Joe In Japan

All the preparations are made, all the packing is nearly done - yes, I’m about ready to finally leave. After all the forms, research, studying and dreaming, it is about to become reality. In less than twenty-four hours, I will be on a jet plane off to Hirosaki, where I will be speding five months in the Land of the Rising Sun. I must say now that I feel a mixture of excitement, nerves and apprehension.  But on the whole, I couldn’t be more ready to leave. You can be sure that this blog is ready to now go prime-time. I will be posting much more frequently (as soon as I’m settled in) and hopefully posting different media, like video. Look forward to it!

I’ve had a pretty uneventful final week. Mostly it was spent spending time with my friends and saying goodbye. Last weekend was especially hard, because I had to say goodbye to my indescribably wonderful girlfriend, Zoe. The above photo was taken while hanging out in the dorms up at UMaine. I’m sure we will both be missing each other lots, but we’ve already discussed plans for her and possibly my family to come out to visit in August. Hopefully by that point I’ll have learned my way around a bit, and I’ll be able to give them a great experience in Japan. :)

This will probably be my final post until I touch down in Hirosaki. But I will certainly be twittering. Follow along with my Twitter widget to the right, or go to this page here. Next time I write here, it will be on Japan time. Later!

Bookmark It

There’s my spending money for the first couple months! I got the call earlier today from the bank that my yen had come in. It was convenient, also, that my brother Will called up about getting picked up at school at the same time. Two birds, one stone! That is 91,000円 even, worth $1000. It’s the amount that Hirosaki recommended for students when first arriving in country. My first expenses upon arriving in Japan will be taking the subways around in Tokyo to catch my flight up to Aomori and then staying in a hotel the night I arrive. Hopefully I can get by with the money I’ve saved for the trip, and maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll get some donations from my parents, too. :P

Bookmark It

I promised a few posts back that I would give everyone a little bit of a review of the book “Remembering the Kanji” by James Heisig. The method for studying the kanji outlined in this book is quite unlike any other that you will probably run across. The core of the method relies on imaginative memory, which I will expand on in a bit. The reason I came to try this method of kanji study over others is because of my great luck with Heisig’s other Japanese writing study book, “Remembering the Kana.” With that book, I was able to achieve fast proficiency in both the writing and reading of the characters that comprise the kana. It uses a method similar to the one in “Remembering the Kani,” although it is not 100% the same. I can say up front that I am having an equally good experience with Heisig’s kanji book as I did with his kana book.

First things first, though: this book is not designed to help you “read” the kanji. Unlike “Remembering the Kana,” you will not find the slightest reference to the way the characters are verbalized or read in Japanese. Instead, this book serves to familiarize the reader with the 1850 base kanji required by the Japanese government that all high school students must know upon graduation. By familiarize, I mean you will be able to write the kanji with perfect stroke order and be able to recall their meaning. All of the meanings given in this book are in English, so it won’t help you expand your Japanese vocabulary either. But the ability to write and comprehend meaning in any language is half the battle, especially with a writing system as verbose as Japanese has. So now you know what you are getting into. Clearly, if you wish to use this method, it must be complemented in some what that you can come to learn the readings. For me, I have found that I already know many of the kanji’s readings (or at least one) and by using this method I have been able to proverbally “put a face to a name.”

So how does Heisig’s method work? Like I mentioned before, this method relies on what Heisig refers to as imaginative memory. For each kanji he presents in the book, a story with a strong associated mental image is given. The idea is to see the image in your mind’s eye when looking at the kanji. In this way, you can remember a kanji by drumming up a scene in your head instead of relying on rote memorization.

Heisig creates this images through what he calls primatives. Throughout the course of the book, especially in the early lessons (which is where I am), he takes the simple, basic kanji consisting of few strokes and correlates them to an object, which usually has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the character by itself. These include shellfish, fire, tools, nails, drops (of anything), St. Bernard dogs, etc. The use of imaginative memory by the reader is important at these points, so that future kanji can be more easily broken down into parts.  The kanji in RtK are delivered in such a way that the primatives you just learned are combined together to create new kanji and sometimes even new primatives.

For example, 目 (eye) is learned early on. This one is pretty easy because you can sort of imagine if the kanji was rounded you would see an eye, albeit sans iris. Later, you come to learn 貝 (shellfish). How do you remember that this character means shellfish? Heisig has you imagine a shellfish with one giant eyeball on two little legs, skittering around a beach. This character is also given the primative meaning of shellfish, and goes on to appear in many, many more kanji, in which the stories involve shellfish in various situations.

I have so far made it through 130 kanji. If I was to see these kanji on a sign, I would have some idea of their meaning, and if asked to write them, I could reproduce them. But like I said, this book cannot stand on its own. You will need to learn the readings to complement the writings and meanings that you learn in this book. I would say that this book is a great method  to use for beginning students of kanji (which I am one myself). The writings and meanings of the kanji I have so far learned have stuck better with me than any other method I have tried. Ultimately, I recommend giving “Remembering the Kanji” a shot.

If you do decide to pick up the book, I highly recommend that you check out the website Reviewing the Kanji, a community-driven site that includes tools to create and organize flashcards and study the kanji after completing a lesson in Heisig’s book. It even has a section for people to submit their own stories for the kanji, many of which I have found to produce even more powerful images than the original prescribed by Heisig.

