最初日本語のブログ、ようこそ！
このエントリーは全然日本的な事がないので、今度は日本語で語ってみよう。
Youtubeで画家はスピードビデオーですごいイメージを描いて、すごかった！そして、私が絵をかいたいと思って古い筆箱を探していた。
フランスからアートファッションの雑誌を持ちのでいい写真を取って一番好きな鉛筆でイメージをコピーした。どう？すごい練習をしなければいけないがまあまあだ。
Sunday, 19 September 2010
Buying wafuku (和服)
I'm finding trials and successes with buying Japanese goods online. Like any online clothing store, it's hard to imagine how something will look on you when it's 2-dimensional. Then there is the sizing!
I bought a pair of zori from a website, making sure I carefully measured my foot and matched it with the size I ultimately bought.
Oh, god!
I guess I'm stuck wearing regular sandals!
Apart from the sleeve length, you really can't go wrong with a kimono. It's a one size fits all masterpiece, as I tell my friends! Unfortunately I don't have one to model. I have one, or two, actually- but I'm not allowed to show them yet! Early November, maybe I'll post some photos then!
I wonder if anyone has had success buying from this store with a non-Japanese credit card? For some reason my perfectly good fantastic plastic is rejected every time, and my bank doesn't even see the transaction come through. How odd? I never knew there was active discrimination against foreign cards on Japanese shopping sites!
I bought a pair of zori from a website, making sure I carefully measured my foot and matched it with the size I ultimately bought.
Oh, god!
I guess I'm stuck wearing regular sandals!
Apart from the sleeve length, you really can't go wrong with a kimono. It's a one size fits all masterpiece, as I tell my friends! Unfortunately I don't have one to model. I have one, or two, actually- but I'm not allowed to show them yet! Early November, maybe I'll post some photos then!
I wonder if anyone has had success buying from this store with a non-Japanese credit card? For some reason my perfectly good fantastic plastic is rejected every time, and my bank doesn't even see the transaction come through. How odd? I never knew there was active discrimination against foreign cards on Japanese shopping sites!
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Severe lack of Japanese lately
With uni holidays at Macquarie nearly over, I am itching to get back into some Japanese study at advanced level. Gulp.
It has been extremely hectic with the other uni subject and work but I don't know how I coped with those and the Japanese all at once! Still, need to re-learn those tough study skills in a few weeks.
With Auspeak on hold until further notice, I have to find other ways to feed my craving to learn more. And with that, I've decided to start a blog in Japanese, which I will start writing in a bit later. I also discovered this girl who loves kimono, which makes me happy because I want my own kimono!
It has been extremely hectic with the other uni subject and work but I don't know how I coped with those and the Japanese all at once! Still, need to re-learn those tough study skills in a few weeks.
With Auspeak on hold until further notice, I have to find other ways to feed my craving to learn more. And with that, I've decided to start a blog in Japanese, which I will start writing in a bit later. I also discovered this girl who loves kimono, which makes me happy because I want my own kimono!
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
Like being in Japan again
Lucky for me in this period that I've been home I've still been able to meet Japanese people and practice those skills.
The best I can do in an English-speaking country (which I love, don't get me wrong!), is get out there and meet the people that come from other countries, but love Australia too. Hello, Auspeak!
Anyone who has a desire to mingle with Japanese folk in Sydney are gonna love this group. You practise your listening and speaking for an hour in both English and Japanese, then afterwards socialise over a coffee or whatever, or... hey, let's have an okonomiyaki party "after class"!
It was great. We were chopping cabbage, spilling seaweed flakes on the carpet, and talking in a hybrid language known as Japlish or some such thing. Sentences that could only be understood by a person who knew both languages and could laugh at the weirdness of the situation. I was struggling to understand people again. I would have to ask for a translation. I was interjecting with useless little Japanese tidbits to show I was listening. I was a foreigner in my own country! Ahh, bliss! I am in Japan again!
In other news, with the current 経済状況, I am thrilled to have full-time employment again after my stint of teaching kids in Japan. I was finding that being awake for 10 hours and job hunting was too much effort! That needed to change very quickly. Plus, with my boredom of being penny-wise and unable to go out every day, I think without groups like Auspeak and a great group of friends I'd be in need of a kick up the bum to get me going again. And now that I am enrolled in distance education, my life is about to go from insanely boring to way too full in a tearing hurry. And I'm happy!
The best I can do in an English-speaking country (which I love, don't get me wrong!), is get out there and meet the people that come from other countries, but love Australia too. Hello, Auspeak!
