This last month has been pretty rough on me to be honest. There was a lot of last minute planning for my vacation. And of course, right when you want to go on vacation, everything seems to need extra attention. More work to do at work. More fires to put out. I haven’t had as much time as I would like to sort my plan out.

My new position has a pretty hefty learning curve. I have heard that this pretty common so I’m not too worried. But it has meant that I have a lot of late nights catching up things. I think that sometime in the future I’ll be happy with my decision to take on more responsibility. Sometime.

But for now I’m getting an incredible amount of real in-your-face practice with Japanese so I’m not too worried about my skills going to waste. I’ve had to get used to a few slangy comments. My co-workers aren’t the most professional and Kansai has plenty of interesting dialects it seems like. It is making me sweat, but great practice.

Fighting back the burnout

Often times I tend to push my students like a coach would push his players. Constantly asking them about doing their homework and encouraging them non-stop to perform at the best level they can. More often than not they tend to push back, of course. No matter what the age, it seems everyone is allergic to studying hard. I have adult students that always talk about regretting not studying harder in school, but struggle to get regular practice in now.

And I think a good regular routine is good for you, but you can also go too far. I try to stop short of just mindlessly doing language practice. Because let’s be honest if you aren’t focused on the task, you are really aren’t doing yourself any benefits. Recently, I’ve been feeling that I’m starting to border on the way too much territory. Of course, having a vacation on my horizon didn’t really help me any.

But, as I have said before, motivation is pretty much the only thing you need to be successful with language learning. So, if you feel like you have reached the edges of burnout, it is good to take a step back and take a little mental vacation before you lose it completely. I think some people might think I’m pretty lazy with my studies, but I think if you purposefully use your time to take a break when you need it, you can focus a lot more and get a lot more done with your time when you are ‘on’.

I’ve been flirting with doing more and more meditation lately, and I feel like putting in the 5 minutes or so a day to refocus has started to really pay off. It’s not that there is this sudden change, but an overall better ability to get stuff down and feel good doing it. Meditation can really help stop burn out from anything I think as long as you stick with it.

Stop and look around

It’s now the beginning of September and we are about 3 months away from the December JLPT (Dec 6th). It’s a good time to look around and take stock of where you are in terms of preparing for whatever level you want to take. If you are behind, you are going to have to put your head down and hold your breath to get through to the end. If you have been burning the candle at both ends, it is a great time to take a short break before you burn yourself out in this final stretch.

I personally recommend giving yourself a little holiday before the main event. I wouldn’t recommend dropping all your studies at once, though. Keep up the habit of doing your vocabulary and your drill books, just might want to tone it down a bit and take some time out of your day to just relax a little and clear your mind. Taking the time now will definitely pay off when you start doing the serious studying.

If you haven’t started, now is when you should start drafting a plan. Lay out what you want to get it done. Set some manageable goals for yourself to hit over the next few months heading into the test. What books do you want to finish? How many more words are you going to go through in that time? Be sure to leave yourself some wiggle room for a final reviewing and reinforcing session at the end of it all.

Test or Not to Test

Every test, I tend to get a lot of questions about whether I’ll take the test or not. I definitely want to make another attempt, but there are a lot of things that are holding me back. I have a pretty clear idea of what I need to do and what I need to work on to get to the point that I need to be to pass, but I just can’t make the time commitment to do it.

I’ve bit off more than I can chew with the site to be honest. It has exploded with traffic and I love helping people with the test and just enjoying Japanese. I love hearing from my readers (sorry, I don’t reply to everyone, but I do try to reply to as many as I can). It’s great hearing from such a lively community and getting feedback on what is and is not working. I’ve learned a lot about effective studying and I’ve been trying to share it as much I can.

I’m also getting significantly more real world practice, and I have been learning about the differences between standard language and jargon and kansai-ben. That has been a great amount of practice for me and I love it.

I’ve always tried to make the point that N1 isn’t actually necessary to get a job or achieve your dreams of being a good speaker of Japanese. Getting N2 is arguably useful and should be something to strive for if you want to be a good speaker, but N1 is kind of like icing on the cake. Icing is totally awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t necessary.

I actually know a good number of translators and other people working with Japanese every day that stopped at the N2 level, and don’t seem to be bothered by it. Now, of course, being a guy that blogs about the JLPT, I get steady pressure to take the test, and that is why I started the blog in the first place – so that I would have something/someone to push me to pass. And I will pass it someday, just maybe not this time.

How about you?

How are your JLPT plans coming along? Are you right on track? If you need some advice, check out Month 9 of the JLPT study guide for some tips on what to do now to be ready for the December test. Let me know in the comments if you have questions.

Photo by Yuki Yaginuma

When I first moved to Japan loved the city. It was nice and compact and everything is in one place. As long as you are a decent walk away from a train station you can get anywhere pretty easily without the use of a car. If you needed to buy anything that can’t be found at a store, no worries you can just order something online and give them a 2 hour window to deliver it to you. You have to live in a shoebox, but that’s the price you pay for convenience.

Japan is incredibly convenient because everyone lives so close to each other. There is actually a lot more space in Japan that people can live on. For example, Shimane prefecture is so desperate for people that they are giving away houses as long as you plan on living there for 25 years (kind of). So there is literally free space available for anyone that wants to live out in the countryside.

And cities have been getting a lot of love lately. People are starting to see them as a solution for a lot of problems with the environment as well as just being the new cool and convenient way to live. In recent years, city planners have been making cities much more inhabitable. New York City is a shiny example of that. They have shut down a lot areas to vehicular traffic and making them people-only zones as well as introduced bus lanes and bike lanes to allow for easier transit.

So living together is great for everyone, the environment, and life in general. People love the city. It’s almost like a little utopia. So, what could possibly go wrong with it? (queue ominous music)

The Utopian Rat Experiment

John Calhoun did an experiment where he gave rats plenty of food and water and enough space for a good number of rats to live. He eliminated disease, natural predators. Everything just kind of came to these rats without much effort. The idea was to simulate the ideal environment that we humans live in and see what would happen.

Rat population initially grew at a fairly rapid pace after a few months of settling in. Rats were making love and getting down, chowing down on the free grub and generally enjoying life. It was a good time to be alive for the rats.

Then, before the actual physical capacity of their little utopia had been reached the population started to level off. Keep in mind that they still had plenty of food and water. That wasn’t limiting them. The population just leveled off. Then after a period of a year or so of this leveling off, the population started to rapidly die off and finally went extinct. This was back in the good old days when killing off animals was no biggy apparently.

During this leveling off, Calhoun noticed a lot of interesting behaviors that pretty much led to the population’s downfall. Mothers stopped caring for their young. Fathers would first leave their kids and then their mothers would leave them. Sometimes they acted as if they simply forgot the children existed.

There were other rats that kept themselves immaculately clean, but didn’t do much else. They simply ate, slept and cleaned. They didn’t even get it on with other rats. And apparently they were pretty stupid as well.

On top of all that, they were constantly fighting with each other toward the end, despite the fact that there was not that much to fight over. There was plenty of food and water to go around. The only thing in limited supply was space. But they blooded each other’s tails with bites.

What about Japan

So, is the same thing happening in well-developed countries like Japan? Well, it isn’t exactly a rat colony and there are a lot more complexities to the Japanese system obviously. The country isn’t a big box in someone’s barn or lab, but there are some alarming signs that similar behavior is starting to become more prominent.

Child Abuse

In the rat utopia experiment mother’s abandoned their kids. There have been a few sensationalized news stories of mother’s abandoning their children, but nothing statistically relevant. However, child abuse has been on the rise for the last few years. Or at least, reports of child abuse have been on the increase.

Reporting of child abuse cases started in 1990. And good statistics weren’t really available until 2000 when it became a requirement for people to report cases of child abuse that they witnessed. Reporting has gotten better, but it is still believed to be under-reported for a variety of reasons.

Corporal punishment used to be a pretty standard practice in Japan 20 or 30 years ago. Natives of my generation have told me of having to receive spankings on a pretty regular basis at school. There was a famous case a few years ago of a coach who would beat up on his team captains.

And if you ask some conservatives in their 40s and 50s, a good majority believe that this should continue. That not having corporal punishment is making the next generation weak. I’ve personally seen a few minor cases of child abuse in public, a mother slapping their child for instance. It seems like for some of the population it is an acceptable way to discipline your children.

A recent report found that child abuse costs $14 billion annually, about the estimated cost of loses from the Tohoku earthquake. It is a hidden problem that is just starting to get more and more press and exposure, but not nearly as much as it should.

Metrosexuals

There is a good number of metrosexuals in Japan. I see at least a few a week precisely positioning each of the hairs on their head in the bathroom on a windy day, only to leave the restroom without washing their hands (sorry ladies, more men than you realize do this, eck). They are definitely a unique bunch that I have a hard time relating too, but hey, to each their own.

There is also another breed of men in Japan called herbivore men. They don’t even bother to search for a mate, but instead eat, work, watch porn, and sleep. A lot of Western media have reported that this means the Japanese population doesn’t have an interest in sex, sourcing a now famous annual survey that asks people about their feelings on sex. But, the porn industry is alive and well in Japan.

In fact the Japanese market accounts for 20% of porn profits worldwide, more than double the States. The spend an estimated $157 per capita compared to a paltry $47 per capita in the States. Of course some believe this divergence is more due to Japan’s ability to get more people to pay for porn than to actual consumption. Being that the States apparently loves pirating everything porn.

So with all the porn consumption going on, it is hard to believe that the sex drive of the average Japanese person has magically evaporated. It’s just that for whatever reason, they don’t feel motivated to work for it anymore.

In the rat experiment, alpha males started to horde the ladies in their own little rat apartments, and the weaker rats simply gave up on the whole ordeal. That doesn’t exactly seem to be the case here though. I don’t know too many people in polygamous relationships unless there is some underground network somewhere I haven’t come across.

Fighting amongst each other

The rats also started fighting amongst themselves, constantly competing for a position in the colony. That doesn’t seem to be happening in Japan. There are definitely established positions in the society, but competition for them hasn’t quite become a bloodbath either figuratively or literally, yet, anyway.

I think this is thanks to the relative modesty that most people in power try to show. However, lately, there has been more pushing in the political arena with the recent security bills that got shoved through. And this has been met with loud protest. This might be the start of something new, or just an anomaly though.

Japan is Always the First

Although the media loves pointing out this phenomena in Japan, it is definitely not unique to Japan.  Media like to tout that Japan is the most crowded country in the world (it isn’t even in the top 10) or that its fertility rate is the second lowest in the world as I saw in one article (again, not even in the top 10).  It just so happens to be the 3rd largest economy and everyone likes to look on because, well, it might be them soon.

But, I think with the awareness of the fact that, if we act like a bunch of animals and give into our instincts we will be in for a lot of hurt, at least a number of people will realize that we need to look at the world a little differently.  We need to start acting like intelligent beings instead of falling for our instincts.  Because we are one of the only species who can successfully reject our inborn instincts and create a different path.

I think there is still hope yet for Japan.  I have met plenty of mothers and fathers that stand by their family through thick and thin.  Yes, it is a lot rougher than before, but not unbearable.  It just takes a different set of tools and lot more know how than before.

I’ve heard the biggest problem facing Japan at the moment is people finding mates.  I feel like this is due to a shift in values and roles of the sexes over the years.  It used to be men provided all the cash.  In a lot of ways, they still provide the majority of the cash in a relationship, but women don’t need their money to be happy.  Men need to make women happy with their personality, i.e. be interesting people, and that is something some men find to be a mystery.

Talking to a lot of my female friends, that is the number one complaint that keeps coming up – men are too boring.  Yes, of course there is at least some concern about money.  Can they provide for me and a family?  But, there is a new requirement and a lot of men don’t spend a lot of time developing that.

What do you think?

This podcast went a little long this time.  I’ll cut it off here, but I’d like to hear what you think of this experiment.  Do you think humans are doomed to this behavior?  Can we fight our animal instincts?  Let me know in the comments below.

 Photo by Tatiana Bulyonkova

I’ve always found summer to be a more active time. Despite the oppressive heat and humidity we have here in Japan, I still think the increased sunlight and ability to walk around the house in a lot less clothes just makes me do something more than keeping my nose in a book.

People always ask me what my favorite season in Japan is. And I have to say that while I’m working, I love the winter. But when I’m off, I love the summer. I guess if I could wear shorts and a sports shirt to all my teaching gigs, I think I would feel a little differently. Who ever invented ‘dress’ clothes anyway?

So while I’m still keeping my reading up of Harry Potter and slowly working my way through 1q84. I wanted to steer my studies towards something more, well, physical. Even if I can’t manage to arrange meet ups online, I want to challenge myself by doing some talking practice, specifically speaking incredibly fast so that I can get my comfort level up with the language and make it easier to listen to native speakers.

And also, at my level, I just need to be really comfortable with native materials. I’ve been sitting through some meetings in Japanese lately. And like all meetings, they are pretty boring. Listening to upper intermediate Japanese of boring administrative gobbly guck can cause some serious headaches. I would prefer to digest the content a little more automatically.

Overshot my Level

So, to this end, I’ve been trying to work my way through one video on FluentU a week.  The main reason for this is that I want to create a manageable new habit.  Realistically, I probably should be consuming a lot more, but I don’t want to get hit by a hurricane and have to drop it all and then try to re-establish the habit.  The idea here is to start small and scale slowly so that I can keep it from becoming overbearing.

When I first started out, I overshot a little.  I tried to go for an advanced video.  And even though, I understood most of the video and vocabulary, I realized my ability to speak that fast and comprehend it at native speed, just wasn’t there yet.  It was a news video on the Ginza Yanagi festival in Tokyo and it was chock-full of formal Japanese – things like おこなう and ひらかれます which I still have a hard time saying fast because well, I don’t use them that much.

So, I downgraded to upper intermediate.  The idea being that I can practice this foundation more easily and get through videos more quickly, making it more motivating to keep studying.  Also, I want to be able to speak and listen fast, like really fast, like native-speed fast, and so that aspect makes even relatively easier material a good challenge.

Also, I kind of feel like the ‘captions’ i.e. sentences taken from the video, are a little too long to practice word order exercises with at that level. Some of the sentences I was unscrambling were like 30 or 40 parts long.  That made it immensely difficult to try to parse them all out.  It was and is good practice because the N1 definitely has a few monsters that you have to untangle.  However, now I want to improve speaking and comprehension speed.

Typical Week

So here is what I typically do to get through a video in a week.  First, I watch the video without any help.  No script of any kind (Japanese or English) and just try to pick up as much as I can the first time around.  I might even repeat this once or twice to see if I can get some more details.

The point here is to get some freebie listening practice before beginning your speaking practice with the conversation.  Try to get the main idea of the video.  If you are feeling really ambitious you can even take notes about key words.  This is great practice for the N2 and N1 listening sections, bonus points if you can take notes in kanji/kana.

I then download the transcript (a premium feature) and read it out loud a few times, without furigana at first.  The idea here is to note any kanji I don’t know how to actually read.  I might even circle a few that I have questions about or are unsure of the reading.

Then I watch the video a few times with the English shut off, following along with the script.  FluentU really shines here because the script, in a big font, follows the video as you watch it allowing you to easily follow what is being said.  At this point, I try my best to try to read along with the conversation, but I might not be fast enough with all the words.  The words or parts that stumble upon I circle.

At this point I drill the points that I’m having a hard time saying.  I also look up furigana for any kanji that I am still having trouble reading and couldn’t quite pick up from the video.  I might read through a few times and try again reading along with the video.  I do this until I fairly comfortable with it.

And then and only then do I go to the English and check my understanding.  Usually, I just watch the video with the English showing and nothing else to follow along and get a clearer idea.  And then afterwards start drilling vocabulary and captions to really bring it all home.

What does this Do?

The main reason I try to keep away from English until the last minute is because I want to ‘break the crutch’ that English provides. I don’t want to be doing double duty, translating Japanese into English and then trying to comprehend it.  I want to try to do it all natively.  So, I don’t use it until I absolutely need to.

I think focusing on just making the sounds, especially trying to do as fast as you can, tricks your brain into not thinking too much.  This brings you closer to native speed with comprehension.  And also pushing your muscles to work faster and faster breaks off that little safety latch that keeps stopping you from speaking at the speed you should be speaking.

In general, it just makes you feel more comfortable using Japanese, and makes it easier for you to take that mental leap and just think in Japanese and instead of reverting back to English.

Give it a Try

Have you tried FluentU yet?  Most units allow you to download the first sentence of a video, so you can practice a little bit and get a feel of how to use this technique.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

Be sure to also take a look at the JLPT Study Guide Plan month 7 for what to do to prepare for the big test in December.

I grew up in white bread America where the corn grows high and hills don’t. I spent most of my time in a city of a mere 10,000 where everybody knew each other (and who was doing what to who). It was not uncommon to go downtown to run some errands and run into a handful of your friends on the way.

I met a girl, and thought I was in love. What was peculiar was that I never met her parents. In fact, her parents prohibited her from dating, which, of course, didn’t stop her from dating, but made things annoying for the two of us. You see her parents were 1st generation immigrants from a more traditional country. The dad was a cardiologist and the mom was a super intelligent housewife because that is what super intelligent women do in the old country apparently.

What struck me as odd was that her parents were whole-heartedly planning to spend their whole adult lives in the States, but were going to retire to their home country. That to me, seemed like a bit of shame. You spend your whole life in another country longing to be somewhere else. I’d much rather enjoy life while I live it and not while I’m decrepit and my joints lock up so much I can hardly get out of the house. But, hey, that’s me.

To this end, they didn’t go out. They didn’t come to community events. I rarely saw them at school functions. I only saw her mom once the whole time we were dating.

And granted, back then, living in backwoods America, I wasn’t racist (although plenty of my peers were) but I just didn’t have the view of the world that I do now. So, it was very frustrating to see someone making their living in my dinky little city, but not actually living there if you catch my drift.

In our city, like a lot of other small towns in the States, there were a lot of doctors and specialists from all over the globe. That was basically my main exposure to diversity. Most of them kept to themselves, while their kids tended to be incredible socialites, some of them being the most popular kids in school.

It always struck me as odd that their parents were such outsiders while the kids tended to be the opposite. While I tended to know most of my friends’ parents quite well, their parents always remained in the shadows.

“You’ll always be an Outsider.”

There is a comment that seems to be battered about that goes something like “you’ll never fit in, in Japan.” And like a lot of things that seem to be attributed to being uniquely Japanese, I have always been a little suspect of this. I’ve never really felt this that much. On the contrary, some people I’ve worked with and hung out with have looked past a lot of my oddities and treated me as one of the gang, despite my awkwardness.

Yeah, I’ve been laughed at for wearing toilet slippers where I shouldn’t have. I’ve went into the wrong bathroom once and got a few odd looks. I’ve found myself at the drugstore looking at a package for a few minutes before realizing it was an enema. I’ve been there and done that, sometimes very publicly, but my friends have stuck with me and given me the benefit of the doubt.

Do I feel totally at home? Does everything come naturally to me? No, it doesn’t. So in that sense I do feel a little out of place, but then again that’s what I signed up for. Every day is a new adventure, and I inevitably learn something new, usually through painful failure, but I’m a guy that likes to learn things the hard way.

The one thing I don’t feel is that I don’t fit in, or that I’m a trained monkey. Why? Because I try my best to fit in. I leave my house, socialize with non-English speakers, and mingle with the locals. I participate in my community as much as I can, sometimes begrudgingly, but I’m still there.

In other words, I work hard to be here like any new resident of a place anywhere should. Even if you were to move to another part of your home country, wouldn’t you try as much as possible to meet new people? Yeah, sure you would. So why would being in a different country change that?

When I think about the people that complain about ‘not fitting in’ I think back to my earlier days and my old girlfriend’s parents. They were working in the States for sure, but were they living there? Not really. Fitting in is something that you have to take an active role in. You are not going to be passively sucked into Japan. You need to take action and surround yourself with people that can help make that happen.

This is not Uniquely Japanese

People have problems fitting in anywhere. Maybe those immigrants in my old hometown felt too uncomfortable to fit into society. Maybe they felt like the culture was too radically different for them to really be able to expose themselves to it. But, the reason they didn’t fit in, at least at the root, was that they didn’t get out and try to mingle. They made up their minds that staying in America was only temporary.

And there are a few people that are like that here. They never really planned to stay that long, but nothing enticed them to go back, and so they stayed on. But, they never laid the foundation to feel at home here. They keep to their English speaking friends, go to foreigner bars, do foreigner events, and still act like they just got here.

I think, for some people, it’s fun to keep up that newness. But, that newness eventually wears off, and reality sets in. This is generally known as culture shock, and tends to happen about 3 months after you arrive. For some people though, it happens a lot latter. And they wake up and realize they don’t fit in, which does suck.

Big City Problems

I’ve found that like other things that Japan gets a lot of flack for, this problem is most apparent in Tokyo. The bigger the city, the easier it is to get lost in one of its small little corners. It is also a lot easier to find people with similar backgrounds, do activities that are very similar to what you did back home and generally isolate yourself from the culture.

When I did my stint out in the backwoods of Japan. I felt more at home and a part of the group. There would be times when I would only see one other foreigner (a colleague) about once a week. It was actually the best experience I’ve had here. I made a lot of great friends.

But, I had to move to the big city for a variety of reasons. The biggest one was to be able to fly to the States fairly easily. In the countryside, I would have to take an overnight bus after work to Osaka, sit around for a few hours (the bus would arrive ridiculously early), then grab a transpacific flight to my parents. It was a grueling 2 day ritual that would bookend any trip I took. Something I simply couldn’t sustain if I was going to stay in Japan for any length of time.

Do you fit in?

Is it easy to find your place in Japan? Let me know your experiences in the comments.

It’s a story you’ve heard several times – we don’t talk to each other like we used to. Because ya know, back in the good ole days we used to chat it up with our neighbors and everybody knew everybody right? It was always better back then.

But these days, we tend to ignore each other. We aren’t as open to conversation as we used to be. Instead of striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to us on the train we choose to sit in silence. This is more true in Japan then probably most other places but you get the idea. There just isn’t as much communication going on.

But we humans are social creatures. We like talking and sharing ideas with each other. We need to communicate to get pretty much anything done. And the better we are at communicating the better off we tend to be. Do you ever notice that the one guy that doesn’t do much in your office but can chat anyone up keeps getting promoted? There’s a reason.

And one of the things I love about learning a language is that you have a very viable excuse to just start talking to random strangers. Nobody is going to think it’s strange. That’s kind of one thing I like about my job. I get to talk to people every day all day. Granted you sometimes meet people that are little too unique, but overall, it’s interesting to hear everyone’s different take on the world.

How to Start doing Regular Chats

A lot of people will recommend doing Skype sessions to get some practice with real life conversations and using ‘real’ Japanese with ‘real’ people. And I definitely think that is the best option for the majority of people. Before my daughter was born and my life was a little more scheduled, I was perfectly capable of scheduling Skype chat sessions and keeping to them.

These days though, try as I might, I really have not been able to buckle down a regular pattern to my life. Even my sleep schedule has become a bit tentative in recent months. This has made me a master of being a little more portable with everything I do from blogging to emailing and checking in with friends and family. But even with all my time savings I’ve managed to hobble together, I’m still not able to consistently clear a block of time in my schedule to practice talking.

So how can someone like me squeeze in some practice? Something that doesn’t really require that much of an ongoing commitment, but does provide regular practice so that I can practice and learn new vocabulary in a more natural setting?

Well, I looked around for something to plug this hole. I thought I could get some practice in with Lang-8.com, which I have been doing a little more with, and it is a great service. However, I never really felt a compulsion to do a lot of writing. After all, it is only for me to read, and there really isn’t a whole heck of a lot of real communication going on. You just kind of shoot out a passage and get corrections back, but you aren’t really talking to someone.

Introducing Hello Talk

Eventually, after a little poking around, I found Hello Talk, a chat app for the iPhone and Android. And on the surface it is a basic chat app, kind of like a toned down Line or something similar. But, what’s cool about this little app is it is specifically designed for language learners to practice their target language.

The app is basically free, with some of the handier tools available as a subscription service. But the base package allows you to tap and get a Google translation of what someone is saying. This Google translation isn’t the best thing in the world. But, it will give you the general meaning of what is trying to be conveyed.

I really like the app because it is nice and simple. You just login and do some chatting. It isn’t complicated by a whole heck of other utilities. This makes it easy to pick up and do some chatting and then go about doing something else.

And it’s key selling point for me anyway, is that you can have asynchronous conversations with people. Skype is great, but it can be difficult to squeeze in a chat session or find people that are free when you are. With asynchronous communication, both of you don’t have to be present at the same time.

Of course there are other platforms to chat with like Line or Facebook. But, Hello Talk is designed with language learning in mind. I mean Line probably has more native speakers of Japanese but if you can’t read a particular kanji you have to copy and paste to get a definition.  Hello Talk helps you out with a very approximate Google translation.

Some hurdles to deal with

I have had a few problems getting a few conversations going and keeping them going. This is partly my fault as I tend to start a few conversations and then get suddenly busy and I’m not able to respond to everyone I’m talking to. Also you can have a good conversation and then the other person just up and disappears. This isn’t that big of a deal because there are plenty of people using the system and you can just go back and look at who else is available.

There also tend to be a lot of the usually suspects that you find on services like this. The overly ambitious talker that assaults you with long welcoming messages asking you to answer a list of riddles or shoving their Skype id in your face in hopes that you will suddenly call them up. But, their numbers are relatively few. Most of the people I met like to chat and keep a conversation going. The demographics, not surprisingly, skew young. There are a lot of college students majoring in English that have some free time to chat. But there are others from all walks of life.

Some Quick Tips

I’ve found that if you blast someone with a huge message, you don’t get a response more often than not. Another dead end to starting a good conversation is playing the interrogator – こんにちは？　仕事は？ / しごとは？(What is your job?) どこに住んでいますか? / どこにすんでいますか？(where do you live?) etc… A lot of people ask these questions when they first meet someone and chances are there are a lot of people meeting people on a service like this. So anyone you message may have heard this a gazillion times already.

So, my tip is to instead of bombarding them with the standard questions, ask how their day or week was – 今日の調子はどうですか？　/　きょうのちょうしはどうですか？ (How is your day?) or 今週の調子はどうでしたか？　/　きょうのちょうしはどうでしたか？ (How was your week?) These tend to get a variety of responses and then you can ask questions and talk about your week as well. Be sure to have some somewhat interesting story prepared. Even if you tell a story about something that happened at a different time, telling a story is a good way to introduce yourself that is more interesting than chugging through the standard questions. It also gives you good, real world talking practice.

Have you Used Hello Talk or Something Similar?

What is your experience like with conversation partners? Have you been able to maintain a good connection? Let me know in the comments below.

Ukiyo-e, if you are not familiar,  is a Japanese art form that was popular from 17th century  to 19th century Japan.  It basically consists of woodblocks used for mass production of pictures.  Ukiyo means floating world, and e means picture, so they were literally “pictures of the floating world.”  They generally depicted daily life, landscapes, and beautiful people.

Ukiyoe prints are some of the most famous pieces of artwork from Japan.  Almost everyone has, at one time, seen Hokusai’s “Big Wave” print featured above.  And portraits of the kabuki actors tend to crop up whenever a Japanese themed picture is needed.  The sharp contrasts of the images have a distinct style and have probably done a lot to influence manga artists of today.

5.  How to pronounce it

Okay, so it may seem like a simple word to pronounce, but it really isn’t. You have to give it a few tries before it really rolls off your tongue. So try it a few times, quickly. If anything it is a great work out for your tongue. Here is a native saying it courtesy of our good friends at Forvo.com:

4. Some Ukiyo-e had Bewbs

Erotica wasn’t as big of a taboo in Japanese art as it was in Western art. Although not often displayed in museums around the world, erotica was a part of ukiyoe art. And these drawings were not just for dirty minded pervs looking to get their kicks. They were actually quite common.

The style of ukiyoe depicting erotica was called shunga. And there are records of everyone from samurai to housewives purchasing and carrying shunga with them. Although not completely openly accepted (despite Western commenters attempting to portray otherwise), it wasn’t completely against any religious morals like in the West.

Almost all of the major ukiyoe artists at one time created some kind of erotica. Even Hakusai, arguably one of the most famous woodblock artists created a series of prints that depicted a story of a woman making love to an octopus, which of course would never see the light of day in the 19th century West, and to be honest is a bit shocking to see in this modern era, even as art.

3. The major periods

Early Ukiyo-e (1670~1740)

Before around the 1670s, art was mostly limited to the nobility who had the kind of money to commission works of art, much like in the West.  Patrons usually liked to see pictures of things that reminded them of their wealthy, like wealthy people doing wealthy things.

But, once Japan was united and the Edo period began.  The merchant class found themselves making some serious yen, and there started being an interest in art, especially art that depicted every day things.  This merchant class had money, but it seems like they weren’t exactly swimming it, so being able to mass-produce artwork with woodblocks, made prints cheaper and more affordable.

These first pieces of work were mostly in the style of what had come before.  They characterized by their use of only one color, typically black, and showed limited use of prospective, usually just sticking to 2D.  A lot of them focused on the human figure and ideals of beauty.

Beginning of Color Prints (1740~1780s)

Starting in the 1740s, ukiyo-e prints started to be printed with multiple woodblocks each using a different colored ink.  This somewhat complicated process led to more flexibility in creating different images.  Landscapes and more complicated scenes became more popular.

During this time, due to influence from the West, paintings started to take on more geometrical prospective.  The paintings, in particular Masanobu’s works appeared a lot more 3 dimensional, something that we take for granted today, but was actually a major breakthrough back in the day.

The Peak and Popularization of the Genre (1780~1804)

This era brought on some of the greats like Utamaro and Sharaku who placed more emphasis on beauty and harmony.  Portraits also began to focus more on the head and torso of someone as opposed to the whole body.  Some of the popular woodblocks were of famous kabuki actors and every day beautiful women.  A lot of the faces look very similar due to the emphasis on harmony and perfection.

Move toward Landscapes (1804~1868)

Due to the Tenpo Reforms of 1841 to 1843, printmaking of kabuki actors, geisha and courtesans was banned.  Artists turned away from people as the subject matter of their prints and focused more on landscapes.  This is the area when a lot of the major prints that are famous today were created.  Prints like the Big Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai as well as Hiroshige’s more subdued prints.

There were still scenes of villagers, but there was less emphasis on beauty and perfection of the human form.  Artists and the Japanese government didn’t want to focus on decadence.  Instead, artists seemed to look for beauty in the every day life and nature that surrounded them.

2. The major artists

Moronobu was one of the first woodblock artists.  He did a lot to popularize the art form and get it started.  Although he wasn’t the first, he formalized and refined the art style.

Sukenobu was famous for his shunga, or erotic prints.  He published at least 30 volumes of erotica.  Being based in Kyoto, which was rather rare for ukiyo-e artists of the time, he tended to focus on beautiful women going about their hobbies and daily activities in beautiful kimonos.

Masanobu came to prominence during the second era of ukiyo-e artists when color printing became popular.  He is best known for employing geometrical perspective in his prints to give them a depth that hadn’t been seen before.  He used multiple colors to give his prints a tremendous amount of detail.

Harunobu was a pupil of Sukenobu and was believed to be the first artist to use multi-colored printing or nishiki-e, sometimes called brocade printing for his works.  In 1765, he and a group of poets published a deluxe edition of calendar to be distributed amongst friends.  This calendar eventually brought him fame and he went on to create around 600 prints in 6 years before his untimely death at age 45.  He was famous for his expressive and creative designs.

Shunsho is famous for creating portraits of kabuki actors that were more true to life.  The portraits allowed viewers to not only recognize the character, but also the individual actor playing the part.  Although famous for his woodblock prints of kabuki actors, he was also a versatile painter that painted several images of beautiful women, bijin-ga, as well.

Kunisada was a giant in the woodblock industry, producing well over 20,000 prints in his lifetime.  He created prints that often did not follow the norms of the day.  Just looking at a few of his prints you can see his bold use of color and composition that was completely different from the previous norms.

Kiyonaga painted idealized female forms in the latest fashions. Despite being of humble origins he managed to capture an air of aristocracy. His female forms were said to be fuller and more mature than his predecessors. His prints portrayed scenes very plainly not idolizing them in any way.

Utamaro is said to replace Kiyonaga as the go to guy for bijin okubi-e (large headed pictures of beautiful women). His women tended to be even more fuller and mature. Although they were far from being realistic. Most of the women in his prints were tall and slender, their faces long with small eyes, which were apparently coveted at the time.

