few questions

School has started back and I have decided to get TEFL Certification in the next month so I can stack my deck a little before I apply for JET in September. has anyone out there done this? is it easy? It sounds to me like a hoop that you have to jump through to get better odds of acceptance. I really hope that I am not just trowing away my cash and I get some insight from it. Oh ya, for those of you who live or have lived in Japan, how long did it take to get use to speaking Japanese or at leaste comfortable with normal every day tasks such as getting food, and how much Japanese training did you have before you went?

As of late

So the semester is over and now I am worrying about how to retain all of the information that I have learned over the last 4 months untill I get to my next class in the fall. I think that I will use lists that I am making from Iknow.jp.co along with videos from a web sight that my sensei told me about that her husband was the host of http://www.gpb.org/irasshai. These videos are really funny in that I cant believe how bad this is funny and they were filmed in the late 80s to early 90s so that just adds to the atmosphere. but there are a nice number of these videos so I will give them a shot in the interest of not loosing what I have learned. more over I will communicate with Ashley as much as I can that does seem to help us both in our studies.

I would like to send out a huge congratulations to Sean from the blog flyingsound. He was accepted into the JET program and is awaiting assignment. The more people I see achieve their goal in getting into JET and the more people I meet that have been in it. The more I feel that it is an achievable goal. All I have to do now is wait for application time and get to it. It is kind of scary, this single goal has become the main focal point of my life as of late. Most things that I have done as of the last 6 or so months has been with the thought "This can or could help me get into the JET program or could help me if I get into the JET program." I hope that it is not all for naught.

Bad day

So today was a pretty bad day. I was in a car accident. My truck is possibly totaled. It is amazing how much damage can occur at 25 mph. No one was hurt. More over I just had the clutch replaced on it and that cost me $775.00 so lets hope that it is not completely gone. Other things that made this a fun day were. . . I went to the doctor and was poked, prodded, given a shot, had my blood stolen for god knows what dastardly uses. The vending machine at school took my money. sigh... Oh well! on the plus side my sister let me borrow her scion TC until my truck is fixed or until I find another vehicle assuming it is totaled. ooh and I went back to the house that I was house sitting and had a nice long nap! man I needed that.
Oh yeah and my sensei told the class about her travel agent that she booked a flight through from here to Tokyo and it was only $700.00 round trip．I was so excited about this that I blurted out in class 本とですか！！どこ!？!?At which point every one turned and looked at me.　It seemed that most of them had no idea how much these tickets are through travel sites but Cook sensei helped out by playing a game that had the normal price through continental airlines and then the price of first class just for fun. prices $2100.00 and $11,000.00 these shell shocking prices made me look like I wasn't crazy and the best part was that my excitement was rewarded when she hooked me up with the travel agents name :)
So I guess that the day wasn't a total bust after all.

Cramming my brain

So I have been using Smart.fm, the site that contains the IKnow study program. But I have run into an impasse. The program gives me like 12 words a day to learn and I have been having a really hard time trying to keep up. 12 words doesn't sound like a lot but that is 84 a week, 336 words a month. Now this is a little bit of an exaggeration because there are only 200 words in each unit and I only work on one unit at a time. More over after I finish going through all the 200 words the program will continue requiring me to learn and relearn these 200 words until I have gone over each one several times over a recommended month. so really its like learning 6.7 words a day but not really. Ok back on track... My problem is that I am not that great at straight up memorization so does any one have some suggestions on study methods (other than flash cards, I use them constantly) that may help me out? Thanks a lot!

Dream

Last night I had an odd dream. I get rejected from the JET program. So I decide to take the money that I have been saving and go to Japan any ways. I buy my ticket, which costs a measly 50 bucks (I am budgeting for a $2000.oo ticket), hop on the plane, and fly over there. The flight only takes a hour in the dream. Once the plane lands, I decide to walk around Japan. In my through the city that I landed in, I some how manage to get to an old country road that is totally abandoned. After walking a little while I come upon two individuals who talk to me in Japanese, Which I some how understand clearly. Next a third person walks up to us and tells me that I need to speak to him in English because my Japanese is terrible. While speaking to him I learn that he is my real life friend Toby. At this point he shows me around the city and explains what he has been doing for the past year in Japan and talks about how he has fallen in love with the culture and has decided to never come back. After that I decide that it is time for me to come back to the USA and I tell him that I will come see him on the weekends because it is so cheap and easy to get there. When I arrive at the airport I run in to my professor, Cook Sensei. She asks me if I enjoyed visiting, to which I respond, "that I love this place. It just makes me sad that I cannot stay." At which point Ashley wakes me up by turning on the lights to find some cloths that she needed. When I woke up I was filled with disappointment. I wonder what Sigmund Freud would say about that.

exam results!

Yay I passed my first Japanese exam with flying colors! five pages and a Hiragana chart in 50 minutes and I received a 93.25% woot Ill take what I can get! so now it is time to start the next half of my semester with a bang and work with the Iknow.co.jp site. I would like to finish one section of the Japanese 2000 series by the end of the semester. It is only learning 200 words oh and I would like to finish the Katakana section on it as well because I think I have my Hiragana down fairly well. But just to be sure I will finish the Hiragana practice on the site. I'm about 50% done with that and should be finished by next week.

