anything either way.

Jul 272009
 

After seeing this post by Vosmiura on the RtK forums, I’m going to try Iversen’s method of learning lists of vocabulary before entering them into Anki.

I’m not usually obsessed with getting particularly high pass rates or having high long-term retention percentages (mine is already around 96%), but I have been noticing lately that there are certain words that just don’t seem to stick, no matter how often I see them, and it’s bugging the crap out of me.

If you jump down a few posts later on, Vosmiura provides graphical evidence of how his retention rates improved in Anki over a 47-day period. It improved for short, medium, and long-term retention, so that’s not too shabby.

The basic gist of Iversen’s method is simple. I’m paraphrasing from his post here. (Scroll down about halfway down to the big post.)

How to Make Word Lists Work

Take a list of 5-7 words in foreign language X you want to learn, which have corresponding meanings in your native language Y.

Write the words in foreign language X in a column on a piece of paper in one color of ink. Then learn all of the meanings in your native language Y, and only write them down in the next column when you know all of them and can write them without hesitation.

So if you go down your list of 5-7 words, and you keep missing one, don’t write down the translations for any of them yet. If you have to struggle to remember one word in your native language Y, don’t write anything down yet. Keep going at it until you can. If you have to look stuff up, then look stuff up.

Once you can remember everything, then write down all of the translations in your Y language in a different color ink.

Now go and cover up the original words in the foreign language X column. Based only on the words you see in your Y language column, use the 3rd column to reconstruct the X column the same way you had to construct the Y column. That is, you can’t write anything down until you can write everything down correctly.

So when you’re done, your sheet looks something like this:

X language --> Y language --> X language

With one column for each.

Now comes the tricky bit: applying it to Japanese, which has kana and kanji for a lot of words. If a word has no kanji, you’re fine. It’s just English and kana. Not a problem. But kanji will complicate matters, as they always do.

Vosmiura’s approach is to break it down like this:

Kanji --- Kana --- English

He covers the kana and English columns while looking at the kanji. That way he makes sure he has the meaning and the reading correct.

He also varies the way he tests the list. If the list has words in the order a-b-c-d-e-f-g, he doesn’t always test in the order abcdefg. He often tests gfedcba, or acfedgb, or any other random order.

I think it’s a good idea to avoid getting the cde words lost in the middle.

Remember, we’re good at remembering firsts and lasts, but horrible at remembering stuff in the middle.

I’m going to try messing with the order a little to fit my models better, and see how it works. It may work, it may fail spectacularly.

So I’m going to try setting it up like this for now:

Kana --- Kanji --- English --- Kana --- Kanji

That way, I get Iversen’s X-Y-X pattern, and I get my production needs met. Although in this case I guess it’s more of a X-X’-Y-X-X’ method.

Monolingual types will probably froth at the mouth a bit, but I’m not a monolingual zealot. Whatever gets my error rate down is cool with me.

I am becoming more and more “theory agnostic” and am just using whatever works best for me.

Oh, and the mountains are still gorgeous.

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