Sharaku was a mysterious ukiyo-e artist that appeared in 1795, made prints for about 10 months and disappeared shortly there after. His artwork was met with disapproval at the time, but they are now some of the more iconic images from that time. They showed a lot of expression due to the contorted expressions on the kabuki actors faces.

Hokusai is arguably the most famous ukiyo-e artist. He was famous for prints with sharp contrasts and hard edges. His print the Great Wave off Kanagawa is probably the first image that comes to mind when you think of ukiyo-e prints other than the countless portraits of kabuki actors and beautiful women. He had a personal obsession with Mt. Fuji and painted several views of the mountain in his lifetime along with a lot of other studies of nature.

Hiroshige is famous for his The fifty-three stations of the Tokaido which portrayed the sights he saw on his trip to Kyoto from Edo.  During the Edo period, tourism was booming, making his prints very popular.  Although he made good use of color his prints tended to be more realistic and with more subtle colors than Hokusai.  He was also known to paint flowers and birds, which up until then hadn’t been a popular subject of ukiyo-e prints.

1. Further Resources

I’ve just given you a small glimpse of the massive world of ukiyo-e artwork.  If you are interested in checking out some more prints for yourself, I encourage you to visit ukiyo-e.org, which has a massive library of prints from around the world cataloged and named for you to sort through.  I consulted it several times for some good prints for this article.

If you’d like to be able to identify some of the great’s artworks, I put together my own short ukiyo-e course on Memrise.  There you can learn to identify some prints created by some of the great ukiyo-e artists.  There is also a course that walks through Hiroshige’s 53 Stations of Tokaido.

Also if you are interested in doing some further reading, be sure to check out Japan Journeys (JPN), which a nice book that arranges some select ukiyo-e prints to show what some of Japan’s greatest cities used to look like.  Andreas Marks also has another beautiful book, Japanese Woodblock Prints: Artists, Publishers and Masterworks: 1680 – 1900 (JPN), if you are looking for something large format to enjoy these prints.

Another small primer of ukiyo-e history is Ukiyo-e: An Introduction to Japanese Woodblock Prints (JPN).  It is a short and sweet 96 page intro to the art form.

What do you think of Ukiyo-e?

Who is your favorite?  Let me know in the comments.

In school, I always had a hard time paying attention in class.  The teacher would lecture away and we were suppose to be taking notes, but to be honest I could never proper filter out what was important and what wasn’t.  Half the time I left the class knowing that I had listened to something interesting, but not having any clue as to what the main points were.

And there are a lot of classes out there that are just teacher lectures, students take notes, read the required material, and there are periodic tests or papers to check everyone has a pulse.  It is the same rhythm.  A lot of English classes are set up like this.  There are certain steps that I go through every class.

They tend to be boring for me and boring for my students.  And it seems like a students aren’t retaining the material as well as they should be.  So, why do we do it?  Because it is easy to organize, it is measurable (with tests), and we can clearly ‘see’ students ‘learning’.  But, are they really learning?

Mmm, maybe.  The good and focused students are.  But, that isn’t your average student.  In our effort to make everything streamlined and measurable, we seemed to have forgotten how to learn.

Doing it the Hard Way

Last month, I talked about moving away from digital and being slightly more analog in my study approaches.  I’ve been trying to do a lot more unplugged as well as make things just a little more interesting for myself.

Part of that has been working on an improved vocabulary notebook system.  I’ve been so willy nilly about keeping a vocabulary notebook in the past.  I’ll start off taking good notes and with good intentions only to abandon it a few weeks later, so I want to build something that is easy to stick to, but hard to do.  Let me explain.

Memrise and Anki, they are my best friends. They have seen me through some tough spots and have accelerated my vocabulary learning immensely.  I don’t think I could have gotten through all the vocabulary words you need for N2 and N1 without their assistance. But, there comes a point where this regular pattern of learning just causes your brain to shut off.

Much like my classes back in high school and college that followed the same formula day in and day out.  Show up, take notes, go home, go over notes, take quiz/test, rinse wash and repeat.  Without variation or any surprises, my brain just kept going to sleep.

On the other hand, if you give me a piece of software to learn or a computer to fix, I can get it done in a day or two.  Part of that is because learning software or fixing things is a lot more interactive, giving you feedback on whether you are doing the right thing or not.  And that definitely plays a huge role in learning a language.  You really need to have interaction with someone so that you can get that instant feedback.

But, another part of it is that every time I went to fix a computer it was just a little different.  There was always something a little different about what was wrong.  The same with learning a new piece of software, it was something new for me, so my brain could soak it up.  So the more new something or how different it is to what you are used to, the easier it will be to remember it.  Your brain tends to take note of things out of the ordinary.  If you do the same hum-drum every day, it isn’t going to pick up on anything.

I also failed a lot and made (sometimes expensive) mistakes.  When the stakes are higher, you also tend to pay more attention as well.  That’s why it is kind of a good thing that the JLPT costs ~$50, because you are going to study a little harder knowing that if you fail, you have just lost $50 (kind of, I mean you do get feedback on how your studies are progressing).

All of this reasoning is driving my design behind trying to put together a good, maintainable vocabulary notebook.  It is a bit hard work to keep notes and look up extra words and definitions, but I’m already starting feel a difference.  It’s still not really ready yet though, so stay tuned.

Fluent U

A couple of month’s ago, one of my readers suggested that I start studying with FluentU, a new website for learning languages.  At the time, I kind of just thought of it as yet another ‘learn languages with our patented, proven, super-duper system’ kind of site.  The internet seems to be packed with these.

But, FluentU is a bit different.  They take YouTube videos and help you along with the script as well as the translation.  They then slice up the vocabulary for you to practice with.  They also build out handy flashcards (complete with pictures).  What I like about their system is that they give you scrambled sentences to help you practice word order.  This is great practice for the JLPT.

Right now, I’m testing out their iPhone app, which is due out at the end of May.  It’s pretty handy to have and gives me a good counterweight to the Memrise app.  The FluentU system isn’t focused on a particular list of vocabulary, which is handy if you are going for a good background of vocabulary.  Instead, they dissect one video, which typically has around 100 words or so, and give you context for each word.

This scatter-shot approach is great to be honest.  I think if you stick to the lists, which aren’t technically accurate anymore, you are selling yourself short, and probably boring yourself to death in the process.

They are still in their infancy, but they have around 300+ videos for Japanese so far, and it takes a surprisingly long time to get through one video.  I’ve yet to feel the need for more material, even at the more upper intermediate/advanced level.  Definitely worth the few minutes to check it out.

How are your Studies going?

Have you tried studying the ‘hard way’?  What do you do?  Have you tried FluentU yet? Let me know in the comments below.

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar

A few years back, I was working at a school and we were trying to arrange a farewell party for one of our fellow teachers.  One teacher found a great Indian restaurant that wasn’t too far away from the school.  It seemed like a great place.  It had a big room to accommodate everyone and it was something different for us, since we usually go to Japanese restaurants for these kinds of things.

The problem was that the restaurant only had the typical ‘all-you-can-eat/all-you-can-drink’ deal for large groups like ours on weekends which is when we wanted to go.  The grand total of which was Y4000.  Not too bad if you like to drink yourself blind, and, to be fair, the usual price for this kind of party.  Some people grumbled a bit about the price, because, well, we’re teachers and are perpetually broke.

Another more generic, slightly farther away Indian restaurant offered ‘all-you-can-eat’ plus order/pay for your own drinks for just Y2000.  And this was offered up as a better option.  I was a big fan of this option, because I hardly drink nowadays.  However, another foreign teacher objected because the other restaurant wasn’t so nice and farther away.  The Japanese staff listened politely and then it was decided that we would ‘think about it’.

Well, we thought about it long and hard. But, nothing ever came of it.  In the end, we went back to our old friend, the izakaya, a Japanese-style pub.  The other foreign teacher threw up his hands in frustration wondering why we couldn’t have come to an agreement on the Indian restaurant and the Japanese staff found excuses to look away and change the subject.  So what happened?

Well it turns out that the problem is that about half the staff really had no desire to drink and didn’t want to pay the premium for ‘all-you-can-drink’. Did anyone really expressly say that or explain it to my foreign colleague? No. I hadn’t made the conclusion myself to be honest. I just didn’t want to spend more money.

I think us Westerners expect there to be a thorough discussion about these kinds of things. And that everyone’s opinions should be heard, weighted, and sorted. And after all that, a proper decision should be made. But, in Japan a lot of these arguments need to be implied from the situation.

In the above situation, the Japanese staff didn’t want to cause conflict by outright disagreeing. And they probably felt uncomfortable structuring their arguments in English, so they just kind of gave silent resistance to the argument.

This is a common situation that has led to many an expat getting frustrated and throwing a fit. But, in Japan it is an every day thing, and even openly accepted and appreciated. It is seen as being polite in some ways.

Tatemae

The Japanese staff in the situation above were showing their ‘tatemae’ or outside face not their true feelings ‘honne’. This a key part of Japanese society that most people believe helps everyone get along in such a crowded country. Basically, it is a way of being extremely indirect in conveying a sometimes uncomfortable message. It is considered polite to do so, even though you are essentially lying to someone’s face.

It can also mean doing something that you really don’t want to do, but are obligated to do. For example, for Valentine’s day, women are expected to give male co-workers and their boss chocolates (called girichoco – obligation chocolate) even though they really don’t want to. They also give chocolates to romantic interests that they would like to see more of.

Girichoco tends to be of the rather cheap kind that you can buy at the supermarket. Not exactly a plain old candy bar, but one small step up from that. On the other hand, for those they hold most dear, they will go to the department store and get special chocolates.

And this is not necessarily seen as a negative thing even though it is pretty obvious that people are just doing it out of obligation. This is in contrast to the Western idea of being true to yourself and being honest with others.

That’s not to say that people in the West don’t, from time to time, do things they are obligated to do. It seems like the higher you go in society in the West the more obligations you have to uphold. We’ve all heard of the suburban mom who keeps track of how much everyone spends on presents so that they can give an appropriately priced gift in response at a later date. Or the sudden need to wash one’s hair when someone makes an unwelcomed advance.

I think we in the West tend to also use a tremendous amount of sarcasm to soften our blows and achieve the same purpose of tatemae. But, sarcasm is noticeably absent from Japanese culture. It’s actually quite amusing to hear someone try to use sarcasm in Japan. It usually ends up being way to blunt or way too soft. It is a tough skill to master, not unlike tatemae.

But, people will sometimes appreciate hearing your true feelings in the West. As a matter of fact, it is seen as a brave and respectable thing in some situations. And people in Japan, may often be shocked and not be able to really deal with true feelings. I have seen many a foreigner explode with frustration, and the shocked expression on someone’s face, puzzled as to how to deal with it. I’ve been the foreigner sometimes when I’ve had enough with some sales rep monopolizing my time and I’ve tried to politely brush them off with some ‘arigatou gozimasu’s and ‘sumimasen’s.

Softbank has recently taken this to new extremes with their incredibly long walk through of all the add on services that you could possibly need. I just need an iPhone with a data plan please. I sometimes feign ignorance of Japanese at this point and keep repeating what I need until they give in and let me sign the contract. Or my favorite “chotto jikanganainode…” which seems to hurry along most people and force them to make their point.

Honne

Honne, of course, is the opposite. Instead of hiding your feelings or adhering to social norms, you are staying true to your feelings. This is usually limited to close friends or family. But, like anything else there is a spectrum of people that are on the edge of tatemae, and others that are completely honne.

A lot of those that have a hard time fitting in in Japan, tend to look abroad and to English to be their way of expressing themselves. What this means is that the people that you meet from Japan that are fluent speakers of English tend to be quite Western and quite honne.

Some people can be quite brutally honest. I have been around more than a few people that have blown their top in an epic explosion of anger or frustration. It is pretty rare, but it does happen. Another thing that kind of happens is that some people don’t carry their tatemae filter with them into English. One time an acquittance, that I hardly knew, poked me in the belly and said “metabo” (short for metabolic syndrome, basically calling me fat). I wasn’t really offended but just surprised that he would do that.

Another time, I was out with an all male cadre of sales reps that I had been teaching for about a year. And even before the drinks started really poring they were asking about how my wife was in bed. Their boss lucky cut them off and redirected the conversation, but it just seemed kind of a funny thing to ask. I mean when is that ever acceptable? But, I think speaking another language (they had asked the question in English) tends to shake off those inhibitions you have when using your native language.

In America, we also tend to hold back on true feelings. For instance, breaking down and crying in the office is not going to get you a promotion any time soon. Neither will violent outbursts. So, its not unheard of that some people in the West keep their true feelings hidden.

Affects the Language

This desire to keep everyone happy by not saying too much extends into language use of course. There are more than a few phrases that are meant to never be completed. For instance, you can complain about something politely by just saying ‘chotto…’ and leaving it hang. For example, if you wanted to complain about someone’s shoes, you could simply say ‘sonokutsuwa chotto…’.

Some N1 essays and listening questions prey on this and leave a lot unsaid because it is implied.  It is one of the toughest skills to master when learning Japanese.  Reading between the lines can be difficult even in your native language, but adding in the difficulty of reading Japanese at a rapid pace, this can be a huge hurtle to passing the N1.

That’s why, as frustrating as it can be sometimes, I always ask questions to try to get a little more information and fish out what people are actually trying to say.  This can be true even if they are speaking in English.  And there are more than a few people that have gotten frustrated with me because I just didn’t get it.  But, hey, at least I’m trying.

What is your experience?

Have you gotten a little frustrated trying to see through the fog of tatemae?  Are you a master of the BS?  Let me know in the comments.

I’ve been taking it pretty easy with my studies recently due to some re-prioritizing of my time. I’m chugging away on Hirugao and Harry Potter but I’m giving myself a little more time to digest things. I felt a bit rushed of late trying to get through study sessions and I’m finding that is not the way to go.

In addition to toning down my reading and watching, I’m trying to get my vocab binging under control. I just feel like I have a hard time with long term retention of vocabulary when I practice it purely through SRS. I’m trying to shift my studies a little bit in order to fix that problem.

There is a lot of new research out there that is starting to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using electronics in order to study and retain material. It turns out that it isn’t quite time to throw out all your dusty drill books quite yet.

With all the things on my plate recently, a new assignment, along with being busy helping my family, I’m going to have to make a change to my priorities. Something is going to have to go. But, don’t worry the posts will keep coming.

Current Studying

So, as I wrote last month, I’ve been watching Hirugao, a scandalous jDrama about two housewives and their adventures into having affairs. It has some interesting and somewhat poetic lines of dialog at times. Overall, the language they use is pretty common (not limited to a certain industry or certain age group).

I haven’t really spent much time or effort writing down and reviewing new words. I already have too many word lists to chew through, so I’m treating it as more of a fun side project. I think it helps to keep your ear ‘tuned’ to Japanese, so that it is that much easier to focus.

I’ve also been taking it more slowly with Harry Potter and taking the time to go back and review the material until it is automatic for me to understand. The audiobook is absolutely priceless in the sense that I can practice while I’m walking or doing the dishes or something. It’s great to go back now to the first few chapters and be able to listen to the audiobook at double the speed and not have any real issues with understanding.

Another reason why I’ve slowed down with Harry Potter is that my vocab bulking had been getting out of control. I finished off the first stage of Harry Potter that I had created. And now I just want to get my study time under control. I think it is a bad sign when you are consistently beating your friends on the leaderboards by a significant amount. It’s great to be competitive, but when you are studying twice as much as the average, it’s a bit overkill.

So, I switched to simply reviewing vocabulary and building up mems as much as I can to keep everything from spiraling out of control with Memrise. If SRS makes up more than about 10 to 15% of your overall studying, it can lead to an unhealthy balance. You really need to get out there and use it (writing or speaking) or consume words in context (reading or listening).

Pondering a Switch to Analog

Electronics and the digital revolution is amazing. To be able to hold literally thousands of books on your tablet and be able to read them anywhere you go at anytime, that is incredible power and convenience. And programs like Memrise and Anki make memorizing things a cinch with their proven learning algorithms, cool graphs of stats, and points to make you feel like you are in a game.

But new research is finding that digital is not always better, especially when it comes to retention. According to a recent study, writing notes out is better for long term retention.  The study basically concluded that when taking notes on laptop you are more likely to take notes verbatim instead of critically thinking about them.

As if that wasn’t enough bad news for digital, there is another study that focused on overall retention using paper books and digital books using tablets. The study focused on plot reconstruction and not vocabulary retention, but it does give us a glimpse into some of the problems that can arise if you rely too much on digital.

I’ve tried note taking before, but found it to be a bit cumbersome for me to keep and maintain. I also had a hard time scheduling reviewing and keeping things sorted. But, lately I’ve had some serious issues retaining abstract words that I’ve been studying off a particularly popular N1 Memrise list. My list of Harry Potter words is a lot easier because I had context and I review the material on a regular basis, and the words aren’t quite as abstract and more colorful.

So, I’m going to try to develop a new note taking system that provides a better experience and something that I can keep up with instead of letting it just drift away. I’m not a particularly well-organized person so I need to make something fairly fail-safe and doable. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on what I come up with.

My Future Studies

Currently, I have 4 forces pulling me in different directions for my time – my family, my new position, JLPT Boot Camp, and my goal of passing N1. All of these are things I’d like to achieve and would be useful for me to achieve. However, 4 is just too many things to keep managing.

My family is in need of my time more than ever. My new position is taking up more of my time as I learn the ropes and try to get everything organized. Not to mention that I need to put in a few more hours to keep up on all my new responsibilities. JLPT Boot Camp has been growing by leaps and bounds and so has Memrise, which is great. I’ve gotten so much great feedback, as well as great questions and suggestions on what to do and improve.

And the thing is, I love building courses and doing research about Japanese and making it easier for people to learn the language. And I’m a bit disappointed in myself for not being able to keep up and help everyone out. So many people are asking for updates and help and I love trying my best to deliver that (and learn a lot in the process).

What about N1? Well, I really don’t need it as much these days. I got the position I wanted to get without it. And yes it is good to have for job security but what is more important is making sure I do my current job well, which will help my job security. And that, at the moment, doesn’t depend on me taking the test. So I’ll be taking a break from it for a little while.

This means more support for Boot Camp and less stress for me, which should be good news for everyone. I’ll be gaining enough real world practice with Japanese in the future, that when I do turn my focus back to the test it should be a lot easier and I’ll be a lot more comfortable with it.

Anyway, I look forward to writing and creating more for you all. And organizing what I have done already so it is easier to access. I hope to get some upgrades out to you as soon as I can.

How about you?

Do you prefer digital to analog? Do you still use a notebook? If you are studying for the test, be sure to check out Month 4 of the JLPT Study Guide to help you with what you need to do to prepare.

Photo by Terry Madeley

I should start off by saying that I’m not getting divorced.  I’m still happily married and probably will be for the foreseeable future.  Some of my fellow expatriates and Japanese friends haven’t been so lucky though.

Which, to my naive self, seems a little surprising.  Don’t get me wrong, I come from a divorced family and pretty much everyone in my family has gotten divorced at one time in their lives.  I know it exists and is out there.  I just didn’t think it was all that common in Japan.

The divorce rate (the red line in the linked article) is in line with a lot of other developed countries and it actually peaked around 2001, and has been slowly drifting down, but it didn’t use to be like that.   Some people believe that this slow drift down is due to the lower marriage rate in Japan.  As you can see from the linked article, Japan’s marriage rate is also on the decrease (it’s the blue line in the graphs).  People are also getting married older, which has been shown to lead to happier more successful marriages.

However, Japan, pre-2000s, was known for its low divorce rate.  You may even heard that it still has a low divorce rate.  There is a general perception that people get married for life and that’s that, much like the lifetime employment system that Japan supposedly has.  But, like that lifetime employment system, the old ways of doing things are finally giving in to modern problems.  So, what happened?  Why was it relatively low in the first place?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Getting divorced in Japan is a simple matter of filling out the paperwork to do so. There really isn’t that much fuss to be honest. More often than not lawyers aren’t called in. Instead, counselors at the city office help sort things out. This is probably in part due to the fact that assets are generally not held jointly by the couple. For instance, people usually don’t have joint bank accounts in Japan. I’m not even sure if you can have joint accounts.

Divorces don’t generally tend to be the all out blood bath that can result from some divorces in the States. And the whole process won’t cost you, financially speaking, that much. Just a few processing fees.

There are even divorce ceremonies where the former betrothed get together to smash their wedding ring and symbolically let it go. The trend supposedly started here and has spread to other countries. I’m not sure if I could possibly go through anything like that to be honest, but many report a feeling of closure.

The divorce rate is currently 0.18%, which sounds really small, but what that means is that 0.18% of the population, every year, is getting divorced.  Considering only about 0.52% of the population is getting married every year, that is a pretty high rate of divorce.  And there is still a pretty strong stigma against it.  A lot of woman have found it difficult to get a job.  Although, Junichiro Koizumi, Prime Minister of Japan from 2001-2006, was a divorcee that never remarried.

Another sad fact about divorce is that there is no joint custody system in Japan.  This means that one parent, usually the mother, retains sole custody of the children.  Any visitation is arranged informally and can not be enforced by the courts.  In some cases, children never see their father again.  Prime Minister Koizumi, has two children from his marriage that he has custody of, but a third child, born after the divorce has never met his father.

It doesn’t always end that way of course.  I have a friend that did not have custody of her kids, but is able to see them on a regular basis.  She even went on a few vacations with her ex-husband and his new wife to be with her kids.  But, of course, that has to be a fringe case.

Preparing for divorce

I recently read an article in Aera, a weekly newspaper, that detailed a roadmap to getting divorced.  It even had a trendy looking infographic about how to prepare for the big event, detailing tips like keeping a diary on all the negative interactions that you can use in your favor to argue for divorce.  The article went on to talk about a handful of horror stories about woman that weren’t able to escape from a marriage and how to avoid the same fate.

A Japanese friend of mine recently confided in me that he had found his wife’s journal that detailed every argument they ever had.  The date and time and what was discussed.  And, at least from my prospective, he just seems to be a regular hard-working guy with 2 kids that he worries about a lot. I find it hard to imagine living in the same house as someone that is planning and making arrangements to get divorced.

But, actually, another, much older (60s) Japanese friend of mine, told me about how him and his wife had made plans to get divorced in a few years so that he can start work overseas, and she could get his full government pension.  It seems a little odd to me, but in a country where men are still the major, and sometimes only money maker in the family, it is a reality that sometimes plays out.

About a year ago, I was leaving the house to go to work and a distraught woman buzzed my doorbell.  When I stepped out I saw a huge moving truck parked in front of my house.  Apparently, she was a friend of our neighbor’s and they were moving out that day.  It seemed a little odd to me because we had just talked to her and she didn’t mention anything about moving out despite the fact she was the hancho (neighborhood leader, and yes that is where the phrase ‘head honcho’ kind of comes from).

And then *poof* she was gone.  The husband is still there.  The sad thing is they had 4 kids, which is positively nuts, but I haven’t seen them since either.  So, she hit the road, took the kids with her, and didn’t look back.  At first it seemed a bit odd, but through a long, roundabout neighborhood connection, we later found out it had been a case of DV – domestic violence.   So, I hope her and her kids are living a better life somewhere.

My Two Cents

So, from all these anecdotes, you might think that I’m pretty pessimistic about marriage, or at least terrified of getting divorced.  But, I always try to think positively, and although my wife and I are going through a bit of a rough streak (for non-relationship reasons, sorry long story), I feel like we are good for the long haul.  In my humble opinion, I think we have a few advantages to our marriage that keeps us together through thick and thin.

First, I think a lot of people in Japan have a communication problem.  Men and women think and act fairly differently.  They tend to be motivated by very different things as well.  And in Japan, a place where men and women live pretty different lives, that gap is even more pronounced.  In the West, communication skills are learned through the tough and sometimes unforgiving social interactions that arise from junior high and high school through countless nervous first phone calls to awkward conversations sitting in cars to timid requests for a dance.

That proving ground doesn’t really exist in Japan.  There are no dances, there is not a lot of pressure to ask a date to a dance.  There is no prom, where everyone that’s anyone must have a date.  There is no engine for forced interaction between the sexes.  This of course keeps everyone focused on their studies, but does little to develop their emotional intelligence.

I know a lot of people, in their 30s, that have only had 2 or 3 boyfriends/girlfriends in their lives.  I’ve also met others on the other end of the spectrum, but I would say on average, people here just don’t have that many boyfriends/girlfriends.  How can you know who you want to marry after dating only a handful of people?

And that communication problem used to be solved by a very simple machine of arranged marriage and lifetime employment.  That machine brought post-war Japan to the forefront of the world.  And people got married, the man worked his tail off in the office, the wife worked her tail off at home cleaning, cooking, networking with neighbors, and helping kids with homework.  Love grew out of simply being together a lot like brothers and sisters end up loving each other even after all the fighting with each other.

Society kept the couple together because you had two whole families (not just two people) interested in keeping the union together.  This by the way is not ‘traditional’ Japanese culture.  Before new Meiji regulations came into effect in 1899, the divorce rate in Japan was sky high, higher than the current rate in the States.  It wasn’t until the government started making changes to the law to help make the country more stable that this new cultural norm was created.

Now of course, Japan is facing all the modern craziness that other developed countries are experiencing.  There is a rapid urbanization of the population that separates kids from families.  Individuals are being transferred all over the country away from family that could enforce the social norms of keeping a marriage together.  The perpetually sagging economy that can never quite take off coupled with worker inefficiency keeps people working late hours and away from being able to just sit and have a decent conversation with their spouses.  These are all factors that make keeping a marriage together pretty tough.

What is your experience?

Do you have any anecdotes you can share?  What is your experience?  Let me know in the comments.

Photo by Marc Hatot

I’ve been spending (or wasting depending on how you look at) with keeping my streaks up on Memrise. I think it is great to have that daily goal, but I have busy days and not so busy days and it can make it hard to keep up with keeping a good streak going. This has lead me to ‘learn’ a lot of words, only to score 50% on the tests afterwards. This can get a little frustrating.

Other than bulking up on vocab, I picked up a new jDrama, Hirugao, which literally means afternoon face. It is a pretty risque drama about two women involved in affairs during the day, hence the whole afternoon face. So far it is pretty interesting and has some interesting phrases. Although I hope I won’t need so many of the vocabulary words.

And finally, I’m back to doing some translation. Although translating is not communicating at all, and isn’t the best form of practice, it helps get me some reading practice while getting paid at the same time. Studying during work is really important, as any new father will tell you, and it’s been great to get back into doing it when I can. I hope I don’t get buried again.

Memrise Streak Contests

So recently Memrise has held a few contests on their platform. In January, they held a contest to see who could learn the most words in a month. And in February, they had a competition that asked participants to meet their daily goal for a particular course for at least 12 days straight.

These competitions have come under a little fire on the site because a lot of people feel like this is just encouraging people to ‘over-game’ and use Memrise simply to get more points so that they can win prizes. And in general, they teach bad study habits because users don’t develop a slower, more thoughtful process of absorbing vocabulary.

And I would have to agree that yes it does encourage some bad behavior. Especially if they kept the contests up for an extended period of time. But fortunately, they just limited these competitions to the first two months. And I think these little spurts of focused study can be good for you. It helps you create ways to cope with !unpredictable schedules and prioritize your studies.

After you’ve established the study habit, you can modify it, scale it down or up to fit your lifestyle. I found the February streak contest a bit of a blessing and a curse. It forced me to make time for studying, and I scored a tremendous amount of points, but it also forced to push through study sessions a little faster than I would have liked so that I can score my points for the day and move on.

I personally slow way down on the weekend because I spend a lot of time with my family and just doing the usual errands that you tend to only get done on the weekend. However, during the week, I can be incredibly focused, especially during my morning and evening commutes, and traveling between teaching locations. I love having nice trains that I can sit on and get work done on, instead of sitting in a car.

Watching Risque jDramas

I was interested in picking up a new jDrama to watch and I ended up doing a Google trend search just to see what was really popular these days since I hadn’t heard of too many mentioning one particular series. Google came back with Hirugao, which was apparently wildly more popular than other dramas.

And it is easy to see why. The series is a scandalous story of one married woman who was having an affair recruiting a complete stranger to help her cover up her lies. And trouble ensues from there, complete with edgy scenes and implied nudity. The end credits are barely suitable for prime time TV. Hmm, I wonder why it is so popular?

So far, it has some useful dialog with some good daily expressions. This can be a bit hard with jDramas because they are often set in some particular industry with its own yougo or jargon that makes the phrasing not so useful. Although it is fun to quote some things from Hanzawa Naoki from time to time, it didn’t have a lot of reusable material.

I also find the series a little interesting culturally speaking. The series focuses on the plight of the two women and the husbands aren’t shown in the best light. The story plays a lot on the fact that the affairs are just ways to get the attention that they aren’t getting from their neglecting husbands. The characters are still somewhat 2D and stereotypical. The handsome smart teacher guy, and the brooding troubled artist are the two characters that play their love interests. Not exactly ground-breaking stuff.

Translation Work

I took a bit of a break from translation because I got busy with a lot of other work, but have now managed to pick up a few little gigs here and there to get the ball rolling again. I think translation helps expose you to the wide variety of material out there that is in Japanese. It seems I get everything from personal emails to legal documents thrown at me, which makes for interesting reading.

I don’t think translation is for everyone, but for me, I really do like to piece things together and see how the puzzle fits together. Translation is like writing but you don’t have to come up with ideas and the topic. You can just focus on how it all comes together. I’m not sure if I could do it for 8 hours straight, but the occasionally gig here and there is a good little break from teaching.

I should say that translation isn’t actual studying. In truth, when you do translation, all you are really getting good at is well translating. Although you do pick up a few words here and there, I don’t find it to be the most efficient way to study.

However, I have learned how to decipher some pretty tricky messages through translation though, which comes in handy for comprehension. Translation is paid per Japanese character you translate, which means some cheapskates will attempt to write the shortest message possible and hope that you get their full meaning. Often times I’ve had to make my best guess, and later I double check my work with a native, and they didn’t even know either.

How are you Faring?

If you are studying for the JLPT this July or December, be sure to check the 2nd Month of the JLPT Study Guide for tips on what to do this month.

Have you changed your study routine? What is working for you? Let us know in the comments.

There seems to be a small subsection of the expat population in Japan, that likes to shower the world with negativity and tell you about how horrible it is to live in Japan.  Some of them came over seeking the easy profits and seemingly easy lifestyle of teaching the language that they grew up natively speaking.  When they grow older, they start to realize that Japan, like pretty much everywhere else on the planet, requires some hard work for you to get ahead and move into a position of comfort.

A perfect example of this type of character is Arudou Debito, who likes to rant on about the terrible reality of Japan, while he sits in Hawaii, who published a diatribe about the brutal reality of Japan awhile back.  Japan Times subsequently published the praising comments, while ignoring the objections like the ones expressed on Reddit.  Now, there is a need for a ranting political activist that brings up the key issues of racism and all the other problems that Japan faces today.  Everyone is entitled to their opinions, that is the whole point of freedom of speech.  I just thought I would add my two cents to counterbalance the lopsidedness that tends to crop up in the discussions on the realities of Japan.

So, does the bubble really need to be burst?  Is that the true reality of Japan?  Should you forget about your dreams of living in Japan?  Well, first let’s provide a little background for you to get a clearer picture of what it is really like here.

Everyone has a different experience

Living abroad, beyond anything else in my opinion, really helps you identify who you are at your core.  There are so many values, concepts, ideas that you think are apart of you, but are actually a product of your ‘personal’ culture.  This culture being created by your upbringing, where you were raised, your parents, the friends you had when you were younger and impressionable.  All those factors impacted you to shape your identity into the unique individual you are today.

When you spend time in another culture, you really start to see and pick out the little parts of you that you just picked up and internalized without ever really realizing it.  You can start to identify what little extra pieces of you are from somewhere else, and what is actually you.  It is a bit mind-blowing if you really get into it.

The great part about all that exploration and discovering is that the experience is different for everyone.  There is nothing I can write or say to you that will make you have that experience.  You just have to experience it.  Some people might come out more awakened with a better sense of purpose.  Others take ideas back with them and share them.

And being fluent in a language and living in that country and being able to understand most of the things around you, just gets you that much deeper where you can really see the depth of all the little intricacies that different cultures have.

There are times when I sit around with friends and we can talk for hours about the little nuances and observations that we make about what it is like being here.  For somebody like me that is interested in the wonders and complexities of cultural diversity, its a great experience that everyone should do at least once.

I remember one blog post a travel blogger wrote a few years back about the ‘Top 10 Reasons you Should Travel.’ In it, he simply narrowed it down to just one ‘You are going to die.’  Which is so true.  Traveling and living abroad are the two best ways to find yourself, and wouldn’t it be a shame if you went through such a hard life and never found yourself?

