Nihongo Notes

Random Japan #1

Chris — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:40:04 +0000

A few photos over the past few weeks of random things that caught my attention.

I walked past this place, I think it was a bar, every morning when I was living in the guesthouse. One letter wrong can change the whole meaning ^^

Sometimes I wonder if people even bother to look up the definition of a word before using it as the company name...

I'm in heaven!

Mickey takes a day off from Disney Land

Would you give him a hug?

Work & Employment in Japan

Chris — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:11:16 +0000

You may have already heard via my Twitter or via the grapevine that I finally found a job here in Tokyo. I hoped if I stuck with it that I’d eventually find an IT job here, and one day I would land a dream job. I never expected it all to happen in one go, but I’m very glad it did.

I can happily say that I wake up every morning looking forward to work, even if I have a 1 hour and 20 minute train journey. Even the journey worked out well because I get a seat going both ways with a solid 60 mins available to work on my laptop.

Things have worked out amazingly well so far, but it wasn't easy in the beginning, so I thought I'd write about my experiences job hunting.

I arrived in Japan on a 1-year working holiday visa during Nov 2008 and soon began looking for work. I spent 6 long months looking for IT work, with some positive feedback but no results. I knew it would take a while and had enough savings for 7 months, but didn’t expect it to be so difficult. The financial crisis around the world was partly to blame for the lack of employment opportunities, but I couldn’t just sit on my bum and moan about the state of the world.

During those 6 months I continued to hunt for work using several different approaches:

Online Job Sites

Agencies

Networking & Direct contact with companies

I searched Google for web development companies in Tokyo and contacted them all. Out of about 20 emails I sent I got roughly 10 responses and 3 interviews. This was my most successful method for finding full-time work.

Freelance/Online Forums

I registered with a few web development bidding sites, but found it hard to win bids for work where I wasn’t working at a ridiculously low rate. I also posted on groups/forums such as the Tokyo 2.0 group, which has sent me about 4 emails of people looking for a freelancer, and I have managed to build a good relationship with one of my clients from the Tokyo 2.0 forums. If you can do a consistently good job for a client they will often do their best to send you work, because they know that what you produce will be of high quality.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The job sites are ok, but I didn’t find much for IT, they’re good if you’re looking for English teaching jobs. The agencies seem like a good way to get IT work with large companies. The main issue with the agencies was that most of them are aimed towards those who speak English and Japanese at a high level. My Japanese ability didn’t meet the requirements, but they still tried to find me work and I’m grateful for that.

A lot of companies were looking for hardcore programmers and I’m more of a front-end developer/designer, but I couldn’t be picky about what jobs I interviewed for, so I followed up every opportunity that arose. I had enough programming knowledge to apply for the jobs and with a bit of study could switch to a programmer role.

One thing I learned is that a nicely designed PDF resume is a good thing, but be sure to have it in Word format too, since most agencies only want it in Word format. My Word document was basic, and that was fine for them, since I think they just needed it to cut/paste into their internal database system.

Luckily I found a few freelance web development jobs online and they kept me afloat, but it wasn’t a comfortable time. There was always pressure to find next months rent. So I continued to pursue a full-time job.

Teaching English

I knew teaching English was an ‘easy’ way to find work, but it was the polar opposite of what I want to be doing. For me to teach English was like trying to fit a round block into a triangular hole. I am still in awe at those who manage to control a room of kids. So I interviewed for several teaching positions and soon realized it was a bad fit for me. However I kept applying because it was the only alternative for employment. I read horror stories about GABA and other teaching ‘factories’ so I did my utmost to avoid them.

I had a particularly ‘fun’ english teaching interview where part of it went something along the lines of:

After traveling for over an hour, filling in a 2 sided questionnaire with strange personal questions, having my passport photocopied and answering several more questions, I thought I was doing ok…

Lady 1 You originally worked in the IT field?
Me Yes
Lady 2 *whispers to lady 1*
Lady 1 Why are you not looking for IT work?
Me (slightly bending the truth) I’m looking for a new challenge.
Lady 2 *whispers to lady 1* *giggles*
Lady 1 You don’t seem very ..uhm… energetic
Me *wonders how more energetic he could be in a seated interview*
Me I can be energetic if you’d like. Will we be going through a teaching scenario?
Lady 2 *whispers to lady 1*
Lady 1 I think you should find IT work. There must be lots of IT work here in Tokyo.
Me … *screams internally*

I’d been through so many interviews previously that I knew it wasn’t me that was the problem. If someone else had the same kind of reception as I did for their first interview I hope it didn’t crush their confidence too much… It was an incredibly unprofessional interview, especially the second lady who kept whispering to her co-worker. The giggling and whispering was very rude. Luckily now I can look back on it and laugh, but at the time I wasn’t laughing.