Anyone who has a desire to mingle with Japanese folk in Sydney are gonna love this group. You practise your listening and speaking for an hour in both English and Japanese, then afterwards socialise over a coffee or whatever, or... hey, let's have an okonomiyaki party "after class"!
It was great. We were chopping cabbage, spilling seaweed flakes on the carpet, and talking in a hybrid language known as Japlish or some such thing. Sentences that could only be understood by a person who knew both languages and could laugh at the weirdness of the situation. I was struggling to understand people again. I would have to ask for a translation. I was interjecting with useless little Japanese tidbits to show I was listening. I was a foreigner in my own country! Ahh, bliss! I am in Japan again!
In other news, with the current 経済状況, I am thrilled to have full-time employment again after my stint of teaching kids in Japan. I was finding that being awake for 10 hours and job hunting was too much effort! That needed to change very quickly. Plus, with my boredom of being penny-wise and unable to go out every day, I think without groups like Auspeak and a great group of friends I'd be in need of a kick up the bum to get me going again. And now that I am enrolled in distance education, my life is about to go from insanely boring to way too full in a tearing hurry. And I'm happy!
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Tautology
This word refers to the unnecessary repetition of words or an idea using a different phrasing.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because after posting my last entry, I realised that I included quite a few double-ups of words or phrases which I needn't have.
But it has also shown me that when your significant other is out in the loungeroom watching TV, and you are quietly typing to yourself, it really does affect your concentration!!
This is something writers are quite conscious of when they are working on a novel or whatever. In English, the constant changing of words for synonyms, slight changes in phrasing, and the like, are the things that make English literature interesting and fun to read. I am not yet able to read Japanese literature above a children's level, but the day that I do (and I do hope that day will come!), I will make an accurate comparison. For now, here is my current (uneducated) observation;
As far as speech is concerned, Japanese is not very wordy at all. Simple and concise phrasing is respected in Japanese, whereas in English it's all about how many words you can shove in there. Take old English, for example (pulled from a H.G. Wells story, back in 1904);
"...Mr Bensington certainly sniffed critically at this disorder, but he made no unnecessary fuss, and even when he found a wasp regaling itself in a gallipot half full of Herakleophorbia IV., he simply remarked mildly that his substance was better sealed from the damp than exposed to the air in that manner."
Count how many unnecessary words are in that paragraph? And how many times have you gone through essays adding in little words here and there to up the word count? Mind you, I love English literature, particularly when it's all wordy like H.G. Wells. But the focus in Japanese is not on the amount of words.
Back to tautology...
I know of so many instances where people repeat ideas without even realising. What about using "I think" and "I believe" in the same sentence? 6 a.m. in the morning? Either you are happy, or you are not happy? These all repeat an idea which adds no value to the original statement.
Anyway, I'm not having a go at the good citizens of Planet English. I'm guilty of these crimes myself. But, I still find it interesting to bring up this stuff.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because after posting my last entry, I realised that I included quite a few double-ups of words or phrases which I needn't have.
But it has also shown me that when your significant other is out in the loungeroom watching TV, and you are quietly typing to yourself, it really does affect your concentration!!
This is something writers are quite conscious of when they are working on a novel or whatever. In English, the constant changing of words for synonyms, slight changes in phrasing, and the like, are the things that make English literature interesting and fun to read. I am not yet able to read Japanese literature above a children's level, but the day that I do (and I do hope that day will come!), I will make an accurate comparison. For now, here is my current (uneducated) observation;
As far as speech is concerned, Japanese is not very wordy at all. Simple and concise phrasing is respected in Japanese, whereas in English it's all about how many words you can shove in there. Take old English, for example (pulled from a H.G. Wells story, back in 1904);
"...Mr Bensington certainly sniffed critically at this disorder, but he made no unnecessary fuss, and even when he found a wasp regaling itself in a gallipot half full of Herakleophorbia IV., he simply remarked mildly that his substance was better sealed from the damp than exposed to the air in that manner."
Count how many unnecessary words are in that paragraph? And how many times have you gone through essays adding in little words here and there to up the word count? Mind you, I love English literature, particularly when it's all wordy like H.G. Wells. But the focus in Japanese is not on the amount of words.
Back to tautology...
I know of so many instances where people repeat ideas without even realising. What about using "I think" and "I believe" in the same sentence? 6 a.m. in the morning? Either you are happy, or you are not happy? These all repeat an idea which adds no value to the original statement.
Anyway, I'm not having a go at the good citizens of Planet English. I'm guilty of these crimes myself. But, I still find it interesting to bring up this stuff.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Making Okonomiyaki
Okay, so after returning to Aus and in a round-about way making a promise to each other to look for more Japanese food in Sydney, we decided we would also try making our own Japanese food.
