Theme based reviews are the way of the future, at least for dumbotaku.com. As you may have noticed it has been a bit quite around here since the site split. Unfortunately it is mostly due to having no real goals for the site other than “reviews and otaku culture” type posts.

Reviews are all fine and good, and a lot of fun. However, doing random reviews kind of sucks for me because I don’t know what is review worthy or not, odd problem I know.

So starting this month I am going to do theme based reviews. Every month is a new theme for reviews, and one post per week.

This months theme is going to be Movies.

I have several ideas for what to do reviews on so now it is a matter of getting through them in a timely manner.

All that said What are your ideas?

Please leave a comment with your ideas for themes. As you might have noticed I am not binding myself to genre, but am actually open to almost any type of theme.

Thanks for the help and I can’t wait to see some of the ideas.

This blog was started over a year ago, originally, to be an outlet where I can talk about anime, manga, and j-drama plus other otakuness. Since I went more and more into learning about Japan itself and the Japanese language. As I did that though I moved away from my original goal of blogging about anime and manga.

However, the topics started to collide with each other and I didn’t want to do hardcore topics on either subjects. So the best solution was to move Japan and Japanese language posts to another blog where I can go as wild as I want to on posts. So in comes JapanGaku.

JapanGaku is close to Japan(学) or Japan Learning. Again the general goal is to blog about Japan and the Japanese Language. So please give it a look and subscribe to the rss feed.

The word for “play” in Japanese does not necessarily have the same context in Japanese as it does in English.

In English when we think play we think, in general, we think games or sports. From tennis and golf to video games or mind games.

The word 遊ぶ (あそぶ) can mean up to three main things.

• to play
• to spend time pleasantly
• to pay a social visit

To Play generally refers to the concept of playing not “actual” playing.

• こどものとき、よくともだちとあそびました
• When i was a hild, I often played with friends

To Spend Time Pleasantly refers to having a good time like going to a club or hanging out with friends.

• せんしゅうのしゅうまつはとうきょうにあそびにいきました
• I went to Tokyo to have fun last weekend

To Pay a Social Visit refers to when you visit someone as more a social obligation to be nice. Like if you had in-laws you hate and they invite you it is a social call to go visit them usually “playing” isn’t involved.

• わたしのうちにあそびにきてください
• Please come and see us again

The last one is the one that bugs me the most as it is so often mis-translated or purposely not changed in translation. I have seen a few j-drama where someone is invited to a house, party, or in one case a boat ride. Each of these they left play as the translated word and it is confusing if you don’t know the context from the Japanese langauge point of view.

If you want to say you are going to play a sport or video game you would use the verb する.

• テニスをする
• テレビゲームをする

There are other nuances to “playing” stuff, but this is the gist of it. I’ll come back down the road and expand more.

Update: Just Another Day in Japan posted a good compliment to this. Give it a read.Let’s enjoy Japanese: Playing around

There is a new Podcast on the block for you Japan enthusiasts to listen to. I have teamed up with Jamipanese on a new podcast which is about Japan. We aren’t just focusing on one aspect, but a lot of different things. Here are a few of the things we will discuss. I was going to bold what I was most excited about, but realized basically all of it would be bolded.

• Anime
• Manga
• Games
• Language
• Culture
• History
• Idols
• JDrama
• JBloggers
• and more

Each show is going to feature some part of these, and as we get going more we will build up a more formal list and structure.

I must say I am really excited about doing this because finally I can help make the podcast I would want to listen to, content wise.

This month for our first show Kirk and I are interviewing each other a bit so you can get a better idea about us and what we are doing.

So please visit the site and give the show a listen and don’t for get to subscribe too.

Site: http://www.allhailjapan.com
RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AllHailJapan
Twitter: http://twitter.com/allhailjapan
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/All-Hail-Japan-Podcast/275218832350?v

Go, go now.

I was recently put in my place this last December with the JLPT 4 test. I wrote it about it in “Why my JLPT Fail was Still a Win“. It was a very eye opening experience and a great motivational experience.