Japanese Midterm

yesterday I had my Japanese midterm and I am not really sure how well I did on it. I thought that I would blow the test away the night before but when I started to do it I began to have second opinions. The answers seemed to come easy enough. I hope that my second guessing is just lack of confidence. I guess we will have to wait and see. On the bright side at least I now know what the lay out of my sensei's exams are so I will be better prepared for the next one.

Thinking in Japanese

It is really surprising how much you can say with only a few words in your repertoire. I have been attempting to make sentences with the words that I currently know and in doing so I not only found out what words I need to learn next but I get a great boost of confidance that I may be able to comunicate enough to eat or communicate on the most basic levels if I make it to Japan.

better than Anki

There is a seemingly better flash card generator based on the same principles of Anki, but it has made the cards for you. The web sight Iknow is really cool it has a lot of lessons not only for Japanese but for several other languages as well. In the lessons are the words, an audio pronunciation, pictures, scentances and other stuff. It is also based on memorization curve like Anki but in a nicer package. Oh and the best part is that it is free.

Anki

I have been reading many blogs to learn about studying Japanese as well as JET and other things that interest me. While reading the blog Hopeless romantic The blogger suggests several study methods that I think will be really useful one of these is a method of learning kanji, when I get it and use it for a while I will write a small review on it to tell you all what I think about it. But for now I am going to talk about a really cool program that he suggested, Anki. This program is great! it is used to make flash cards that adhere to research concerning memory studys and the amount of time that you should wait between reviewing older material. Basicaly if you know some information on a flash card well, then the next time the program uses that specific card will be in the more distant futre than the cards that you have more difficulty with. The best part is that it is free! but there is a place to donate and I would recomend that everyone does because this is made by an individual and not a corporation and the product will surely become a valuable tool in your self study regiment. So go out and try Anki! It is a great program.

Hulu Halarious!

dark beer....

In response to a comment from my last post. as my Friend Keelie pointed out, Sapporo beer is a light beer and lightighter beer is on the other end of the spectrum from where the beer that I like it so... out of curiosity has anyone found a dark Japanese beer? If so I need to try it out... please post any that you all have heard of!!!

New furnature

I have a show coming up in a little more than a month and I have made nothing for it so far.... So I guess I need to get cracking on it. I need to make about six pieces two of which need to be lounge chairs because they sell really well. I have been thinking a whole lot about Japan, its culture and its language so I think it would be fun to draw from that to make a few of the pieces. For some reason I am attracted to the idea of making furnature from the shapes of Hiragana I assume because that is all that I have been studying for the last week. So what is the most comfortable Hiragana symbol to you all? please leave a comment with your opinion! Dont worry if the symbol has parts that are not connected it will be part of the fun to design to get around those problems! For those of you who do not know what it looks like see the image below.

Japanese progress

It has been a month sense I have started going back to college to learn Japanese and I must say that I love it! It is such a logical language. So far I think I am keeping up fairly well with the curriculum and i have been studying other aspects of Japanese in my free time so hopefully one day my several ways of learning it will converge and I will jump ahead of my current standing as a Japanese 101 student. I have employed several methods to study outside of class. I have been using Rosetta stone software to learn straight up expressions and sentences. I spent some time reading the Japanese for Dummies book and though it was fun and it helped a little. More over I bought a Nintendo DS and the Japanese Coach game. It is really great to learn tons of vocabulary and I can use it anywhere which is a huge plus. I watch anime with no subtitles just to listen to them talk and then I re watch it with sub Oh yah and I make note cards ... hundreds and hundreds of them :( I think at the rate that I am going, if I can keep up the pace, I will be ready to apply for the JET program next December. Often times I think about the large amount of money, effort, and time that I am putting into this and I wonder if I am foolish for doing so just on a bet that I may get in to the program. Its very discouraging to think about it so I usually put it out of my mind and think about alternatives if I don't get in. oh well here are some pictures of my study material as well as a look at how some of my hiragana is going. I personally think it has improved and looks much less like a 5 year old's hand writing and more like a 13 year old's hand writing. I am getting better at recognizing the writing but I still have a long way to go be for I stop sounding like a hooked on phonics commercial.

mmmm soooo good!

I want to announce to the world that their are some things that America Bastardized from other countries (including Japan) that turn out bad... BUT I have found one of the things that turned out great! and it is pure gold baby! I was in Walmart spending the last of my cash on food for the coming week when I walked past the ethnic food section much to my suprise I found Golden brand curry mix making me jump for joy in the middle of the isle. Upon closer inspection I noticed that there were some very dirty bottles that looked like they had been on the shelf for half of an eternity. I was shocked at what I saw, Tabasco Soy Sauce. I snatched up one of the sticky and dust covered bottles and tossed it in the buggy with partal glee and partal horror. So when I made it back to my girlfrends house I took it to the sink and gave it a nice scrubbing befor opening it up. After that I ripped of the seal, poured some into the palm of my hand, and tasted it woah moma is it good! I should have guessed that spicy soy sauce would be good due to my love to Wisabi and soy sauce mixed to gether for sushi. I was just suprised at how well tabasco did it. so to all the people out there who like spicy food and soy sauce you should try it out. you wont be sorry!