To go through this process you really need to let go of a lot of the things you might feel are a part of your identity.  This can be a huge hurtle for some.  There are some ideals that you might think are just and perfect, but they just don’t hold the same value in a foreign country.

Are the Cards Stacked Against Us?

Racism is still alive and well in Japan.  Just when you think steps have been made in the right direction, some 80 year old lady expounds on how great it would be to have apartheid in Japan.  And the real shocker was that it was published in a major newspaper.  And that is just one of many signs that racism is still around. Here is another example of something that really shouldn’t be a thing anymore, anywhere.

But, many Japanese have spoken out against it, and it is for the most part a feeling shared on the fringes.  I’ve never personally been discriminated against.  And 98% of the time in Kansai, nobody even cares I’m a foreigner.  I think the worst that has happened to me was occasionally nobody will sit next to me on the train.  This seems to be especially true about men, they don’t like to sit next me.  And I’m completely fine with this.  Women can sit next to me anytime.

When I went to get an apartment for the first time, the rental agency I worked with never gave me problems.  When I choose my apartment, the only hiccup I had as a foreigner was the landlord said he was nervous because I was the first foreigner he rented to.  But I think that was more the fact that he knew no English than me being a white dude.  He was a great landlord and fixed anything and everything I ever complained about.

Has it affected me in job prospects? I can’t really speak to that too much because I’ve stuck a lot to teaching English, but I’ve been able to move up in the system and have never felt like I got held back because I was a foreigner. And I know more than a few folks that have found their way in companies here and there.  They were more multicultural companies that already had staff from different countries though, not the massive pillar companies of Japan.  But, one could argue that this is because those conservative companies typically hire straight out of college, and for life, so it is hard to penetrate them after that time period even for Japanese.

Living abroad Anywhere

Living abroad in any country means you will have to interact with a variety of new social systems that are unfamiliar to you and the rules for which are not written down anywhere. You just have to either know or have a good mentor that can hold your hand through the process. To get a good job in your home country you probably had a pretty hard time at first, but you learned from your mistakes and eventually punched through the market and got the job you wanted.

To get a more mainstream job (not English teaching) a foreigner needs to navigate through that system just like anybody else. And you will make mistakes at first as you pile through all the mishaps that will inevitably come up. This will be complicated by the fact that the basic logic of the system is, well, foreign to you. It makes zero sense to me, an American, that companies would hire someone straight out of college before they even graduate. That makes little business sense to me, but that is the system.

And their are tons of little quirks like that you will have to learn.  You also have to do a lot of networking and maintaining contacts to get any job that is going to pay well and feed your family.  But, this really isn’t all that different from the States.  You are not going to find a great job in a classified listing, it just doesn’t happen that way anywhere.

Chances are pretty good that you will fail at this process a few times, and it is going to be rough and scary.  But, failing is good, it means you are stretching yourself farther than what you are now capable of.  And you need to stretch to grow.  Falling flat on your face hurts, but it teaches you what not to do.

Ask for it

There are plenty of opportunities out there though.  All you have to do is ask for them.  A lot of my teaching gigs and contracts have come from me simply asking someone or a group of someones if they can give me a job.  And sometimes those people are other foreigners, and sometimes those other people are Japanese.  In both cases, they have waved me on without issues.

Teaching jobs do exist if you do the time and you have a masters in linguistics.  You will probably have to network a good amount.  You will have to submit a few papers for publishing from time to time.  And you will probably have to look for a new job every 3 years, but you will be in the system.  I know plenty of people teaching English for good wages.  And I also know a lot of world-class English professors that have done amazing research in linguistics.

You really just need to ask and try.  Don’t assume that it is impossible just because someone else tried and failed.  That is true for a lot of things here.  People are often too scared to ask, or they expect there to be some kind of track they can get on to get ahead, but you need to strike out on your own and network like your life depends on it.  And you might be the first foreigner to do that, and that is okay, as long as you are polite and not demanding, I’ve never run into too many obstacles.

Overall

Living abroad is not for everyone.  It is not an easy life, but that is why it is so fun and rewarding to give it a try.  If you are looking for an easy way to get through life, it isn’t here, it really isn’t anywhere.  If you like people, like unexpected things, and are slightly weird, living abroad is for you.  If you can’t deal with new things, and confusing new systems that you need to figure out, then you should probably stay home.  Sorry, living abroad might not be for you, but by all means come for a visit.

I apologize for this post ending up as a bit of rant, but I just think it is important for people to know that living abroad is challenging but it can be truly rewarding in so many infinite ways that are just aren’t possible any other way.  Sometimes that challenge is painted in a wash of negativity, but it can be a pretty positive experience.

What is your experience? Have you been living in Japan?  Do you think it is too tough to get ahead? Let me know in the comments.

I’ve been trying to keep my studying pretty steady over the last couple of months and not really piling on and changing anything. This has a lot to do with me just having way too much going on for me to focus on going in a different direction. I’m also not entirely sure where to go from here.

At the moment, I’m tooling up for a new assignment that is requiring me to use a lot more Japanese. Specifically, listening and speaking a lot in Japanese. Since the JLPT doesn’t exactly test speaking, it is not very useful for me to pour over literary phrases and grammar that I may hardly use at this new job. So, I’ll be shifting more towards speaking practice once I get few more things sorted out.

That’s not to say that I am abandoning JLPT Boot Camp. I love interacting with everyone and I love pushing out the updates to the N5 Grammar guide and study guide. It is a huge motivator for me to hear from so many people and read about their success stories. I’ll be continuing to do my best to help everyone I can to pass the test.

I have, though, been doing a lot of vocab bulking and taking a different approach to my studies where I try to get perfect scores every time I go through a vocab test. If I don’t, I’ll work on a new mnemonic or way of looking at the word in order to keep it locked down and not floating off. Ed Cooke recently wrote an excellent post on some quick tips about how to use Memrise to learn words fast that encourage anyone that uses Memrise to check out.

Other than that I’ve been trudging through Harry Potter at a pretty slow pace. This is mostly so I have time to practice and review the vocabulary in each chapter. I’ve also been doing some editing to the Harry Potter course at Memrise due to some of the definitions being a little off. I’m trying to add all the audio as well, but I’m not going to promise anything. Adding audio to a Memrise course can get a little tedious at times, but well worth it I think.

Closer Focus on Vocab

One of the small changes I’ve made is tweaking how I learn vocabulary. I’ve been trying my best to slow down and build a stronger link with new words that I encounter. This may involve taking a good amount of time to build a nice mem, or simply trying to act out a situation using the new vocabulary word. I think it is important to engage all of your senses when learning something new. And also, just getting up and moving a little keeps you awake when you are drilling through hundreds of vocabulary words.

I’ve also been making a point to just run with my curiosity instead of trying to digest as much vocabulary as I possibly can. So, if my mind goes on a tangent with some word and I really want to take some time to look up some phrases here and there to see what I can do with it, I don’t worry about taking a bunch of time to do a little more investigating. As long as I have some time to do so.

One example of this is jyumoku, which is a word that popped up in a N1 deck that I am currently studying. In the deck, it had the English translation as ‘tree.’ Now, if you’ve been studying Japanese for any length of time, you’ll know that the word for ‘tree’ is usually ki. Or at least, that is what usually comes up first when you do a dictionary search. So, what is with this jyumoku?

Well, just as we have a myriad of words to describe things like a place we live (lodge, cabin, house, hut, shelter, etc…) so does Japanese (go figure). And each of those words I mentioned before conjure up a different image in your head right? A lodge is different from cabin in your head. The same is true for jyumoku and ki. They kind of have the same meaning, but they are slightly different.

It turns out jyumoku has more of a written or academic tone to it. It is more often used in writing or in some kind of prepared presentation, not in regular conversation. And it is used more to talk about trees in general and not a specific tree, like ki is more often used for. jyumoku has another translation as ‘arbor’ and can be used in such words as tree husbandry (樹木の栽培管理).

Of course, these distinctions are little blurry and you still need to read through a few examples to get a feel for how it is used. I feel like this is why, the higher you get the more reading and using of the language you need to do to really learn all these little nuances that can come up. You can’t just drill everything and hope for the best in other words.

Intensive Reading with Harry Potter

When I first read through Harry Potter, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of it and that I picked up a lot of vocabulary. But, in reality I had looked up a bunch of words, temporarily put them in my head and then moved on. It has been a great experience to go back over things in detail and learn some of the quirky little words that come up. I’ve been drilling them using my deck and trying them out with friends and co-workers for laughs, especially some of the words that can be hard to work into a conversation.

For example, I picked up the word usunoro, which means half-wit or knucklehead. I obviously can’t use that with too many of my friends or co-workers in a regular situation, but I’ve been joking around with them and trying out new phrases and vocabulary.

I’m still reading through the elementary school newspaper and it has been pretty interesting so far. In general, it is pretty easy for me to understand, although a lot of the vocabulary is not automatic for me. I may understand the meaning of each word, but comprehending it all put together has sometimes slowed me down a little, so I think it is a great piece of material that is just at the right level where I understand most of it and can practice and get faster with a foundation of useful words and over-learn it all.

Memrise Premium Updated

It is always a good thing when you are able to set little mini goals for yourself as you work towards your big goal. It keeps big goals from seeming so unattainable. I go into a lot of detail about goal setting in the JLPT Study Guide Kit, because I think it is something that a lot of people overlook when going to set out to study. But, it is critical that you set goals for yourself.

Memrise does a great job of gamifing the whole process of learning with points and charts to show your progress. And this has helped a lot in setting goals and being able to track how well you are doing as well as allowing you to compete with your friends for some motivation.

But now they have taken the process one step further and allowed you to set points goals for each of your courses. This is a good way to keep you focused on trying to learn a particular number of words each day. And of course, since it is Memrise, everything is beautifully presented to you in a little chart for you to fill up.

To make things simpler, Memrise has simplified the process a bit by limiting you to only 3 choices – 1500, 6000, or 9000 points a day. This can make things a bit trickier, because I think about 3000 per course is a good goal if you are split between two courses that you are actively studying (like me), but hey simpler is better.

How about you?

How have your plans changed? Are you new to the site? You might want to check Month 1 of the JLPT study guide to give you an idea of what to do this month in preparation for the July or December test.

A couple of weeks back I had some free time to take my family to Baymax (US title: Big Hero 6).  It is a cute little movie about a boy, named Hiro, who befriends his brother’s robot and ultimately goes on to fight the bad guy and save the day with his trusty team of friends.  In general, the plot is pretty standard with only a few minor surprises.  But that doesn’t stop it from being a great movie.

There were plenty of moments where I laughed out loud and had a genuinely good time.  It was also the first time we took our 2 year old to the movie theater, and she performed beautifully.  No crying and breaking down in the middle of the movie, no fidgeting or yelling out.  It was great.

One thing that I noticed though was the mismatch of the titles.  In Japan (and apparently Germany?), the movie is known as ‘Baymax.’  But, the US title is ‘Big Hero 6.’  Now, generally speaking Hollywood movies usually don’t have the same title in Japan as they do in the US, and sometimes it seems like they have put little to no thought into making them, like ‘Karate Kid’ becoming ‘Besuto Kiddo’ in Japan, which still baffles me.

But, I thought it odd that they named the whole movie after the robot, when usually they would just make some more generic name like ‘Big Robot.’  Obviously, Disney had put a little more thought into it then simply slapping a generic moniker and hoping it flies, because, well, they’re Disney.

I started to wonder why they would have different names, when both seem to be pretty generic. I mean, what is big hero 6? Unless you happen to read the Marvel comic of the same name (but set in Marvel’s world, and with a very different Baymax), you wouldn’t really have any idea what that is about. Heck, I didn’t even know there was a comic until I saw the post-credits scene, a hallmark of pretty much every Marvel movie.

So, why would they have different names? Names don’t change anything about the movie’s content; they essentially just a change in packaging, which you might not think is so important but a change in packaging could persuade a few extra movie goers. More movie goers, more money. Essentially a movie title is used for marketing. After all, you would never go to a movie titled “Big Boring Bunch of Heros.” or maybe you would out of curiosity. Who knows?

Big Hero 6’s Marketing

Movies are marketed through trailers; those 2 minute action-packed clips they show before the movie you came to see. They tease you to come back at a later date to see another movie. They often times tease you with the most enticing bits of the movie to get you hooked. The Big Hero 6 trailer looked like this:

It really puts a lot of emphasis on the hero, named Hiro, his robot and his helpful friends. It presents you with your typical hero story. There is a good guy and a bad guy, they fight and good guy wins. Presumably along the way Hiro has to overcome some obstacles and this is sprinkled with some comedic moments to keep the pace of the movie manageable, and keep the whole thing from getting too serious. Your typical Hollywood flick.

You could almost say it is an animated version of a lot of Hollywood’s recent blockbusters that are essentially superheros fighting some world ending force, like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” just to name a few.  In other words, Disney’s other movies.  They happen to make a lot of money, so I guess they have a pretty good formula going for them.  But this is very American, right?  Hero overcomes all odds to save the day, maybe falls in love on the way.  It makes millions, and will make millions for years to come.

Baymax’s Marketing

Baymax, as Big Hero 6 is called in Japan, has a slightly different trailer.  It still features some of the same clips, but there is a little difference in the focus of the main elements of the film.  Take a look at it:

Did you see the difference?  There is bigger focus on the relationship between Hiro and his big brother Tadashi.  As a matter of fact, the Japanese trailer was the first to reveal that Tadashi is ‘gone.’ And we see more of the relationship between Baymax and Hiro.  And just for good measure, the Japanese trailer adds Ai’s ‘Story’, the classic tear-jerker of a song played at weddings (including my own) across Japan.  The scene where Hiro equips his team with new outfits and gear is reduced to a short blip.  Even the volume on the first superhero anthem seems to be a little softer.

The Baymax trailer tries to play up the human relationships of the movie, and plays down the hero overcoming the bad guy side of the story.  It’s still there obviously, I mean that is the primary plot after all.  But, it isn’t what Disney choose to entice its movie goers with.

Why People Go to the Theater: US vs. Japan

I think a lot of people go to the theater to escape reality.  Yes, home theater equipment has advanced by leaps and bounds, but going to the theater still allows me to escape out of my humdrum house and jump into another world.  That’s why I think nothing will ever beat the movie going experience, no matter how good and cheap TVs and speakers get.

In the States, where cynicism has seen a strong revival, a lot of people want to escape to a place where people have super powers and anything seems possible.  I think a lot of people in the States are either looking for a hero or want to be that hero in the spotlight.  They want to overcome the bad guy.

In contrast in Japan, where relationships are more visible and sometimes strictly enforced, a lot of people find escape in experiencing other people’s relationships.  Not romantic relationships necessarily, but human relationships in general.  One of my Japanese friends commented that people in the States go to the movies to see a hero, but people in Japan go to the movie theater to cry.

I think either out of sheer dumb luck or marketing genius, Disney managed to create a film that could be highly marketable in two big markets – Japan and America.  As I mentioned earlier, Big Hero 6 is actually based on a Marvel comic with some very noticeable differences.  Disney basically made a whole new group inspired by the Marvel comic, going so far as to removing them from Marvel’s world (Earth-616) and putting them in the imaginary city of San Fransokyo, which is absolutely beautiful by the way.  I heard that Disney was trying to base the story in Japan without letting the setting overpower the story.  And by doing this, they made the city both American and Japanese in a way.

The characters have been removed from a lot of the traditional American superheros and placed in a very cool Pacific hybrid city.  I really hope that this is a start of a new world with some interesting new characters.  I would like to see the return of this setting and characters.

What do you think?

What do you think of the movie?  Do you think it is a good combination of two cultures?  A bomb?  Let me know in the comments.

December in Japan is always unbelievably busy. There is the Christmas/Bonenkai party season. Then, you have New Year’s cards to design and write. And finally, the big cleaning where you throw out as much of the old as you can to make way for the new. Then after New Year’s, you have your first visit to the shrine, first visits and formalities to all your business contacts. And if you still have enough energy, New Year parties.

Needless to say I got way behind with my studying. The graphic above is taken from my Memrise account. The red line is the number of words I forgot, and the green line the number of words I know. It took a beating over the holiday break, and I am just now starting to get it under control and add new words to the stack.

Getting back on track is always a game of patience. If you try to go too fast, you just start mindlessly punching in words and not retaining that much. You go to slow and you risk getting buried under the inevitable review that comes. I think I am managing a lot better than last year at this time when I basically took two weeks off from studying and came back to about 600 words I needed to drill through.

New Job

So, I recently got a new job, or more specifically, a new contract that requires a lot more Japanese than what I usually need. I kind of took on the contract hoping I would be able to use my Japanese a lot more since I really haven’t been getting any kind of natural practice other than some eavesdropping on the train and a little small talk with some mothers when my daughter is taking some gym classes.

The use of Japanese is going to be a little limited, but I’m still a little nervous about it. I used to be pretty confident about my ability to start up a conversation with someone and keep it going, but those days are gone. There are going to be a few staff meetings I’ll be sitting in on that require some good focus, which I’ve started to lose.

Anyway, I’m excited to actually be using Japanese on a regular basis again and using some old muscles that haven’t seen that much exercise lately. I’m just hoping that it doesn’t eat up a lot of my time with reports and such. I’d like to maintain some semblance of a work-life balance.

Passing N1

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from readers about how to pass N1 recently. Although I have yet to pass the N1, I have been in contact with a lot of folks that have. I’ve been trying to pick their brains as much as possible to try to tease out what separates someone from an N2 level and an N1 level.

Some key points that I have seen come up time and time again is the need for immersion in the language. You don’t necessarily have to be living in Japan. A lot of people outside of Japan, have passed the exam through some hard work. But, you do have to strive for automaticity with the language. Automaticity is basically what it sounds like, everything should come to you automatically. If you have to still take some time to translate things to understand them, you haven’t quite reached that level yet.

I admit, there are times when I have to take a step back and translate a passage piece by piece before I can get a good understanding of what it is about. I don’t have this problem with most common materials – letters in the mail, notices, advertisements and such, but if it is something more abstract and indirect, I really need to take a step back and try to understand as much as I can by doing a little translation in my head.

Also, at this level, you need to really take a genuine interest in reading and listening to Japanese a lot. You’ll need a lot of bulk input in order to bring your vocabulary up to level that is needed for the test. Using SRS, like Anki and Memrise, can only get you so far. You will have to go out and really see and hear those words in context a few times in order to really get a good enough grasp on the language and make it automatic.

I think drill books are still useful at this level, and give you a decent idea of what to expect on the test, but don’t expect them to fully prepare you for the real thing. Kanzen Master is a really useful series, but I found their reading book for this level was far too easy to prepare for the real exam. It’s a good start, but try not to get a false sense of security from it. The same goes for mock tests. They try their best to make these tests on par with the real test, but a lot of times they fall flat.

How about you?

How are your studies coming along? If you are studying for the N1, what are you doing to prepare?

Last month, I ranted on about 5 things that I think Japan could import from other countries. One thing that I missed on that list, and this list as well, is a work-life balance. Japan definitely doesn’t have anything resembling a work-life balance, and with the recent belt tightening, it has only gotten worse. I’ve heard stories of a few people taking on the job of two and burning a lot of midnight oil to keep their jobs.

I could probably write an entire blog post about work-life balance (and probably will at some point), so I’m not going to discuss it in too much detail here. Instead, I’d like to give the next 5 things that I’d like to see in Japan:

5. Education reform

Okay so this is a horse that has been beaten bloody way too many times, but as a father of a 3 year old that will soon join the education system, I think it is important to at least mention the state of education in Japan. The problem has multiple facets that need to be addressed in order to really build more efficient system. As a matter of fact this probably another topic I could write a full post on, so I’ll just go over the key points here.

First, every public school across the nation follows pretty much the exact same curriculum and exact same books. This would be a good system if the people at the top were perfect and could write accurate and truthful textbook. But, of course no one is perfect, and so I encounter students on a regular basis who are stunned to find out that we pronounce the word ‘the’ pretty much the same even if it comes before a vowel sound. And why students regular respond to ‘How are you doing?’ with ‘Yes.’ The list goes on and on, because the same wrong textbook was used.

Second, is the immense amount of time and energy that goes into shoveling raw facts into kids’ heads. This raw information without any critical thinking applied is next to useless in an age of Google and on-demand information. The way things are going, we are already searching for things using voice, and it is not unthinkable that we will have the ability to search for things with our thoughts. With that instant connection to information why is there such a focus on memorization?

Now, knowing facts about the world is important, don’t get me wrong. You can’t, for example, have an effective discussion on the effects of the cold war on current policy if you are spending half the time looking up facts on Google. But, learning of facts is a lifelong process. And to make use of those facts you need critical thinking.

4. Unique Women Heros

Legally speaking, women have a lot of rights in Japan. There, in theory, are no obstructions to receiving equal pay and equal opportunities in the workplace. However, women still occupy considerably small portion of the leadership workforce. Most of the women working in companies today are forced on to a cleric track that, at best, will allow them to be executive assistants to the president. But, this seems to be a huge misuse of resources to me.

The problem is incredibly difficult to solve due to a lot of entrenched cultural norms. The Economist has an amazing article that captures almost every angle of the problem that I encourage you to give a read if you are more interested in this topic. But, just to summarize, the company culture in Japan is still set to men are the leaders, women are the clerics.

I’ll just give you one example. In the States, I worked in sales for a large B2B company. At least half of the sales reps were women; women tend to be good sales people in my opinion. Anyway, I’ve taught a few corporate lessons to sales staff here in Japan and the entire team is men. In sales, this is a tough problem, because sales staff usually take buyers out to hostess clubs and such, which obviously female staff would have a hard time doing. There are other ways of doing business of course but this is the usual way.

Another problem is that some women simply don’t want to work. And to be honest, I can’t really blame them. I have more than a few friends that are married to doctors, execs, etc… and they live a life of luxury. They are still busy and working hard to raise their kids, but they also typically go on a weekend trip once a month and a long (sometimes up to a month) trip once a year. Meanwhile, the husband puts in long hours, barely sleeps, and is maybe rewarded with a week long trip a year. If you have that going for you, who wants to work outside the home?

Japan is slowly changing though. More woman are interested in working and staying employed their whole lives (instead of simply quitting after getting married or having a baby). This change is a bit too slow, though. So, I propose my own weird solution, unique women heros.

Okay, so the right word to use here is role model, but I hate that word because it has too much of a school guidance counselor feel to it. Hero sounds so much cooler. And that is what is needed really. It needs to become popular and cool to break from the norms.

3. Audiobooks

For whatever reason, I was always a poor reader in school. I read way too slow, and just didn’t really enjoy it. These days, I have a lot better time with audiobooks. It is a lot easier for me to listen while I’m walking, cooking, cleaning, or doing some other kind of physical activity. I have been able to ‘read’ a lot more material than I ever would if I simply read books.

And audiobooks are a great resource to learn languages because you get listening practice in as well as reading if you put the audio together with the text. It is especially helpful in Japanese where you are sometimes unable to actually read the language because you don’t recognize the kanji.

That’s why it is a little sad that there is an utter lack of good audiobooks in Japanese. Most of the audiobooks that do exist are short, self-help type books from what I’ve seen. Luckily, the first two books of Harry Potter were recorded as audiobooks, but that is where they stopped. Obviously audiobooks aren’t as popular in Japan as in other places. I’m not sure why this is. It seems like it would be pretty convenient as well as discrete to listen to an audiobook on the train to work instead of having to open up novel on the train.

2. Buyer’s Market for Jobs

Why is it that companies hire employees almost a year before the even graduate college? Then keep them on for years, even when they obviously aren’t a fit for the company? I could understand if there were shortages of good employees, but their aren’t. There are always people looking for jobs, so why do you need to hire people that you barely know, and haven’t even completed the basic requirements of graduating from college yet?

Nobody wants to lose their job obviously, and everyone likes job security. But, sometimes in life you make the wrong decision about your career and it would be helpful to be able to turn that around and work somewhere else, but you can’t so easily. And keeping on unmotivated, uninspired workers is draining to a companies efficiency. If those employees could jump ship to somewhere that motivates them more, everybody wins. The new company gets a happy new employee, the old company can hire a new hopefully more motivated employee.

1. Las Vegas of Japan

There is some buzz going around about the possibility of building ‘integrated resorts’ on par with those in Las Vegas and Macau. The bill recently got shot down due to some political scandals in Abe’s cabinet, but I would like to see it be revived. I have personally never been to a casino, and probably won’t be frequenting one anytime soon, but I think it would be a good boost for the economy.

Some were suggesting that the resorts could be built in Osaka bay, where a large section of land lays relatively vacant waiting for some Olympic games that will probably not come anytime soon. And although that could be a good use of space relatively close to a large international airport, I think it would be better to revitalize a rural section of the country that is dying out like Tohoku or Chuugoku (no not China, the section of Japan between Kansai and Kyushu).

My reasoning for this is simple. A lot of anti-casino lawmakers are against the bill due to concerns of gambling addiction, which is a valid concern. So, how about putting it in a place that is a little hard to get to? Much like Las Vegas in the States, it can isolate the casinos and make it more difficult for individuals to make a regular habit of going there. And we get to have a lot of nice cheap hotels and shows like Las Vegas.

Is that all?

What else would you like to see in Japan? Let me know in the comments.

I celebrated Christmas a little early again this year. The 23rd is a holiday here in Japan. (It’s the Emperor’s Birthday). It is the one day that we officially have off and get paid for it, so it tends to be the day my family and I celebrate Christmas.

Yes, I know it is a little bit of a bummer to not have Christmas off, but that is one of the things you have to deal with when you live in another country. I could ask for the day off, but I’m greedily hoarding my days off for much larger vacations.

Christmas in Japan is usually a lover’s holiday, which is why if you go out with your family to a “Christmas Dinner” you’ll most likely be surrounded by young couples. I used to do this a lot with friends actually until, yeah know, I got married. And the thing you are suppose to do if you are married with a family is get a great big bucket of fried chicken from KFC or as it is called here “Kentucky.”

This seems to be a bit of a thing in Japan, where major trends are created by a company to drum up business at certain times of the year. KFC happened to be lucky enough to fill in the gap for Christmas, earning them big bucks every year I’m sure.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to getting some hard earned time off this year. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go to the States for Christmas due to money and time not really working out for us this time. But it looks like we will be making our way across the Pacific sometime next year instead. This year, I’ll be doing the traditional Japanese thing of sitting around with family for New Year’s.

Read and Listen to Review

So, I have been working my way through Harry Potter. This is the second time I’ve tackled it and I can pretty easily get the main idea of what is going on and only get tripped up in a few minor spots. But this time, I want to absorb all the vocabulary instead of simply just having a brief notion of what things mean, I want practice them a few times and overlearn the material. The theory being that this will make it easier to read and over-learn the next book and the next book until reading any book becomes a cinch.

The biggest problem is keeping up with Memrise at the moment. And I’m trying to decide whether or not I should care about that or not. Should I just keep re-listening/re-reading material to understand all the vocabulary or should I drill to death? Do a combination of the two? At the moment, I’m trying to do both, which is working out quite well if I had the time to feed the drilling beast, but my free time to study is so patchy it is hard to maintain a regular pattern.

Anyway, what I like most about this method is that I get to study while I am walking. At first, I couldn’t be bothered to listened to Japanese day in and day out. I was tired after work, or tired in the morning and just wanted to listen to music or listen to one of my favorite podcasts. But, after listening to it a few times, my brain relaxes a bit and it has become a lot easier to follow everything while I’m walking. If my mind does start to wonder, I can pretty easily get back on track, because I’m so familiar with the book at this point. In some parts I know it so well that I can mouth the words as I listen, kind of a walking dictation practice.

This is great but what about material that doesn’t have audio?

I started reading a paper for junior high students. At first, I thought it would be really easy to get through, almost too easy. And there are some articles that are below my level. But, a lot of them are written to be just difficult enough for me to learn some valuable new vocabulary. It doesn’t seem to suffer from being dumbed down too much like NHK’s web easy news. It contains a lot of useful facts and articles about interesting, topical stuff like Ebola or space.

The biggest problem, again, is that I don’t have much ‘sitting-down’ time. I’m usually walking somewhere or sitting on the train. When I am home, I have a variety of stuff to do with the family, so it can be hard to get some quiet time alone when I can read and I am not too tired to concentrate. So what to do?

Well, my current method is asking my wife to record the articles that I want to read, so then I can listen to them while I’m walking to and from the station to go to work. This allows me to review while I’m doing something I have to do every morning – walk. For some reason, I have a pretty easy time of staying focused while I’m walking.

Reading this newspaper and reading Harry Potter has led me to start stockpiling a ton of vocabulary. I’m currently adding about 100 to 200 words a week and I’d like to do even more. What has been a big boon is the whole new app available for Memrise on the Android platform, which I’m sure will get ported to iPhone pretty soon as well.

The new app allows users to practice any course, big or small. This is great practice. Before I had to do my big courses at home, but now I can do any course on the road. I have a feeling I’ll be racking up a lot more points with this new app. I hope it makes it too iPhone soon as well.

SRS is not a cure all

SRS, Spaced Repetition Systems, can be pretty addictive. They are easy to just plunk down in front of and start drilling away and you can easily see the number of words you know, some systems even give you detailed reports of how well you are doing and your efficiency of studying. Memrise adds gaming to the equation with points and weekly/monthly/all-time leaderboards.

All of this can keep you studying and digesting more and more vocab, but it isn’t a cure-all. You aren’t finished with it, if all you do is drill the words. You need a little something more. You need context in order to really glue those words in and keep them glued in. Context can also provide you with extra information that you really can’t learn from a flashcard like the connotation of the word or its appropriateness in certain situations.

Reading gives you a great context for the use of these words and provides something meaningful and interesting to consume instead of lists and lists of words. In my opinion, it also helps you remember it more, because you can see the object or action taking place in the story, instead of just some dead word on a list.

I’m hoping that this winning combo of reading and SRS pushes me through to the higher level of the test. Reading through the comments from the first reactions post a few weeks back. It seems like reading interesting native material is a big key to absorbing sentence patterns, grammar and vocabulary and using and understanding it automatically.

Have you been doing some reading lately?

What are some good books to read to practice Japanese? What some good manga that you have read in the past? Let us know in the comments.

Japan has a lot of great things to love about it. There are convenient train systems, relatively low crime, and 24 hour vending machines. These all make life extremely nice for us all, but if I may I’d like to add some tweaks that might make it a little better. And of course these are completely biased and based on my sole opinion, but I thought I would just get them out there in hopes others will help me campaign for their existence.

10. Good Mexican fast food

Japan secretly likes Mexican food. I know because every chance I can, I take someone to a Mexican restaurant so that they can taste the wonders that Mexico has to offer. And a lot of people in Japan say they would like to have a good Mexican place to go to eat Mexican food.

So, why is it not so popular? Why can’t we get a stinking Taco Bell over here? (I’m not saying Taco Bell is the best, just has the most marketing power). Well, they tried in 1988, and failed. My opinion is that they tried a little too early, and there was a bit of branding issue as well.

See, the word taco to most Japanese people means octopus as in takoyaki (fried octopus balls, a famous delicacy of the Kansai region). In Japan, takosu means tacos as in the food from Mexico. So maybe they should have called it Takosu Beru or maybe American Tacosu House? Apparently, it is important that it is Western sounding. When they shortened Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC, sales dropped for the famous fast food chain. Now, everyone just calls it Kentucky. So, if you happen to be from Kentucky, this why everyone might be offering you fried chicken all the time.

But, anyway, I think this is a great time to reintroduce it. Tacos and tortilla shells are becoming more common place, and there has been more of an interest in foreign things. Also, McDonald’s recently took a huge hit from the whole tainted chicken meat fiasco. I think Taco Bell could sneak in and grab some of the market.

I should also note that Taco Time did have some locations in Japan up until about 2012 or so, but they seem to have all closed up.

9. Entrepreneurial Culture

America is lucky in the sense that it seems to attract all those who want to create something new and make a lot of money. It has attracted some big name stars like Elon Musk (of Paypal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX) as well as some home-grown stars like Steve Jobs. These tech giants have gone on to fund smaller tech companies which generate more money and those companies beget more tech companies, and so forth and so on.

Even though we’re not in the heyday of the Internet, there is still a lot of money being thrown around at people that have brilliant ideas and just need some fuel to power it to the next level. There is a lot of know-how concentrated in Silicon Valley that can help take a small idea and make it concrete, churning out more and more things every year. And these have even spawned off smaller communities in other parts of the country that create the new gizmos and software platforms we can’t live without.

