A Little Boost...

What can you say about music?

To practice my Japanese casually, I have been using the afore-link-ed smart.fm software. But, when that gets a bit tedious, I use a streaming music website called Last.fm to aid the practice. Last.fm is a website that records your musical tastes based on artists and songs, and then creates a radio based on similar songs or artists.

Now, why not Pandora, or any of those other websites, you might ask? Simply put, it's because the range of music on Last.fm seems to surpass the rest easily. It's very hard to find Japanese artists on Pandora especially, which frustrated me for a while, whereas if you leave the Last.fm radio running for a while, you'll run into tons of new artists of any genre. I was introduced to Perfume, Kaela Kimura, sifow, Tommy February6, and more-- love at first sight.

Another thing-- music while studying. I find it best to put on a Japanese artist's radio when studying Japanese, and a French artist while studying French-- seems obvious enough, right? Well, I found this out when I started studying French on smart.fm, and I had Ai Otsuka playing on Last.fm. I could literally feel my brain tugging towards Japanese and away from French. Weird, huh? I'm not joking! Then I changed to Camille (a French artist) Radio, and the tug was gone!

Stop looking at me like that.

Well, in any case, if you need a musical boost-- for anything, I suggest you use Last.fm. Enjoy!

-JPOtaku

A little recess...

Hello, it's JPOtaku, and... well, I'll be gone for a month.

BAM! A wave of sadness hit the country. Especially since no one's reading this and I've left for over 3 months plenty of times. But don't despair!

I'm not actually abandoning this blog, I'm just going to be busy for a month. Busy. A month. 2+2=... CAMP! Even while I'm there, I will still がんばります (try hard) to maintain my Japanese schedule. Perhaps I'll even have news when I come back!

Thanks,

JPOtaku

Multilingual...ism

I find it harder and harder to be learning more than one language at once. Prime example? Japanese and French.

As you may have known, the English sentence order is SVO (Subject-verb-object). For instance, "I hid an Easter egg." The subject, in most cases, comes first in the sentence (I), then comes the verb (hid), then the object (an Easter egg). However, in Japanese, the sentence order is SVO. Which means instead of saying "I hid an Easter egg," you'd be saying "I an Easter egg hid".

Sometimes, when speaking in French, I get an irresistible urge to put my verbs at the end of my sentences. God forbid I speak to a French native anytime soon! They'd think I was Yoda!

I found a very helpful person on Youtube who specializes in this exact type of problem: kemushichan. In particular, this video of hers deals with those who are learning several languages at once. (She even happens to mention my own situation in the video!) Watch the video, and look at her channel-- she might help you with some of the problems that YOU are having!

HOLY CRAP #2-- (Fit's Gum)

Now-- I just recently found out about this Youtube craze a week ago, but still--- it was inevitable that this trend would spread all over Youtube Japan.

A Japanese gum company, "Fit's", released these commercials to promote a new, innovative, unbelievably soft, more mouth-accessible pack of gum. In the commercials, the model takes a piece of gum, chews it, and then proceeds to do a very distinctive, lively dance that gets anyone in a 15-foot radius excited to chew and dance as well. All the while, an infectious jingle plays in the background that would make anyone who knew the dance moves want to get up and shake it, too.

But wait!

We can shake it, too!

On the Fit's website was posted the instructions to the dance, in Japanese, along with their official announcement of their Youtube dance contest. That was when bunches of Japanese Youtubers picked up their webcams, shook it, and advertised their imaginary packs of gum.

A Fit's Entry
Another Fit's Entry
A Third Fit's Entry (my personal favorite)
A Fourth Fit's Entry (WHOA, foreigners?! No way. :P)

As far as I know, Fit's company (LOTTE) has promoted 32 entries. Now-- if this seems crazy or pointless to you, just think back a little-- just how many commercials have us Americans obsessed over?

Visa? (There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.)

Geico? (The gecko AND the cavemen. AND the cash with the googly eyes.)

Freecreditreport.com? ("My legs are stickin' to the vinyl and my posse's gettin' laughed at!")

Remember those? :P

--JPOtaku

My Japanese Progress!

Lately, since it's summer vacation, I have been able to do a LOT more Japanese. Particularly, I have been trying to learn more kanji to correspond with new adjectives and verbs I've been memorizing.

But, it turns out that I have an unexpected problem. Since it's spring break, most would take a break from all of their studies, educational or otherwise. I, however... am way too obsessed to take any sort of break.

Exactly how obsessed? I mean, "Learn 5 kanji every day", "finish 2 chapters of 'Japanese for Dummies'" obsessed. By the way, recently I've been using this extremely useful website called smart.fm, which helps you with learning various things using flashcard-like quizzes. It's extremely addictive, and it even features some exercises from Tofugu.com's Koichi-ben. Check it-- it's in the sidebar.

This blog post from Tofugu.com helped me a lot to budget my time wisely and to not overwork myself. It's also useful for those who find themselves not able to study enough. Perhaps it'd help you, whether or not you are studying Japanese!

Enjoy,

JPOtaku