The first hurdle was okonomiyaki!
Known to westerners as the "Japanese Pizza" (which I think is a silly comparison), it has very simple ingredients and a method which is quite simple too. Which makes this dish sooooo great. You can substitute ingredients quite easily to make things more to your liking (which is what the dish literally means in Japanese- "cook to your liking").
I would actually liken this dish to an omlette as it consists of a batter with egg, and veggies. Anyway...
We have a great supermarket near our house where we were able to buy authentic Japanese ingredients, including okonomiyaki sauce, fish flakes, and Japan-famous Kewpie mayonnaise. Being able to buy Japanese ingredients ended up making the difference in the end.
I'm not going to tell you how to make okonomiyaki, because if you search the web you will see many many many English pages with instructions (and if you read Japanese many more). There are even video links of people making okonomiyaki so there's no point in an amateur (i.e. me) telling you how!
The result was this.
Not bad for a first attempt, huh? This is half of it as we were sharing, of course. It tasted pretty good, too. Room for improvement the next time we try, of course.
I think the next thing I'd like to try and cook is ramen!
The first hurdle was okonomiyaki!
Known to westerners as the "Japanese Pizza" (which I think is a silly comparison), it has very simple ingredients and a method which is quite simple too. Which makes this dish sooooo great. You can substitute ingredients quite easily to make things more to your liking (which is what the dish literally means in Japanese- "cook to your liking").
I would actually liken this dish to an omlette as it consists of a batter with egg, and veggies. Anyway...
We have a great supermarket near our house where we were able to buy authentic Japanese ingredients, including okonomiyaki sauce, fish flakes, and Japan-famous Kewpie mayonnaise. Being able to buy Japanese ingredients ended up making the difference in the end.
I'm not going to tell you how to make okonomiyaki, because if you search the web you will see many many many English pages with instructions (and if you read Japanese many more). There are even video links of people making okonomiyaki so there's no point in an amateur (i.e. me) telling you how!
The result was this.
Not bad for a first attempt, huh? This is half of it as we were sharing, of course. It tasted pretty good, too. Room for improvement the next time we try, of course.
I think the next thing I'd like to try and cook is ramen!
My reason for learning Japanese?
It seems weird to me that a lot of people learning Japanese are learning the language for the benefit of watching anime, reading manga, listening to Japanese pop songs, or to get a date.
Why?
I was amazed when I visited Japan at the number of expats who were totally into anime and manga. As for me, I've never had a great interest in anime. I liked cartoons as a kid, but anime was just the same for me. Another style of cartoon which was fun to watch when I wasn't doing my homework. I always appreciate good art, and manga sure does have great art sometimes. But, I don't see it more interesting than a good novel. Adults reading these thick manga on the train and in the convenience store, I just don't get it. Doesn't good writing grab you anymore?
As for pop songs, well... some is good, and most is just average. It sounds very similar to American pop music and I don't really like that much either. To my dismay, I find myself listening to Japanese pop not because I like it, but to get used to the language in all formats (song being one of many). But the few I like, I did find myself singing at karaoke which I enjoyed very much :) but yes only a few.
I never even considered looking for a Japanese boyfriend because well... I dunno, it never crossed my mind. I'm learning Japanese for the sake of learning Japanese, and everything related to it is just supplementary study tools.
So while most people seem to be studying Japanese for the culture, music, and people, I find myself studying just for the language itself.
Am I strange? Or sensible? A minority even?
Why?
I was amazed when I visited Japan at the number of expats who were totally into anime and manga. As for me, I've never had a great interest in anime. I liked cartoons as a kid, but anime was just the same for me. Another style of cartoon which was fun to watch when I wasn't doing my homework. I always appreciate good art, and manga sure does have great art sometimes. But, I don't see it more interesting than a good novel. Adults reading these thick manga on the train and in the convenience store, I just don't get it. Doesn't good writing grab you anymore?
As for pop songs, well... some is good, and most is just average. It sounds very similar to American pop music and I don't really like that much either. To my dismay, I find myself listening to Japanese pop not because I like it, but to get used to the language in all formats (song being one of many). But the few I like, I did find myself singing at karaoke which I enjoyed very much :) but yes only a few.
I never even considered looking for a Japanese boyfriend because well... I dunno, it never crossed my mind. I'm learning Japanese for the sake of learning Japanese, and everything related to it is just supplementary study tools.
So while most people seem to be studying Japanese for the culture, music, and people, I find myself studying just for the language itself.
Am I strange? Or sensible? A minority even?
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