The idea seemed simple enough: play the game, learn kanji. And it went pretty well for a while. But when I hit level 3, I realized that it's completely unworkable. The problem is, I need to take the material in small dozes, to allow kanji to get digested. But KanKen …
read moreWoe me is spelling
Tomeru and haneru
The Successor of The Game With The Longest Name Ever, or, in short, KanKen 250man, throws the following at me sometimes:
I completely failed at solving this, but J. Greely has a more extensive background (do you know why a 5-yen ball has 9 characters on it?), so he ovecomes …
read moreJLPT result
This is how far watching anime can take you:
Level: 4, Section 1: 89, Section 2: 71, Section 3: 164, Total: 324, Result: Pass
In practical terms, this is not enough to watch raws indiscriminately, but in most cases the second pass with subtitles off is doable.
read moredu zu tsu
A banner in a local restaurant is a print of Mitsuo Aida's writing.
It says, "つまづいたっていいじゃないか にんげんだもの", all in hiragana. Still, it took me quite a while to figure it …
read moreWhite Rabbit
The mailman delivered a surprise package today: Canon Wordtank G70 that I ordered from White Rabbit two days ago.
God I love capitalism.
Incidentially, White Rabbit was also cheaper than eBay sellers, to say nothing of generic stores like GoodsFromJapan. I credit J. Greely for the reference, he had gotten …
read morePuzzling Gum
The gum wrappers come with puzzles on the wrappers, all in hiragana for pre-schoolers.
The question is: "〇なかにことばをいれてネ".
Once I figured out that "irete" means "insert" in this case, I was able to guess 4 out of 5.
read moreJ. Greely on new Kakitori-kun
J. is back with vegneance from his trip to Japan and reports that Kakitori-kun, a kanji practice game for DS, was updated. Unfortunately, I have already suggested my family members to get me 250man kanken. It is an improved version of the 200man kanken, which I have. J tried both …
read moreJLPT
I am back from JLPT. Ana-sempai took level 3, I took level 4. I think I did well on reading, rotten on listening and grammar. The test was very light on kanji.
In my room, out of 32 people, 3 were old weaboos (no women among them, naturally). A sad …
read moreJapanese understatements
Seen in Nakama ch.10:
家事で家が焼けてしまって、生活に必要なものが何もなくて、不便だ。
Which approximately means, "my house has burned down in a fire, no life necessities left, so …
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