Japanese

Nijikon 2011

I’m an idiot.

Yup, only I could’ve managed to go to the wrong location to an event that happens every year in the same place. Yup, that’s me an idiot that never gets where she’s supposed to.  Not only that but the convention wasn’t called Otaku festival it was called Nijikon. The Otaku festival took place in May while the Nijikon convention is in October.

I’m an idiot.

The worst part is that this time I dragged Johnny after me. Yup, I managed to convince him to come with me. I was happy that he came with me even if he wasn’t that pleased. Well I can understand him, I wouldn’t have liked to pay for things that I don’t use either. But he’s a nice guy and he supports my hobbies (even financially).

So here’s how it went:

  • we payed the fee and got in
  • I dragged him around looking for the best shops
  • we noticed a lot of people who were cosplayers are a lot of cute cat hats
  • bought a handmade notebook with Totoro and a Chopper plush toy
  • left

Yup, we only stayed about 20-30 minutes there.

I just realized that the only thing that I like about this things/conventions are the goods that I can buy. I don’t like to hang around much, especially since I don’t have many friends that are into anime. So it’s weird to be the only one going alone to this kid of things. Seriously, I only saw people in groups. I know that I had Johnny with me this time, but he was there because he’s my boyfriend not because he wanted to be there.

It’s different when you go with people that share your hobby.

This year there were a lot more shops and a lot more merchandise. I saw many cute things but *cough*Johnny*cough* only bought two: a handmade Totoro notebook (15Ron) and a Chopper plush toy (50Ron). But there was one item I do regret not buying: a Chi wallet (30Ron). It was so cute and functional. Darn you life for not giving me money when I need it most.

There were some Japanese guys there that were selling a lot of cool stuff, and this is were I saw the wallet. But all of their merchandise was expensive. I mean a Totoro wallet was 70Ron! That’s pretty expensive for a wallet. They also had some Totoro plush toys, pretty big in size, but truthfully they were ugly. And after seeing the price of the wallet I didn’t dare ask how much the plushies were.

Oh well, I can’t complain much because I did spend a lot of money this weekend. Besides the things I bought at the convention I also bought new manga’s from MangaShop: 2 new volumes from Dr. Slump and the first 2 volumes from Cross Game.

I’ve spent quite a bit this month on my hobby so I’ll need to behave the next few months. Heh, but I got Chopper and he’s so darn cute I can’t believe it.

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My first try at reading and translating hiragana

Normally, at this point I would drop everything and forget about learning Japanese. I would just give up!

I’m just stunned how difficult it is to learn a foreign language as an adult. Now I regret even more giving up so easily when I was still in school. If I would’ve kept going maybe today I wouldn’t feel so disappointed with myself.

But enough of that.

I tried the impossible today aka reading and translating a childrens story. Needless to say, it was a futile attempt on my part, considering I still haven’t learned all the Hiragana characters. But I tried. Learning from error is better than not trying to learn at all.

With this opportunity I also practiced my writing. What can I say, I barely managed to read the words, translating the text is another story. So here is how I read the text:

Itsusunboushi

Mukashi mukashi kodomoga inai ojiisanto obaasanga kamisamani ongaio muruto koyubikuraino otokonokoga umawamashita.

“Mamaeha itsusunboushinishimashou”

Futariga takusan gohano tabesasetanode itsusunboushiha totemo genkini sodasamashita.

That doesn’t feel right at all! The words are way to long even for Japanese. Even I can tell that it’s wrong but the question here is how wrong am I. The original text:

いっすんぼうし

むかし　むかし　こどもが　いない　おじいさんと　おばあさんが　かみさまに　おねがいを　すると　こゆびくらいの　おとこのこが　うまれました。

And it’s reading in Romaji:

Issunboushi

Mukashi mukashi kodomo ga inai ojiisan to obaasan ga kamisama ni onegai wo suruto koyubikurai no otokonoko ga umaremashita.