It was worthwhile

I learned a lot about the interview process and job hunting. The biggest thing I learned is patience… You’ve got to just go for every single job opportunity you can find and, from 20 interviews, you might get 1 or 2 good chances. I continued to freelance whilst building my online projects such as this blog and JPop Japan (some changes are in the works). I got further involved in the Japan-related blogosphere, primarily at JapanSoc where I met a bunch of great people.

During that time Nick Ramsay got in touch and asked me to help redesign JapanSoc. We worked together, since building templates for the CMS system he was using isn’t the easiest of tasks and he knew the system well. It was good fun and a good experience working with Nick. He was pleased with the job and it received a good response online. I also met several times with the people at Cerego (smart.fm) which was partly due to my blog posts about the site and from contacting them directly about work. Unfortunately I missed the boat for a developer job and all positions had been filled. We continued to stay in touch and there was possibility for a community/blog position but I had another offer I couldn’t refuse.

I knew of dannychoo.com and since contacting companies directly had been a reasonably successful way of getting IT job interviews I decided to just give it a try and email Danny. He responded and suggested we chat at the next Tokyo CGM night. So after a few weeks I met Danny at the event and we had a little chat. Danny said he’d be in touch if there was work, but I suspected there was little chance in the current financial situation around the world. The Tokyo CGM Night was great fun and it was the first time I’d chatted to a potential employer (or anyone for that matter) whilst they were wearing stormtrooper armor ^^

It was my work on JapanSoc that got Danny’s attention and he invited me for a meeting. After a lunch meeting with Danny and Hector I left feeling things had gone well. The job seemed a perfect fit for me, Danny and Hector were nice guys and Mirai Inc is doing some very interesting things. So it was a great feeling when I got the call from Danny asking me to come work at Mirai Inc. We started on a trial period, since it’s a very small team and it’s important on both sides that we all get along and can work together. Well, we all got along well and Danny offered me a full-time position in the team!

I’m grateful to Danny for giving me the chance to prove myself and I’m looking forward to developing some great things at Mirai inc. がんばります!

Danny has written about Japanese Companies and about why he employed me. The free figures are definitely a nice bonus to the job and working at Mirai Inc is always interesting. So feel free to follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my RSS feed as I will be posting regularly about work and life in Japan.

Tokyo CGM Night #5

Chris — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:42:49 +0000

Last night was the 5th episode of Tokyo CGM Night. Once again it was packed with lots of interesting people and this time we were visited by 30 Google managers from around the world. It was good to catch up with people and meet some new faces.

This time there were more people than just Danny in costume.

Flickr and Twitter tags were streaming across the big screen, currently full of tweets from Paul Papadimitriou, the man of many tweets ^^

I only had my small canon ixus with me, but here are a few more shots of the night.

I also got some Firefox stickers for my laptop ^^

Anki SRS on the Nintendo DS

Chris — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:13:28 +0000

So far the available options for taking your Anki deck mobile are not that great. I’d love to have a proper Anki iPhone app with syncing and stats. I’ve toyed with the idea of building my own for my first iPhone app project, but unfortunately there aren’t 36 hours in a day, so I’ve never found the time to start it.

Today I spotted an interesting tweet by @2nihon about his attempts to get his Anki deck onto his Nintendo DS.

He has yet to put it into action, but the tools are on the way and I’m looking forward to reading more about it.

How to introduce yourself in Japanese

Chris — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 01:11:55 +0000

Recently I was gifted several figures by the generous Mr Danny Choo and I had an idea one evening to use these figures for creating every-day scenes for Japanese lessons. This way I not only make the lessons a little more interesting for others but the action of creating the images helps to give the words and phrases I’m learning some personal context.

Personal context is very valuable when learning a language. It’s much easier to recall a word from a fun or embarrassing memory rather than a word you revised from a book. Another benefit of writing these lessons is that if I make a mistake I hope someone will kindly comment and correct me. For both of us this will create another useful memory for recalling the phrase later. Also these articles will evolve over time as I correct my mistakes and learn new phrases.