The biggest problem with it is not being able to convey my how I felt afterward to others in my class. It really is one of those things you have to experience to understand. It isn’t completely a bad feeling just one of disappointment in yourself, and the wanting to do better next time. Today friends and classmates in our local college Japanese Language club got to feel the same thing, finally.

I don’t say this to be mean at all, but our class lives in a bubble in the middle of the United States. Not a lot of opportunity to speak and practice Japanese. If you want to figure out what level you are at it probably wont happen easily unless you actively seek it out. Most people in my class don’t. What happened today burst that bubble for many and let them see the bigger one they were inside of. So I guess you are curios what happened.

On Monday I went to The Tulsa Japanese Language and Culture Meetup. It was an awesome experience since there are a couple of fluent speakers some middle of the road and me, at the bottom. Anyway, I mentioned the college club and invited the others to come if they wanted to. Well one of the fluent speakers showed up, lets call her Sarah. I was excited she showed up because she could really contribute to the group with her speaking ability. My teacher seemed excited about this too and they held a few conversations at breakneck speed in front of everyone.

While I was listening to the conversations I saw the exact expression showing up which was showing up on my face during the JLPT. The “what in the world have I gotten myself into” look. It was also awesome for Sarah to be fluent as an extra motivator to show it can be done for sure.

After the meeting I asked several people how they felt about what they just experienced, and all of them basically told me they felt like someone destroyed their brain. The best way I know to put it is they now know their place in side this bubble that is Japanese language, with me along with them.

Fortunately not one person was defeated and everyone is motivated to learn more now that they realize truly how far there is still left to go, which means good things are going to happen this year with the club.

So in conclusion to all this if you are learning try to find a couple of people that are fluent and listen to them talk in person if at all possible. It is totally different to listen to 2 people talk in person than from a computer now matter how much I or you might want to argue to the contrary. Never be discouraged by what you don’t know just realize there is something else to learn and next time you will know it.

Kanji and Japanese aren’t the same. At least that is how I see it in my head, for better or worse. It is very odd to see it that way so it takes some explaining.

One day I plan to learn Chinese after I learn Japanese. Since kanji is from China originally and the Japanese incorporated into their culture way back a long time ago many of the kanji seem to still be about the same. So it is actually helping with both languages to learn kanji therefore, to me, Japanese is not synonymous to kanji.

If you want to go SAT test with it. Japanese is kanji, but kanji is not necessarily Japanese. So the two are kind of separate, well at least enough that it can help make Japanese easier.

For simplicity sake we will say Japanese is made up of 3 alphabets.

• Hiragana which is phonetic sound for native Japanese words
• Katakana which is the phonetic sound for foreign words, most of the time
• Kanji which is a character that associates a meaning to it

Generally we see kanji as this hard nut to crack because it can have several readings to the meaning. When you combine the kanji in certain orders the original meanings might have almost nothing to do with the word, but the reading is what matters. Basically lots of circular logic that kills your head when learning. While it can be a pain there is hope.

The article title says Kanji Makes Japanese Easy, but all I have described are the complications. So what I want to say is its not really that bad. Learning the meaning of the kanji can go a long way which is why Hesig’s book Remembering the Kanji is so popular and used so much. Because at the end of the day those kanji mean something.

The best way for Kanji to make life easy is to realize that Kanji have a meaning and when you are lost and confused you can use that to your advantage. Lets look at some examples.

私は魚を好きです

The above is a sentence that is kanji and hirigana. The kanji are 私, 魚, and 好. Roughly I, fish, and like. So we can probably infer that the sentence means I like fish, right. Well yes. That is what that sentence is.

Now the next thought is, well not all sentences are going to be that easy and short. I know, but that doesn’t mean you cant try to infer meanings of sentences and pick out parts of sentences to try to better understand things.

One sentence that helped me realize this was this one.

アンは詩を書くのが好きだ。

I still don’t have any idea how to read this sentence properly I always seem to mess it up. However, I know that there is poem, write and like. Along with those plus さん I know that someone likes to write poetry.

And here is another example of looking at kanji meanings and getting the sentence.

秋が好き。

秋 is autumn and 好 is like so the inference is liking autumn.