I can only think of one thing right now, and that is that I still have a lot to learn about how the Japanese form their sentences, about particles and all the other things related to grammar. But I can recognize some words like “ojiisan” and “obaasan” which are stuck in my mind thanks to watching anime for so many years.

Oh well, back to my Hiragana characters.

⋅ Free time, Japanese ⋅ , , , ⋅ 2 comments

Japanese progress

Another post about my slow progress with learning Japanese.

I haven’t practiced much writing this past week and I was in no mood to study either. This is a shame because I just wasted one week. But I can’t say I wasted it entirely. After all I did my own kind of learning: I watched anime (Sailor Moon and One Piece) and read manga (Hajime no Ippo).

It might not be real studying, but I realized I can read a lot more words with the Hiragana syllables I currently know and I recognize even more words just by hearing them.

For example, I was really happy when I was watching an episode of Sailor Moon where Luna was reading a letter from Usagi and there was this phrase “ashita no yoru” which means “tomorrow evening” (maine seara) and I recognized it instantly.

It might not be much for more advanced learners but it’s nice to know I’m making some kind of progress even if I’m not actively studying.

I was also thinking of buying a workbook but I saw the prices and changed my mind. I think I’ll stick with what I have for now. When I’ll finish my current workbooks I’ll see if it’s worth buying them or not.

P.S. I just gave my handwriting a second look, and it looks horrible. I really need to practice writing more.

⋅ Japanese ⋅ 2 comments

Hiragana handwriting

I’m back again with new progress, if you could call progress learning a few more characters.

But then again even slow progress is good progress. I’m not in a hurry to learn the language, even if I’m a few years late with accomplishing my childhood dream. It’s not like I will be moving in the near future. Nope, I’ll have to wait a few more years.

I know I’m going slow. I can’t help it. There are days when I just don’t have the time for it, and days when I’m just not in the mood. For example, because of the idiotic situations that I have to put up at work (I was just given another blow to the liver) I’ve became so stressed that I had a few days when I was depressed. I started having bad thoughts about everything, including my dream to learn Japanese. Heck, I even had a period when I started smoking just to have a reason to get out of the office.

But I’m not the type to sit and complain for long so I snapped back to my usual self, aka my Don’t give a fuck self combined with You’ll eat shit soon enough self. That and Johnny’s encouragement of my pursue of the Japanese language made me realize that I’ll be dealing with a lot of this situations and I’ll just have to suck it up. Just a few more years: 3 to be more precise.

Moving on…

I bought the Genki book and workbook, but I soon realized that I can’t use them because I don’t know the Hiragana and Katakana characters. It sucks, but it makes sense. Without the basics you can’t advance. Yet just having those books around is motivating. They are so shinny and new. Heck, even Johnny bought me the Japanese Proficiency Language Tests (well practice books like the one I had for my IELTS exam) for Level 5 and Level 4.

It’s nice to have moral support. And just to make things better, today I’m going to get my new hard drive from the service (750GB of memory here I come) and I’m going to the postal office to pick up my package from *drum roll* YesStyle! External memory and new clothes, what can be better? Leaving earlier from work. Hehe

⋅ Free time, Japanese ⋅ No comments

Japanese progress

I was planning by the end of this month to have the Hiragana characters memorized. But like everything in my life, nothing goes as planned.

I’ve only managed to memorize around 18 syllables. I’m not upset or anything, in fact I’m pretty pleased with myself. There was a period of two weeks when I didn’t practice at all (life got in the way) but it didn’t affect my learning process at all. Because I practiced writing the same syllables for hours at a time I’ve become pretty used to them by now and I can recognize them in an instant.


It might be slow progress but it’s all good. I’d rather take things easy and make sure I truly memorize them then hurry and just forget them later. After all Japanese isn’t a language that can be learned in a few months and considering how many characters there are I will need a memory of an elephant.

⋅ Free time, Japanese ⋅ No comments