I just spent like two hours looking into keto diets, because I find myself being semi-obsessed with going to the gym and trying to get back down to a healthy weight. But I think that now that I’ve done that much reading… I’m both a: convinced that it’s a great concept and it works, and b: convinced that I don’t have the time or patience to learn anything more about it. Every food item I looked into has more protein than fat, and I just can’t see a way to balance out the dietary budget to get the ratio I need without straight-up drinking heavy cream. And forget that. I’m just going to have to continue going to the gym, and trying not to eat too much candy and bread and hopefully things just work out.

In the meantime: Read More >

Hoyo ~ It’s been a few days since I’ve done any sort of studying. It’s a long weekend, what can I say. I managed to binge watch through Better Call Saul though.

I feel like the first time I did programming, back in high school, I didn’t really “get it”. I instead made the decision to get into doing artwork, which over time evolved into visual effects. I’ve been lucky to get to dabble with scripting while doing a job that is largely creative, and now that I’m returning to some basic C++, I feel like I have a much better understanding of it. Ben is doing a great job teaching the course so far, and it’s enjoyable to follow the lessons. That said, time to jump in with the note taking. Read More >

Alright, I’ve been so focused on Japanese recently, it’s easy to forget that I have other things I want to do too! Yesterday is the first day in close to a month that I decided to just go with the flow, not do anything planned after work, and ended up watching the first two episodes of Better Call Saul. It starts off great! I’d love to binge watch the rest of it, but all play and no work makes for an empty blog.

It’s been a week since I last followed along with the coursework over on Udemy, so lets get back into gear:

Read More >

It’s been a while since playing any video games, and the urge was strong tonight. I’m currently trying to figure out if there’s a good option for me to play in Japanese. Either via PS3, or import on DS. Both of which I own and can easily play games on from other markets. I’m tempted to look into emulation options too so that I can check out the Japanese versions of some of the NES or SNES games I grew up with. In the meantime though, I was able to scratch a little of my itch by picking up Influent again. Read More >

It’s very vocabulary heavy learning a new language… it’s horrible to want to race through chapters and take in as much as my grey matter will allow, however it’s also quite difficult to store any of this into long term memory when I keep getting new words every day. A couple of them will stick, but not enough I’m afraid. Maybe I need to start entering the words into Anki or Memrise or something so that I can start memorizing them before I continue bombarding myself with more new stuff.

I was able to find sometime to re-listen to Pimsleur 1-11 today in addition to doing new stuff. So, especially having taken notes yesterday, I feel like I was able to listen better today. But then I went and also made it though two chapters of Human Japanese, and another new Pimsleur session.

Let’s start with the Human Japanese stuff first: Read More >

Exercising while sick isn’t fun. I felt a little light headed afterward actually, and had to reduce the speed of that treadmill just a smidge. But I still did it! That’s three full weeks of going to the gym now, and I’ve managed to drop almost 3 kg so far (unfortunately my bathroom scale is in lbs… so I’ll have to say 6lbs). I’m not going to let a little cold get in my way of continuing to reach for my target. I, of course, managed another Pimsleur session at the same time. I also managed to bring my katakana memorization up a notch.

Pimsleur Level 1, Unit 11

This class is mostly about asking when you want to do something. Want to eat dinner at my place tonight? That sort of thing.

Something that was interesting in the teaching style of this lesson, is that the phrases きいてください and くりかえしてください were both introduced without being introduced. The audio was just slammed into my ear, and it actually threw me off quite a bit. It was jarring to have phrases spoken, and I wasn’t able to have it repeated immediately so I could try to decypher it. Apparently they’re going to do more of that as time goes on.

I’ve got 20 more lessons to go to finish up Level 1, so at the rate I’m going that might be another 7 weeks.

Phrases
– なんじですか。 – what time is it?
– いまなんじですか。 – what time is it, now?
– さんじにのみたいです。 – at 3 o’clock I want to eat.
– いえいまのみたくありません。 – no, I don’t want to drink right now.
– いつのみますか。 – when would you like to eat?
– じゃあしちじに。 – well then, seven o’clock?
– こんばんすずきさんとたべたいです。 – This evening, I’d like to eat with Suzuki-san.
– ばんごはんをたべませんか。 – Won’t you eat dinner?
– こんばんじゅうじにばんごはんをたべます。 – I’m going to have dinner at 10PM
– あしたのばんたなかさんとばんごはんをたべます。 – tomorrow night, I want to have dinner with Tanaka-san.
– わたしとばんごはんをたべませんか。 – Won’t you have dinner with me?
– ありがとうございますでもきょうわちょっと。 – thank you, but today is a bit…
– こんばんのみませんか。 – won’t you have a drink this evening?
– こんばんあにをしますか。 – what are you doing this evening?
– コーヒーをのみます。 – I will drink coffee.
– じゃあまたあした。 – See you tomorrow.

Human Japanese Chapter 11/12

Chapter 11 was simply a page on Japanese bathing habits.

Chapter 12 introduces more vocabulary:

and the lesson ends with some more katakana:

マ – 2 strokes – it’s easy to remember this one as a triangular flag on a stick (just imagine the line extending the rest of the way up)
ミ – 3 strokes – another way to say the number 3 is mittsu. Just as ni is two lines, mi is three. They’re also slightly angled downward.
ム – 2 strokes – This one might be like the lid opening on a box. or something? It’s triangular shaped.
メ – 2 strokes – this is an extremely abbreviated version of it’s hiragana version: め. It shouldn’t look like an x
モ – 3 strokes – It’s a lot like it’s cousin too. The stroke order is different though, as in Hiragana, the vertical line goes first. も

Yay! I practiced the katakana today for a bit with Obenkyo, and it seems to have made a difference. During the review here, テ was the only one that threw me off. Memorizing these won’t be so bad after all 🙂

ヤ – 2 strokes – This is very similar to や, but it’s more angular and missing a stroke.
ユ – 3 strokes – the vertical portion of the first stroke should veer slightly left, never to the right.
ヨ – 3 strokes – it’s a backward E, The lower arms are drawn left to right.

these of course don’t use ten-ten, but they work just as their hiragana counterparts to make extended sounds such as kya キャ, shu　シュ, and cho　チョ. And are very easy to take in.

There’s not enough hours in a day. Jobs are the worst. I should totally just have a gofundme or some bullshit so that I don’t have to work anymore. Then I’ll just learn stuff all day and feel stressed because there’s still not enough time in a day.

Ok, so I left off at some ungodly hour (like I do every night) a while back half-way through Human Japanese Chapter 10. I should try and finish that since I’ve found myself attempting to learn kanji. I don’t even have a good grasp on katakana! That said I managed to also spend a bunch of time looking into a strategy for learning Kanji today, so expect a look at that before the week is out. Since I can only memorize so much a day, I’m going to hold off on it just until I finish enough Human Japanese that I feel that I’ve got katakana down. In the meantime, I’ll be using Obenkyo to test myself a couple of times a day to help pound the kana into that noggin. Read More >