Another great thing about kanji is it helps shrink the size of what you read and get words in an easier understanding way. Look at the following both the hiragana and the kanji.

Hiragana: わたしのはははえいごはなしません。

Kanji: 私の母は英語を話しません。

The first thing I see is a ton of kana and it kills my eyes for a moment. After that I see the 3 は. After that I have to sound out the sentence and try to figure out the words and manually separate them since there are no spaces like in English. The kanji is what allows you to have those “spaces” because the kanji can be your words so there aren’t any need for spaces per se.

Also notice that the only things that aren’t kanji are particles and conjugations. This lets you be able to break the sentence into words easily and is the true power of kanji which makes reading Japanese a lot easier.

There is one final thing to look at and take note of. While the above is true there are times where picking things out isn’t so easy. Lets see why.

彼の自転車は青い。

This sentence says the bicycle is blue. However, without knowing that 自転車 means bike then this sentence will leave you stuck until learn what it is. So kanji is not a silver bullet to Japanese, but it can help a lot especially as a beginner.

Finally, there are many words that have the same “spellings” in hiragana but mean completely different things when seeing it in kanji. Take kanji for example here are two meanings.

Sentence Hiragana: いいかんじ
Sentence Kanji 1: いい感じ
Sentence Kanji 2:　いい漢字

The hiragana sentence is the same as the others, but without content you don’t know which. Kanji 1 is “Good feeling”. Kanji 2 is “Good kanji(Chinese character)”. So kanji is definitely beneficial when trying to figure out what is being said. As you learn more vocab kanji helps you keep it straight. Plus the more kanji meanings you know there are quite a few kanji readings which will miraculously fall into place all of a sudden. 誰 (だれ) or who was one of those which just fell into place.

Conclusion

Basically when it comes down to it learning Japanese is all about approach. Learning Kanji separate from grammar and vocab can have different outcomes. I like to think it makes things easier. Since starting to focus more and more on kanji it has sped up my learning Japanese to the point some of the manga I have is getting easier to read without looking everything up.

So remember the 4 key components to kanji making Japanese easier are:

• Meanings of Kanji can help you to figure out sentence meanings
• Kanji helps you to find ends of words and beginning of new ones for an easier time reading
• A lot of times kanji is only used for words whereas particles and conjugation are in hiragana; and katakana is foreign words or pop-culture spellings.
• Kanji is used to distingiush words to help figure out context since many words can have same spelling/phonetic sounds

keeping those in mind learning kanji is a very beneficial thing to do from the get-go. Also of note is that the AJATT method has you learn kanji meanings first using Remembering the Kanji. So this definitely isn’t an idea out of left field.

As a note these are my observations from my learning Japanese for the last year and half along with thoughts from others discussing this very thing. So please give your opinion too about your experiences in learning kanji along with Japanese

It has been a year since this blog was started, and has been an exciting ride to say the least. Since the beginning of the blog and January 1 are so closed together I think I’ll just join the two post themes as they are pretty much the same thing.

Lets start with the top posts of this last year.

Top Posts of 2009

1. Online Japanese Music Radio Stations
2. How to Learn Japanese
3. 5 Ways to Use Subtitles to Learn Japanese
4. Who Are the Ainu
5. Top 10 Japanese Tongue Twisters
6. Japanese Verb Conjugation Te-Form
7. Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gotaman
8. Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple English Audio First Impressions
9. Top 9 Japanese Language Blogs
10. 5 Centimeters Per Second First Anime I Didn’t Like

Top Post Thoughts

I’ll tell you a couple of these are a bit odd to have at the top. I am curios where so many people hear about “Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gotaman”. I know the Anime World Order podcast did a review, but I can’t imagine it is all from them.

The others I can see, but the Kenichi really makes me wonder too about where the advertising is for it. I really am curios where people see advertisements or hear about this anime from because I never hear about it from anyone but myself.