But, this has not really come to Japan. At least on the scale that it really needs to be to effect some change to the market. This is even more odd when you consider Japan leads the world in granted patents (but is #3 in patent applications). They are ranked second (behind South Korea) for number of patents per capita. So with all this patenting going on, they have to be creating a lot of new things, just not new products I guess.

Whatever happened to the ingenuity that gave us the Walkman or CDs, DVDs and BluRay Discs? It seems like engineers and creators in Japan aren’t hungry like they once were to create something new, which seems like a bit of a shame. I’m still rooting for the underdog company that comes out of nowhere to create the next big thing, and with the new found capital begets more little gizmos for us all to use.

8. Anti-ageism laws

Every other week, there is some newspaper article about the insurmountable problem of Japan’s aging population. People tend to get older when you have one of the best healthcare systems in the world, and people have good genes to boot. It just tends to happen.

The healthcare system is so good that people still have plenty of energy and vigor at age 60 and 70. They take up new hobbies and travel the world living it up. So this is obviously the perfect time to fire them from their jobs. I mean it makes great economical sense to let go of your most experienced workers at age 60 for no other reason than they had their 60th birthday.

At least that is what most major companies do in Japan. They force retirement at a certain age, usually 60. The kicker is that these same companies will take on those same former employees as consultants.

And then everyone stands around with the hands in the air wondering what we could possibly do to have a bigger workforce to support the aging population. They are baffled as to why there are so few workers earning a salary, paying taxes, and paying into the national pension. How can this problem possibly be solved?

Easy, make it illegal to fire (and hire) people based on age. Make it based on their abilities not some arbitrary number. Do the same for women. There you go, you probably just doubled the workforce. Is there something I’m missing here?

7. Saying Thank You

Okay, so I know it is a cultural thing, and it is just how things are in Japan, but I’m tired of everyone saying ‘sumimasen’ for absolutely everything. If you hold the door for someone, instead of a polite ‘arigatou’ you are inevitably treated to a ‘sumimasen’ and a bow of the head in embarrassment showing that you made the other person uncomfortable by your act of kindness.

I’d much rather have a smile and a thank you. And, I’ve even heard from a few people living in Japan that they would like to see this, too. But, unfortunately like a lot of things in Japan, it just exists because it exists.

But, I like doing nice things for people and that making them happy. I like making people happy. Is that so wrong?

So, I say let’s try to make the change ourselves. The next time someone picks up something you dropped in Japan, look them in the eye and say thank you and give them a great big smile. Together we can make a change for the better.

6. Banking for the Little Guy

Okay, so I can’t really speak for banking products in countries other than the States, but Japan for being such a big company seems to have abysmal banking options. Now granted if the interest rate in your country is so low that you are advertising returns of 0.1% as the next big thing, you are going to have a slight problem getting people to do some banking.

But, is it not possible to setup some kind of automatic saving program? or make it a lot easier to invest in the stock market? Yes, there are options out there for the little guy, but they seem to be a bit confusing and investing in stocks doesn’t seem to be what your average Joe does here. Whenever I ask about buying and selling stocks people seem to think you have to be very rich in order to do anything. But, you don’t really.

And Japan needs people investing there money to boost the economy and get the money out of savings, which is pretty big drag on the economy at the moment. So if the best you can do by letting your money sit in a bank account is 0.1%, then isn’t worth a little risk to do some trading? I mean companies have to be growing at least slightly better than that.

What’s Missing?

What would you like to see in Japan?  Let me know in the comments below.

Photo by Hiroaki Maeda

It has been an incredibly busy couple of weeks. I was incredibly busy with Halloween and the little one.  We were actually able to go trick or treating twice.  Trick or treating is not yet a standard thing to do in Japan but we always arrange a small trick or treat event in our neighborhood for the kids. It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of busy work.

Also, the website has been going through some minor growing pains lately. The site has grown by about 25% in terms of visitors since last year, which means my hosting company is starting to strain a little bit. I had to do some late night research to make sure the whole thing keeps going and doesn’t get crushed under its own weight. But, by all means please keep visiting the site. I love having lots of visitors!

So this December I will not be taking the test as I usually do for a variety of reasons. The one big reason was that I’ve just been trying to do way too many things at once. Having a 3 year old and juggling a few jobs can weigh you down a little bit. This resulted in one of my worst scores ever on the last test because I was just not in it when I took the test back in July.

So, I have had some time to change some things around and see if a different strategy might suit me better for passing the test. I’m still not sure if it will make a difference or not. Right now it is just good to be able to get so many things done that I’ve been putting off for way too long.

I’ve done my best to abandon drill books. Although I will probably revisit them again in the future, I’m letting them gather dust and instead doing more immersive learning. Or at least, that is what I’m trying to do. It seems like lately there have been far too many emergencies to deal with, but that is the game of life, and I know I’m not the only one.

Harry Potter

So, I recently made it out to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, usually shortened to just USJ. It has grown quite a lot since I was there about 3 years ago. One very new addition was Harry Potter land. Now, I wouldn’t really say I’m that big of a Harry Potter fan. I thought the whole series was pretty good, but nothing phenomenal. However, I am a bit of theme park nut and I had to visit it to see how the whole place was setup.

Anyway, after walking through the land and taking in the shops, I suddenly remembered the Harry Potter audiobook that I had bought awhile back and had done nothing with. I had been saving it for when I could go back to ‘fun’ studying. You know, after I had chewed through all the JLPT stuff.

I had been trying to read Game of Thrones in Japanese and was having a heck of time with it because of the rather complicated vocabulary and some expressions. And about every 3rd or 4th word I looked up was a word that I had seen in Harry Potter before but just forgot how it was used. And being that I have hardly made it through the Harry Potter course I made on Memrise, I figured I would revive my efforts to master the book.

Harry Potter is kind of unique in a way because it is one of the only books that has been translated into Japanese and also has an audiobook to help with listening. Audiobooks, for whatever reason, are not as popular in Japan as they are in other places. For instance, you can get every one of the Harry Potter audiobooks (all 7) in Polish, but only the first two are available in Japanese. And even those are hard to come by because they were released on CD and never digitized. They have actually stopped making new copies. Instead, you have to snatch up the used copies while they last.

I ripped the CDs for personal use on my iPhone (still legal in Japan by the way), and then slowed them down so that I can listen to them more easily when I was walking to and from work. This is especially helpful for the first chapter which is a little overwritten (like most first chapters of books), so it is difficult to understand the first time you go through it.

I should say that I have read the entire book once before, so this should be review. But, I’ve noticed I missed a lot the first time through, so I have been adding more to the Harry Potter course as well as picking up even more expressions and sentence patterns.

The point of practicing this book again is too really master it this time. The first time I went through I was just striving for comprehension and kind of passively picking up a few things here and there. But now, I’m going to read and reread, as well as listen to the audiobook several times until it becomes automatic for me. The goal is stop thinking or working to understand what is being said but for it to just come to me automatically.

So far I feel it working out quite well. I can, of course, understand the Harry Potter audiobook quite well after a few listens, but my overall listening skills are starting to improve. I feel that my head doesn’t ‘reject’ Japanese as often as before. It seems to take a lot less effort to concentrate on what people are saying. I’m hoping that this will improve my reading as well. Although, I often don’t have enough time to sit down and read along with the audiobook.

The goal here is to get so comfortable with the set of vocabulary in the first and second book that I can cut through the rest of the books in relative ease. I still wish there were audiobooks for the rest of the series. That would make my life a lot easier because I spend a lot more time running around than sitting down, but I guess I’ll take what I can get.

Memrise Premium

Memrise has recently made a premium version of their web app available that I have been test driving since the very early days. It has been interesting to see the stats develop and mature to something that is really useful to use for focusing your studies on those nasty words that seem to never quite catch on.

What I especially like is the difficult words option where you can drill and practice just the words that you have been missing a lot. Already, if you miss a word during a study session, you will be prompted a few more times again with that word. But with this is new feature I can go through a round of the words that I have been missing a lot lately in order to give myself one more look at it in a different session.

I have found that this has really driven home the words and made them very automatic for me. It also gives me a chance to spend some extra time with them and create some nice mems (mnemonics). Often times in a regular session you have a lot of easy prompts that you sail through and then get hung up on a few difficult ones. Personally, I get a little frustrated having to spend extra time on the tricky words. But, if you are specifically drilling them, you are more focused and ready to try to remember the definitions.

There are also some really interesting stats if you are stat nut that covers how long your learning streak is, how much time you spend on each course, and how many words you forgot that day, as well as how many you learned. These can be really motivating if you like to see stats of how you learning.

How are you doing?

Have you ever tried to tackle the Harry Potter books or any native materials? Tell us about them in the comments.

Photo by Karen Roe

At one time, I used to teach an English class to some public servants. And it being a government sanctioned event, everything had to start incredibly early, 8am to be exact. This was not a normal time for me to be up and around, needless to say the life of an English teacher usually doesn’t start that early.

But, the one thing that struck me as odd was there were hardly any women on public transit, at all. Instead, just rows and rows of businessmen in black suits perfectly lined up, awaiting the arrival of the massive Midosuji subway train to whisk them away to wherever they worked. Like clockwork, the train came to a stop, the lines split apart to allow passengers off and then everyone filed in. Eventually the last few poor souls had to smash themselves into the human blob contained inside the subway car.

This is probably the stereotype you might think of when it comes to Tokyo rush hour – millions of like-dressed drones marching to their stations. And although things are moving away from that, at a snail’s pace, it still persists – the uniformity of Japan and Japanese life.

You might have heard the famous saying “The nail that sticks out, gets nailed down.” And you can see plenty of examples of that at work in Japan. Most people wear black or if they are really edgy, grayscale, most cars you see are also some variation of this, white or a darkish gray. Doing what everyone else does and staying in line is important in Japan. You have to be a part of the group.

And being born and raised in America, where individualism is celebrated, at first it seemed a little annoying to have all this conformity, but over time I just got used to it. Also, for the most part, foreigners are exempt from conforming because we are just different, and that is okay I guess.

Big City, Big Crowds

I think some of this group think comes from the fact that you have to deal with massive crowds of people in the city. So many people actually that your brain kind of switches off to the fact that they are actually people. You almost have to or you would easily get overloaded by everybody you see just walking around the mall. I’ve had to learn to do this myself. When I go to a crowded place, I no longer look at faces or think on my own, I just follow the person in front of me.   Often times this leads me the wrong way or I end up taking longer than it needed to be because I took a path everyone else is taking.

At the office, some people work 60, 70, even 80 or more hours at their jobs and so are surrounded by their workmates. And then, after work, they might go out for drinks with their co-workers.  And this would seem fun, but I often hear complaints from my students telling me they have to go drinking again. They can’t just go home and relax.

This is probably the key reason why people are not getting together, getting married and having kids. They simply don’t have enough free time to do it, in the city anyway. A lot of people end up marrying someone from work (myself included) because you don’t have the free time to just meet people naturally.

And all this is being driven by the perpetually so-so economy.  People tend to tow the line and keep working for the same company because they are scared to lose their jobs, and changing jobs is difficult in traditional careers. If you are some kind of skilled professional (like a nurse, IT tech, etc…) it is a lot easier, but then again they tend to work some long hours as well.

Standing on the right side of the escalator

But, Japan isn’t just one big glob of people doing the same stuff.  There are actually regional groups that have their own thing going on as well. Osaka and Tokyo often come up as good examples of regional differences since they tend to do things a little different. In some ways, they are exact opposites.

In Osaka, people stand on the right side of the escalator and walk up (or down) the left side. In Kanto (the nebulous cloud of people that hovers around Tokyo), it is the opposite – stand on the left, walking on the right. No one came to this decision mind you, but the division still exists. And actually, in Kyoto, which is pretty close to Osaka, they follow the Kanto way. So, just Osaka seems to stick to this unwritten rule.

There are language differences as well. For example, baka in Kanto and aho in Osaka mean “silly” in a playful way. But if you switch them around, saying aho in Kanto and baka in Osaka, you are saying “You f**king idiot!” Obviously a difference you need to keep in mind. There are a lot of other differences to other everyday words too like chou for “super” or “uber” in Kanto, but meccha in Osaka has the same meaning. Not to mention kansai-ben, which almost sounds like another language.

Even the power grid is different between the different halves of Japan. The east half uses 50hz, while the west uses 60hz. This is a bit of a problem for disaster relief. In the aftermath of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, there was a power shortage due to nuclear power plants being brought offline in that region. The ability of Western Japan to assist with this shortage was greatly reduced by the fact that in order for the East to use the power, it had to first be converted to 50hz.

TV shows play up this difference. A particular show that I like to watch, モニタリング (kind of like Japanese candid camera), likes to invent situations for unwitting participants and see their reactions. A running theme is to see the difference in reactions between Osaka people and Tokyo people.

The American Perspective

I think a lot of people when they first come to Japan find this grouping restrictive and annoying. And there are definitely some aspects that still bug me.

For example, I have a Japanese friend that worked for his family’s company his whole life, but now the company went bust (not his fault) and he is out looking for a job.  He is over 40, which is the invisible age barrier here in Japan. After 40, you apparently can’t learn anything new. So, he is falling through the cracks at the moment. He is having a really hard time finding a job that he can do that will help him feed his wife and two kids.

The system works perfectly if you adhere to the system of the husband working all the time (sometimes literally) and making a lot of money and the wife staying home and raising kids, but if you don’t stay in that track you don’t really have a lot of help.

But, conformity is not necessarily all bad.  It does keep people fairly disciplined and upright and proper so to speak.  The fact that their is practically zero crime in Japan is a great selling point for conformity.  I mean the biggest national news story the other day was the fact that someone used $600 or so worth of counterfeit money at some convenience stores.  I wouldn’t really call that a dangerous place.

Of course the low crime rate might also be contributed to the fact that Japan has one of the lowest rates of income disparity in the developed world, in sharp contrast to America that has one of the highest, and one of the highest violent crime rates to go with it.  But, maybe that is just some weird coincidence.

I do have to work pretty hard to keep up with the Tanakas, but it is a small price to pay to know that my wife and daughter are pretty safe.  It might seem a little boring to be apart of the same group all the time, but there is plenty of room to wiggle around in.  Life is what you make of it after all.

Do you like group life?

If you are living in Japan does the conformity to the group bother you? Do you need your freedom?

It has been an incredibly tough month for me. I had some more medical issues I had to deal with. Nothing serious or life-threatening just incredibly time consuming. We are also running into some family issues that are taking up a lot of time. Again, nothing serious, but just time-consuming for me and my wife.

All this means of course that I haven’t really been able to put anything that resembles a healthy amount of time in for studying. I have to cut a lot of my study sessions short and do a lot more impromptu studying when I can. I have managed to keep up with my vocabulary study, but I haven’t been able to start a lot of things that I would have liked to this month.

I have continued to listen to podcasts, which have gotten easier and easier. I still think Jane Su’s podcast is a great resource to study with. The conversations are pretty natural and have daily vocabulary, and the show notes give you a good enough of an idea of the main idea that you are able to guess and fill in the rest while you listen. I’ve been listening to it once to see if I can guess the main idea. Then, check the show notes to get the main idea. After that, go back and listen as many times as I need to get most of the details.

I have Bocchan on my reading list. I listened to the English audiobook, which is available for free, awhile back. Although it was written a century ago, it still reads pretty well except for the dialog which uses the old Matsuyama dialect. This can be a little tricky even for some Japanese. But, thanks to the English translation being easily available I can hopefully fish out the meanings.

Bocchan is in the public domain, so you can pick up the book on Amazon Kindle (with an Amazon.co.jp account) for free or from some other sources.

Web Easy NHK

I mentioned previously that I was going to give NHK Web Easy a try, and I have to say that it is a great little resource. If you haven’t heard of it before, it is mini NHK site where they have taken NHK articles and rewritten them in simple Japanese. This makes them a lot easier to digest and learn from. What is really great is that they also link to the main article that they simplified as well as the video clip of it.

I would say the level of the simplified articles is around N3, which actually at about the level where you have to start getting reading speed up and getting comfortable with reading in Japanese. The main article is a fairly easy N1 level, but still good for reviewing vocabulary and some grammar structures.

The main reason why I say it is pretty simple is that these articles are pretty cut and dry. There are no twists or anything particularly strange about them. They are simply too short to really deliver more than just the facts. So, they are easy to understand and great vocabulary practice, but not the best thing to read for comprehension practice.

There is audio available for the simplified news story, but it is computer generated. It is pretty life-like, but you can tell early on that it is not a real speaker. If you are looking to get some real pronunciation practice you might have to look somewhere else for it. However, the computer generated voice is good enough for doing some listening practice.

What I usually do is listen to the audio of the news story and try to get most of the key words and the main idea of the article. Then, I click through to the real article and use that for my real reading practice. Finally I check out the video that they have available, which has pretty fast speaking on it, so it is good practice even for N1ers. They loosely follow the story but not word for word. The flow is generally close enough that it can help you understand most of it though.

I do feel that sometimes the simplified article is too simple, to the point of not really being interesting or actually slightly confusing because they are unable to express all the interesting details, just the gist. This could start to get a little tedious if this were your only source of reading, but it might be a good addition to some of the other stuff you should be reading.

Leaning Japanese particles

I have recently gotten a few emails from readers asking about how to master Japanese particles, so I thought I would do my best to shed some light on how to get a good grasp of them.

Japanese particles are and will probably always be one of the biggest hurdles to learning and mastering Japanese. You start with basic usage of particles at the N5 level, but you don’t ever really finish studying them. Even on the N1 test you’ll find a few questions over particles. I still mix up some of the more advanced uses of them.

Particles really don’t have direct translations in English. This never so apparent but with the whole wa vs. ga battle that you will probably fight with for most of the time you are studying Japanese. Even though I have heard several explanations of the differences between these two particles, I still find myself in those rare situations where I really don’t know which one would sound better.

Another thing to keep in mind when you study particles is that you really need to use them in order to get a good feel for them. When you are speaking with someone, like your tutor or another native, be sure to clearly pronounce the particles and try to get them to correct you.

The reason for this is that, to be honest, a lot of the time particles are not necessary in order for you to get your idea across and natives will generally fill in the gaps and understand what you are trying to say without the need to be exactly correct. It might actually be quite frustrating to practice and master particles only to not hear them with nearly the frequency that you are expecting.

See, particles are absolutely necessary in writing, especially formal writing. Okay, so in informal writing, like on Twitter or Line or something you don’t need to be exact with your particles, but most writing requires proper particle usage.

The last thing I can tell you is that you really need to experiment with them and test out different ways that the particles can be used.  Write out a few sentences and get them corrected by someone.  Start off with some simple sentences so that you get a feel for them and then try to pile on a few just to see if it is correct or not.  Also, do a few mock tests, because they will twist particles around all the time on those and you will see them in a different way.

There are a few books that people recommend when it comes to particles.  The first one is the most simple, All About Particles (also in the US), this is shorter book that gives you the basics of the different particles without going into too much depth.  It is less than 200 pages and can be an easy read to get through.  The other book, Dictionary of Japanese Particles (also in the US), is more through and more of a good reference book.  All About Particles does not have exercises, whereas Dictionary of Japanese Particles does have a few, however the layout of the questions is pretty rudimentary.

The last book I can recommend is “How to Tell the Difference Between Japanese Particles“(also in the US), which groups particles by common themes like time.  This book really helps pry apart the differences between particles, which is something the test really preys on.  The exercises help you to see when one particle is used instead of another.

What do you do to Study Particles?

How do you conquer these beasts?  Let me know in the comments below.

Photo by Tatsuhiko

Phew, that was a bit of a long train ride. It seems like Matsuyama is such a long way from most of the major cities in Japan. And it really feels like it too. I heard there are around 500,000 people here, but it is a pretty sleepy town. It’s good to get away from the crowds you know?

All right, well, that’s Matsuyama castle, but I’m a bit exhausted from the trip, I don’t really feel like hiking up there today. We will visit it tomorrow after we have had some time to relax and get a feel for the city. First things first, let’s take a tram to Dogoonsen station.

There are actually four tram lines that run through the city, but they all end at Dogo Onsen, which makes things pretty convenient for us. Do you have Y180 for the fare? It’s just one fee for any stop.

Dogo Onsen

All right, that didn’t take too long. Here we are at Dogo Onsen. What’s that? Yeah, it does kind of look like the bathhouse in Spirited Away. I heard they used it as inspiration for the design of it. Pretty cool huh.

Look at this rock, I guess it is the rock that Sukunahikona danced on after he was cured in the bath. Have you heard that legend? No? Well, as I understand it the two gods Okuninushi no Mikoto and Sukunahikona no Mikoto came down from Izumo, which is home to the Gods of Japan. Sukunahikona was pretty sick with a fatal disease of some kind, but the waters healed him. And he danced a little jig on this rock to show off. That’s why there is that little dent in it.

Okay, so there are three baths – on the first floor there is a simple bath called the Kami no Yu. It has a slightly Mediterranean theme to it. On the 2nd floor they have a lounge where we can hang out in yukata and eat some sweets. And then on the 3rd floor is the Tama no Yu, which is suppose to be the highest class. It costs Y1200 but we get some dango and a nicer yukata apparently.

By the way, a yukata is kind of like a lighter, more generic kimono. Usually people where them to relax at an onsen like this or even at summer festivals. They can be quite comfy. And the dango is a doughy ball of rice flour. They kind of have the consistency of hard jelly. They are often coated with red bean paste or another type of sauce, that has a slightly sweet taste to it. Pretty good, I’ll give you the recipe when we get back.

Let’s try the highest class one, shall we? We may only get one chance to come here, so might as well go all out right?

All right, we are here. Look it’s a little statue of Bocchan. Do you know about him? He is a famous character from one of Natsume Sōseki‘s first books Bocchan. It is about a Tokyoite that comes to the backwaters of Japan to teach math. It is loosely autobiographical and based on Soseki’s life here. The whole town has Bocchan themed goods and food.

The main reason why there is a Bocchan room here though is that the character of the same name frequented Dogo Onsen in the book and was also addicted to the dango as well. So they ended up naming the dango after him and apparently this whole room as well.

Anyway, if you are interested, it is a short read, and there is even an audiobook in English and Japanese in the public domain that you can pick up and listen to the whole thing. Not the best translation, but it gives you the main idea.

I’ve been babbling along for too long lets go take a dip.

Ahh, kind of small to be honest. I kind of thought it was going to be a little more for being so famous. A little underwhelming, but it still feels pretty good after that long train ride. Can you scoot over a bit? I don’t want to be so close. No offense.

Yeah it feels nice to relax. Hopefully this bath will heal all my sore muscles. I really need it. Oh, do you know about the other legend of Dogo Onsen? No?

All right, so the other legend is that there was an egret with an injured leg that limped to the onsen and went for a little dip. And then of course, poof, the waters healed its leg perfectly. That’s why you will sometimes see an egret around town and in the onsen.

Aaaah , that was refreshing, but it is getting a little late, so let’s head to our place. It is really close. It’s called Eco Dogo.  And get this! It’s only ¥2500! Well, if you have your own sleeping bag it is Y2200. Did you happen to pack one? Well, that’s okay, maybe next time.

All right let’s get some shut eye. We’re going to do some hiking tomorrow to the top of Matsuyama Castle. I’ll be sure to wake you up.

Did you sleep well? Let’s get out of here then, we have one more place to stop at before we head out of town.

Matsuyama Castle

Okay so the climb looks a little steep at first, but I’m sure it will be a lot of fun to hike it. This is only one of a few original castles in Japan. A lot of castles are reconstructions, but not this one. Matsuyama Castle was completed in 1627 after 25 years of construction by Kato Yoshiaki.

We could also take the ropeway, but c’mon, I think the hike will be a lot more scenic, don’t you? Oh, stop being such a wussy, let’s go for a walk.

And we are here. Wow, this is an amazing view of the city. You can see a lot from up here. I especially like the view of the bay and the sea. It was well worth it to hike up instead of just the ropeway.

You know, there are a lot of castles in Japan and after awhile they tend to just all blend together, especially the reconstructed ones. I mean some of them have elevators in them. That’s not very exciting in my opinion. But these handful of original castles really give you a feel of what it was like back then. There are only about a dozen like this one still left. The most famous of which is Himeji castle.

Food

Remember that botchan dango I was talking to you about before?  There is some for sale at the food stand over there.  Let’s pick some up before we hop on the train back home.

Mmm, fresh dango, this looks great.  They are three colored balls of rice flower and flavored bean paste mixed together.  One is flavored with green tea making it green, one is flavored with egg yolk making it yellow,  and the last one is flavored with adzuki beans making it brown.  This is a kind of sanshoku (lit. 3 color) dango that are a kind of Japanese sweet. Another popular sanshoku dango that you might have seen before is hanami dango.

They taste great don’t they?  I swear every city in Japan has some kind of famous food dish.  Matsuyama is also famous for mikans and a special kind of tart that is basically a roll cake with sweet bean paste inside.  We’ll have to try those later though, we need to catch the train out of here.

Heading Back

Phew, that was a great trip.  What part did you like the best?  Do you want to go back some day?  Let me know in the comments.

Photo by Yoshikazu TAKADA

I used to be a huge Garfield fan growing up. I read all his comics and thought that they were the best. For my 8th birthday, my parents even made me a Garfield shaped cake and decorated it perfectly. I had a stuffed Garfield toy that I dragged with everywhere I went. It was my friend and companion on many adventures.

But eventually I grew out of that stage. I stopped taking Garfield on car trips. And he ended up getting thrown under a pile of stuff in a closet somewhere. I grew up and moved on.

Old study habits are kind of like those trusty stuffed animals you had. They were great. They were safe, but you have to grow up and start playing big kids’ games or you’ll end up like that one guy.

I’ve kind of held on to some old study habits even after they stopped really being all that effective. For example, I had been going back through my reading textbooks and grammar books. Trying to milk out every last drop of effectiveness I could. But last week’s test results showed that that was not a very effective strategy. As matter of fact, talking to most people that passed the N1, it didn’t seem like drill books played that big of a part.

Don’t get me wrong, New Kanzen Master and So-Matome did serve their purposes, but they were not the end all be all of prepping for the test.

Doing a lot of Reading

My main focus over the next few months will be just reading as much as I can as frequently as I can. I can get through a lot of different kinds of content from the letters I get in the mail to your average magazine article, but I need to focus more on speed and understanding the abstract points that some articles are trying to make. Overall, I just want to make reading something automatic, not something I have to concentrate on in order to understand, but something that just comes naturally. I know that could possibly be a pretty difficult feat to accomplish, but I feel like I am almost there and just need to concentrate on it a little more.

I have really gotten into Aera. I liked the weekly news magazine format in English (Newsweek, etc…). I just feel like you get better information when someone sits down and takes a little time to write an article instead of trying to churn out the latest news before somebody else does. And Aera seems to have a little something for everyone from tourist, food related articles, to human interest pieces to a somewhat depressing article about having a happy separated life (getting divorced easily).

Instead of pulling out any words I don’t know and shoving them into a course on Memrise, I’m going to simply reread the magazine once I’ve finished it. I feel like I’ll have forgotten enough as well as missed enough details the first time that it’ll still be pretty interesting. And I get a little more in context vocab practice.

I also got hooked on NHK’s Web Easy News. Although the articles are pretty easy to understand (for N1 level), they link to the real article that the simplified news article is based on. What this means is that I can listen to the Web Easy article to get an idea of the main idea of the story and then move on to the real news article armed with a good chunk of background information to help me understand it.

The real news story has a nice short video (usually under 3 minutes) that accompanies it, so you can get a visual reference, too. The written text comes close to what is being said on the TV, so you can get a pretty good idea of what they are talking about.

Overall, I think it is an invaluable resource that anyone studying for N2 or N1 would find pretty useful.

Doing a lot of Listening

I have a sometimes love, sometimes hate relationship with jMusic. For some reason, I’ve just never been able to get fully into it. I don’t want to say that American pop is that much better, but for some reason I’ve never been able to get unhooked from the classics that I have circling around in my iPhone.

But, I tried to get back into it once again. This time I’ve taken advantage of some help from iTunes radio. Apparently, a lot of Japanese music is available in the US store as long as you search for the romaji name of the band. I started a Greeen radio station and set it to give me a variety of music so that I could try to discover some new stuff.

It hasn’t really disappointed actually. I’ve been finding some good tunes hear and there. It still needs some fine tuning to my preferences and at times I get funky techno English songs mixed in, but with a little tuning it seems to offer up digestible music.

I’m still listening to Jane Su’s Podcast, which has been a pretty big help to me. The topics are fairly easy to understand and get a grasp of. I do miss a few things while I’m listening but I get enough to understand the main idea. And then I re-listen to it a few more times to understand what is being said. If there are parts that just get too hard, I throw them into VLC player to slow them down to listen to that one point over and over again. But, more often than not, I tend to just let it slide because I’m too busy to sit down at a computer long enough to sort through the audio.

To Test or Not to Test

I’m still mulling over my decision to sign up for the test. I think it is going to be a no go for me this time, but I still haven’t really made the final decision. There is two sides of the coin as I see it:

If I sign up, I might be motivated to study harder so I can push my score up. It could keep me chugging through books and practice tests refining my skills and getting everything absolutely automatic. I’ve had lulls in my studying before where I really didn’t do much of anything other than chat with a few people every day. I would like to avoid that because I don’t want to go backwards.

but taking a break will allow me to setup some new habits without feeling pressured to show some results with my next test. I’ll have a little more time to test some longer range strategies. I also won’t have that feeling that I have to stick with some strategy just because it is too late to switch.

Overall, I’m not giving up of course, just changing gears to try something different for awhile.

How about you?

What you going to do with your results? Are you going to change it up? Let me know in the comments.

Photo by Matt Brown

For a lot of people, living abroad is a temporary thing. Most come for a year or two to work, or to go to school.  Then, they hightail it back to their home countries to start their ‘real’ lives.  Or some family emergency pops up, and they hop a plane home.  Or some simply freak out over a giant earthquake and decide Japan isn’t their cup of tea anymore.

Whatever the reason, the average time spent living abroad tends to be fairly limited for the average Joe.  But, there are occasionally those crazy fools among them that stay behind for whatever reason.  Here in Japan, they go by the nickname of ‘lifers’ – people that are here for life and are probably not moving back.

In all fairness, once you hit the 5 year mark, it becomes pretty difficult to move back even if you want to.  There becomes a problem of reverse culture shock.  While living abroad, your mind tends to think your home country has been frozen in time, waiting for you to come back.  Like it is waiting for you faithfully like your old pet dog you left behind.   But, it isn’t.  Every time I visit the States, it just seems stranger and stranger.  So, I guess I’m stuck here for now, along with all these other fools.

These fools tend to fall into 5 main categories.  Now, with all generalizations, there is a lot of gray area here, not everyone living here for an extended period of time is purely one of these, but they tend to make up a good number of them.  Here they are in no particular order:

5. The One that is Completely Lost

You know that Baz Luhrman song/speech?  It’s called “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen.”  It’s a classic piece of 90’s nostalgia.

Anyway, in one part of the song, Baz tells you to not worry about what you want to do with your life.  And that some of the most interesting people he knows are 22-year-olds and 40-year-olds that still don’t know what to do.  Well, those 22-year-olds and 40-year-olds are in Japan, hanging out, wandering what to do next.

Part of the reason is because the economy took a major downturn in the States and there really weren’t any jobs to be had.  The problem has fixed itself a little bit, but there still don’t seem to be the kind of jobs that people currently living here want.  And now that they’ve been here a while, they are kind of stuck.  I mean if you teach English in Japan, what kind of skills are transferable to a job back home?  Not many.

Another reason I believe is that people sometimes live abroad to find themselves, which it is really helpful to live abroad to do that because it helps you to see who you truly are.  However, for some it just seems to confuse them more and they get too comfortable here to move to somewhere different.

4. The One that is a Political Refugee

There are a good number of Americans that are here because they don’t agree with what is going on back in the States at the moment.  There seems to be a whole lot of shouting over there and not a lot of doing currently.  Of course, that isn’t a whole lot different than some other countries at the moment, but some people feel like America should actually be getting its act together being that they are often thought of as a leader.

I’m partly in this category to be honest.  I wasn’t a big fan of Bush and all the fun things he did, and I thought I would just take a vacation from it for awhile until somebody else became president.  Then, we got Obama, who looked promising at first, but… well, he didn’t really do much of anything.  And now, the Republicans are suing him as if that is a valuable use of anyone’s time and resources.  I’ll stop right there before this becomes a political rant, but hopefully you get my point.

Some people would rather just live in another country, not that Japan is doing much better at the moment, (Article 9 anyone?)  But, political problems here seem to be somewhat abstract.  I can approach them from a more neutral angle I guess because I’m not from here, so it doesn’t bother me as much.