So let’s get started on the first Nendoroid Nihongo lesson!

You can get these and larger types of Nendoroids over at J-List

From left to right we have みゆき, つるや and the mystery figure in the collection with no name so I’ve called him ネオ ^^

You need to know the kana (hiragana and katakana) before we start. I personally think if you want to learn Japanese seriously you should avoid romaji at all costs. Plus the kana are easy to learn, so there’s no excuse not to learn them. First I’ll give you examples and then I’ll explain the parts of the sentences.

はじめまして

The very first thing I learned in Japanese was how to introduce myself. I can’t remember which textbook or site I learned it from, but I was of the understanding that the correct way for all situations was to introduce myself with:

はじめまして、私はクリスです。よろしくおねがいします。

This roughly translates to:

I’m glad to meet you (for the first time), I am Chris. Please treat me well.

Let’s break the sentence down:

はじめまして means “I’m glad to meet you” and should only be said the first time you meet someone.
私はクリスです means “I am Chris”.
- 私 (わたし) is the feminine way of saying “I” or “me” but is used for both men and women in polite situations. The masculine way of saying “I” or “me” is 僕 (ぼく) but since it’s more casual than 私 it’s not used in this case.
- は, pronounced わ when used as a particle, is the topic marker particle and comes after the topic, in this case the topic is myself (私).
- クリス is my name in katakana.
- です politely ends the sentence and can be described as meaning “It is the case that”, but I’m not sure there is a clear translation for it in English.
よろしく in this case is a casual way of saying “Treat me well” or “Be kind to me”.
おねがいします means “Please”, so よろしくおねがいします means “Please treat me well” or “Please be kind to me” and is considered polite.

This is a very polite way of introducing yourself, and as I have gradually learned, probably only best used in business or if you’re meeting the emperor. In Japanese you can often drop the subject being discussed so you don’t even need to say 私. So let’s learn some other ways to introduce yourself.

どうぞよろしく

The more natural way to introduce yourself politely would be:

はじめまして、クリスです。どうぞよろしくおねがいします。

To be more casual you can drop the どうぞ:

はじめまして、クリスです。よろしくおねがいします。

And to be even more casual you can say:

はじめまして、クリスです。どうぞよろしく。

However you probably still want to be polite when you meet people for the first time, so the first and second options are your best choice.

This roughly translates to:

I’m glad to meet you (for the first time), I am Chris. Pleased to meet you.

The only new word here is: どうぞ, which like おねがいします also means “Please”.

こんにちは

If you’re only briefly meeting someone, say you’re walking down a 商店街 (しょうてんがい) “Shopping street” and someone stops briefly to greet your friend and your friend quickly introduces you, you can just say a typical daily greeting, such as:

こんにちは

Or if you are introduced and expect to get into a conversation with this person you can say:

はじめまして

However, one of the major things I’ve learned whilst being here in Japan is just to say at least something. The worst thing you can do is question what to say in a particular situation and end up saying nothing or mumbling your introduction.

It’s something I still fight to overcome now, but I’m getting better at just saying the first thing that comes to mind. If I make a mistake I have yet to come across anyone who has been offended (at least not visibly) and it often breaks the ice and gives everyone a giggle.

The Japanese language is a sea and you need to build a boat before setting out

A Week of Nihongo #2

Chris — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:20:26 +0000

The last 2 weeks have been good an bad. The good is that I found my groove with Japanese. I knew what I needed to learn and how to go about learning it. The bad is that I couldn’t find the time to actually do it. Those 2 weeks involved getting married, working hard and showing family around Tokyo. I’ll write more about those amazing 2 weeks in another article (or two!).

As you can see I managed to add 9 new kanji but after that I didn't get around to even revising them. This weekend I failed quite a few during revision.

This week I’m playing catch-up. I’m not too bothered, since kanji is not my main goal right now, but I do need to keep revising and gradually learning new ones. Once I’ve relearned the failed kanji I will continue revising and adding new ones.

I had a mass of family come visit last week and my parents kindly bought along all the books I left behind, even books I bought from Japan back to the UK last year! Some of the books are way above my level, such as all those 'Death Note' books, but the 'あたしンち' books are a good challenge.

However, just owning the books doesn’t help, I actually have to use them ^^ I’ll talk about how I’m using them and what I think of them soon. I’m now working on a couple of articles about the things I’m studying, which I’ll turn into lessons for others to use.