Stats of 2009

• February: 672
• March: 978
• April: 1,497
• May: 7,495
• June: 6,575
• July: 5,774
• August 8,126:
• September: 8,186
• October: 9,546
• November: 10,544
• December: 8,210

262 RSS Subscribers

Stats Thoughts

I started out doing pretty low traffic numbers, but am excited at how well I did for my only real advertising being via twitter, but what really threw me up high in April, and I have to give credit to my Japanese teacher for, was the Top 10 Japanese Tongue Twisters. I had asked if she knew them and she later came back with a printout of them, from goo. It was linked to on a site from Hungary and got over 1100 pageviews in one day. From there things went fairly well traffic wise since Google finally noticed me at that point.

On the subscriber count I’ll be honest that I am amazed at how many I got in 1 years time. I don’t know how I got so high to be honest. I know that I got 50 or so from alafista linking me, but the rest I am not to sure. I am every so thankful and appreciative people think my site is nice enough to even subscribe to. If you don’t know what RSS is please read this post to find out more A Primer on RSS.

General Thoughts

First I want to say thank you to all those who have visited and commented it means a lot to me. When I first started I had no idea how long I was going to blog for or even how useful I could/it would be. Since people felt enough to leave comments, subscribe, and revisit I take it I was able to be of some use.

Content wise I didn’t know how long this blog could go before I started I was asking others to co-author the blog with me because I didn’t know if I could ever come up with enough content or good content. Things started off rocky for the first few months, but around June or July I found some focus and a direction to take things and that is where quality started going up from readers hopefully because the blogs quality went up.

2010 Goals

It has been an adventure and I have learned a lot about blogging. However, this is only the beginning I feel confident since it has been a year that there is no reason not to continue. So here are a couple of goals for the next year in no particular order.

• Continue to improve quality of content
• Try to build a tighter community here and in J-Blogosphere
• Review more books
• Increase readership and subscribers
• Do more history posts

If you have any suggestions or comments good or bad please let me know and leave a comment. I am constantly looking for ways to improve so please help me out if you can.

Plot

Kai Yuuki (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is in his senior year at university studying social welfare psychology. At present, he is in the middle of job-hunting season. He is finding it difficult with no job offers so far. One day, he meets a girl who is playing violin in the campus. She is Sae Hagio (Kou Shibasaki). In marked contrast to her beautiful tone and attractive looks, her personality is somewhat impertinent. And to top it off, she communicates through very vulgar sign language. Four years ago, she lost the most important thing for a violinist – her hearing. As a result Sae closed off her inner self from the outside world. Kai finds himself on a date with Sae, in place of his best friend. Unexpectedly, he comes into contact with Sae’s private side. Love, job-hunting, friendship… Setting a campus in spring as a dorama`s backdrop, it’s the start of a glittering youth drama.

Opinion

I have to say I really did like this show for multiple reasons. First it showed, to some degree, how some Japanese deal with disabilities. There was also good emotion and kind of took you through the thought process that one might go through if they were to lose their hearing.

I think one of the coolest things in this show was the sign language used. Since they had sign language they had to do a lot of Japanese subtitles. Having the subtitles in Japanese and in English was a lot of fun because I could look at the kanji and the sentence try to read it then read the english one real fast if I missed it. Was a fun show for working on your Japanese with.

Another point I liked is when people actually said things directly a few times unlike other shows where they are too Japanese and try to talk things out the round-about way. Also I have to say they had the best kissing seen in a Japanese drama I have seen to date.

So over all I would recommend this show for sure. Give it a watch I don’t think you will be disappointed it. Good story, good actors and good for helping with your Japanese, can’t really lose.

Images

More images can be seen in the flickr set (Orange Days Flickr Set

Plot

Junpei Kōsaka is a second-year high school student who despises cats and has an allergy to them. It just so happens that his high school crush is Kaede Mizuno, a girl who adores cats. One day, while walking home from school, Junpei kicks an empty can and unfortunately breaks the local neko-jizō-sama (guardian deity of cats). He finds he can now understand what cats are saying, including his family’s own ill-tempered cat, Nyamsus. However, if he does not grant 100 wishes to cats, he will turn into cat himself and die from his own allergy.

Opinion

With so much time watching more classic anime I wanted to watch something that was new. Nyan Koi was the first one back from the classics, so maybe a bit scewed opinion. I got this one on the suggestion from someone on MyAnimelist.net.