3. The One that Doesn’t Want to Grow Up

There is a honeymoon phase when you first come to Japan where everything is just peachy.  Everybody wants to help you out.  You go out drinking with your new buddies, meet other new buddies, date a lot, go exploring, etc…  Everything is new and shiny for at least 3 months, sometimes even a year or 2.  But, then, inevitably, it all kind of grinds to a halt and you wake up one day and you realize you are just doing the daily grind except in a very different place.

Well, some people don’t want to let go of that special honeymoon period.  They keep holding on to it with all their might.  They still go out drinking all night as if there is something to celebrate.  They spend every last penny they have on beer, taxis and ramen.  They are horrible drunks that never know when to quit.  I see guys in their 50s hanging at the cool kids bar trying to live up the old days.  They are gone, sorry.

2. The One that Never Quite Moved Here

Some people never quite make the transition to Japan, but still hang around because they like having the foreigner treatment.  They feel it is cute to get someone to sort out all their bills, take them to the doctors, and generally pamper them because Japanese is just way ‘too hard’.  Which is often quite ironic because those same people will turn around and preach to their students that learning English is easy and that they need to study it to be successful.

They fumble around with some Japanese, but never really learn it properly.  They still go to British and Irish pubs that serve beer and fish and chips like they are used to.  They still might even have pretty much the same job as when they landed.  They have had a terrible time adjusting and a lot of times are divorced and bitter, complaining about their wives or ex-wives whenever they get a willing ear.

These are the type that give most of the other lifers a bad name.  I hear they patrol the British/Irish pubs looking for women with their giant beer bellies.  The funny thing is, for whatever reason, they are successful in this endeavor.  I’m not sure how or why, but I guess more power to them.

1. The One that Found a Home

Then there are those of us that for whatever reason just feel comfortable here.  And if you asked me why I feel comfortable, I have no idea.  This leads to a lot of frustration whenever I meet someone knew that wants to ask me “Why did you come to Japan?”  And to be honest, I have no idea at this point.  It was kind of something I did on a whim because I didn’t have anything holding me down and I meet a beautiful nice woman and we got married.  Now we have a beautiful daughter and a beautiful house.  Its too hard to leave now.

Not only do I have all that.  I’ve paid into the pension system and so, if I leave now, I could potentially leave a lot of money on the table.  You can get up to a 3 year refund on your pension, but after that the government takes it all.  There is a funky agreement that allows you to transfer some of what you earned to the US system and vice versa, but only to qualify for the minimum level of pay back.  So, there is no turning back now unless I win the lottery.

Bonus – The One that Genuinely Loves Teaching English

For most people, being a native English speaker is your first initial ticket to Japan.  From there, a lot of people will branch off into translation, marketing, even sales.  But, to get that critical first visa, English teaching seems to be the easiest way to go.  After that first visa, it is up to you where you want to go.

But, a select few love English enough to teach it at a higher level and go through the master’s program to qualify for posh teaching positions.  There are actually a lot of top researchers in the field here.  It is always good to see and rub shoulders with them from time to time.

Can you Add Somebody else to the List?

Do you live in Japan?  Who tends to stay here the longest?  Let me know in the comments.

Photo by Nullumayulife

I’ve recently been really mixing up my studying to try to do some more things. I can never seem to keep my motivation up for passing the test between these lulls in action of between taking the test and getting the results back.

So, I’ve turned to doing a lot more fun and interesting studying instead of day after day of drilling. For instance, I’ve started back playing Chrono Trigger (the Japanese version) as well as some other games in Japanese on my ride home.

The main reason for this is I’ve been struggling to try to study after a long day of teaching and I sometimes end up falling asleep or not really retaining anything. I figured it was pointless to try to keep hitting the books when it just wasn’t an effective use of my time. So, I switched to playing games which involve a lot of reading like RPGs.

I’m very eagerly awaiting the results which should come out on August 26th for those that registered online and took the test here in Japan. I think online results for everybody else usually pop up the following week. Be sure to check the official JLPT site for more details about how results are handled in your area.

Of course, I will be posting a results blog post shortly after I get my results discussing what think I got wrong and what went right. I’m pretty sure I didn’t pass. At this point I’m just crossing my fingers that my score didn’t go down. Anyway, as soon as you get your results come visit the site and let me know how well you did.

Bonus points for the 80s style logo.

Found a Great Podcast

I’m always on the lookout for a good podcast to practice my Japanese listening. And after my (probable) defeat on the listening section of the last test, I figured I would go looking again. I came across a great podcast called ジェーン スー 相談は踊る. It’s basically a radio advice show, featuring Jane Su as the host.

It has some pretty entertaining topics ranging from whether not to wear a bra at night to how to become a radio talent. There are times when some of the topics are a little boring, and the way that every guest announcer seems to go on about not being on the radio since forever can get on my nerves a little. But, overall, a pretty interesting show to listening to.

The pace of the conversation is sometimes a little faster than what you would normally expect, but I think that is because it is a radio show and they are always trying to fit everything they can into the limited time spot they have. Their conversations are also not scripted so it is a pretty natural flow.

At this point, I’m simply just listening to it when I can and not trying to force it. I try to listen at least once a day so I can get regular practice with it. I’d really like to be able to have a little more natural listening ability. Right now, I kind of have to be in the mood to listen.

EDIT: I mentioned in the podcast that I had no idea what ジェーン スー was.  Well, I did some research, and surprise, it’s the host’s name.  Go figure.  Sorry about the confusion.

Back to Reading Game of Thrones

I started reading Game of Thrones after a bit of absence while I was preparing for the test. It was good to get back into it, and I am starting to make good steady progress. I tend to read about 2 pages in about 20 minutes or so. This is a snail’ space to be sure, but I don’t look up that many words unless I want to double check the reading. Mostly I just guess at what is being said.

I’ve been learning some fun expressions that I use as a joke with some people. For example, 名誉に値しません (meiyouniataishimasen) means I’m not worthy of the honor. Something that Ned says to the King in the first part of the book. And yes, if anyone was still wondering “Hand of the King” is in fact “王の手” (ounote), the literal translation.

Reading it bilingually is a huge plus. One of my biggest pitfalls is losing the subject of the conversation, so I lose the context and have a hard time understanding what is going on. It also helps me with the incredibly difficult kanji that shows up often. I can use the English to look up words a little easier. I spend a little too much time hunting down complicated kanji that I probably will never see again, but it is fun.

I still don’t recommend it for general study, but if you are a fan of the series and at a higher level it might be fun to check it out and see how well you do. If you are not use to reading fantasy it might be slow at first because George R R Martin loves describing things, especially people’s clothes and that gets carried into the translation as well. That means you’ll be wading through a lot of old pieces of clothing and equipment like tunics and cloaks and the like.

Usually there are photographs, but this week there was this awesome drawing.

Picked up Aera

Aera is basically Asahi Weekly, or at least that is what it replaced. It is a weekly magazine that goes a little more in depth on some issues and topics than your regular newspaper. It seems to trend to more businessy topics, but they also focus on one particular person each week and write an in depth article about them. Overall, it is a regular, native-level read. There will be some topics that can veer into the way too much kanji category, but I found it to be pretty readable for my level.

I’ve noticed that articles are occasionally plucked from this magazine for use on the test, and that is why I ended up picking it up to see if it was a good source for the type of material that you can find on the N1. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. It has some great articles about interesting topics, as well as a good amount of photographs to help it all be a little more digestible. I’ve only made it through a couple of articles so far, but I found it to be well-worth the Y390 or so yen I plunked down for it.

My particular issue had a series of articles on foreigners in the workplace. It was basically a positive piece on how foreigners can add a new dynamic and allow companies to see things more globally, from a different angle, etc… It also went over all the issues that stand in the way of hiring and keeping foreigners including language barriers and visa issues. It ended up with the perennial topic of shrinking Japan, and how immigration might be a good solution to that.

They have a few shorter articles online that make for some good reading as well.

Overall

I’m just trying to keep studying and focused on the test. I have been spending more and more time teaching my daughter English, time that I was spending drilling vocabulary words (and writing blog posts). I’ve cut my blogging duties in half, and trying to squeeze studying in where I can, but it can be a relentless battle. I’m starting to get really anxious for those July test results.

How about you? How are you faring in this hot summer heat? Let me know your strategies below in the comments.

Photo by Photocapy

My wife and I had just arrived in Paris for our honeymoon. Due to our flight being delayed, we were about 2 hours later than we originally planned. We were both fairly hungry, but it being a strange place we weren’t familiar with, we couldn’t find a place to eat.

My wife, exasperated, said “Aren’t there any convenience stores?”

To which I replied, while holding back a chuckle, “No, this is Europe, this is France, there are no convenience stores.”

Living in Japan, it is easy to assume that any developed country would have convenience stores on every corner, because well, they’re convenient. But, they seem to be really common in Japan (and albeit other Asian countries) because I believe there is an emphasis on convenience here.

It seems to be built into a lot of the way things are, with some very notable exceptions.

The space myth

Everything is so packed, and there is no space is the common idea about Japan. Indeed, Japan is actually slightly smaller in area than the US state of Montana. Trying to cram 127 million people into the area of Montana could get a little tricky.

Japan isn’t the most densely populated country though. It ranks 9th most dense for countries with more than 10 million. Some notable more dense countries are Taiwan, South Korea, India, and the Netherlands. So, although packed, they are in no danger of running out of space, especially with the whole shrinking population thing.

So there is some space left to be developed. You could, in fact, buy a sizable house in the countryside for a very reasonable price. My wife’s family has a chunk of land in Shiga that is just sitting there because it is not worth it to even sell it.

So what gives? Wouldn’t people try their best to get their own little chunk of land? Well, apparently not.

Condo buildings (called mansions in Japan) go up all the time in the city.   They are always showcasing or advertising a new one and they typically sell out as planned. These mammoth 20+ storey buildings or even complexes (with several long flat buildings interlocked with each other) generally fill up relatively fast for a country that is suppose to be shrinking.

Japan actually has around a 13% vacancy rate for its housing.  Meaning that 13% of the houses in Japan are empty and not being used. These are mainly located in the countryside or somewhat inconvenient places like the side of hills that require steep climbs to get to.

When we were looking for a house, if a house was more than a 20 minute walk from the station it was virtually worthless. We actually almost decided on one of these because you can get a fabulous house for a little money. The downside is that you have to drive or bike everywhere you want to go, which if you calculate all the costs of parking and gas, wasn’t worth the money you save.

Our old apartment was about 25 minutes from a major station.  I remember telling students that and they were completely shocked by the fact that I walked that far. But hey, we wanted a decent sized place for a reasonable price. And rent in the Kansai area can be pretty expensive even though housing prices are generally down.

Convenience stores

Convenience stores are the Crown Jewels of Japanese innovations. It’s like they sat down and tried to pack everything they could into these little guys.  Lawson is by far the most common, but there are several variations of these magical shops.  Although bemoaned by some, they seem to have those little emergency things that you seem to need at odd times of the day.  Need a dress shirt? covered. Need a tie? gotcha there.  Need tickets to that sports thing you want to go to? Yep, covered.  And underwear?  Yep, just in case ya know it’s 3am and you need a pair.

Mmm, just like from a pastry shop!

They even have miracle food that never seems to age, which I’m sure is perfectly healthy for you.  On top of that, they have elaborate, rather expensive sweets, just in case you get a burning desire to eat a fancy chocolate cake or forgot to get one for your sweet heart for Christmas.

All joking a side, there have been several times when a convenience store has really helped me out.  They just seem to have everything that you would need.  From beer to quick food, they are a big help when you are wondering around the city and just want to snack and walk instead of sitting down and taking in a meal.

They also, of course, have a lot of things you don’t need like excessive salt and preservatives, junky food, and relatively high prices. The oden that sits out for hours uncovered is a little suspicious looking as well. And they don’t carry any kind of medication. So, if you have a sore throat, a cold, or a headache that just happens to be bothering you, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Speaking of ubiquitous things in Japan, vending machines are absolutely everywhere as anyone who has been here can attest to. And they vend you absolutely everything from drinks to bouquets of flowers. I even saw one with fresh eggs you could buy. They are kind of like the mini version of convenience stores.

Home

One thing I like about ordering things off the Internet here in Japan is that if the deliver truck misses you, you can request they deliver the package in a specific window the next day. I don’t know how many times I had to stay home all day in the States waiting for a package or worse, find my package tucked away somewhere extremely well-hidden.

And inside the house, there are a variety of miracle devices that make life a little easier. For instance, your typical microwave usually doubles as an oven. Our refrigerator has a compartment that you can put things, unwrapped, into it and they will stay fresh. So, if you have a pack of ham slices and don’t want to bother putting it in a Ziplock, you can simply throw it in that drawer and seal it up.

Finally, in more modern homes and apartments the shower room doubles as a dryer, which comes in real handy on rainy days. It also sucks out the humidity after a shower so you don’t have mildew mess to deal with. And of course in winter It has a heater you can use to keep it nice and toasty in the shower room.

Inconvenience still looms

Internet services don’t seem to be as big here as they are in the States. For all the talk of Japan being a tech giant they don’t seem to use computers much. Desktop computers are not all that common.  Most people prefer to use just there phones and now tablets. I’ve even heard some teachers complain of high school students coming to their class never having used a desktop. It’s rare, but it sometimes still happens.  A few of my students don’t have a laptop or desktop anymore.

This has led to just an utter lack of good internet services.  The interfaces for online banking are reminiscent of something you might see 10 years ago – very bare-bone menus, main options are not usually highlighted.  Every time I go to check my credit card balance I still have to dig around to find where the darn button is.  And this is something that I would think most people would like to know.  I mean, it’s important to know how much you are going to pay next month right?

There are also big time security fears.  Some people I know refuse to do any kind of internet shopping due to fear of their money being stolen.  Banks have elaborate and overly complicated, hence defeating the whole purpose, security measures.  One of my biggest pet peeves is that they usually don’t accept romaji for answers to security questions.  So, I have to answer questions like ‘What was the first car you bought?’ in katakana, which of course my first car did not have a Japanese name.  Even Japanese cars don’t have Japanese names, like Prius.

There seems to be a relatively slow, around 2 year lag time, for most of the internet innovations to hit Japan.  In my opinion they need to be borrowing more from the greats abroad.  Rakuten, the biggest and most popular Japanese online merchandiser, has a mess of a website.  Buying things there takes a lot of patience, although they do usually have better and more unique products than Amazon if you are willing to wade through it all.

And one of the biggest inconveniences of all, is well women’s rights.  Although things are improving at a snail’s pace.  Apparently it is still okay to jeer and make sexist comments.  And, good luck finding any kind of help with day care or nursery school, or getting back into the workplace after having a kid unless you have a well-established job before you have kids.

What do you think?

Is convenience a thing in Japan?  Is it really inconvenient here?  Just the same as everywhere else?  Let me know what you find the most convenient and least convenient about Japan in the comments below.

Photo by Amy Ross and Yuya Tamai

About a week ago, I went up to Kyoto University to take the test again at their somewhat poorly cooled facility. I covered my first impressions before earlier, but in general I felt more confident about the test.  I’ve started to take test day a little less seriously, which seems to be helping with my test score.

Now it is just a matter of waiting for the results, which typically come somewhere around the last Tuesday of August. This lull between the test and results always seems to slow everything down. You don’t want to keep studying for the level you just did, but at the same time if you didn’t pass you’ll need to review as much as possible to get back into it.

For me, if I pass I’ll probably turn around and throw everything into speaking and conversation skills. I feel like my reading is where I want it for now. It definitely needs some tweaking, but it is at a comfortable level. My speaking is down right embarrassing for my level though. It’s just at a daily conversation level, but I want to be able to do so much more with it.

So, with that in mind, I’ll probably just turn to drilling for the next 4 months to get ready for the December test. There is a chance that I passed but from here on out I’ll be devoting as much of my time to purely studying for the test. I might even break down and buy a vocabulary book or two.

Click above to check it out!

Building Vocabulary and Grammar Course

In what little spare time I have, I’m hobbling together a N1 vocabulary and grammar course. Basically, I’m adding any vocabulary words that I haven’t seen to the course with a Japanese definition, an example sentence, and collocations. This makes it a little unwieldy, but very comprehensive. We will see how well it works.

For the grammar points, I’m setting up cloze statements for the grammar points I’m tripping over a lot. I feel like grammar is really close for me. I have a pretty good understanding of most of it, just need to work out the nuances between them. And to the best of my knowledge, cloze statements seem to be the most effective at learning these pesky differences.

It all comes down to my usual mantra of making everything as automatic as possible. I don’t want to have to think about the rules, I just want it to be understood clearly and quickly. And the test requires that of you as well.

[Tweet “It all comes down to my usual mantra of making everything as automatic as possible.”]

I wonder what time it is?

More Efficient Use of Time

I’ve really started to do a lot more slicing up of my schedule to keep me focused. Instead of sitting down and trying to power through 30 minutes of vocabulary drilling, I try to switch up as much as possible. I’ll study grammar for a little bit, do some listening exercises for 10 minutes, then switch to reading. I do try to schedule a few longer sessions to keep my focus up because the test is such a long block of time.

I also started doing a little bit of exercise as soon as I wake up to get my heart pumping and awake. I’ve found this keeps me from sleep walking through my vocabulary drills. And has all the usual benefits of exercise, like losing a little bit of weight, which is something else I need to do.

I’m also doing my best to cut time wasters. A have way too many things to do in my life now and so squeezing in some extra time here and there can be a huge advantage. I’m also considering deleting Facebook from my phone. I find myself checking it randomly when I have no reason to do so.

I am almost tempted to get one of those apps that locks you out of certain programs after a set time. I haven’t gone to that extreme yet, but I might get there if I can’t quell my addiction. I guess I just need to focus on it for 21 days and set a new habit.

So Close

I now I’m really pretty close to passing the test if I didn’t do it this time. However, the closer I get, the more tired I get of mastering every little grammar point and vocabulary word. I’m really looking forward to a more natural way of learning where I’m simply exploring and finding new words that way instead of grinding through things so systematically.

The N1 to me has become more of a diagnostic tool than something I need to beat. Mostly because I feel like if you put pressure on yourself to just best the test and that is your only motivation for studying, you set yourself up to fail.

But, getting N1 will help me significantly professionally so it is a necessary beast. I do think studying for it is worth it because I’ve uncovered so many little things I wouldn’t have otherwise. And I definitely wouldn’t have pushed my reading skills to this level if I was studying without a test.

Anyway, we’ll see. As time goes on, I keep getting more and more projects piled on me and more family duties. Time management has become a huge factor.

What are you doing in the post test slump?

Have you changed your methods at all? Are you doing more natural studying? Let me know in the comments.

Photo by Arjan Richter
Photo Credit: Tambako the Jaguar via Compfight cc

This post is a continuation of last month’s top 10.

5. Purikura

This is one of those things that most people probably don’t know about outside of Japan, but can be the source of  a lot of good times with friends and significant others.

If you haven’t heard of what purikura is, it’s pretty simple really. It’s basically a photo booth where you can take pictures of you and your tomodachi. They can be a little intimidating at first especially since a lot of the commands are given verbally so you have to listen well and move quick to get into the different poses that they sometimes make you do (like looking down at the camera or in my case crouching down because you are too tall.)

Also, the booths are usually designed for just two people but inevitably after a night of drinking, it always seems like a good idea to have you and your 6 closest friends join you for a photo session. This ends up being absolutely hilarious because you are smashing together to get into the shot at the last moment, which makes for some interesting photographs.

[Tweet “purikura – perfect after a late night of drinking.”]

You can typically find purikura machines at game centers in popular shopping districts. Just look for the UFO catchers (the crane game) and go upstairs.  They will typically have an entire floor of them.

Just step in and pop some coins in (4 – ¥100 coins these days) and you will be whisked through a high speed photo shoot, which is part of the fun. Afterwards you’ll be able to customize your memento with clip art hearts, labels, swirlies, and all sorts of stuff. Then, it will get printed out a few seconds after that.

After that, take your sheets of printed pictures and there will usually be some kind of cutting table you can stand at that has scissors for you to cut your pictures with. You might have to wade through a few school girls (which is the typical clientele at these places) but well worth it for all the fun.

4. People Watch

when my mom came to Japan for the first time I had taken her to all the major sites – the Golden Pavilion, Kiyomizu, Nara park, etc… It was a well planned out action packed tour of everything Kansai had to offer. And towards the end of the trip I asked her “what was the best part of being in Japan?”

She answered that the best part was the people. She is a little biased because she used to be a professional photojournalist, but I can still see where she was coming from. Some people say that all Asian people look alike, but I think that’s because they haven’t spent any time in Asia, because everyone looks very different. (To be honest, all foreigners are starting to look alike to me now)

Japan is home to some of the largest cities in the world. And they tend to be filled to the brim with people from all walks of life. This makes for some interesting sites on the subway and in public places.

I’m sure you’ve seen places like Shibuya in movies and such. These hubs of swarming humanity can provide a few minutes of entertainment as well as give you a slightly better idea of what the culture is like.

You’ll be surprised by how little things are different. For example, how so many women in Japan where knee-high boots, which are considered a bit low class in the States. Or how every salaryman wears the exact same thing. There will inevitably be some local characters mixed in there as well.

But, if journey off the beaten path to some specialty neighborhoods like Akihabara (if geeks were an ethnic group this would be their neighborhood) or ‘denden’ town here in Osaka (near nipponbashi), you will be able to take in a whole another set of characters.

For the brave of heart and those that can’t resist fried food, Osaka has Shinsekai. Home to a lot of cheap restaurants featuring Osaka’s specialty of fried stuff on a stick. But, there is also a large transvestite community as well as a lot of local color. Shinsekai is considered a ‘rough’ neighborhood so you might want to go during the day, but I’ve gone at all times and never had issues.  In my opinion it is very uniquely Osaka.

I should say that I’m not saying people in Japan are any weirder than people from other countries .  It’s just that due to the fact that there are areas of Japan where large numbers of people gather, it is a lot easier to people watch.

3. Go to the Bathroom

Okay so hopefully you will do this at least once while you are in Japan, so it probably doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway. You should go to the bathroom in Japan, because, well, it’s a uniquely Japanese experience.  Restrooms in Japan range from the really nice to the really open.

The really nice bathrooms usually have heated seats and automated butt washers. Although butt washing might not be your thing (it’s definitely not mine) it is something extremely Japanese.

It’s something that a lot of people here secretly pride themselves about.  I’ve heard people bragging about the amazing butt washing technology that makes Japan more civilized and refined than other countries. I wouldn’t really go that far, but it is something to experience at least once.

The flip side of these high class toilets are the extremely open public toilets you sometimes see that are anything but high class. My favorite ones are where you get to see people walking by (and they see you) while you are relieving yourself. Nothing is more comforting or relaxing.

If you are out and about you may want to try to find a mall or a place with a lot of restaurants to do your business before taking a chance on these smelly last resorts.  A lot of restaurants don’t have bathrooms in them, but there will be a bathroom that is shared by several restaurants, located out in the hall somewhere.

At the very least bathrooms in Japan are usually free unlike some other places. I’m looking at you Europe.

2. Onsen

Onsens or hot springs (sometimes incorrectly referred to as ‘spas’ by the locals) are a very traditional, very Japanese thing to do.  They are the perfect thing to do after a long day of sightseeing or roaming Japan.  Immersing yourself in some hot water is so relaxing.

And there are all kinds of onsens out there for you.  They have scented ones, ones with natural minerals, and even radioactive onsens.  Every locale has a least one semi-famous place to take a dip, and you can’t leave Japan until you make a trip.

Now, okay, so you have to get naked with a bunch of strangers.  And, yes, a lot of cases you will be the only foreigner there.  This might be something you want to try while you still don’t understand that much Japanese because some people might make comments about you assuming you can’t understand what they are saying.

If it bothers you that people are making comments about your normally-bathing-suit-covered areas, you might want to try something else. Granted most comments are pretty positive, no one is going to snicker at you.  It’s just that some people might not have seen that many foreigners before.  And there are probably more than a few that have never seen a naked foreigner.

A real treat is when someone wants to strike up a conversation with you while you are completely naked.  One time I was in Tokyo, at an onsen ‘theme park’, which is kind of like a giant onsen that has two parts.  The first part, you strip to your underwear and throw on a yukata that they give you.  You walk out into a indoor mock Edo period neighborhood where they are selling everything from beer to omiyage.  You pay with a bracelet that they gave you at the front desk.  It’s quite relaxing, it’s like walking around in your bath robe while drinking and eating ramen.

The second part, you take off your yukata and your undergarments and walk into a huge onsen with all the works.  They had a super hot bath, cold bath, outdoor bath, the works, but it was packed, like cheek to cheek.  Again, this didn’t bother me so much, but when I had a seat outside, wedged between two dudes just relaxing, the guy next to me decided to start a game of 20 questions.

Now, it is not a normal thing to talk in an onsen.  As a matter of fact, most folks are as silent as possible.  There is little eye contact.  So, it can be uncomfortable to say the least, when someone wants to ask you where you are from.

Anyway, it is pretty rare.  I’ve been to several onsens, and there is usually no funny business, just a lot of chilling out in hot water.

The one piece of Japanese that you will definitely, a hundred percent need-to-know, is the kanji for men – 男 and for women – 女.  Sometimes, in more rustic or backwoods places that is all that marks the two entrances.

And sometimes, just to make things more fun, they might switch the guys and girls, ya know, just for a change of scenery.  So even if you go to a place regularly, be sure to check the noren (the little curtains at the entrances) to make sure you are going into the right place.

Oh, and don’t be surprised to see a little obaachan (older woman) popping in and doing some cleaning even amongst all the naked dudes.  I was once sitting in the sauna, sweating away when a kind old woman came in to change the towels.  It was just me and her in a rather close space.  For some reason she thought starting a conversation would make me feel more comfortable.  She was wrong.

1. Japanese Food

This might be obvious, because well, if you visit Japan, you will quite obviously have to consume food at some time.  I mean, that is what humans do to survive, or at least I’ve been told.  But, you might not be familiar with the sheer variety of Japanese food there is to be had.  After all, it was recently named by UNESCO as a piece of intangible heritage. And you know UNESCO knows whats up.

You are probably familiar with the old Japanese standbys of sushi, tempura, possibly teppanyaki, Kobe beef, and a few other items, but there is even more to be had than that.  For example, in Osaka, they have a specialty of Okonomiyaki, literally stuff a like fried, it’s like a pancake of fried meat, cabbage and other goodies rolled into one.  I did an entire slideshow on it awhile back:

But, in Osaka, there is also takoyaki, fried octopus balls, and kushikatsu, basically fried stuff on a stick.  To make a long story short, people in Osaka love fried anything.

And every locale has its own kind of food.  Shimonoseki is known for blowfish.  Okayama for its peaches.  Aomori for apples. Kagawa has such a thing for Udon, they even made a movie about it.

And there are the different styles of eating.  Of course, everyone has seen a conveyor belt sushi shop before.  But, the highly automated chain sushi restaurants in Japan put anything you have probably seen before to shame.  Sushiro and Kappa Sushi are two of the big chains and they touchscreen ordering systems, sophisticated waiting-for-your-table supercomputer thing, and all sorts of random sushi combinations like steak sushi.

And, you have to go to an Izakaya, or Japanese pub.  You should go in a decent sized group (at least 4 people, but 10 or more is best). All of the dishes they serve are smaller than normal and are meant to be shared.  What ends up happening is you order 6 or 7 dishes at a time and share them, so that you can get a little taste of everything.  It’s basically like a tapas place in Spain, which coincidentally, tapas restaurants are popular in Japan as well.

With the July test just around the corner, I’ve switched off all of my ‘fun’ studying which is a bit depressing. I’ll basically be reviewing and really perfecting everything before the big day. It’s still frustrating because I really don’t have the time to do as much studying as I’d like to.

I’ve had to slow my pace a little with learning new vocabulary because it was just too hard to keep going at a good speed. I’m starting to get over 30 minutes or so a day and that is just too much blind drilling. I got tired of sitting at my computer typing away.

I do agree with a lot of language teachers in that the best way to learn vocabulary is through context, which means doing a lot of reading. Reading a lot of the passages from previous JLPTs has helped a lot, but the vocabulary section of the test always seems to bring me stumpers that I haven’t seen before.

I have also been steadily working through my massive library of old 一級 tests. At first, I was just doing the reading and grammar. And it would appear my reading is getting better but my grammar hasn’t really been going anywhere. I think this is mostly because there are a ridiculous amount of phrases you have to know at this level.

Tanki Master

Tanki Master is technically a workbook for each level of the test. Or at least, that is what it bills itself as. But, for all intents and purposes it is pretty much another sample test. It really doesn’t have that much of strategies section or a very detailed section about the test. It is simply a book full of sample questions to give you a feel for what the test is going to be like.

The first part contains questions of every type for every section. There are actually more questions for some sections than on the actual test. For example, the vocabulary sections each have about 9 to 10 questions each whereas the test has 6 to 7 for each section. Overall, it is a good, somewhat cheap, practice book you can whip through to give you an idea of where you stand.

However, I felt like the reading section was ridiculously easy. I got most of the answers right in that section and I really don’t think my reading score is that good. I know it has improved, but, I don’t think it has improved that much. I kept answering questions thinking I had gotten fooled by the test writers because they were too easy.

I’m also starting to get a lot better at spotting bogus answers. On the JLPT, even at the lower levels, the test makers love putting answers for the reading test that are correct except for one minor detail. Often times this minor detail can only be denoted by a particle, or a slight change of wording. A dead giveaway is when they use wording and vocabulary that was used in the passage. This usually, but not always, indicates a trap. A lot of times the answer to the comprehension question is a rewording, which uses different vocabulary, of something said in the passage.

I still managed to completely bomb vocabulary. I’m not sure why this is happening, when I’m doing the reading, I often times already know the words that defined at the end of the passage, and can, in general, understand all of the vocabulary in the passage. However, there are still, inevitably words in the vocabulary section of the exam, that I swear I’ve never seen before, which I don’t even think is possible at this point. I must have seen them and simply blanked them out of my memory.

I did great on the grammar for Tanki Master though. Again, I’m not sure if this was just because the questions were way too easy or if I’m actually the right level for the test. I kind of feel like it is a blend of the two. The scrambled sentences were a cakewalk compared to what I have seen before. The text grammar questions (at the end) seemed about the right level though.

Listening focus

These final weeks before the exam, I’ll be doing a lot of listening to test questions to hone my focus. It takes a lot of mental focus to concentrate for the full hour. I catch myself day dreaming a lot which can be disastrous. So, my strategy this time around is going to be to listen to JLPT listening questions non-stop until the test. That way they should seem fairly natural to me once I get in there.

I had previously been holding off on doing the 一級 (old N1) listening because I just assumed I didn’t need that much extra practice, but I’ve now cracked the seal on them and I’m working my way through all of those as well. The format of the questions are fairly different. The new test has a lot more diverse types of questions, whereas the old test only had two kinds. But, I still feel there are plenty of tricks that you can learn from these old-timers.

Other than that it is going to be review, review and review some more. I keep refining absolutely all my knowledge. I tend to do a little grammar practice there, a little listening practice there, a little reading practice there to keep me from getting bored and also to keep everything honed.

Will I pass this time? Hmm, as always, I have no idea. Vocabulary seems to really be pulling me down, so that might hurt me this test. I definitely didn’t do myself any favors with the last score I got in that area. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is the one though. I’d love to get this done and gone.

Are you Ready?

How about you? Are you ready for the July test? If you are taking the test, good luck, and remember to stop by the blog afterwards and share your impressions.

10. Karaoke Box or Clubs

Karaoke boxes or clubs as they are sometimes called are practically everywhere in Japan.  If you are downtown, all you need to do is walk a few blocks at night and you will inevitably bumping into someone handing out tissues advertising for Karaoke.

And they are not just for singing Japanese songs.  Most big chain karaoke places have a pretty wide selection of English songs as well.  Admittedly, it is narrowed down to only the bands that are at least a little known in Japan.  For example, you can get plenty of Queen and the Beatles, but I still haven’t been able to find Bare Naked Ladies.  I long for the day when I get to show my singing prowess with “One Week.”

Most places offer a variety of different specials and packages.  For example, you can have all-you-can-drink bar including alcohol or just soft drinks for the time you are renting out the box.  Keep in mind too that this is a private room, you won’t been singing in front of a group of random people, so you’ll only be embarrassing yourself in front of your travelmates.

Also, if you are on a tight budget or looking to get out of the rain or scorching heat of Japan, prices are really cheap during the day. Some places will have a “free time” where it is just one fee to sing as long as you like, perfect for when you want to let your inner pop star out.

