"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
- Mark Twain
I just got back from a rock show with Takako, whom I believe I mentioned earlier on my post about hanami. After seeing Yasu’s band last week, I just knew I had to go out and see them again. Takako had a great time as well. It was actually her first time seeing a concert like that!
I’ve been having another great week in Japan. This past Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended hanami on three separate occasions at Hirosaki park. Situated in the northeastern portion of Hirosaki, the park is home to about 2600 cherry trees, which all have spectacularly blossomed. I’ve been told that over the course of “Golden Week” (which happens next week), about 2 million people will pass through Hirosaki park. I will now do as many other gaijin already have and cover my blog here with photos of pink trees.
This past week has been one of adjustment - it’s been a long while since I last went to classes at a college level. Like I mentioned in my last post, I last went to classes last fall semester at UMaine, about four months ago. Now I’ve gotten my schedule all worked out and I feel like it won’t take long for me to get back into the swing of things. I’ll talk a bit about my classes, and then about the weekend, which was exceptionally fun - there was a welcome party for the new foreign students and then rafting with the club I just joined, the adventure club, or tanken-bu.
Lots of good stuff has been going on in the past couple days related to me an Japan! It’s getting exiting for me, as I only have a month or so left to go before. Being such, I’m starting to feel it creeping up on me. I’m getting more and more into Japan-mode, ready to pounce on those preparations for departure! Today, I took my first step towards that by informing the factory that I’m currently working at to get some last minute money that next week will be my last. That means that I will have the entirety of March to study Japanese and make my final arraignments. It will be study-study-study like a madman for me! :) I really want to be as proficient and at the top of my Japanese game when I go to leave. I’m going to try and get ahold of some of my Japanese acquaintances up at school, too, and see if I can do some Skype conversations. I really enjoyed practicing speaking with Hitomi-san, a graduate student at UMaine, while I was taking classes last semester. My comfort level with Japanese skyrocketed in a scant few weeks. For anyone studying Japanese, don’t be afraid to approach people to practice conversation. You probably do know a lot more than you think you do.
Also, if that wasn’t enough, some exiting news for the site! Edward Chmura, who I mentioned in my post on Japan-related podcasts, mentioned me on his show and linked to this site this past week. Edward, if you are reading, I am once again greatly humbled that you took the time to notice and mention my site on the show. I’m glad that my comments did not go unappreciated. :)
Finally, my book “Remembering the Kanji” came today from Amazon. I will be delving into this book later tonight probably after dinner and of course, throughout the weeks ahead. Time to learn some kanji!
[Photo by pats0n, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license]
I have extolled the virtues of James Heisig’s method for learning the kana in my earlier posts. His book, Remembering the Kana, had me competent with the Japanese syllabaries in the three hours they advertised. Coupled with practice, I can read the kana fairly well. However, kana is just a piece of the puzzle. I still have to come to grips with the kanji, so I decided to order Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji from Amazon.com. It uses the same method as with the kana book: associate each character with an image and story so that you can remember both the writing and the meaning. I’ll post my impressions of the book here once I get it in the mail.
The above image is from Andy - アンドレア on Flickr, who used the book to learn those above kanji. If I can have even that many kanji under my belt before I leave, I’ll be happy!
I have been a student of Japanese for a nearly two years now, and I felt that today I would share the various websites, podcasts, programs and books I have found useful in the learning process. To be sure, there is an abundance of material out there, for free, that can be used to learn Japanese (or any other language for that matter) online. I’ll start with those.
A few more hints and tips: Learn the kana right away. It is important to not rely on the crutch of “romaji” (Japanse written with roman letters) when studying. You will need to learn the kana anyway if you want to attain any degree of literacy in Japanese. If you can manage it, take a class on Japanese, preferably through a local college. Being able to interact with other people and speak to them conversationally does a great deal to help you retain what you learn. It is also the most fun way to learn if you have a good instructor. Also, listen to as much Japanese as you can. Get your hands on Japanese music, watch anime with subtitles, do what ever you can to hear it everyday. By doing so you learn the natural patterns in the language and this helps you to speak more fluenly and increases your comprension.
