Tag: Japanese

J-Variety Review: TORE!

J-Variety Review: TORE!

by eastasianlover ♥ 2 Comments

It’s really really difficult to find Japanese Variety shows online with some exceptions like Gaki no Tsukai. But those kind of comedies don’t appeal to me. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what is so funny in there (obviously, I’m not at that level of Japanese). And my quest for Japanese variety shows (with no videos other than youtube working here ¬¬) led me to to two – Hey! Hey! Hey! and TORE!

Hey! Hey! Hey! is a talk show and only eng subs I found for were the episodes where DBSK have appeared. So I’m not gonna talk about that. I did stumble upon this game show – TORE! which made me remember all those game shows they used air on cartoon network and other channels when I was a kid. Takeshi’s castle and Wipeout are still popular because they are still aired on channels like Pogo and AXN.

But TORE! was kind of new to me. I remember seeing a variety show with some temple guards in it but the things are hazy and I’m pretty sure it was an English game show. I don’t remember the format either.

So, yes. About TORE! They say it’s kind of mummification program. Ah! Yes. If you get squeezed by the walls or you fall down through a hole whose end you can’t see from above, you’ll definitely become mummy unless you give the correct answers asked in the show. It’s super entertaining and thrilling. The setting is Egypt kind. The keys, the walls, the Pharaos with the most modern instruments and equipments, you’ll all find in here. I watched one episode only, today and unfortunately, the subtitles weren’t available. ¯\(°_°)/¯

You can actually feel their anxiety during the games. When they fall before finishing the sentence they were saying, the breath stops! I mean I know they’re safe and that the hole may not be that deep that they show, but that’s the magic of directors and the technical staff out there and they work for this only. As their audience, I salute them! (￣^￣)ゞ

For Japanese language learners, it can be very helpful. Most of the words can be looked upon in dictionary and I can already see changes in my kana’s reading speed. The contestants (generally celebrities) have to answer the questions so fast with their lives (kind of) at stake that you have to read things fast if you’re staying with their speed. Of course, you can slow the videos down, but where is the fun in that? One of the most fun way to learn Japanese. Highly recommended.

I’ll post the episode I watched. Happy learning!

Look what I found!

Look what I found!

by eastasianlover ♥ 3 Comments

I found this book in our library! Our university’s library! There are three more novels like this. They are too high levelled for me. But nonetheless, I got one issued. Finally, an authentic Japanese novel! Owning it for two weeks is enough for me, even if I can’t translate the whole text 😀 😀

The Izu Dancer 3
The Cover
The Izu Dancer 2
Reads: A gift to the brothers and sisters of India, Katuro Koga, Japan, 3-12-64 (It’s so old!!!)
The Izu Dancer 1
The Cover Page
The Izu Dancer 5
One of the pages – Original Text
The Izu Dancer 4
The translated text

 

Today’s song – I have switched to Japanese Bands again and found 3! Now I’ve a lot of songs to post with my posts 🙂

Today’s from Scandal. This song is one of the OSTs for Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood – 

 

Studying Japanese from Genki + Time management

Studying Japanese from Genki + Time management

by eastasianlover ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

So, I managed to grab an e-copy of Genki Integrated Elementary Japanese I and II from a friend and I’m glad I did. I probably haven’t given any time to a textbook like I’m giving to this one in my four years. It is a good practice for me. The workbook covers everything taught in the book extensively apart from the exercises in the book itself. I am printing and practicing everyday. Thus my reading, writing and listening skills are getting better.

The best thing is, it is providing a definite shape to my Japanese studies. I had always been clueless as to where to start from, after Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji has always been an obstacle for me. But now I’m finally starting to grasp the things. Loving the book totally!

I wish to get a Korean book like this too. Although I do own a lot of e-books and I’m doing what I can from Basic Korean – A Grammar and Workbook, I don’t have much to practice my writing with. I need some workbooks for that but I’m broke nowadays to buy any book. Ah! I need some money or some source of free e-books.