9. Stay at a Love Hotel

Japan is a crowded place and a lot of twentysomethings, thirtysomethings, and probably a few fortysomethings live with their folks, which makes it a little difficult to have some private time with a significant other. Luckily, Japan has a solution for that – love hotels. These mid-sized usually themed facilities offer a wide variety of experiences.

There are Hello Kitty dominatrix themes, classic car themes, giant heart shaped beds, and even Santa Claus gets in on the mix. These ridiculously themed hotels have something for everyone. They also tend to come well supplied with beer and other goodies. They are also relatively conveniently located in downtown areas and tend to be reasonably priced, although by far not the cheapest option.

They may not be your thing, especially if you are having a mancation or traveling by yourself, but they are at least fun to go into and check the different themed rooms available. They are usually displayed on a big lit up board, rooms that are available are lit up while ones that occupied go dark. The staff at these places are usually unseen and everything tends to be automated so don’t worry about making a fool out of yourself.

8. Stay at a Temple

At the other end of the spectrum is staying at a temple lodging called shukubo. This is obviously a very different experience than a love hotel and offers a lot more laid back experience. Dinner is usually served at 6:00 and entails a typical vegetarian monk’s meal (shojin ryouri).  Then, there are morning prayers at 6:00am and breakfast at 7.

Shukubo are more like youth hostels than hotels. Bathrooms and bathing facilities are communal (seperated by sex of course).  Rooms don’t have locks, just a sliding paper door separates you from the hallway sometimes.

They can sometimes be a little pricey considering what you get – 9,000 to 15,000 yen a night, but are a unique experience you can only get in Japan. The typical place where you can really get a taste of what a monk’s life is like is Koyasan, a small ‘mountain’ in Wakayama about an hour outside of Osaka.

Booking a shukubo is relatively easy with a site like Japanican or sometimes through the temple’s own site. You can make a reservation online but the typically only deal with cash. They tend be somewhat foreign friendly. You’ll usually find one monk in every temple that speaks decent English although you probably won’t be able to understand the morning prayers/sermon unless you have a native with you.

If you do decide to check out Koyasan, be aware that most of the town shuts down around 6.  I went there with my wife a few years ago and we almost didn’t find a place to eat dinner because we thought we would eat in town and not at the temple, but we’re surprised to see the whole city was shut down. I think we ended eating some snacks we packed.

7. Japanese Sports

First thing that probably comes to mind when you think of Japanese sports is sumo. But, there are a lot of other sporting events you can take in as well while you are here.

Take baseball for instance.  The stadiums are generally smaller and a little more intimate than those in the States.  And fans really get into the sport here. There are different kinds of cheers they do and a lot of people will get dressed up from head to toe in their team’s wear.

The most popular team here in the Kansai area is the Hanshin Tigers, who have a rivalry with the Tokyo team the Yomiuri Giants.  But, every major city has a team and tickets are fairly reasonable.

There are also the high school tournaments that are played in August and in spring. These can be especially exciting because the athletes can be a lot more emotional and it makes the game so much more dramatic. Also, it is scorching hot in August in Japan, so it can be a real test of endurance.

Japan also has a very active soccer league with regular games.

Of course, there is always sumo, but sumo tournaments tour the country and can be a little difficult to go to. Be sure to check the schedule well in advance of any trip you make.

6. Climb Mt. Fuji (or at least some mountain)

Mt. Fuji is the symbol of Japan and has recently been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It always seems to make it on to any to do list for things to do in Japan.  And rightfully so, it stands alone from other mountains so it makes for a beautiful site just from the bottom, but the sunrise from the top is truly amazing if you can manage to go on a day when the clouds are just right.

Mt. Fuji has always been a crowded mountain though, and with its recent designation by the UN (people in Japan LOVE LOVE LOVE UNESCO sites), it has become outrageously popular.  It is so crowded that they now ask for a donation to help with the clean up and preservation.  And if you are thinking that this is going to be a serious mountain climb, you are mistaken.  It is more like a queue to the top.  Everybody moves up the mountain at a steady pace, and there are thousands of people with you.  So, don’t go thinking you’ll be able to enjoy the solitude.  Also, every 45 minutes or so, there is a station with food and drinks at ridiculously high prices if you happen to run out of anything.

They don’t have toilet paper though, so be sure to steal some from the shinkansen restroom bring some of your own. And the scenery is pretty much the same as you go up – just black rock.  Every station you stop at, you can see the station you came from and the station you are climbing to because there is no vegetation.  It can be a little disheartening to struggle with the thin air for an hour just to turn around and seemingly see you really haven’t traveled that far.

It is worth it though. Be sure to get a cheap wooden walking stick at the bottom, so that you can brand it at each station you stop at.  By the time you get to the top, your stick should be completely full with burnt brands, and for bonus points you can down another trail and have another set of brands burnt into the other side, like I did.  Makes for a good souvenir, although arguably a bit difficult to get into the suitcase.

There are plenty of other mountains in Japan though, and a lot of them offer some spectacular views with less people and more breathable air.  If you like to be outside a lot, I recommend looking up another mountain to try while you are here.  Here in Kansai, Mt. Ibuki in Shiga is a great climb and can be done in one day.  Ibuki is not as tall as Mt. Fuji, but the actual hike is taller and the air is a lot more breathable.  The view is pretty amazing as well, albeit not above the clouds.

There is also a list of 100 of the famous mountains in Japan that is worth a look to see if there are any mountains you want to tackle on your visit.  One of my students is determined to climb every single one.  He tries to climb one a month, so far he has done about half.

That’s it for the First Half

What are some other things to do in Japan?  Can you guess what will be in the top 5?  Let me know in the comments.

Photo by Karl Baron

We are now moving into the final stretch before the July test.  I’ve switched a lot of fun studying into more aggressive drilling and practicing vocabulary and grammar.  I think it is important to get into that mindset of answering questions.  One of the necessary evils about a test is that the test makers have to work in a bag of tricks in order to really test what your level is.  So you need to readjust your thinking a little before the exam.

I’ve been making slow, but steady progress on Game of Thrones.  I took a break from it over the Golden Week holiday because I couldn’t find enough concentrated free time to study it.  So far it has been an enjoyable read.  I do like eBooks, but it can be a little difficult to read and take notes on them.  With my Japanese books, I like to mark them up and add notes where I can, especially if I bought it used.  That’s a little trickier with an eBook.

I also finally finished off watching and practicing Hanzawa Naoki.  Overall, it was an interesting series.  I can see why it was so popular in Japan.  There are a lot of people that would love to tell their boss off here I think. It didn’t have that much reusable vocabulary to be honest, but I hope it honed my guessing skills for listening.  It was at least a lot more fun than going back through my listening drills again, so I hope it boosts my listening score a little bit.

One of the biggest changes this time around for the test is my free time.  I really don’t have much of it.  I’ve taken on a few extra teaching gigs, and my wife has taken on some extra work as well, which means I’m doing more chores and things around the house.  It is a tough time to get a big block of concentrated time available.  So, I have turned to doing more listening and vocabulary drilling which can be done in those spare moments waiting for the train or during my daughter’s naps.

The Race is On

I finished off the short course I made a while back for N1 words that were giving me some trouble.  I’ve since moved on to a list of ~2000 words from one of the more popular vocabulary books for the N1.  I thought I would run into some new words that I hadn’t seen before, but about half the words are review, which is good and bad.  Good in the sense that I can review some things I know, bad in the sense that vocabulary was one of my weak points last test, so I need to learn some more words to pass that section.

I still recommend doing that course if you are taking the N1.  It has a lot of great vocabulary and the course creator has done a great job with making clean and clear definitions.  Users have also contributed a lot of mems with mnemonics and example sentences to help you get a good idea of how to use the word and remember it.

I’ve been on Memrise for quite awhile, and have managed to rack up an impressive point total, so it is often hard to find competitors.  Luckily, Memrise has a cool feature where it shows you the leaderboards for just points earned that week or month.  I’ve turning to that and trying to find some other users that have a good pace for me to race against.  I’ve managed to find two other users that are just ahead of where I usually am, so I have been following them closely, trying to keep one step ahead.  It has kept me going at a good pace.  I’m already over 10% done with the N1 course and I just started it a few weeks ago.

There is always a lot of talk in teaching circles about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.  Extrinsic motivation being some outside force that makes you do or study something, like your boss telling you to get a certain score on the test in order to get promoted.  While intrinsic motivation is something internal; you have the desire to learn the material because you are curious about it, or just like the challenge.  As teachers, encouraging intrinsic motivation is generally considered the best course of action because students that are learning for themselves are much more likely to go the extra mile and really focus on their studies.  Whereas extrinsically motivated students are just there to put their time in and go home.

Gaming learning, like what Memrise does, is a bit of both, and there have been mixed reports about whether gaming actually encourages real learning or not. However, I’ve found it can help you get out of bed and start studying on those days when you would rather just watch a movie or play the latest smartphone game to pass the time.  The tallying of points shouldn’t be your main focus, but it does help to stand back and see how much progress you have made.

This bulking up of vocabulary has helped with my ability to memorize and build mnemonics as well.  It is good sometimes to bulk up in a particular category and just drown in it for a while so that you can perfect your vocabulary (or reading, kanji, etc…) study skills.  I’ve gotten a lot more proficient at learning words at first glance, with only a few needing a little bit of extra reinforcement.

Started Reading

I pulled out my dusty old 一級 exams that I have been saving for a rainy day.  I haven’t gotten into them that much before because I was studying Kanzen Master and So-Matome reading books, but now I’m going to try to hone my comprehension skills over the next couple of months before the exam.  I’m especially bad at inference, even in English.  This has always been my nemesis, I have never really been able to find a cure for it, other than to read and read and then answer questions to double check my comprehension.

I’m practicing an old method I’ve used in the past with some success of reading a paragraph, stopping, trying to summarize it in my head, then continuing on with the passage.  This makes for some slow reading, so I usually change this strategy out with speed reading, to keep myself reading and skimming at an optimal speed.  The common problems keep popping up though.  Passages that have a topic I’m familiar with, I cut through like a hot knife through butter, but if the topic is unfamiliar to me, it’s more like a blunt butter knife through a baguette.

I haven’t done any serious timing of myself quite yet though.  I do want to get a good reading speed down before the main event.  That is usually the difference between having a little while to double check your answers and slamming your pencil down at the very last second.  You really need to be a good fast reader at the N1 and N2 levels.  That is one of the key differences between N3 and N2.

The only other problem is finding a good place to read.  I usually do my casual reading on the train, but reading and answer questions on multiple pages can get to be a little troublesome with a train that is rocking back and forth and limited lap space.  So, I need to get into the habit of doing some reading during my breakfast and lunch.  I’m not exactly a big fan of cutting into my lunch, but you have to do what you have to do.

Are you Ready for this?

The July test is just around the corner, how do you sharpen your sword in this final stretch?  Let me know in the comments below.

Living and working in Japan for a few years, you get to have a lot of adventures. Living abroad in general just encourages you to go out and experience life. For example, I never used to travel alone before coming to Japan, but I did plenty of it once I got it here.

It is also full of numerous frustrations as well. Why can’t everyone walk on one side of the sidewalk? Why the heck do ATMs close at night? Why are all banking sites in Japan designed with an utter lack of user interface design? Why is it so easy to send money to Japan with minimal fees, but so expensive and difficult to send it out of Japan?

In the end though, even the frustrations can turn out to be mini adventures and help to keep your mind going. It keeps life interesting for sure. But, what about my greatest adventure? What one thing has given me the most joy and frustration during my time here? One thing – having a kid.

Kids in Japan

Having kids anywhere is a tough job, being a father is just as tough as this job recently that offered no pay, no benefits, no holidays. When I was a know-it-all single guy circa 2000, I was absolutely sure that parenting wasn’t that difficult. But, it really is.

And to add to that, raising kids in a system you didn’t grow up in and are not familiar with can be a bit overwhelming. Also, everything is in Japanese and people are sometimes too shy to help because you’re the first foreigner (usually) they’ve seen fumbling around through the system. Not that people are unfriendly, they just, well, treat you as if you are Japanese in a way, which is good and bad.

It’s a challenge but a joy or all joy and no fun as one person put it. There are good things and bad things about the situation here in Japan. It’s your typical story of old fashion things not working anymore and band aids that don’t cut it along with the eternal battle of young vs. old.

The Good

The first good thing, and this should go without saying is that, you get a wonderful bundle of joy. I know that sounds corny in a care bear sort of way, but it’s true.

Just yesterday, my daughter stole my credit card I got in the mail from the table and preceded to microwave it in her toy kitchen set. Then, took it out and fed it to her pet cat finger puppet. You simply can’t get that kind of entertainment anywhere else. And it’s delivered to you every day in the comfort of your home!

But outside of the emotional benefits, Japan helps foot the bill for having kids. It depends on where you live, but they will usually help out by somewhere around ¥15,000 a month for every child you have until they reach a certain age. It is bit controversial at the moment because you can spend that money on literally anything, it doesn’t have to be your child.

We, and most responsible adults, tend to hoard it away for the coming onslaught of high entrance fees and school fees in general. Just going to elementary school can be quite costly, which makes you wonder why they didn’t just work to decrease those costs instead of cutting us a check, but hey I’m not complaining.

Giving birth is also a lot more relaxed. I’ve never given birth in America (or in any other country for that matter), but I’ve heard it is a very get in and get out affair. In Japan, it is quite the opposite. My wife had a private room for a week with some decent amenities – her own sink, electric kettle, etc…

And it didn’t cost us an arm and a leg either. Under normal health insurance and with the private room which was optional, I think it ended up costing a little less than ¥200,000 for everything. The local government helped us out a lot with it though.

The Bad

After having kids, mothers are expected to be home and stay home. I see a lot of peer pressure about this. Basically, it comes down to the fact that a lot of companies have an unwritten policy of working a lot of (sometimes unpaid) overtime. Of course, this is not a good situation for a mother that needs to be home to pick up kids and take care of them in the evening.

I should say that this peer pressure is not men vs. women, but actually other women have told me that they feel like those people are not pulling their weight at the company so to speak. Of course, I’ve then seen that same woman get married, have kids, and then complain about balancing work and kids, so I guess it comes down to perspective.

Anyway, there is a recent trend of stay-at-home moms and dads across the developed world, so leaving work to take care of your kids for awhile is not the end of the world. The problem though is that there is this magical time limit in Japan. You see at the age of 40, you cease to be hirable. I didn’t know this before coming to Japan, but apparently that’s the age that you stop being able to learn new things no matter who you are. Go figure, you learn something new every day.

Now, there are exceptions to that of course, like freelance work or certain industries that just need well-trained staff, but that is the norm. So if you want to take a few years off to take care of your kids, you need to do that then get back to work before you turn 40. With more and more people having kids later, that starts to be a bit of stumbling block.

If you do choose to both still keep working, there is daycare to think of. You won’t be thinking about daycare for very long because well, it doesn’t really exist, at least in any consistent form. As the New York Times reports, the daycare centers that do exist are heavily fought over. There are baby sitters, but I feel it is not as common a practice as in the States.

There are  nursery schools that can take care of your kids starting at around 3 months though. There are two kinds of schools private and public.

Public schools are nice, cheaper but inflexible. Public schools operate on the standard school year, which starts at the beginning of April. What this means is that if you don’t get accepted into the school before April you can’t join the school after that point usually. What’s more is that to qualify for public schools, you have to show that you have a need for it, meaning you need to show that you both have full time jobs or are otherwise preoccupied.

What this means is that you have to have a job before you apply to get in the school. So if you have quit your job (to spend more time with your kid than just the 1 year maternity leave) you will have to get a job while taking care of kids on your own in order to qualify to get into the public school. This includes single mothers.

Private schools are more expensive, but more flexible. Private schools usually allow you to enroll at any time, but are more expensive and usually don’t give you the same bang for your buck. But, what a lot of people do is use a private school long enough to get into a public school.

Another problem that has arisen amongst all this is that children in general have become a lot more valuable. What I mean is that since so many people are having less children and some couples choosing to only have one. They are willing to spend a lot more money on them. So, everything baby related tends to be more expensive, especially if it has to do with education or safety.

Even for cheap things like sippy cups, they seem to cost double what they are in the States. Strollers also seem to be a costly item. We always stock up on things when we visit the States because it can almost be half price for the same brand\model.

Of course, having the child subsidy also doesn’t help the situation.

Underpopulation

Japan seems to hover around the 1.3 children born per woman number. 2.1 is what is needed to sustain a population and Japan is already starting to shrink, outpacing past estimates. So, underpopulation is something that should be addressed in the near future.

And it’s pretty obvious to see what kinds of things need to be resolved in order to make that happen. Better nursery school access, more job assistance for women, the list goes on. But, there are some problems getting these services in place.

First, non-parents have a hard time seeing things from a parents perspective. I mean, I sure as heck didn’t have any idea how tough it was. And I think that is something that obviously effects policy and that will effect it more and more as the problem gets worse and their are less and less parents. And less and less people that know new parents.

Second, Japan is currently servicing the world’s largest debt in terms of %GDP in the world. That means no new spending. So, solutions have to cost little to no money or come from cutting something else. In other words, throwing money at it will not solve the problem.

But, something will eventually come to a head whether they want it to or not. The current strategy has been to dramatically increase inflation which is a clever way to put the hurt on the elderly (because they usually live off fixed incomes) without actually coming out and saying it.

Will incomes go up along with inflation? That’s Abe’s (current prime minister of Japan) bet. Let’s see if he’s right.

What’s your experience?

Do you have kids in Japan? Do you have questions about having kids in Japan? I’ll do my best to answer them.

I’ve got a good start on the first book of Game of Thrones (氷と炎の歌１). It has been a lot of fun because I really like that particular story. I think there are a lot of people that will probably find it way too difficult to struggle through. For me though, it is interesting to see how it got translated because it seems like the author has done a decent job in converting the book to Japanese.

It is definitely not a book to learn with, at least for the faint of heart. It is pretty much purposely written to be difficult to read. The author uses a lot of rare kanji and uncommon words for obvious reasons. He wanted to convey the feeling of a fantasy novel and some of the descriptions are quite difficult to fully understand even in my native language.

Something that I have never seen before this book was the author’s way of translating certain key terms that are important to the series. He created a new word out of kanji that symbolizes what he wants to convey but then has katakana furigana of the original term.

For example, for the Night’s Watch, which is a name of a group of guardians in the book, the author writes 冥夜の守人 (lit. guard people of the dark night), but to the side it has the furigana ナイツ・ウォッチ. This makes for an interesting blend that keeps the fantasy tone but clarifies what is actually being talked about.

Another thing I noticed was the use of brackets to emphasize certain key words. For example, the Night’s Watch lives near a place simply called ‘the wall’ in English. In Japanese the author uses 壁 (kabe), which means wall, but then he puts <> brackets around it for emphasis so that you know it’s not just some wall but the wall.

I haven’t had a lot of experience with this kind of formatting. Has anybody else read something like that before?

Dual Reading

So I have the English kindle version of Game of Thrones that I read awhile ago. Since it is in kindle format I can easily pack it with me. So I have been making use of it lately to help me better understand the Japanese translation of the book.

Also, I have an uncommon interest in seeing how things are expressed in different languages so I like to see what is kept, what gets removed, what gets added so to speak. No language can perfectly relay a scene to someone, and that is actually one advantage of writing, because you have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps, making reading a more personal experience than say movie watching.

But, having the same text in two different languages also has the benefit of being great for language learning of course. And basically what I have been doing is reading 3 or 4 pages in English than reading 3 or 4 pages in Japanese. The two books match up fairly well so far so I can get the meaning of what is going on without having to look up a lot of words.

This helps me out a lot because I have a hard time guessing about the overall scene of a piece of writing and so getting an overview of it before I read really helps everything slip into place. And it makes reading go a lot faster with just the right amount of struggle to come up with certain words.

I do still take the time here and there to save words that I want to practice later. These are mostly uncommon but interesting words to know like decapitation, which is probably not going to appear on the test but just interesting to know.

I’m thinking about taking a similar approach to Harry Potter, because I have the English kindle book, I just need the Japanese one. I’d like to combine it with the audiobook as well for some extra practice.

Squeezing in grammar and vocabulary

I’m starting to spot check more and more grammar recently. I want to avoid going into it very deep and boring myself with it, but I want to do some regular review so that I have it over-learned by the time I reach the July test.

As I’ve said a few times before though, The N1 grammar section is not as cut and dry as that of other levels of the test. You really need to know small nuances, and really pay attention to detail. I’ve been trying my best to notice and take note of interesting usage that I see, but other than that I don’t see how you can really be 100% prepared for that section other than just using Japanese and being corrected a lot.

I’ve also tried my best to bulk up on difficult vocabulary before the coming test. Last test, there were some words that I recognized but couldn’t use very well. I’d like to take some extra time with vocab and try to binge on as much as I can before the test, so that I can again over-learn what I need to pass.

I will need to improve my reading comprehension and actually concentration. I have a lot of trouble keeping focused through the more boring pieces of the test. What seemed to work for N2 for me was reading a lot of old pre-N tests. Although the questions and style are a little different, they are still great practice.

I’ll be cracking open a few of those over the next couple of weeks to see where I stand. Another issue is taking a practice test. Although I’ve found the N1 practice tests to be all over the map in terms of being the correct level. For instance, I’ll ace one then turn around and fail another.

How about you?

We are heading into the final 2 months before the July test. Are you ready? How are you preparing? Let me know in the comments.

I’ve been married now for 5 years. This is after dating my wife for about 3 years before we got married, so we have been together for a grand total of about 8 years. It has been a sometimes interesting, often times fun, occasionally difficult mix of situations.

And because of this, I inevitably get a lot of questions about everything from raising kids to what I recommend people should do before getting married. International marriages are extremely complex and unique. There are times when every day seems like a learning experience. And there are other times when it just seems like a perfectly normal thing.

I have also heard a lot of horror stories about international marriages going terrible awry. None of my good friends have gone through such an experience but I’ve known a few acquaintances that have dealt with the aftermath of a messy divorce. And a quick search on Google will bring up a whole host of disgruntled ex-husbands.

So, I thought I would take a moment to give a somewhat positive view of being in an international marriage and my own personal experience and advice.

My Day to day

I think between the two of us, we have a lot of cross-cultural interest. Even though I’ve been living and working in Japan for 10 years, there are still moments when I have to ask about something that I’m curious about. And my wife will often ask questions about how things are in the States, although it has become increasingly difficult for me to answer questions like those because I’ve almost completely forgotten about everything!

We also celebrate pretty much every holiday of both countries including all the major holidays and even the minor ones from the States. We celebrate Christmas Western-style with gifts and treats but no fried chicken (a common dish for Japanese Christmas), although a cake seems to still squeeze in there sometimes. Instead, we opted for a big roast ham one year or just a special meal of some kind. We generally respect each others customs and try our best to observe what we deem worth observing. This year we are going to try to do Easter although I’m not sure if we will have the time.

We are also really trying to push our little one to use as much English as possible. We even have little mini lessons where we go over key vocabulary and try to stress the use of it as much as we can. This can be a little odd sometimes, especially in public where, if I’m not around, it can kind of look like my wife is showing off. And there can be some occasional misunderstandings from family members when we try to correct her pronunciation (like when she started saying basu when she had been previously saying bath).

But my in-laws are incredibly amazing to be honest. Although they had a few doubts about me early on, and with decent reasons. Pretty much all the international couples they knew in their neighborhood had gotten divorced. But after a bit of wrangling and tense meetings we got to know each other a little better and now we meet up fairly regularly.

It does help that they live so close and my wife visits them every week. They have turned out to be great free babysitters. Although, our daughter is picking up a slight Kyoto-ben accent.

This is in contrast to some other parents I’ve heard about that will vehemently oppose a marriage. In one case, a friend of mine was engaged, planned the wedding, had the wedding, but never signed the papers because their two families couldn’t work out the issues with each other. The couple eventually split up. And they were both Japanese, so I can only imagine what it might be like for foreigners.

I mean we, foreigners, aren’t exactly the perfect catch, at least on paper. A lot of foreigners here, make slightly below average salaries compared to Japanese men our age (foreign women probably make more than Japanese women their age here). And, if we go back to our home country, where we have a better chance of earning a higher income, we are taking daughters and sons away from their family (in the eyes of in-laws).

Vaccinated against Yellow Fever

Yellow Fever, the slightly racist term for those who are infatuated with Asian women, is generally a costly and sometimes life ruining disease. There are a lot of people, like some of my fellow young colleagues, that will openly admit they only love Asian women, and actually only seek that kind of person. This is dangerous for a couple of different reasons.

First of all, I’ve traveled to several places in this world, and I can tell you, there are amazing women everywhere. I haven’t done any in depth research or anything, but in my personal experience, you are kind of limiting yourself when you go around saying things like “I only date guys/gals that are…”

Second, what you might think Asian or Japanese women are like for better or worse is wrong. It’s most likely based on hearsay, rumors, or some quirky look-at-this-strange-thing-in-Japan article you read somewhere. Unless you have done a thorough survey of the entire Japanese population, you probably can’t, for certain, say what the typical Japanese person is like (or American, Mexican, etc…)

Third, if you do have some kind of prejudice (good or bad) going into a relationship it tends to blind you from other critical issues that shouldn’t be overlooked when it comes time to pop the question (or say yes to the question).

Fourth, it’s just a wee bit racist, don’t you think?

So, my advice is if you do have yellow fever, cure it before you come to Japan or at least before you start dating in Japan. Generally speaking, people that have had good healthy relationships and felt good about those relationships with people back home before they came to Japan, can be considered cured and our generally a lot happier in Japan. In other words, always leave your prejudices at the door.

In my particular case, I’ve dated both Japanese and internationals while I was here. And it has always been about the individual person for me, nationality usually doesn’t factor in. Although, having said that, I would probably have to factor it in if it were more long term.

For example, my American friend is now living in Australia with his girlfriend thanks to the domestic partner visa, and I think that would be a little bit of a stretch for me because of the physical distance – flying to the States could be a little tough, but then again maybe it’s not so bad?

My wife on the other hand is far from the Japanese equivalent of “Yellow Fever” – a gaijin hunter. She used to actually be prejudice against Americans. Apparently she had a previous older American co-worker that had been a bit obnoxious about asking her out, and she had shied away ever since. She never saw herself marrying a foreigner and thought her parents would never let her to boot.

To be honest neither of us really thought we were ever going to get married. I thought I would travel the world my whole life. And she thought she would do the same (as a flight attendant, her previous job). So, there was/is no feeling of desperation that we have to make this work because it is our dream to marry a foreigner. We did both put aside a life of adventure to settle down, but I have no regrets, and to the best of my knowledge neither does she.

And contrary to most of the reports from lifers here in Japan, you can have a really happy marriage. It is presently pretty busy, and we are fairly broke, but it’s still going strong. I’m not going to start bragging quite yet, it has only been 5 years, but we are both working to keep it going, so I’m optimistic.

Do your Marriage homework

I mentioned before that it is a lot of my young colleagues that have been infected with “Yellow Fever.” The older people here have either gotten married and divorced and know better now or just know better from previous experience.

Marriage, like anything in this world worth doing, takes some hard work and homework. Cultural factors do play a part to complicate things even further because basic expectations that can be reasonably assumed when you are both from the same country need to be laid out clearly.

It reminds me of a job interview that I had a long long time ago, where they asked me “What is the most important thing about working together?” I think I answered “doing your job well” or “working hard” or something like that. The interviewer politely listened and then said “the answer we were looking for was communication.”

Which is so true, even more so these days. There are a lot of things that go unspoken because we assume our loved one ‘just knows’ because, ya know, they understand us. But, you need to make things clear, really clear.

This means doing your homework before getting married – sitting down and talking about how many kids you are going to have, what kind of job, household responsibilities in general terms, who is in charge of the money, etc…

We went over all this pretty thoroughly. Actually quite a few times before we got married. And at times, there were some tough decisions and the whole thing almost got called off a few times as well. But, I’m glad I talked it out because everything is kind of clear which is the best you can hope for really.

We bunk a lot of the stereotypes of the typical Japanese marriage. For example, I manage most of the overall finances while she micromanages the finer points like deciding what food to buy and whether or not we can afford to buy a giant box of diapers at CostCo. We have little skirmishes about money from time to time, but nothing major. Most of the major purchases in our life have been very unanimous and thoroughly discussed and agreed upon.

And if your potential in-laws are thoroughly against the relationship, it’s best to put away your allusions of grandeur and back away. I’ve seen a lot of friends waiting it out to see if the in-laws will finally agree to the marriage or if their bride/groom-to-be will run off with them to their home country. Well, unfortunately that usually ends badly. In my experience, blood is thicker than water in Japan.

Got Questions?

This was a bit of bare all article for me that I hope sheds some light on how marriage really is in Japan. If you have any further questions, let’s hear them in the comments.

You were probably advised when you were very young to not eat the yellow snow. What about yellow sand? It’s that season again in Japan, and we are again being blessed with the wonderful dirty, gritty sand from our neighbors here in Japan, coating everything in a nice uneven blanket of yellow that seems to get into everything.

And if you live in Japan, you might have also heard of the evil curse of PM2.5 that newspapers and electronics stores love to throw around as a buzzword. This mysterious cloud of gunk likes to come and go as well these days. Although I wasn’t able to pull up some numbers, it seems to be getting worse and worse each year.

Yellow sand and PM2.5 come to Japan by way of wind currents that shift around during the Spring season. March is especially worse for this. During almost the entire month, you can find yellow sand on your bikes and cars. Regular washing doesn’t seem to help that much as well because it just comes back the next day. So, what gives with this yellow stuff? And this mysterious PM2.5 cloud? And is there anyway to combat it?

Yellow Sand or Asian Dust

Asian Dust or as it is called by the Japanese Meteorological Agency, Aeolian Dust, comes to Japan from the Gobi desert in China. It so happens that the Gobi desert is a good 2000km or more away from Japan, which means that this sand somehow manages to get sucked up into the upper atmosphere and then dumped thousands of kilometers away in Japan.

And usually it it is fairly light. You can hardly see it on most days. But, I have seen it come down like rain. So thick, it is like a yellow smog. On those days, you need to stay inside or wear a good mask. Otherwise your throat will be coated with it and you’ll be coughing it up for a week. I know from personal experience when I got caught outside and I had to ride my bike through it for about a kilometer and a half. Big mistake.

I’ve heard from one of my students that is an entomologist (bug scientist) that even small insects get sucked up this way as well and reek havoc on crops in Japan. And the mixture can also include pollution as well as fungi and viruses that somehow amazingly survive the journey. It’s a nasty mess.

The problem has apparently been around for thousands of years. But it has recently been getting worse due to increased desertification in China providing more sand to kick up. And, of course more pollution.

PM2.5

But there is also another little treat that greets us here in March and in other seasons like last fall, and that’s PM2.5. It stands for particulate matter, specifically pieces that are smaller than 2.5 micrometers, which roughly 1/100th the width of a human hair.

Particulate matter of this size are usually made up of toxic organic compounds and heavy metals. Although this may sound like a typical weekend for you, it can have some rather nasty side effects that you might want to look out for.

Normally your respiratory system does a decent job of keeping gunk out of your body. You’ve got nose hairs and mucus and all sorts of tools to trap crap from flowing down into your lungs. However, PM2.5 is too small and manages to bypass all that and get absorbed into your body.

Short term effects include things like aggravated asthma and respiratory problems to even premature death if you have heart problems. Long term effects, of course, cause things like chronic respiratory problems and heart disease.

You can begin to see why a few people are freaking out about it a little. And since the media and electronics stores have been hyping it up, it is something that has been on everyone’s minds of late.

Staying Protected

First of all, it’s important to know when a giant cloud of nastiness will be invading your neighborhood. Luckily, the Internet has a few handy tools to help you with that. Surviving in Japan has a great post going over the main websites where you can check latest air quality in your area.

The one thing I would add to that site is a handy little iPhone app that I picked up that has been really valuable if all you need is a quick check. Be sure to set your region in the settings. The app itself might be a little hard at first to get around in if you are not that good at Japanese. The keywords are 汚染 (Osen, pollution) and 黄砂 (kousa, yellow sand).

I’ve found this app to be fairly accurate. It was able to warn me about the big cloud that hit Osaka about a month ago. The color coding is a little weird. Blue is the lowest level, then green, then orange, then red? (not sure, it hasn’t been that bad yet)

On bad days, you have the option of dawning a mask for your morning commute to work or just staying inside. If you wear a regular mask, the kind you can pick up for about ¥100 for 40, you can reduce intake of particles by about half. Using heavier-duty 3M masks cut it way down, but will cost you around ¥100 each.