I hope that this was helpful to all you kanji learners out there! With any luck, I’ll be able to get few a couple hundred before I go to Japan. Then, the real learning begins!

Bookmark It

Well, if by everywhere you mean Japan. Yes, I just got my Japanese visa in the mail from UPS. They put a big ol’ sticker in my passport that takes up an entire page. It’s pretty similar to the layout of the United States passport page that has your photo and information - except on this one it has a super grainy rendition of the photo I submitted on my visa application. I suppose that’s for the custom’s guy to hold out at arm’s length next to your face while inspecting you for entry. Wow, thinking about it like that makes me feel like cattle to be herded through a fence. But what I’ve read and heard from people about entering Japan it doesn’t seem like it will be too much of a hassle (well, as far as customs go).

Today I also went out and bought yen for my intial trip over. Hirosaki recommended having about $1000 worth of yen on hand, so that’s what I got. I won’t actually have the money until Wednesday, but you can be sure I will let you know what 91,000円 looks like. I’m also going to be seeing about getting power of attorney for my parents, which will come in quite handy I imagine since tax season is upon us and my taxes won’t be done before I leave.

Bookmark It

I’m really sorry about the long blackout in posting. After I finished working, I’ve been more busy with things than I imagined. Mainly, I’ve been studying Japanese, but as you’ll see from this post there has been a couple other big things that I’ve done. Who knew that when your time gets freed up, you just become all the more busy with everything you’ve been wanting to do for a while? I’ll start from the beginning I suppose.

About a week and a half ago now I quit my job at the factory. I worked overtime that week to make some last-minute cash, but at the end of the day I gladly said “good riddance!”. That job had to be the most menial and most boring I’ve ever had. Can’t say I can complain too much, because I did make some decent money, but I certainly won’t recommend for anyone to work there.

So for the past few weeks, I’ve been just sticking to working at Burger King. Since I’ve been working part-time, it has practically been like being on vacation. It was fortunate, too, that I ended working at the factory when I did, because I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to meet with the Hirosaki students who come to UMaine every spring! I did this last year as well, and it was a big motivating factor for me to go apply for Hirosaki the following semester.

Zoe and I made the trip up to Orono on March 6th. The drive went well - we got there with time to spare. When the students showed up it was just like I remembered from last year. They came out into the student union by the information desk, where we were separated up to act as conversation groups. Like last year, I was very impressed with the students’ skills in English. All of them spoke with a good command of the language, but occasionally they had to bust out the denshi-jisho to make things easier. They drew out a map of Hirosaki University’s layout and we discussed the best places around the school to get food. We also got on the topic of music and I got some recommendations from them. Among their favorite artists were Polysics, Hi-STANDARD, Namie Amuro and the Radwimps. That’s quite a broad range of music, from electronic to pop to punk rock.  I didn’t get as much time to get to know them all this time around as I did last year since we only met the one time, but it was time well spent. I really enjoyed talking to the Hirosaki students here at home, so I can only hope that means that I will enjoy it as much when I go over there in a couple weeks. :)

The following Monday, Zoe and I made another trip. This time, we went down to Boston for the day to apply for my visa, because that is where the closest Japanese consulate is. I recieved the final documents from Hirosaki the week before, detailing the housing situation and some forms I needed to fill out and fax back to them. Also included was my “Certificate of Eligibilty,” which is bascially a piece of paper from the Japanese government saying that they recommend me for a student visa. With this piece of paper and a filled-out form in tow, Zoe and I showed up to the Federal Reserve Bank building just outside of South Station, were we took the bus into Boston to. It was pretty amusing, too when we arrived. I wasn’t sure if we’d need to take the subway, so I asked one of the people at an information desk for help. When I showed her the Google map I printed out, she said, “it’s right upstairs.” Indeed, it was literally across the street from South Station. Shows how well I know Boston’s streets. :P

Once we got into the Federal Reserve, we took the elevator up, up, up until we got to the 14th floor (this was quite the tall building). Upon stepping off the elevator, the Japanese consulate was right there in our faces. I assume the consulate took up the entire floor because of that, but not much was accessible to the average visitor. There were signs everywhere saying that photography wasn’t allowed, which was too bad because I wanted to take some shots for the blog here. The decor of the place was very much similar to that of a travel agency, except that it was all Japanese-themed with many of the posters that adorned the wall were written in Japanese. The whole process of applying for my visa took literally a minute. Because I had printed and filled out the separate visa application required, I was all set to go. They said it would take three days to process, so I should be getting my visa any time now.

We spent the rest of the day just walking around the downtown and checking out some stores. We went by the Massachusetts State House, too. Outside, saw this great sign:

With all this stuff going on lately with state politicians and “call girls,” I think that picture is both funny and ironic.  Not just some hookers, but all hookers admitted!

I’m sorry if I just glossed over things in this post, but I haven’t been good about keeping up with the updating and I don’t want to write a book. XD I hope that I can write more frequently, as always. As it stands, I’m not in Japan yet, so I don’t have anything terribly exciting to write about except the minuate of the preparation process. If that interests you, all the more power to you - I hope this site is a help to everyone who is considering studying abroad. But if you are here to read about traveling in Japan, just give it a few more weeks. Until next time!

Bookmark It