The wife and I are about to move in to our own place. Well, actually it’s a small detached room with bathroom and kitchen behind her parents home. We’re staying there for about 2 months and then finally moving in to our own flat, which is still being built. We’re both looking forward to not having to sleep in this tiny guesthouse room anymore! We’ll be able to speak Japanese a lot more together and also by getting to know her family better, who don’t speak English, it will be good for my Japanese and good for us all.

I’m expecting a busy weekend and a bit of adjusting to a new living space but I’m determined not to let anything else disrupt my Japanese study!

Children’s Day (Boy’s Day) in Japan

Chris — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:01:23 +0000

I took these photos back in May. They are for Children’s Day (こどもの日) which is celebrated annually on May 5. It’s a day to respect children’s personalities and to celebrate their happiness. Before the festival families display these carp banners (鯉幟) outside their homes, but there are also big displays such as shown here.

I also saw a giant one, much bigger than a person, but didn’t have my camera with me at the time!

It was originally named Boy's Day, but people felt it was inappropriate because it was a national holiday when Girl's Day is not. So it was renamed to Children's Day.

Very colorful and it was a windy day too so they were flying about.

When displayed outside a home the top carp represents the father, the second carp represents the mother and all other carp after that represent the children.

I'm not sure if the color has meaning too, does anyone know?

Tokyo CGM Night #4

Chris — Sun, 17 May 2009 11:51:49 +0000

Getting back into blogging after a few weeks of silence. You may have noticed there’s been an update to the site design. I wanted to fit more content on the front page as well as tidy things up a bit.

I’m very late with my post on the last Tokyo CGM Night, so late in fact it’s almost that time again! I had a good time there and look forward to the next one.

A part of the Tokyo Stormtrooper

I should've got one of these posters

My poken is all alone looking for other poken to high-five

Me and Ken taking photos of our shadows ^^

I only took along my Canon Digital Ixus 75 camera so the photo quality is a bit poor.

Danny Choo makes his presentation about Mirai Inc

Tokyo Cooney makes his presentation about jibtv.com. Japanese TV available online outside Japan (but not inside Japan...)

A couple of maids serving cake. yum yum yes please.

Crabs in Ice

Chris — Sun, 17 May 2009 09:57:49 +0000

Came across this awesome display of seafood on my way to lunch this week.

Do you eat seafood? I came to Japan on a tour last year and about 4 of the 12 people didn’t eat seafood. The tour guide had to keep everyone happy so there was a lot of awkward moments when people realized that most places don’t serve vegetarian dishes here in Japan. I felt sorry for the tour guide having to sort all of that out.

I was more than happy as long as I had some form of meat and beer ^^

The Japanese language is a sea and you need to build a boat before setting out

A Week of Nihongo #1

Chris — Sun, 17 May 2009 06:02:01 +0000

Decided to revive my lesson diary, but make it a little more open and useful to others. So to start things off here’s a photo of this weeks kanji practice.

My handwriting has always been awful, and my drawing skills are worse, but the only way to improve is to practice. So I shall expose my bare naked notes so you can see you don’t have to be a calligraphy legend to learn kanji.

The little doodle at the bottom helped me remember the kanji for the keyword 'upright'. It's a magic wand shooting a clam (shellfish) and making it stand upright... ^^

I realize a lot of the keywords Heisig chooses are odd, such as ‘upright’. However I’ll get through the book and worry about relabeling them later. As long as I can remember a keyword for each kanji it’s a lot easier to replace that keyword later rather than worry about it too much right now.

I started RTK again and so far so good. I'll add another 10 kanji today and study my failed cards, since most of the week I only kept up with the revision. Taking it slowly and focusing more on vocabulary right now, but it's important to keep going with RTK.

I’ve been learning the vocabulary for body parts this week and have an article in the works about it. I was recommended to do so in case I fall ill and I figure that’s good advice. I’m taking this further and will continue to learn the vocab for many different daily or important situations. Too often I have got through a situation here in Japan and not bothered to remember the right phrases for next time. Bad, bad, bad!

I’ll learn grammar alongside my vocab sets too, but I think the vocab is more useful first. This goes along with my opinion that you should learn just as a child does. For instance kids don’t learn how to say “Holy s**t, I broke my leg!” first, they might say “leg” and scream a lot. So I’ll start with “あし” and work my way up to swearing at the gods.

Plan to make this a weekly update with more photos of things I learn and the tools I’m using.