Now, the time management thingie. I’m pretty much satisfied with the pace my Korean and Japanese are going on. I’m at least giving time to them daily (excluding Sundays since very less time is left for me to give to Thailand). Now that my mentor has gone to Japan and I don’t have many projects at hand, I have a lot more time. But sometimes, I feel that the time is just flowing by and I’m not able to do much productive work. I’ve been neglecting my blog too.

Only one month more to go and I’ll be in India. My stay in Thailand is coming to an end and I think I am getting depressed about that. If only I had the books, my new phone for awesome apps and GoGo Korean Beginners course from Pegasus Society and very inspiring fellow bloggers who are learning languages themselves earlier, I would’ve been one level up by now in both the languages. But I don’t want to regret and fret over the things, hence I’m trying to accomplish more in the given time. But even then, the time is flying too fast. In a blink of an eye, it is lunch time!

***After Lunch***

Ah! Why do we need to eat food? Why was this thing called stomach given to us? If only, we had the power to make food from sunlight like plants. Wastes a lot of time! This is going to happen again – I’ll become sleepy – then sleep for probably half an hour and it will be 3! Then in last two hours, I’ll study some Korean and waste some more time considering the body becomes so sluggish. I don’t have concept like Power Nap – a big tragedy in my life. Better chug down some coffee again and not sleep at all. I wonder, what I will do in my college if I get addicted again here…….

Side Story 1 – Day before yesterday, we went to the Platinum Fashion mall (This particular mall in Bangkok is just full of clothes and anything you name. I call it heaven for girls) again for probably 5th-6th time. There was a shop with traditional Chinese dresses that I saw for the first time yesterday. Those red and black beautiful dresses! I wanted to buy but I was running low on cash, so I had to postpone it. ㅠ_ㅠ

Side Story 2 – I’m sure, from my talks about money in this or other posts, you may think I’m stingy. I admit to the fact, I am. I tend to be very careful while spending money. But my friend here managed to convince me that, this whole trip of mine is being sponsored by me myself (credits to the company of course). Hence I should not think much. Moreover the clothes and accessories have far greater variety here than in India and are cheaper too. I have collected a lot now.

Side Story 3 – Now that I’ve mentioned in above story, clothes and accessories, I feel like writing about the fact that I’ve completely changed with regards to shopping attitude. I was never even interested in accessories, let alone buying them. But my friend has made me such a shopaholic that I want to take whatever I like including bags, earrings, lockets etc. etc. I shouldn’t become that spendthrift but when she says – In India, these are very expensive and you’ll need them when you start your office, even if you can’t use them in the deserted isolated college – BITS Pilani, of yours – I get allured by it.

Today’s song – Since, in my last post I said, I was listening to OSTs, I’ll post one again. In my school related dramas post I mentioned this anime and I just love such a peppy song. Again there are TV size and full size versions. Hope you enjoy this one –

Improving reading skill – Short stories (Updated)

Improving reading skill – Short stories (Updated)

by eastasianlover ♥ 1 Comment

I’ve been getting lot of topics to write lately, that I can’t resist blog posting. And when I really really want to write, I run out of ideas! So ironic! Anyways, I’ve been reading short stories now-a-days to improve my reading and speaking skills. And because I come across a lot of new words, vocabulary part is a bonus.

Although, many a times, it is really really difficult. I sometimes just throw the papers in frustration. But in the end, I pick them up again and start from the beginning. Since, I won’t be able to learn the stories in two or three readings except the words I already know, I can go to the same story again which I’ve already read.

It has been pretty hard for me to find stories online so that I can print them and read them, and sometimes I feel webtoons would be much better for entertainment and reading for Korean. But my schedule involves remaining glued to my laptop screen as long as I’m awake. Most of the work I do is on my laptop. If not, I’m watching dramas or MVs. If I’m revising flash cards, then it is my mobile screen. Too much strain on the eyes! (Ah! My eyes are already going bad. I don’t know when the optician uncle would be able to find my no.) That’s why, they are becoming a total no no. So I found out some and got them printed – for now, one in Japanese and one in Korean.