Finally, if you have a Mac, I would recommend you download Provoc and Genius. These are two wonderful pieces of software. Provoc is a neat way to create vocabulary lists and study them in any variety of user-defined ways. Genius is primarily concerned with memorization of vocabulary and works by using a special algorithm that adapts to what you know and what you don’t.
Well, I think that will do it. Hopefully for all the new students of Japanese out there, you will have found this to be helpful.
So why would someone want to do this? Get out of their comfort zone, go to a completely foreign land where they don’t know anyone, and then stay there for several months? Well, there are a couple of reasons. I guess I should go back to high school to really start this off.
When I was a high school student, I found that I took a liking for foreign language. At the time, I was taking Spanish and I did pretty well. I was fortunate to have a dad who just happened to be fluent in it. I would be lying if he wasn’t one of the primary reasons why I settled on Spanish. It was partially because of him too that I did well. But I found that I enjoyed learning a language, feeling the ebb and flow of the new sounds, discovering the grammatical structure. I know, it all sounds very nerdy. But I really do enjoy it now studying Japanese just as much as when I first started to learn Spanish.
It was also around this time in high school when my family took a trip we had been planning for a while: a trip to Europe, visiting the countries of France and England. Even though it was tiring and exasperating at times, I found myself enjoying the different culture immensely. We stayed in Paris, walked the streets, visited all the touristy spots. We also went up to Normandy to see where the D-Day landings took place. That was an amazing experience as well, because as an avid video gamer I had seen this patch of ground several times, but to see it in person was fantastic. You really feel more of a connection to something like that after having seen it for yourself. England was great too, and not just because they spoke English. :P London was a great city where we spent most of our time. Later in the week we went up to Stonehenge, which was cool to see as well, but I do remember it being a bit underwhelming. It really is just as the pictures show it to be.
Anyway, the result of this trip was a new found interest in travel and foreign cultures. As such, I began thinking about studying abroad in college, but I just couldn’t see myself going to Spain for an extended time. I didn’t feel myself having a connection there - it was more of my “father’s” country. I really wanted to visit somewhere I could relate to on some level personally. It just so happens that around this time, my friends introduced me to animation from Japan, a.k.a. anime. I was instantly hooked. I always had an affinity for the fantastic, which anime had plenty of. But more than that, I was able to hear the language of Japanese for the first time. This too, I became hooked to. As time went on and the more I watched, I started picking out bits and phrases.
Like I said earlier, I am also an avid video gamer. It was also in this way that I exposed to another facet of Japanese popular culture. I played some of the Final Fantasies, Resident Evils, Metal Gear Solids, and several of the happy, bouncy Nintendo games. I really loved the style of these games and their difference from their Western counterparts. I knew it now. I knew what country was “mine.”
Towards the end of high school and beginning of college, I began studying Japanese on my own. At first, I found that learning the basic character sets was the best starting point. After some time, I had the “kana” under my belt. Come my Sophomore year, I discovered the Critical Languages department here at the University of Maine. I immediately began taking Japanese classes. Which brings us to the modern day. I am up to Japanese III and still loving it. I just wrapped up my applications to study abroad and am now waiting for March to roll around so I start my travels. :)
A final thing I want to say about my decision to travel: the quote at the top of the blog. I really feel that traveling is one of the greatest experiences a person can have - I had a taste of that on my family’s trip to Europe. The thought of staying in one place all my life with the big, wide world out there is a frightening thought to me. So more than my love of Japan and the Japanese language, I desire to see the world while I still can, at a time in history when it is more important than ever to be understanding foreign people and cultures.
Well, now that we have gotten to know each other, I suppose I’ll wrap this up. I’ll go into greater detail what the University of Maine had me go through in the application process, so that those contemplating a study abroad program can get an idea about what to expect. Later!
Well, this is the very first post on this site, so I suppose introductions are in order. My name is Joe Kester and I am a student at the University of Maine, who so happens to have a love of Japan and the Japanese language. It was this great interest of mine that lead me to pursue a study abroad program there, which I will be departing for in March of 2008. I recently was accepted, so I figured I would set up a site where I could document what transpires over the next few months in great detail.
I’m going to cut this short for now, but don’t worry! Over the next few days, I will have posts up about my experience applying for study abroad and some pointers for beginning Japanese language students. Until then!
Joe In Japan by Joe Kester is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. –
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