Well first I will say this is a pretty standard Ecchi Harem, no complaints there. However, they decided to make it “new” by adding cats. Unlike the images display they aren’t nekomimi; nope they are cats, and the girls don’t turn into nekomimi either .

What I liked about this anime is that it looks good, I think. Also for late night watching standard harems are always fun. This one kept me engaged by throwing out something enough at the end story wise to make me want to watch the next episode so I applaud that. There isn’t too much more about the anime it is pretty standard, but isn’t bad at all.

What I didn’t like is that they relied to much on same old same old in they way of gaffes and cliches. While the whole possessed cat kami statue cursing someone was new it still was pretty much the same old same old, which I didn’t have to much of a problem with.

If you like this type of anime you will like this one for sure. If hate these then don’t bother watching. If you are 50/50 I think you might enjoy this one over others.

Images

More images can be found in the flickr set (Nyan Koi flickr Set)

Here are the entries for this December Blog Matsuri. This was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I definitely think you should check each of them out.

Joshua Zimmerman
Entry: Robot School Girl Horror
Description: This one creeped me out and got me excited, not that way, at the same time. I love robots and always get excited to see them. I was creeped out that they were turning them into school girls. There is a youtube video to watch too.

Just Another Day in Japan
Entry: Toilet Technology
Description: This is the exact reason I wanted technology as athe topic. I was after anything especially not so seen parts of Japanese technology. Funnily enough there was a conversation in my Japanese club once about toilets in Japan.

Lonelee Planet
Entry: Top 5 Japanese Gadgets from Thanko
Description: Thanko is a Gadget company and apparently they come out with some very interesting gadgets. Lets just say for one part nekomimi is going to sound awesome again.

Gakuranman
Entry: Omoshiro Zakka – R2D2 Soy Sauce Bottle
Description: This isn’t exactly technology, but I am a huge sucker for Star Wars especially droids so since droids are technology it is ok this time. Though looking at the picture it seems like it could get a little messy.

NihongoUp Blog
Entry: The digital camera that started it all
Description: I really liked this one post. I am a huge fan of photography so when I get to read/see history on the digital camera I am all over it. What is funny is the megapixel rating that it has. Never imagined it would be that number.

Maz
Entry: Karakuri (Part 1)
Description: This was an amazing entry. This is a side of the Japanese culture I had never even had a hint of knowing existed. Definitely give this a read, and watch the youtube videos. Imagine wooden robots.

Jamaipanese
Entry: 5 Japanese Robots
Description: Oh we have some more robot goodness here. These are as creepy and really show how far we have come with technology as humans. I will say I am an ASIMO fan, but after seeing the ApripPoko I don’t know anymore. However, the security guard looks a bit too happy to be one.

Muza-chan
Entry: 7 Reasons Why Japanese Trains Are Different
Description: While I am not a huge fan of trains, because of not so fun experience with them, I will say after reading this when I go to Japan I will probably not feel as bad about it. Seeing the different types and views of them I can see why people can be enamored by them. The first picture would make me nervous as a worker though.

Through Eyes From Afar
Entry: A Pinch of Salt
Description: I have got to give mad props on creativity of this one. When I think technology I think mechanical. Here is a good post on chemical technology/science. I will say second picture makes me wonder about whether I really like salt or not.

kirai
Entry: Manicure Machine
Description: This takes vending machines to a whole new level. I’ll just put it that way. The internals actually look kind of neat.

Japan Sugoi
Entry: Japanese Suima Automated Baby Crib
Description: I am living in the wrong country to be lazy in. Japan seems to make some cool stuff for those that want to be lazy, at times. I might have to import one someday if I have kids. Though can you tell me is it made out of wood or wood like plastic?

EDIT: Sorry I missed one I feel horrible about it, but here it is.

chottomatte.net
Entry: RIKEN Next-Generation Supercomputer, Kobe, Port Island
Description: I loved reading this especially since I am a programmer. I love computers. I especially want one this big.

Be sure to stay tuned for next months matsuri at loneleeplanet.