In this regard, news articles can do too! But stories are way more interesting. Last time I got an article printed and it’s still there in my bag, eating dust! (I’m sorry dude.) I haven’t even touched it (yet). I’m posting the stories link for Japanese stories, they are a few in number. Korean is only one though. I’m still searching and if I get some more, I’ll add in this post

For Japanese go here – http://life.ou.edu/stories/http://life.ou.edu/stories/

For Korean story go here – http://pds8.egloos.com/pds/200802/04/11/Episode_41_Worksheet.pdf

Side Story 1 – When my cousin went to China, I was so envious. Now my mentor is going to Japan. JAPAN! I’ve asked her to bring me souvenirs and I’ll try for books. That reminded me, I was searching for big book stores in Bangkok and there are plenty and at those places where I’ve already visited. I never noticed them *Facepalm*. If I had noticed them earlier, I would’ve spent my money on buying books instead of clothes. TT_TT (Now I’m a poor person)

Side Story 2 –  I’m using company’s waste papers for my printing. Here, they generally print on one side and the waste papers are either shredded and then sent to recycle or less important things are printed on the other side – much later. This time, after audit, there were many papers which were deemed to be waste but now I’ve found out the way to use them. Even for my writing, I’m using those only. (One more way to save money, yes!)

Today’s Song – After such a long time, I’ve found an idol group which solely is dominating my playlist. Yes, you guessed right. That is EXO. I already said that I am totally drooling over their charisma would be getting involved with their songs later than the variety shows. Now, not one day passes me without watching the MVs. I wake up and first thing I do is watch them before doing anything. And last thing before going to bed is their songs again. So, today’s song will be –

Update 22/12/2013: Aigoo!! Why didn’t I see this when I was in Thailand? So many worksheets are there and I was searching for them. Anyways, there are a lot of stories here and much more apart from that. So enjoy – http://freshkorean.com/free-resources/

Link

Mistakes we make while learning Kanji

by eastasianlover ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Mistakes we make while learning Kanji

No matter what, this article needs sharing. For all those people like me, who are attempting to learn Kanji and have not reached there yet, we can try changing our approach and this article is perfect for that.

But, somehow, I don’t regret it…….

But, somehow, I don’t regret it…….

by eastasianlover ♥ 3 Comments

Yup, I committed a grave grave mistake and I’m very sorry for that to myself. I don’t know how I missed it. Why did I think it was in September? And I didn’t even bother to check it. On the top of that, I came across the whole thing on the last day of all days, not even once in past twenty days?

Oh, sorry sorry. I was talking about 32nd TOPIK registration. I just came to know yesterday that I had already missed the deadline. Everybody keeps a milestone for the date of exam but no one tries to display registration dates. I had a list of plans to execute before and after the exam. I have to take another engineering exam in February and I thought I would start preparing for it after this one. But oops! Everything failed. So what now?

Nothing. Life will go on and I will take the exam next year. 34th TOPIK for sure. And I won’t be outside the country at that time so I won’t get confused as to where to take the exam and where to register. That being said, now I’m going to study even harder and become serious. I already started from yesterday. Everyday, learning new words feels so great. And I have decided to continue with Japanese also.

It makes me a little worried though. Now I’ll have to give time to everything including my engineering related studies whereas earlier I was thinking of taking up Korean only till TOPIK exam.

I know I am 바보 and I seriously wanted to clear at least one level before sitting for placements in December, but oh well, it may as well be advantageous for me. May be, that’s why I’m not regretful about it.