Air purifiers and air-purifying air conditioners are a real hot item now in Japan. We are guilty of buying into the trend. Mostly because every brochure we see of said devices has a young mother and child playing near the devices, implying that you should buy them to protect your family.

And yeah, I’m a sucker for that. We had to get new air conditioners for our house and I ended up upgrading to the Sharp Plasma cluster-enhanced ones, so that I can be ‘rest assured’ my family won’t be attacked by deadly PM2.5 while they sleep. And now I’m broke, but I feel slightly assured I guess.

So, you might be thinking that’s all good, but what a more permanent solution? How about a future without nastiness in the skies.

Well, as with a lot of issues in Asia, there is a lot non-communication going on about it. The problem obviously needs to be solved in China, but there are a lot of issues with that. First, their economy is tooling down the road of modernization at 1000mph and changing the engine on that is going to prove difficult. Second, it is a really expensive, in terms of money and time, problem to fix.

It’s not like China is going to slough off the problem for much longer. They can’t. If you think the air quality is bad in Japan, it’s a lot worse in China. And people dying of lung cancer is not good for any economy. So my guess is they will at least make some attempts to mitigate the effects.

In 2007, South Korea sent China some trees, but they unfortunately used them to line highways instead blocking the sand. In 2009, South Korea spent 50 million won ($42,000) to plant some 72,000 trees in China, which seems like a small price to pay to attempt to fix things.

Of course, Japan has spent significantly more in foreign aid for China to help prevent pollution, but it is a huge problem that needs a concerted effort. My hope is that relations normalize a bit and everyone can stop disagreeing over some inhabitable rocks, so bigger issues like gunk in the air can be discussed and focused on, but that’s just a little dream I have.

Do you have Yellow Sand in your Area?

Are you a sucker for air purifiers? Would you or do you wear mask to work? Let me know in the comments below.

I have finally finished off the two elementary school level books that I had lying around the house. They were novelizations of “Toy Story” and “Surf’s Up” that I had picked up awhile ago. These novelizations tend to be pretty easy reads for N2/N1 level. I could get through about 10 to 12 pages in 20 minutes or so on the train.

I took a very casual approach to reading these books. Basically, I didn’t look up any words unless I absolutely had to or my curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to check a meaning here and there. I was surprised to find some grammar items that had come up in my N1 grammar books, but most of the grammar is around the N4, possibly N3 level. There is a lot of vocabulary you have to work through, but they are worth I try if you are that level.

I have a lot of fun with Chrono Trigger, an old Super Nintendo game that I am playing in Japanese. I think RPGs are the most helpful kind of video game to play for language learning because they have a story and lots of reading. However, most RPGs have a fantasy setting which means they usually use a slightly different way of speaking.

Still, it’s good practice and you can usually decipher what is trying to be said. The old Super Nintendo games are especially useful because, due to space limitations, they don’t use as much kanji as newer games. I would say the worst system for reading kanji tends to be the Playstation 1 and 2. Sometimes the characters are so smashed together you can hardly read them.

I’m sure she doesn’t hurt the ratings.

I’ve started experimenting with a couple of different ways of studying. Mostly because I still don’t feel like sticking my nose in a drill book quite yet. I’m also nearing the end of the jDrama I’ve been watching “Hanzawa Naoki” which is quite good. It’s a little difficult at times, but I can understand the main plot points which is about all you need.  It has Masato Sakai and Aya Ueto, which I could watch in absolutely anything (for her talented acting of course).

I’m wondering what I should try to tackle next for TV shows. A lot of people have recommended variety shows. I have a hard time getting into them to be honest. I might end up watching more news stories on YouTube. I’ll keep you posted.

Revising My vocabulary decks

I made a course at Memrise of all the words that I had trouble with when I was studying my drill books to get ready for the N1 test. There are about 400 words total, which isn’t that much. But, to my surprise there were actually a few words on the test that were also on that list, so I’d like to finish it up.

Once I’m finished with that list I want to move on to the list of words I made for Harry Potter. I’ve found that a lot of words I tripped over in my reading lately have been words that I read in Harry Potter, but never really mastered. It turns out it is a pretty good list of words to study if you want to do some reading.

I’d also like to finish the course off. At the moment, I only have the first 4 chapters posted online. Sorry to anyone that has been patiently waiting for the rest of the chapters. I’m going to try to get a little better at posting them and keeping my Memrise lists updated.

I also have plenty of problems with vocabulary glut. I studied way too many N2 words and I have started to fall behind in them. So, I’ve been continuing to ignore some of the easier words and converting the more confusing words to an all Japanese deck. I still spend a good half hour every morning working through the huge list of words and I think a half hour is a little too much. I’d rather be doing something more natural with that time.

Although studying vocabulary all in Japanese is a little daunting at first, it has proven to be quite useful. Mostly because I have to think more about the vocabulary. Yes, this slows me down a little but really helps the vocab stick. I highly recommend it if you have a little patience.

Listening Reading method

This last month, I stumbled upon a method that a friend of mine recommended and swore by. It’s called the listening reading method or just l-r sometimes. It’s kind of drilling technique that seems to work for a lot of people, so I thought I would give it a try.

Basically, what you do is take some material in Japanese in both written and spoken form, and an English translation of the material. First, you listening to the audio of the Japanese to get used to the sounds of the conversation.

Then, you listen to the Japanese while reading the English. This is for you to understand the meaning of the Japanese. This part sounds a bit difficult and it can be, but does help with the meaning.

After that, you listen to the Japanese audio while reading the Japanese text. This is to help link the written words to the audio and it can be really helpful for visual learners that need to see something in front of them I think. It also helps internalize the pronunciation of the kanji used in the text.

Finally, you read along with the text while listening to the Japanese audio. Try to match your rhythm and intonation to the recording as much as possible. If you wanted to do a little extra practice I suppose you could do some shadowing as well. Shadowing is where you only listen to the CD (without looking at the text) and repeat what the speaker is saying while the CD keeps playing.

The hard part is finding some good, already made material for this. There are a few options available to you though. One pretty easy way is with a service like JapanesePod101 which has tons of bilingual materials along with Japanese audio. Or, you could find a Japanese friend to record some audio for you as well.

I experimented with some material from some online resources and having my wife record it for me. I’ll report back with how it worked out. So far, I’m a little mixed about it, but that might change after I get a little more used to it.

Does anyone have any experience with this method? It seems like it could be pretty effective and easy to stick with once you get a pattern down and have a good source of material.

How is your progress going?

How are your studies going? Have started doing some reading? If you are preparing for the December test you might want to check my first month’s JLPT study guide for the JLPT for some tips on how to get started.

When I first came to Japan, I was, like so many others, fascinated by the vending machines. I mean there are vending machines absolutely everywhere in Japan. And they will vend absolutely everything from soda to fried noodles. One of them that I saw sold bouquets of flowers, which could come in handy for that late night craving of flower giving.

But, one of the most ubiquitous kinds of vending machines of course are soda machines. And most of them carry some kind of canned coffee. Some machines actually only carry coffee. And during one of my early days here, when I would try absolutely anything and everything within an arm’s length, I purchased a black can from a machine. It was when I first came here and I couldn’t read anything, so it could have been motor oil for all I knew.

As it turned out it was straight black coffee. And it was ice cold. No creamer, no sugar, no milk, straight. I almost spat it out and threw the can away. Cold black coffee? Are you mad? Who drinks that?

Now, 10 or so years later, I sometimes drink cold black coffee with my meal at Mos Burger or grab a can from the convenience store without even thinking about it. I acquired the taste pretty early on actually, and I’ve come to realize that there is a lot of coffee in Japan.

From little cafes to the big mainstream places, it is a part of Japan. And it was a part of Japan even before the chief mate on the Pequod showed up. There is even a style of making coffee named after Kyoto. A slow 8-16 hour brewing process that this kindly bearded man will explain for you:

Mainstream

At the beginning of the 80s, the Japanese coffee shop Doutor opened its doors for business. They were seen as a quick cafe that salarymen could duck into on their way to work to pick up a sandwich and a cuppa before heading into work. They are still the most common coffee shop in Japan, with somewhere around 1400 locations including its offshoots.

They offer a good combination of a light sandwich and a good blended coffee. They also have a few seasonal drinks, but it is primarily a simple, to-the-point kind of cafe without all the thrills of other coffee shops.

If you were wondering where the word Doutor came from, it’s the Portuguese word for ‘doctor’. Apparently, the name comes from the street name that the founder stayed on while working on a Brazilian coffee plantation.

Speaking of strange names for coffee shops, the coffee shop named after the chief mate of the Pequod, the ship that went after Moby Dick, made its inevitable way to Japan in 1996. Amazingly, Starbucks mostly kept its style and menu when it came over. I would say the big difference is a smaller selection of coffees and a bigger and better-stocked sweets selection.

As with a lot of trendy places from overseas, it was an immediate success. Doutor felt the pinch of competition and responded with a look-alike, called Excelsior Cafe. It apparently looked so much like Starbucks, including the color scheme and the old logo, that Starbucks promptly sued them.

Excelsior Cafés are still around today though and yes they still kind of look like Starbucks Cafés.

Other than mainstream coffee shops, there is an immense variety of canned coffee flavors available. A perennially favorite seems to be cafe au lait, a French mixture of coffee and milk. What’s amazing is that in winter, these drinks are served hot from the vending machine. That’s actually why they are canned, so they don’t burst open.

A new trend of late has been coffee at convenience stores. It seems like somebody would have thought about it why before now, but over the last 2 years or so, Lawson, a popular convenience store chain, has started carrying all sorts of coffee drinks for reasonable prices. And it is pretty well-brewed.

It really pales in comparison to the kind of coffee you get in the States at convenience stores. There it seems to be more of a raw commodity, like gasoline or milk. It’s generally pretty tasteless and over-heated. The convenience store coffee here is quite nice.

Alternatives

There are plenty alternatives to the mainstream options of course. For example, there is a recent trend of cat cafes, where you go and have coffee with a few feline friends. There is even an owl cafe in Namba here in Osaka, where there are several owls in cages hanging out in the cafe. That one seems a little cruel to be honest, but interesting none the less.

Out in the countryside, there are plenty of cozy little cafes that serve their own variety of sweets and coffee in unique handmade mugs. I went into one place that had an all-wood interior and a nice view of a Japanese garden. So, it might be something you want to add to your to-do list if you are visiting.

I feel in some of these local cafes it is almost like coffee drinking has replaced tea ceremony. The interiors are homy and the coffee is served with real sugar cubes that don’t look they came off an assembly line somewhere. The whole experience is a lot more peaceful than the ram and jam of trying to squeeze into an urban Starbucks.

Adapting New Trends

I feel like coffee in Japan is just another example of Japan’s take-it-and-twist-it way of adopting something. Not a lot of trends seem to come out of Japan. There aren’t a lot of new inventions that change the world or spark a new trend. Instead, Japan seems to take a lot of things and give them a little twist.

The obvious example here is the car industry where Japan has excelled and has actually created a whole new kind of engine, the hybrid. But, you can see other examples in things like housing which I mentioned last month. New houses are inspired by Western tastes, but modern houses have their own style all of their own.

Thinking outside of the box never really gets the applause that it does in other cultures. Instead, there is more of focus on perfection and adhering to standards. The hunger for innovation has been dulled from the days when Sony came out with their groundbreaking Walkman.

I hope the hunger grows again. It would be interesting to see a chain of green tea cafés worldwide.

Are you a coffee aficionado?

Have you tried some interesting cafés in Japan? Do you have a crush on Tommy Lee Jones? Tell me about it in the comments below.

Photo by Miki Yoshihito

Okay so I officially failed the exam again. I had a bit of a hunch that I wouldn’t pass but it is good to get the official results, so I can start planning out how to study this year. I want to make a few changes to how I’m doing things for a variety of reasons.

First, I want to stay motivated. I’ve done some intensive grammar practice in the past and although it was helpful it’s pretty darn grueling. I will eventually make my way back to my trusty copy of Kanzen Master N1 Grammar for some more review, but not after I take a bit of a detour.

I’m continuing to write new sentences using the grammar that I have learned as much as I can. I’m finding this to be really helpful to be honest. I also want to drill some listening a bit more but I will probably hold off on that until shortly before the next test.

Right now I want to focus on something different and more interesting. I’ve started watching Hanzawa Naoki, a really popular drama here that came out last year. Most of the vocabulary is pretty difficult, it is a drama based in the banking industry and they don’t hold back on the jargon. But, the basic plot is simple enough. As in any jDrama the bad guys are always clearly identified with threatening bass-filled music and it is filled with the usual characters.

Other than that, I’ve ventured into buying my first Japanese eBook, which was a bit of a mess. I have also been testing out my Nexus 7 that I got for Christmas. I still haven’t found many good Japanese apps outside of the regular suspects though (Anki and Memrise). Does anyone know of any good Android apps?

My First Japanese Ebook

So, I have two Amazon accounts. One is for the US store and the other is for the Japanese store. This usually doesn’t cause too many problems. I just use the particular store I need to accomplish what I need without issues.

However, the Amazon kindle app is just one app for all countries, which causes problems galore because if you use the same email address for both accounts it won’t know what account you want to use and also you can only register a device to one account (as far as I know).

So, this is where I thought I might be out of luck and not be able to purchase Japanese books. But, alas, there is a solution to this mess. What you have to do is go to your Amazon account in your home country then go to kindle settings. There you should be able to find an option to switch countries. It will prompt you for an address in Japan that you just punch in and presto, you can not only buy kindle books at co.jp, you can also consolidate libraries if you have books at both sites.

This will allow you to buy books from the Japan store as long as you can provide a Japanese address. Keep in mind you don’t have to actually ship anything to that address. You just need an address. You can switch back to your home country at any time as well.

Now, there are some issues with this. If you consolidate your kindle account from some countries you might lose your movies, music, or magazine subscriptions due to that pesky regionalization crap big companies pull. However, books seem to be okay. Anyway, Amazon should warn you before anything drastic happens.

In other words, use at your own risk. Double check everything before you consolidate, but generally it’s a pain free process.

Generally anyway, for me, it was a different story. For me, it didn’t automatically consolidate my accounts. Instead, it gave me a warning and told me to contact customer service. But, while I was awaiting for a response I got impatient and ended up buying the book I wanted through Rakuten.

Rakuten uses a reader called Kobo which behaves very much like the Kindle app. It has a different layout of course and different features, but it is basically the service that Rakuten uses. I’m okay with it except that I downloaded it from the Google US store which means it only has an English dictionary. So, I can’t easily look up Japanese words.

Overall, it is all right though. The book I bought, 七王国の玉座 (Game of Thrones) looks beautiful and is fairly easy to read. I should note that there is a free manga set also available as well for both Kobo and Kindle. It’s called ブラックジャックよろしく. I haven’t been able to read that much of it, but it looks like it is about a young doctor in a hospital. Vocabulary seems a little difficult but might be worth a try if you’d like to practice reading.

Classic Japanese Gaming

When I was a lot younger than I am today, I used to spend many hours playing video games on my SNES, especially RPGs. I was a bit of a geek, but it was usually a social experience because my brother and I would take turns until we finally beat the game.

One SNES game that I have played off and on for the last 15 years or so is Chrono Trigger, which a lot of people say is one of the best RPGs ever. I’m not sure about that but it is definitely fun. My new goal is to try to beat it in Japanese.

Thanks to a really awesome SNES emulator on Android called Super Gnes, I can try to make that dream a reality once again. I’ve only ever managed to make it about halfway, so should be a little bit of fun I can squeeze in here and there.

I really like the fact that with emulators, you can save the game at any time. This makes it a great little thing to whip out and play for a few moments while waiting for something or just to veg out a little before going to sleep. I still don’t know how much free time I will have, but it is worth a shot.

I should mentioned that SNES emulators are available for just about any platform out there even other game consoles like the Playstation 2. It’s just a question of how to get the emulator up and running and finding the roms you need, which I’m sure Google can help you with.

Having enough fun?

What are doing to put fun in your studying? Are you tired of the drilling? Let me know in the comments.

When you visit a foreign country, the first thing on your list to check out is usually not the houses. After all, they aren’t quite as glamorous as 400 year old temples and shrines. But, they can tell you about a place all the same.

Houses are very personal for obvious reasons. Where you choose to live can say a lot about you and your lifestyle. That is something I saw a lot of when we were house hunting last year. There is a big variety of what is available to you when it comes to buying houses. I think if you are looking for a condo in Japan, they all seem rather similar to me – concrete, one-level, and close to the station.

But houses can vary widely from McMansion style houses to extremely customized houses with trendy features like roof top terraces. The interesting thing is there were relatively small differences (around 1000万 or $100,000) in price between them. It seems like since land prices are so high, the houses on them are deemed a bit temporary, losing all their value (of the physical building) after 20 years.

There is kind of reason for this actually. Japan has gone through a rather dramatic change in their preferences for their houses, so that houses built 30 years ago are no longer a desirable place to live for a variety of reasons.

Notice all the Japanese-style rooms (和室) and oshiire (押入). Built 1964

Houses pre-90s

Houses built before the 1990s tend to still favor traditional styles of housing. There were no large main rooms. There was a dining room and a living room, each about 8~10 畳 (jou) or 120 to 140 sq. ft. If you have ever been in one of these houses, they seem a bit cramped. They are not designed for any more than about 8 people at a time and that is a tight fit.

House parties were apparently not very popular back then, and still are not as popular as they are in the States, but they are starting to get more popular. At that time, people usually entertained guests in there Japanese-style room or tatami room, so it tended to be fairly big 8~10 畳 and still have the alcove for the personal shrine used to honor the dead of the family.

These houses tend to be of lesser quality, although there are some made of steel or reinforced concrete that have stood the test of time. But, in general house building was not as developed as it is now. The main reason for the smaller rooms was for earthquake safety.

Another drawback to these houses – to cut down on the amount of plumbing needed for the house, the bathrooms were usually attached to the kitchen and main dining room. This means that if you want to take a shower you often times have to walk by the dining table to and from the shower. This doesn’t seem like that big of deal, but it can make you feel a little uncomfortable at times.

And of course there are no bathrooms on the second floor, which means if you have to go in the middle of the night you have to clamor down the stairs and back up again. You can start to see why these houses are slightly undesirable.

The 和室 are gone except one. Bigger LDK and still an alcove for the shrine. Built 1991.

In the 90s

Houses started to look a lot more European/American. There was a lot of wooden cabinetry and bay windows (windows that project out from the house and form a little ‘bay’ to sit in or put flowers in) were pretty popular. Housing quality seemed to have gotten a lot better, too. Although the shutters I saw for a few houses were a bit shabby.

Built in ovens were a little popular and kitchens were still ‘detached’, basically they weren’t a part of the main room but formed a kind of kitchen hallway that was attached to the dining room. I’ve been told that this was popular because women often wanted to hide away the ‘dirtiness’ of the kitchen from guests.

Japanese style rooms were going through a bit of a transition at this point. It seems like some of them kept the alcove, while others didn’t. I saw both. Big main rooms ~14+ 畳 started getting popular as well. Whereas before there were typically 3 rooms, a bath room, and a toilet room on the main floor there were just 2 bigger rooms, a bath room, and a toilet room.

It seems as though Japan wanted to modernize their houses and so they looked to Europe for inspiration. There were more than a few houses from this era that you could easily have mistaken for a townhouse in the states. Some of them even had white picket fences!

The LDK is now double the size. The 和室 is considerably smaller. The new fad of a ‘walk-in-closet’ can be seen here as well. Built 2014

These days

Houses have really started to have their own Japanese style. Although they still seem European, they have a trimmed modern look that is very Japanese. Gone is the wooden cabinetry and in its place is snazzy white cabinets with swing down trays and self-closing drawers. Bay windows aren’t so popular, and narrower, more opaque windows are now the norm.

In the newest layouts, the Japanese-style room has practically been deleted from the design. In our house, which is about 8 years old, the Japanese-style room is only 4 畳 (60 sq. ft.), essentially the size of a nice walk-in-closet. It is also the only room in the house with an 押入れ (oshiire, a large Japanese-style closet used to store futons). All the other rooms now have shallow, western-style closets.

About 13 years ago or so, they passed a housing law in Japan that requires 24-hour ventilation in all homes. This is to prevent “Sick House Syndrome”, which is essentially an allergic reaction to house dust, and house building materials. This makes it so each room in the house has either an in-vent or an out-fan that creates a very slow but steady flow of air through the house.

This seems like a better deal than the typical approach to airing out the house – opening all the windows once a day. I always dreaded that in our old apartment. Even in winter, we opened up all the windows for 5 to 10 minutes to air it all out. I’m not sure how helpful it was, but it did wake me up in the morning.

I should also mention that plumbing has changed a bit as well. Now, the bathroom is usually far away from the kitchen and a lot of houses have a bathroom on the second floor. We don’t have one, it was something we could live without, but it is typical of other houses.

The Physical Transition of Culture

It was interesting for me to see Japan’s departure from old customs in the physical world. You could literally see how the style of living has changed over the years. Premium houses of today have wide open spaces with vaulted ceilings that I never saw in any of the older buildings for sale. Another thing to point out is there are hardly any buildings older than 30 years. Most of the old buildings have been torn down, so even if you wanted something traditional, it simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Outside of a few key areas (like Kyoto’s Gion district) older houses are not worth anything, and actually some of them make the land worth less because people have to pay to tear down the house if they want to build a new house.

Although at first glance, I think it is a little sad that these houses are disappearing. But, if you take an honest look at them, they are pretty shoddy and some of them are infested with all sorts of things. One of my students told me a story of how a raccoon would sneak through a hole in their kitchen floor and steal cookies off the kitchen table. And this was in the city.

Would you live in a traditional house?

Would you like to live in a traditional Japanese house with the oshire and all tatami floors? Is modern housing so much cooler? Let me know in the comments.

So the test is finally over for 2013. I was barely able to get to the test much less put in serious study time the whole month before because I was in the process of moving, which is now thankfully over. Although, there is still a lot more to get setup, I’m finally physically in the house. To be honest, it’s great to be moved in and headed down the final stretch of this year.

I’m getting started on a few books that I haven’t read because they were too easy for me. I would like to get into writing as well, but it might take me some time to get up to that. I need to find a solid chunk of time to do it, but all I ever seem to get is 10 to 15 minutes there and 10 to 15 minutes here. So, doing some reading and writing will be my two big projects to do over this winter break.

I am really looking forward to simply having fun and reading instead of trying to hammer through the grunt work of more vocabulary and abstract reading. My main concern is keeping the habit up so I’m not out of shape mentally when I go back to it in January. I think after the holidays calm down, I’ll go out and pick up a good difficult philosophy book to work through. Or maybe pick up the next book in the Harry Potter series, which actually proved to have some good vocabulary.

Easy Books

While I was cleaning during the big move, I found some old Disney books that I hadn’t read yet – Toy Story and Surf’s Up. I’ve talked about these Disney books before, but it’s worth repeating that they are perfect for those that around N3 to N2 that just want to get into reading more. They are easy to get through, and they all have movies you can watch to give you the background 1st.

I’m going to use them to increase my overall comfort with reading fast. I’ll probably try to time myself a few times to see if I can get a good reading speed. Now, the vocabulary in these books isn’t particularly difficult for N1, but I just want to get my sentence and expression recognition down pat.

Of course, those are all just excuses to take it easy over the holidays and have fun. They are also very portable and don’t require batteries, which will come in handy because I’ll be doing a lot of traveling, during the winter holidays as well. It’s studying that I am actually looking forward to.

Make Grammar Perfect

I’ve been studying Kanzen Master pretty intensively over the last few months with the goal of being able to quickly recognize and use the grammar. I’m pretty sure I improved on that this time although I was admittedly pretty exhausted by the time I made it to the test. I hope I kept my score. I felt better about it anyway.

I’d ideally like to take it one step further though and get used to using the expressions for N1 and N2. To do this I’ve been boiling down the grammar, which has been quite helpful actually. I managed to fill up about 20 to 30 pages so far in my notebook that I can flip through to remind me about how to use each point.

I used to journal in Japanese and do regular writing, but that hasn’t been happening of late. I’d like to hear from people how you get into writing and keep the habit up. I have a few things I’d like to try, but it’s always good to try something a little different. I’ve tried translating English to Japanese, which can be quite challenging and actually quite helpful in some cases.

Do you have plans for the Break?

Do you have a winter break? Have you made any plans on how to keep up your studies? Let me know in the comments.

Photo by Andrew Subiela

There was somewhat recent Guardian article  that got a lot of Facebook love about a month ago. It was essentially the rehashed news report of an annual survey about Japan’s sex habits, to put it bluntly. The Guardian did a little more leg work with it and did some ‘on the ground’ reporting to fluff out the article and get more perspective. It was seemingly quite in depth actually, even going so far as to interview a few lucky people.

The people they chose for these interviews were a dominatrix turned sex therapist, a couple of Sex-and-the-City idolizers, and a young asexual man. They hand-picked a few stats from a recent survey to base most of the arguments off of and left out some other stats. Hmm, I wonder if it is biased in any way?

And normally, I can kind of blow off this kind of bad reporting, but it has become an annual event with the press. The Guardian seems to have a special thing for it actually. Here is Guardian’s somewhat more neutral article in 2011.  They seem to love to call out Japan as being the sexless wonder.

The first problem with this situation is that surveys about sex generally don’t yield good results. Nobody is going to put down that they are nymphomaniacs or anything like that, so the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. And good investigative reporters would go the extra mile and get some balanced opinions to write a good article. However, that apparently doesn’t sell as well as interviewing a dominatrix sex therapist. So let me bust some myths for you.

Granted some of this is my personal opinion/experience so you should take that into consideration as well, but the realty of Japan is at least slightly different than the picture painted by the Guardian.

Nobody is Having Sex in Japan

This seems to be a myth that is getting floated around of late. And the statistics do back it up a little bit. At least according to one survey, 25% of men age 35-39 are virgins. And that is at least a little shocking.

But, as this Slate article points out, this is also a noticeable trend in other developed countries like the US. It is just a little more pronounced in Japan. This is an unfortunate trend, but it doesn’t mean that everyone has given up. There are other things to consider.

For example, in my opinion, people in Japan don’t usually date for fun. As matter of fact, a lot of people I’ve met don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend, which is great if you are single. And I’ve never really encountered the whole ‘I don’t have the time for a relationship.’ business that sometimes happens in the States. Again, maybe this is because I’m stud, lucky, language barrier, foreign envy, etc…

But, it feels like to me that dating is a slightly more serious affair than in the States (my only frame of reference). It seems to me that dating is seen as a precursor to marriage, no matter what age, and isn’t something that is done a lot for fun. Now of course, there are plenty of hook ups and various other types of relationships, but the ideal thing is dating to get married.

And the general attitude toward sex is pretty cavalier. It really isn’t a ‘thing’ if you know what I mean. People just do it. There aren’t these religious taboos holding people back or cultural stimulus for it. For example, in America, women’s magazines are packed with 100s of ways to ‘please your man in bed’ where women’s magazines here are more about cooking, fashion, and some gossipy things.

It also doesn’t help that it really isn’t branded very well either. Sex education in Japan is full of ambiguous references, including using sea urchins to act out certain parts (in Japanese). So no wonder some Japanese might have the impression that sex is disgusting, wouldn’t you?

This is coupled with the fact that everyone has to study non-stop to pass entrance exams, which cuts down the amount of time they spend simply interacting with each other socially during those earlier years when it is important to build up these kinds of skills. But, when I ask high school girls what they talk about with their friends, they usually always answer one thing – boys. It just seems like there isn’t enough time for them to go through those awkward conversations with the opposite sex that everybody should go through in their junior high school days.

So, you essentially have 3 factors combining to make sex, not so sexy. First, members of the opposite sex aren’t so comfortable interacting with each other, due to having their noses in their books too much. Second, dating is seen as a somewhat serious affair. Third, sex is not a big part of the popular culture.

Ahh, But There is Hope!

It’s a tricky situation, but what’s interesting about all this is that 90% of Japanese according to that same survey the Guardian quoted want to get married. And if you look beneath the surface you can see this.

A lot of people I talk to in and out of class are actually a bit stressed out about finding that special someone. It’s a very clear goal for both men and women. And a lot of them are actively seeking someone, going to 合コン- gokon or dating parties, and speed dating parties (25 men/25 women).

They are typically 30somethings with a stable job, a good head on their shoulders, have stacked up the necessary qualifications they need to keep going in their jobs. They are women who have gone out of there way to get extra qualifications in things like English teaching, accounting, etc.. so that they can get back into the workforce after getting married or having a kid.

A lot of them come back from these parties complaining about how boring the people are. They have trouble keeping a conversation going sometimes. In other words, men especially, have bad communication skills or simply work too much to be interesting.

20somethings on the other hand, tend to be more focused on building a career (both men and women), and getting certifications. They also get jostled around a lot at their jobs, getting transferred from Tokyo to Kobe to Hakata and back again before finally coming to rest somewhere in the innards of the company. This is due to how well or how poorly they do in a particular department.

This 20something corporate battle is waged for two reasons – Men need a pretty good salary to get married, so they need to fight to get to at least somewhere in the middle. Women need to gather qualifications and experience to survive the marriage/child birth speed bump, they get hit with when they get married.

Women also have to have the right boss. Some (unbelievably old-fashioned) bosses will summarily fire a woman just for being married. Yes, that actually still happens. Women also get pressured by their family to stop working after marriage, too. It’s not just the office.

So having qualifications and experience can help women jump ship for another more woman-friendly company. As well as return to the workplace after having kids. I know a few women who changed jobs in order to be able to get married and have a kid and keep their careers.

So, yeah, okay, there is slightly less sex to be had in Japan, but this seems to be a trend that is popping up in other countries as well and people do still want to get married and have kids (both men and women).  And I’m going to go out on a limb here and presume that once they are married they have sex.  That is not always true of course, but let’s just suppose.  So, both sides still would like to get married, but they want to still live a decent life as well.  They takes a lot of money and qualifications in Japan, and it is a bit tough to get over that hill.  It quite honestly takes a lot of grit and determination.

The Solution?

Sometimes I feel like this is a problem that will disappear in time. As the old guard starts to retire there will be more changes hopefully, especially as Japan’s workforce shrinks. Some people call this the ‘hurry up and die’ strategy.

However, I feel somewhat optimistic that things will change for the better. I have my fingers crossed that Shinzo Abe will grow a pair and start making some of the changes he promised on the campaign trail to change how women are treated in the workplace.　It might be a bit a long shot though.

What do you think?  What has your experience been?  Let me know in the comments below.

Photo by Scion_cho

Lately, I’ve gotten more and more annoyed at doing vocabulary drills. A lot of this has to do with it getting tremendously boring to do the same thing over and over. But, also because of being at a higher level, it is easy to get two words that have similar meanings mixed up. And there were some simple words in my Memrise courses that I’ve been ignoring and pruning out.

I also couldn’t study the old N2 course on Memrise that much because it is too big to be used on the iPhone app. I almost dropped the whole course, but I’ve decided on another course of action instead.

I’m taking every single word I get wrong and adding it to a Japanese only deck. Although I’ve known Japanese to Japanese is the best way to learn, I’ve been pretty lazy about switching over. Mostly because I can’t find a good source of resources for practicing Japanese to Japanese words.

One handy app that a reader recommended before is 漢字読めるカナ. It practices the reading of the kanji and allows you to look up the definition online if you get it wrong. It also has a handy image search function, too.

But for Memrise, the data that I used to create the main dictionary is all from WWWJDIC. Meaning it is all Japanese to fairly good English definitions, so to create Japanese to Japanese I have to make the cards by hand. If I have time I might try to hunt down open-source data, which I’m sure exists somewhere, but for now it is a manual process.

Japanese to Japanese

Full immersion seems to get a lot of praise as ‘the’ way to study a language, and for the most part it is a pretty good method for hard-core language lovers. But, it can also lead to a bit of confusion and sometimes just be simply de-motivating because it is difficult to jump into at first. And some recent studies suggest that at the early stages of language learning, it might be better and faster to use one’s native language to learn with instead of guessing at meanings.

I like to call this ‘half’ immersion. Where you do immerse yourself sometimes but not all the time. For example, I’ve never understood Japanese explanations of grammar points. Sometimes it’s filled with too much jargon-y language terms, sometimes the grammar point is just too complicated. For whatever reason, I like to look at both the English explanation and the Japanese one, just to be safe. Also, it gives me a well-rounded understanding of how to use it and how it sounds.

I’ve been a bit hesitant to switch completely to Japanese to Japanese dictionaries because I’m afraid I won’t be able to lock in vocabulary as well as if I used an English definition. Also, some Japanese definitions are more complicated than the word they are describing. But, my recent experience with Japanese to Japanese for vocabulary building has been fairly okay so far, and has added a lot of clarification.