 

It’s been a while since I posted some song with my post, so here it is – 

Language learning – part 2 – The answer

Language learning – part 2 – The answer

by eastasianlover ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In the last post you read the story. But the main question remains unanswered – how to approach the things. I, till now, have tried a lot of things – creating flash cards of my own, flash cards in my phone, writing things again and again, sticking hand-made fully decorated charts (wasted a lot of time in that) on walls of my room, downloading language learning apps, and what not. I did learn (and now, know) a lot of languages’ alphabets but then vocabulary remains weak. In that case, I can’t actually say I know the language, can I? (Yeah, in resumes, it looks good and if you write that you are learning the mentioned languages, you can answer if someone asks that yup, you do know the alphabets, at least!) Then I saw my juniors studying them in schools. Not the foreign ones but the common ones. And, I remembered how my mother used to teach me and how I used to help my sibling learn things.

Hence, the solution I found out was – Start From The Basics. In Indian system the procedure goes as follows (at least I did that).  Learn the alphabet. Start reading small small words, then larger ones. If possible arrange some newspapers in the target language and then start slowly. When you get a grip over reading, start with dictations. Obviously, you need some native speaker friend of yours or you can use your favorite dramas for that. For vocabulary, you can begin, like small children, with fruits, vegetables, colors, parts of the body, counting etc. Then you can go to the newspaper you started with and add to your vocab.

For writing part, you can start with short compositions like describing things in small sentences. Then go to bigger things like essays and all. Last remains speaking. First the pronunciation needs to be accurate. For that, native speakers are the best source. You listen to them and repeat them. In this regard, the movies and dramas can help too (but, no matter what, don’t get hooked to them!!) Even better, if you know some native speakers.

Ah! This is nostalgic. All the school memories ran through the mind. See, it isn’t that difficult. But this covers basic only. If you want more, you can read this book – How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber. It not only tells this person’s journey of language learning but also how to learn, how to take out time when you don’t have any, but still want to explore new cultures through their mother tongue and the languages themselves. It’s a great resource for those who want to start anew as well as those who have become frustrated with variety and never reached anywhere (include me too in the category)

how to learn a language

This brings me to the idea, that I can write reviews for the resources available online which I found useful! Hmmm…. I should go and find a good name if I want to do a series of reviews like that.

Language Learning – Part 1 – The story

Language Learning – Part 1 – The story

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I did say in my first story, how due to envy, I got introduced to languages. But waaaay before that, I had had some exposure to a lot of languages, not foreign though. Being in an English medium school, you have to learn English from the start. Then obviously you know your mother tongue. In India, there is vast diversity in terms of culture, people and languages. If your father is in a job where he and the family have to move a lot, you do get a lot of experience, meet new people, make new friends and learn how to adjust. In different regions, you get to learn a different language. In my case, I got to learn one in my 3rd class (which would probably be Grade 3rd of Elementary School in East Asian countries) because my father got transferred to a new region. Then, generally, in north India (I don’t know about other regions and there may be variations in this region as well! It depends!) you are given a choice between 2 languages – Sanskrit, which is considered to be mother of all languages and the one which I learnt before in my 3rd grade. So I chose Sanskrit (and did really well too! Thank you, thank you). So now four languages were added to my account – English, Hindi, Sanskrit and last one Punjabi (this one belongs to the state called Punjab).

In my 10th class (this will be !st year of high school in East Asia) I started with Japanese but I only had one small book. I never had a look on the kana charts earlier in my life. In those days, internet used to be a rare commodity, so I didn’t have it. The kana charts given in the book looked suspicious. Some syllables in the end were missing (which was because they didn’t exist but hey, I didn’t know that!). And it was only a phrases book and I wanted to start from the basic. But even so, my curiosity wasn’t gratified. Nonetheless, I copied it in hopes of learning a new language and did learn some words but 10th class, here, is a major class. I couldn’t give my new found “hobby” enough time. Next two years are the most important from career making point of view. Preparing for various entrance exams for getting admission in the best colleges takes hard work of your two years.  Can’t even think of other activities. Before college admissions, I did get time and took up French. Learnt some. But again there was no proper guidance. I never got to understand how to start things. Vastness of material available on net confuses you more.

Then college life started. And here I got to see different kinds of stuff. Travel books basically give you phrases which will be useful while roaming around in the concerned country. Phrase books include some more, related to daily life. Then there are grammar books. But they seem so high leveled sometimes that you want to give up. There are a lot of websites, books telling you how to learn a language, other kind of books, audio lessons, youtube tutorials etc. etc. And if you get into the trap of watching dramas and movies of the language you wanna learn, with the desire to grasp something in an entertaining way, then my friends, you get deviated from your goal. Trust me, I’m one of them.

In the next post, find out the answer I came up with for all my troubles.

And today’s song is:

 

The story

The story

by eastasianlover ♥ 2 Comments

Greetings,

This is the story about how my love (or obsession?) for East Asia bloomed.

This all started when, one day, one of my classmates back in my school (I think it was 6th class) suddenly said that I looked Chinese. I mean, come on. Having small slanted eyes doesn’t mean you’re Chinese (no offence to anyone). But let it be!

Around the same time, a variety of anime started on Cartoon Network. Cardcaptor Sakura was one of the first anime I watched. After that came Pokemon, Beyblade, Captain Tsubasa, Ranma 1/2, UFO Baby etc. etc. and then started Naruto and One Piece. (Me and my sister used to get up at 6 on Sunday mornings to watch One Piece at 7 am!) Their old houses, falling sakura leaves and martial arts used to intrigue me as a child. I was so amused by their culture that I made it my aim to go to Japan once I grow up.

Later, I found a Japanese language learning book in my school’s library (It was due to envy towards my best friend who got French learning book from her brother as a gift but that is another story) and it was the final blow. I couldn’t get it photocopied because it was quite thick and I was afraid of my parents (Of course, it was my 10th class and if you are a good student, your parents would like you to concentrate on studies rather than “wasting” your time on such things). I used to copy the book in a diary myself during the time my mother used to go for her walk ( hehehehe ^w^). They still don’t know I have such a copied book!

Then my college. Now BITS Pilani is a place where, once you get your laptop (I got mine in 2nd sem as most of the people did here), you get access to vast variety of media. A lot of downloaders (I thank such people from the “bottom of my heart”) download movies, series and ANIME (and much more as you can expect and guess!). The old series which I could not complete because they stopped airing and some series I wanted to revisit, were all there. Now, my most enjoyable time started. (I did screw my grades due to that)

And then I was introduced to manga. After that, I started devoting around 16 hours(!!! <My poor Roomie>) to these things (f*** studies) and my curiosity and love for Japanese language and culture (and  people especially handsome guys appearing in J-Dramas) kept increasing. I started listening to Japanese songs (OSTs) and learning the language. It was fun.

Now since there is manga, manhwa and manhua (Korean and Chinese versions of manga respectively) can’t be left and it takes some time for a beginner to figure out which is which. So before I read manga, I read manhwa. Then came webtoons, K-dramas and ultimately K-pop! Chinese was almost the same too.

Its amazing how these things keep introducing you to other related things and you keep getting absorbed. Now I am all into K-pop and considering how their songs are copied in India, it increases my interest more (I am totally against it. These people just ruin the songs!). I think I should add frustration in the name of the blog……

I have written a lot more than I had planned to but it can’t be helped. Once I start on this topic, I can’t stop (I am the same with my friends here and they are now irritated >:-) ) In due course, I’ll keep posting J and K-pop songs and may be some of my fandrawings. Now that I have introduced you to my story, I can start for real from my next post. (I still haven’t figured out what specific things I would write – maybe reviews and more stories?)

Thank you, Gomawo, Arigatou, Xie Xie for reading this and here is a song from one of my favorite boy group, Super Junior (I found it yesterday and I am totally hooked to the song) :