It has slowed down my studying a little bit, because you need longer definitions and I need to look up every word and add the card manually. But, I think this extra work helps you process the word more and ultimately to recall it better in the future.

Fires Galore

Overall though, I’d like to be doing a lot more JLPT practice than I am currently doing. The amount of time I have to study every day has dwindled down to only about 30 minutes or so. For N1, that is way too short of an amount of time to make good progress. I have spent more time on detailed grammar practice and I am squeezing in vocabulary practice when I can with my iPhone app.

I’ve had a lot of little personal fires of late to put out. A friend’s website went down, and we had to do some emergency work to bring it back up again. I’ve been offered a few more classes to teach, which is always a good thing.

And, I don’t want to jinx it, but it looks like I’m moving out in the very near future. We are currently going through the loan process and paperwork of buying a house. So, it looks like I won’t be getting any sleep for the next month or so. Ideally, it probably isn’t a good idea to be in the middle of a major move right before the JLPT, but it’s the perfect house, so we had to get it.

Anyway, the main focus for me is to improve my grammar and vocabulary score and keep my other scores up. I think that is fairly achievable and once the move is finished my life can have some normalcy and I can get back to blogging, studying, and creating courses.

How are things Shaping up for You?

Are you ready for the big exam? Taking it easy? Putting out fires of your own? Let me know in the comments.

Japan is known for its cities. If you ask someone to imagine Japan, one of the first things that probably comes up is the scramble walk in Shubuya, where hundreds if not thousands of people cross the street every time all the lights turn red. Or you probably imagine the neon lights of Kabukicho or our own Dotonbori here in Osaka.

But, when ever anyone asks me where they should live in Japan, my first suggestion is usually the countryside. It is often forgotten and rarely showcased, but it exists. And there are some fairly hidden away spots to explore in Japan that are full of their own experiences that are different from the city.

It all comes down to why you are moving to Japan in the first place and what you hope to accomplish while you are here. Both places offer different experiences that are both rewarding. Also, if you are staying forever or just a short time, that can also affect where you want to live.

Countryside

As in most countries, things tend to go a lot slower in the countryside. When I lived out in the country, I really didn’t have to plan things out too far ahead. Typically friends came over to my shabby apartment and we drank and talked or I would go to the local ‘gaijin’ bar and drink and chat. About once a month or so, we went on some trip somewhere or had some semi-special event.

Things don’t really need to be scheduled in the countryside, you just tend to do whatever everybody else is doing or don’t, you can stay home and study or go exploring on your own. This can bring a certain kind of freedom of its own if that is what you are seeking. Because there are always places to explore and find. Regular old boring stuff to the locals are treasures to international visitors.

In the countryside, I also seemed to have a lot closer friends. There were a lot of people I could call and just hang out with, Japanese and expats. It also helped that since people lived fairly close you could literally stop by, which really isn’t an option in a big city. Also, every foreigner you meet is somehow instantly your best friend, which is the opposite of the city where foreigners tend to ignore each other unless they are lost or something.

The greatest thing though is that in the countryside you realize that Japan has a lot of nature. Since it is very mountainous Japan actually has a lot of unsettled areas. Places that have resisted farming and civilization because they are just too rocky and mountainous to build anything on, making them somewhat untouched nature preserves.

Don’t get me wrong, there has also been a lot of logging and clearcut mining that has torn up a lot of places as well. One of the tallest mountains in this area, Mt. Ibuki, offers spectacular views of Lake Biwa and a lot of Shiga, but it also has a huge chunk out of the side of it due to some kind of mining. Still as the population starts to decrease and nature starts to reclaim the land used for the now abandoned recreation areas in the mountains, I think you’ll start to see more and more trees and wildlife returning.

City Life

The city obviously has more resources in every sense of the word. You could probably eat at a different restaurant every night and never run out of places to dine. There are also things like parks, aquariums and theme parks. Your usual big city fare.

Big cities in Japan also offer more comforts from ‘back home’, wherever that may be for you. So, for example, you can pick up a turkey for thanksgiving or a Whopper to clog your arteries with if the desire hits you. You also will be able to find sports bars with satellite TV that will be playing your favorite sporting event from back home.

There are obviously a lot more foreigners that you can surround yourself with as well. I seem to have more friends in the city, but less really good friends. There is something about being the only handful of foreigners in a particular area that brings you closer and also forces you to get out and met the locals.

The comforts from back home and loads of foreigners can be a good or bad. It can be good in the sense that you can still have those must-have things from back home with you. And if you have been living here for a while like I have, there tend to be those things that you just end up missing a little bit, no matter how much you like living here.

On the other hand, it might be bad to live in the city because you can surround yourself with English speakers, watch English TV at home, go to foreign bars and work in an all English environment and never really get immersed in what is going on here. If you have lived in the city for any length of time, you’ve met that person that has done just that for the last 15 years or so. They are still essentially living in a foreign bubble.

And that is why I would normally recommend starting in the countryside first because you’ll be forced to get out and be in Japan. You’ll have to eat Japanese food, and you’ll have to learn at least some Japanese, unless you lock yourself in your apartment.

The one good thing about living in the city, and the one reason why a lot of foreigners end up living in the city, is the job opportunities. In the countryside, you are fairly limited to just being an English teacher. Even if you are quite fluent, there isn’t much of a demand for a native speaker of English usually. Jobs do exist of course, but not in the numbers that exist in the city. Tokyo is the best place for international jobs. But, Kansai also has opportunities as well.

Even if you plan to teach English your entire time in Japan, the city is a great place because there are a lot of chances to pick up different kinds of classes with different kinds of organizations. This can make your job more interesting or stressful, depending on how you look at it.

City or Countryside?

Where would you live if you had the choice? If you live in Japan, where do you live? What are some of the advantages? Disadvantages?

Photo by Adam Kahtava and Chistopher Schmidt

After the July test, I’ve been moving toward more natural study methods and keeping my nose out of drill books. I started doing some reading of PHP, a small magazine with short essays that have relatively short essays that have relatively simple themes. I found it to be fairly easy actually. A good magazine for people studying for N2 I think. It’s shorter and literally smaller than regular magazines, so it can be pretty handy.

Since PHP was not challenging, I decided to graduate to ‘real’ magazines. I chose one of the ‘weeklies’ or 週刊 (shuukan). There are actually at least 3 different weeklies put out by different publishers, and I chose 週刊文春 (shuukanbunshun) pretty much at random. So far it has been at least a decent choice.

These weeklies generally combine a variety of reading in one bound edition. For example, they will have some somewhat newsy items like news about the Tokyo getting the Olympics and some stories on that theme.

Or something of interest on the current hot topic. For example, in my edition they have an article about how most people in China don’t believe in Chinese history books, which is apparently relevant because a lot of Chinese also don’t believe in Japanese textbooks? It must have been a slow news day.

Anyway, I’m finding it to be a bit more difficult to understand than PHP. It is a little faster-paced and concentrated. Also, it seems like they use more colorful idioms along with the occasional rare use kanji without any furigana to help look it up. Another difficulty is the heavy use of names in the news stories. These can be difficult to find out how they are pronounced and harder to keep track of.

I’m going to continue to work through it as well as do some reading review before the big test. I want to practice answering some comprehension questions because I feel like figuring those out is half of the difficulty of doing the reading section.

Boiling Down the Grammar

I’m pretty familiar with most of the N1 grammar, but I’m still not confident enough with it. In the past, I’ve simply kept buying more and more drill books until I’ve gotten very comfortable with everything. And I still might end up doing that, but I thought I would try another approach.

Mostly, I got sick of answering question after question, and lots of drilling doesn’t have that much of an effect on your ability to actually use the grammar point in real life, which is usually the whole reason why you study a language in the 1st place. Although I will be reviewing the last couple of chapters of New Kanzen Master N1 Grammar so that I can be really comfortable with some of the key points from N1.

But, the new thing I’m trying this time is a process of boiling down the most difficult grammar. This process helps me save a little time with my studies, because it narrows down the exact points I’m weak at. The whole process has taken a long time, but I feel like I’m really able to master each point I need.

A Month and a Half to Go

It’s almost gone now, but I’ve spent the last week and a half battling a nasty cold that has put me behind a little bit. I’m finally getting back on schedule for the final stretch to the finish line.

My, now, epic quest to find the perfect house has intensified a bit, I feel like we are getting closer and closer to actually moving in soon. Buying a house in Japan is a lot more complicated than I imagine it to be in America. There are a lot of pitfalls that we’ve avoided and learned about along the way. I’ll have to write something up about it soon.

My main goal for this December test will be to recover my grammar and vocabulary score that took a hit during the July test. I also want to slightly improve listening and reading to comfortably score above 30. I keep thinking about the 100 points that are needed to pass the test. It seems like a tough hill to climb at the moment, but I’m hoping for some more dramatic results this time around. We’ll see what happens.

What are your Goals?

The test is coming up soon. What do you need to improve before the big day?

It doesn’t get much mainstream press these days, but Japan has a bit of a debt problem. The national debt will be an estimated 245% of the GDP, which seems simply unfathomable. In order to pay such a debt off, Japan spends something like 23% of its budget on interest payments. And Japan is currently running a budget deficit, meaning it is adding to that every year.

In other countries, natural inflation could be relied on to lessen the effect of the debt year by year (if there was a budget surplus). But of course, Japan has chronic deflation, which actually makes the debt worse. And there are also a whole host of other things on Japan’s plate too – like declining birth rate, retiring baby boomers, forced retirement at 60, chronic savers, etc…

This has led to a ton of speculation as to what will happen to Japan in the near future. And it has ranged from total economic collapse to some extra inflation. A lot of the top advisors have weighed in on the topic actually and judging from the comments people leave, it is a very hotly debated topic as to what exactly will happen. And as with all financial predictions, nobody has a clue how it will all play out.

The truth in these types of situations always lies somewhere in the middle or a combination of things in my opinion. After all, there is the very slight possibility that it all can be avoided somehow.

The Sky is Falling

Kyle Bass is a hotshot fund manager who got lucky with the sub-prime crisis in the States. He is calmly letting everyone know that financial ruin will hit Japan sometime in the next 18 to 24 months. He placed a lot of bets on this, going so far as to buy his house in yen so that he can save money because he is betting the yen will devalue with the crash.

The reasoning behind this (in a very small nutshell) is that right now the Japanese government (and other governments) are spending more than they are taking in. To work this magic they sell government bonds at auction, print more money, or do some combination of both. These bonds are the national debt. And at the moment, a lot of those are owned domestically and continue to be purchased domestically in Japan.

This allows Japan to have a lot of control over its debt. It doesn’t have to worry about making investors nervous, because they all live in Japan and they want Japan to keep working and not go bankrupt. The problem is, the domestic money supply is drying up. When that happens foreign investors step in and the interest rates may go up on the bonds.

If the rates go too high, it is game over for Japan. The country will default and there will be a lot of economic problems as a result (in theory).

For a more detailed, animation-filled explanation of this please check out the following video:

Currently this is resulting in historically low interest rates. For example, if you want to take out a house loan at the moment, the variable rate is about 0.775%. Even for a 35 year fixed rate, it is 2.5% which is almost nothing. That’s because any increase in rates will cause Japan to default according to some sources.  Also, banks are in cut throat competition with each other to get customers, luring them in with cheap loans and making money off of other services.

But, actually, a lot of people believe that countries like America and Japan can’t default. Because, and again I’m paraphrasing here, a country can simply keep printing money. Of course, if you print too much money, you end up like Zimbabwe.

Now there are a couple of ways to solve some of these issues above. For example, Japan currently has a trade deficit at the moment, which makes things even worse. If they could increase trade, they could increase GDP and help them pay off their debts. The easiest way to do that would be to trade with their neighbors, like China. Unfortunately, China and Japan are currently having a hissy fit over Senkaku, a group of islands in the Pacific, which seem to have a lot of oil around them.

Japan could also privatize some of its national assets that it has lying around. This would make the properties more profitable in theory and give Japan some money to pay down the debt. The only problem is Shinzo Abe didn’t campaign with this idea and hasn’t really mentioned it at all.

The current plan on the table is a consumption tax hike from the current 5% to 8% in April of next year and then up to 10% in 2015. This will, in theory, close up the budget deficit a little bit and stabilize things, but nobody really likes the idea of a consumption tax and many fear it could slow down the economy.  Of course, now with the Olympics in the picture, there are a lot of people that are hopeful for a turn around, but no one seems to truly believe there will be a boom.

The Sky will probably Fall but Slowly

Japan has a lot more control over its financial situation than a lot of other countries do. This allows them to do things like order the Bank of Japan to buy up bonds to keep them a float for a little while longer. And since a lot of bonds are owned domestically it can do things like peg the interest rate of bonds so that interest rates don’t go up.

It seems inevitable that some kind of inflation needs to happen in order for things to get better. Higher inflation means the debt gets smaller relative to GDP and that means it will be more manageable. How much inflation is needed? A lot. Some estimate 6% per year in order to reverse the trend.

Japan can do this by devaluing the yen, which would increase exports, but there is one catch. Since a lot of manufacturing has been moved overseas, Japan now needs to import things it used to produce domestically. And of course, since oil is priced in dollars, fuel costs will rise as well.

What seems like the most likely scenario is a slow steady raise in inflation and weakening of the yen. As the yen gets weaker, exports will pick up and things will get better. Hopefully this process will be a slow one, but it will still be rather painful.

Higher inflation will of course cause its own set of problems, much like what is happening in the States now. The middle class will get hollowed out. Money will funnel its way to the rich, and things will get tougher for the retirees living off savings. In theory, wages should increase along with that, but nothing is for certain.

The general spirit of people in Japan though is kind of a しょうがない attitude.  In other words, it can’t be helped so no need to protest it.  For example, a lot of people aren’t happy about the consumption tax, but it seems like most will just deal with it and go on.

My Two Cents

It is very easy to start believing in doomsday scenarios. Half the videos on YouTube about the financial situation talk about global financial collapse and how the world is going to turn into Mad Max at any moment.

The truth though is that nobody really knows what in the world is going to happen. Everyone is kind of guessing. Personally, I’m trying to get as much money into assets as I can just to be safe. That is one of the reasons I’m scrambling to find a house at the moment. Granted housing and land in Japan aren’t exactly the best investments, but you have to live somewhere.   Also, I want to lock in these great interest rates in case something goes haywire.

But, what about you? What do you think of the financial crisis? Let me know in the comments below.

Boring Disclaimer Legal Crap

Since this article is about finance, I might as well just come out and say that I haven’t studied economics in any formal sense and I really have no idea what I am taking about. Please don’t make any financial decisions based on what I wrote. Do prudent research before making any investments. Never take investment advise from some guy with a blog about the JLPT.

And also, if I have made a mistake in my explanation of the situation, please by all means let me know in the comments.

Photo by IvanWalsh

Not my actually, library, but maybe someday.

After the test results last month, I’ve started to rework my studying a little more to get ready for the December test. At this point, I feel like I know the skills I need. I just need to over-learn everything so it’s automatic. I feel like that is really what N1 is about, testing if the language is automatic for you.

Over-learning can seem a bit of a drag at times. We all like to chase after the shiny new things, but to really master something you have to over-learn it. And that means regular review, several different approaches and sometimes a couple of different books.

The point of all this of course is to make it so embedded in your head that you don’t even have to think about it. It’s just there. Make reading and listening so smooth that you don’t have to worry so much about staying focused. This is one of the big hurdles you have to face as you move to the N2/N1 levels. You don’t have a lot of time to stop and think. You really have to comprehend things quickly.

Grammar Practice

The number 1 thing I’d like to internalize is the grammar and expressions that are used at the N1 level. I don’t want to spend time second guessing different points and questioning my comprehension. So, I’ll be going back through my trusty Kanzen Master Grammar book again, mostly practicing my focus and speed reading skills. I figure this will also give my regular vocabulary a boost as well.

I’ve already got the basic sense of the points down, but want to get more familiar with the uses of each point. To do this I’m just speed reading the sentences then pausing to recall their meanings. And verbally, making a sentence off the top of my head. My reasoning behind this is that I want to be able to comprehend it quickly. I don’t want to give myself any thinking time.

After a bit of a pause, about 5-7 days, I’ll go back and do the questions for each section. I want a realistic picture of what I’m retaining and have retained. That way I can go back and review just what I am having trouble with or ask questions about the points to get a solid understanding before moving on. Any grammar points that give me a particularly big headache, I’ll do some writing practice with.

I figure this multilayer approach will filter out the things that are giving me the most trouble. We’ll see how it goes. I want to pull out those remaining grammar points that I’m still not 100% on.

Increasing Reading Speed

Speaking of speed reading, I’ve been doing some research into speed reading or at least increasing your reading speed over the last couple of weeks. I’ve always been a slow reader and so, I really want to get over that hump and read faster.

Unfortunately, a lot of speed reading is focused on reading quickly in your native language. So I’ve had to adopt the methods a bit, as well as do some research into 速読 (sokudoku, Japanese speed reading). I’m not sure what will push my reading faster, but I’ll be fine-tuning it over the next few months. For more details on what I’m doing to speed up my reading, check the ‘How to Increase your Reading Speed’ section of the JLPT study guide kit.

What I’ve done so far has started to really help my reading speeds, but I need to practice ‘switching gears’ when I hit a word I don’t recognize. This is something that isn’t covered in the books I’ve practiced with. If anybody that knows of a resource, please let me know in the comments below.

Another thing I have been practicing a lot is re-reading. This is obviously very similar to over-learning material so that it becomes automatic, which seems to be my current theme. I hope I can make everything automatic so focus comes easily and I can glide through the answers.

What are you up to?

Now that the results are back and registration is open (or just closed) for the December test, what is your plan of action? Let me know in the comments.

Photo by mxmstryo

Your typical full name in Japan is made up of 4 kanji – 2 kanji for a first name or given name and 2 kanji for the last name or surname. There are somewhere around 600 or so extra kanji that are used just for names, but names also use common kanji like the most common last name in Japan – Tanaka, 田中. The 田(ta) is rice field, and 中(naka) is in the middle of. So, Tanaka literally means in the middle of the rice field, which is where I assume his great ancestors lived.

These names can get quite complex and even include kanji that people are not familiar with. The latest trend is to use kanji so complicated that most people have a hard time recognizing it much less reading it. In addition to that, different pronunciations of the kanji can be used to form different names. So, to eliminate all this confusion, there is usually a space on application forms for you to write the pronunciation of your name in katakana.

Where it gets tricky is for names that are natively in another writing system, like say roman letters. When that’s the case, sometimes you write your name in roman letters in the main box and the pronunciation of it in katakana in a smaller box that runs along top. But, sometimes, you have to write your name twice in katakana. Or, in the case of some poorly programmed web forms, you can’t enter your name at all.

To add to this, there are no middle names in Japan. So, if you are a foreigner with a middle name (like me) that middle name becomes a part of your first or given name. This can sometimes lead to confusing situations, where people have no idea what to call you. Is it the two names? Just the first part of the given name? Last name?

Getting your Personal Seal

In Japan, you use a personal seal, called a hanko or inkan, when you ‘sign’ a document. As a foreigner you can also just sign your actual name, but for whatever reason, banks seem to want you to have a seal. Most other places seem to be totally fine with a signature though. There are special shops that are set up that sell all manners of hanko, jeweled ones, fancy ones, automatic inking ones, etc… But, the most common names can be bought at your local Y100 store.

So, to make a seal for a foreigner, your name is usually converted into katakana. Also, if you are a part of the national health care and pension plans, you will have to use your name in katakana. Because katakana can’t really accurately represent the sound of your name, this can get a little complicated and be prone to errors. My name has been katakana-ized about 3 different ways if I can remember correctly, but now that I am apart of the national healthcare and pension plans that has become my official katakana name.

For my stamp though, things are a little different. When I first came to Japan I was working out in the country side and the person that arranged things for me got me a personal seal, but used my last name instead. This is because the name she got was listed in ‘passport’ order – MacKnight Clayton J. So, now my personal seal is just for ‘Mac’ or more specifically ‘MAKUU’ because it is 真空, which literally means ‘True Sky’. Not that bad I guess.

And that my friends, is how my nickname became ‘Mac’, which is a lot easier to say for people in Japan, also I don’t have to try to keep a straight face while they mangle ‘Clayton’.

Money Transfer Headaches

About 4 or 5 years ago, I managed to get a Japanese credit card. This can actually be a little difficult to do for a foreigner without a permanent residency, but if you keep the same job for 3 years, they will typically give you one, which is really handy for online shopping and other things where paper money is just a hassle.

Anyway, I applied through my bank and got accepted, got the credit card sent to me in the mail. A few weeks later, I used my fresh piece of plastic for a purchase, and received my bill in the mail. All cut and dry stuff really.

But, then when the payment due date came, my bank called me, actually they called me several times, well 8 times and left messages. They were calling me every 20 or 30 minutes. I thought somebody had stolen my card or something. When I finally did get them on the phone (and got them calmed down to speak slow enough for me to understand), they told me that my name on my credit card didn’t match my bank account, so they couldn’t make the withdraw to pay that month’s bill.

Now, this was my bank, actually someone at the branch of the bank that I signed up for an account at, telling me that the credit card that I applied for through them had the wrong name on it. I really started to question the intelligence and competence of the staff at my bank. How could they be that bone-headed?

Similar problems have happened when we registered our newborn at city hall, and gave them our details for them to deposit the child assistance that the local government so nicely provides. My wife put down my katakana name, but apparently my bank account was in my roman letter name. So, I had to go to the bank and change the names on my account. Now there are something like 3 different representations of my name attached to that one bank account.

Save Yourself from the Name Game

I personally recommend that if you are going to be staying in Japan for awhile, pick a katakana version of your name and stick with it. Write it down somewhere and always use that name. Also, just be aware that if you apply for something (like internet, or cell phone service) there might be some delays caused by name mismatches.

The same thing goes for money transfers of any kind, whether it is your paycheck or somebody sending you money, if you don’t receive it, your name might be the culprit.

Also be aware that a lot of big banks will allow you to put a couple of different representations of your name on your bank account. I recommend having at least a katakana and one in roman letters. You might also want to add a name that is surname first, and one that is given name first, like so:

Clayton J MacKnight (Western order)
MacKnight Clayton J (passport order)

Also, if someone tries to send you money, they may not always tell you or know if the money bounced. So, you will have to do the leg work and find out why it bounced and tell them to send it again.

Have you had name troubles?

If you live in Japan, have you had any issues with your name? What happened? How did you resolve the problem? Let me know in the comments.

You can’t be taken seriously unless you have an eggplant on your cover.

Last month, I said I was going to start reading Kazoku Geemu, but I got sidetracked for technical reasons. Apparently, you need a kindle device, or kindle for Android to read the eBook version (Kindle of iOS doesn’t work). I don’t happen to have either a Kindle device or Kindle for Android at the moment so I guess I am out of luck. I’m not sure if this is a licensing thing or what.

Instead, I went to the bookstore and picked up the latest issue of PHP magazine. No, it’s not a magazine about web programming which is what I thought it was at first. PHP actually stands for ‘Peace and Happiness through Prosperity’. It sounds a little suspicious in a cult kind of way, but it is actually a pretty good collection of essays about life lessons from various semi-famous people in Japan.

Essays for the JLPT are sometimes taken from these magazines or one of the books they have published. And if you read a few of the essays they tend to give off the same feeling as ones you would see on the test. They tend to tell a story and then go on to talk about what was learned from that.

The company was actually founded by Konosuke Matsushita. And if that name sounds familiar, it’s because he founded Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, which is now commonly referred to as Panasonic, or the ‘National’ brand inside Japan. He is generally regarded as one of the biggest entrepreneurs in Japan.

I had read an issue of it about a year ago, and I can see a noticeable difference in speed and comprehension. I was really happy to see that. However, the topics do start to get a little boring after awhile, so I might try a different magazine the next time I’m at the bookstore.

Japanese to Japanese Dictionary

I’m pretty embarrassed to say this, but I’ve finally made the move to a Japanese to Japanese dictionary. It has been a long time coming, of course. I probably should have switched at about the N3/N2 level, but I had established a (bad?) habit of using Kotoba (now, weirdly renamed imi wa?) on my iPhone because of all its handy features. Also, at the time I couldn’t find a good Japanese to Japanese dictionary that didn’t cost a lot for the iPhone.

The main reason why I made the switch is because I started running into words that had the same or similar definitions in English and I really needed a clearer definition of the words I was learning. Also, a lot of Japanese to Japanese dictionaries have collocations to give you an idea of how it is used. And of course, you get double practice, both the definition and the word are in Japanese.

I was able to find a free JPN to JPN dictionary for iPhones called Kotobank. It does the job fairly well. It’s not very verbose, and words aren’t cross-linked (click to go to a definition of a word) which premium dictionaries like Daijisen have, but overall it does well for being free.

Unfortunately, it is only available in the Japanese iTunes store, which means you’ll need a Japanese account. That requires a Japanese credit card, Japanese Paypal account, or a Japanese iTunes card. If you are outside of Japan and don’t have one of those, I’m sure Google will tell where (and how) to get one though.

Going on a SRS Diet

Lately, I’ve been trying my best to cut down on my review time. Mostly because I’d like to do other things with my study time, and keeping up a huge stack of cards at my level tends to get a little boring and not as useful as doing more reading.

And, like I’ve said a few times before, I want to build more courses. I’ve already created improved N5 and N4 courses that test kanji readings differently, and I’m currently working on a katakana course to compliment the very popular beginner/hiragana course I already have built up. I’m really looking forward to getting them out.

What are you up to?

Do you have any suggestions for a good Japanese to Japanese dictionary (that doesn’t require an internet connection)? How early did you start using a Japanese to Japanese dictionary?

Massive flood of people

Tokyo and Osaka are two massive clusters of people living fairly close to each other. Tokyo is ranked as the largest metropolitan area by population in the world with about 32 million people, whereas the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area is ranked as the 9th largest with around 17 million people. It’s larger than any American metropolitan area with exception of New York City. Literally millions of people travel through the main hubs of these areas every day.

This naturally lends itself to a lot of opportunities to meet other people as well as explore pretty much any hobby you can think of. There are a lot of great restaurants in the area as well as museums and just plain random going-ons.

And Osaka people are especially well-known for being easy-going and relaxed. Maybe that’s one reason why most of Japan’s comedians come from Osaka, and why Yoshimoto (a famous comedy group) has done so well here. People just love to laugh and have a good time. (Not like those serious folk up in Tokyo j/k)

That’s why it can sometimes be a little strange to hear what one of the most common complaints about the Kansai area is. Especially since it seems like it would be common sense. What is that complaint?

Nobody Watches where they Walk

If you have lived in the area for awhile you might have noticed that some people are pretty oblivious as they walk down the street. Not everyone of course, just some.

For example, you’ll be walking down the sidewalk on the left and a row of people will be walking toward you. Some of them talking to each other, others politely listening to the conversation. And they won’t move to get out of the way until the very last moment. I’ve sometimes ran right into people because I’ve had to stop to the side and they just run into me.

So you could probably just right that off to the fact that they were having a really good conversation and just weren’t paying attention. Okay, that’s pretty valid. But let me give you another real life example:

I was on the subway, on my way to a date with my now wife. I was standing at the subway door looking out. The train doors opened and there she was, facing me. I gave her a big smile. She looked in my general direction, hopped on the train, and turned her back to me to face the door. It wasn’t until I said “Good evening.” that she recognized me and turned around.

Now I could understand this happening if say, I were Japanese and in a suit (like most of the other people on train at the time), but I was a considerably larger (even by US standards) foreign guy in casual clothes. I would think I would have stuck out a little bit.

Another slightly interesting phenomenon in the big city is when foreigners spot other foreigners. When we don’t know each other we tend to pretend like we don’t see each other. I’m not exactly sure why this is, we just do. I suppose it could be that residents here think other foreigners are just tourists because even in the big city, there really aren’t too many other foreigners on the street.

Okay, how about one more example?

One day, I was riding home from the grocery store on my ママチャリ (mamachari, I type of bike with no gears, and a basket in front). My front basket was overflowing with groceries and while steering clear of some pedestrians I managed to fall down into a planter. I crashed my bike, spilling most of my groceries all over the sidewalk. But, as I went to clean everything up nobody stopped to help.

And, actually, it didn’t even seem like they saw what happened. They just kept walking along. I mean, it wasn’t like they looked down and then decided not to help. It was as if they didn’t see anything.

The Countryside

Long time ago, when I first came to Japan, I started off in the countryside. One day, I was riding my bike with several bottles of wine to recycle. I went to pedal up a hill and the chain snapped off of the gears. I immediately went up and over the handle bars and skid on the sidewalk that was covered with the broken glass from the wine bottles.

I hobbled to my feet and within a few seconds a shopkeeper came out of her store to help clean up the glass and give me tissues. The next passerby I met told me to wait as he ran to the nearest drugstore and bought me bandages for my arm. I tried to pay him but he waved me off and went on his way.

My Two Cents

I think there is something about massive amounts of people being in a place that overloads people to the point that they almost literally don’t see other people. It’s as if seeing so many people is something the brain can’t handle and so copes by not tracking them.

I can certainly relate to this because when I go to places like Umeda, a very popular shopping area in uptown Osaka, I get tired within an hour or so of wading through the crowd. It’s like my brain wants to identify every person moving around me. I usually can’t be down there for too long.

I’ve also heard that the majority of people ‘sleeping’ on the trains aren’t really sleeping at all, but instead are closing their eyes to shut out the real world and all the people around them.

What about You?

Have you been to Tokyo or Osaka? What was it like to wade through all the crowds? Have you noticed this phenomena?

I think I can do better than this.

One of my original goals when I first decided to study a little harder and take my Japanese to the N1 level was to become a translator. I’m currently teaching English now, and I enjoy it, but translation has always seemed more fun for me because it is like a puzzle you have to solve. This is even more true for Japanese where some things are expressed completely differently than they are in English.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been doing translations here and there for a few people. Nothing really serious, I’m just getting my feet wet and seeing what it is like. It has given me a lot of good exposure to different kinds of writing and even bad Japanese writing. And overall, I’ve been liking it.

To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure if I want to be a translator. It is a little bit of a lonely job. It also involves a lot of computer work, which I like computers, but I also like seeing the sky and talking to real human beings. So far so good though with it.

I would be interested to hear from the JLPT Boot Camp community though. I’m sure there are more than a few translators out there. How is it? Do you like the day to day work?

In either case, doing some translation here and there can really help with comprehension because you have to look at it in a different way, and you also have a picky client there to criticize your interpretations of the writing.

Reading for Fun

Right after a test I always like to go back to just doing some reading for fun. Nothing too difficult, nothing deeply philosophical, just a good ol’ fashion story. I want something enjoyable that I want to know the ending to.

Also, no matter what level of the test you are taking, reading speed is constantly an issue. Even for the N1 level, which gives you almost 2 hours to answer all the questions for vocabulary, grammar, and the reading sections, it can be really difficult to just finish the test on time. Anything you can do to save some time is going to be a huge help.

I would say one of your biggest enemies for the test will be focus, and being used to reading can be a big help in this regard for all parts of the test. Even the grammar sections can be a little tricky for you to stay focused in. For the N1 level there are few grammar questions that have 2 or 3 sentences you have to look at.

Also, starting at about the N3 level, you can’t rely so heavily on the lists anymore. You should be using native materials on a regular basis because you will probably pick up a lot of good words that will show up on the test. A good strategy that has always worked for me is drill words so that they are in your head, but do some reading to truly understand how they are used.

I’ve recently been watching the jDrama Kazoku Game (家族ゲーム). It’s a story about an at home tutor that comes to help a boy go back to school after he had been bullied. Of course, it’s not as simple as that. The story has plenty of twists and secrets to it as well, like any jDrama. And, the ebook version is only Y340, so I thought I would give it a try.

Sorted by Kanji

Last month, I whipped up an N3 course that practices kanji in a slightly different way. Instead of just studying the kanji one by one. I grouped all the words for a particular kanji together and then sorted the kanji by theme. That way I can be learning vocabulary while learning kanji.

I’ve been trying it out over the last month, and I really like it. The best part of it is that it pairs a lot of similarly looking kanji compounds together that are easy to confuse like 状態(jyoutai) and 状況(jyoukyou). Practicing the two words together can be difficult and a little confusing but I think it makes those nuances very clear.

I’ve already started work on stage 2, and I hope to get it out soon. Definitely let me know what you think.

How was your Month?

Are you getting ready for the big December test this year? Taking it easy? Let me know in the comments.