I am, in fact, still alive...

Thanks for checking in, though!

I personally think that the best excuse for not holding up one's end of a daily dedication is "homework" or "school". But, in this case, the dog didn't eat my homework. My homework ate... my time. *forced guffaw*

But, I am not here for excuses! I am here to give a nutshell edition of how I have been following my schedule for the past week or so, to take the place of my slightly longer explanation of part I of my Japanese Box. (I should give it a better name.)

First of all, writing and speaking on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays have been going exceptionally well. The only trouble I am having so far is what to review on Sundays' "Review Day". I find myself not being able to absorb information by just looking over them two times; in fact I probably am an auditory learner. I ended up just turning back to pages I had done on Monday, etc. and re-writing my notes on those days (which didn't help much at all).

 I also have trouble creating quizzes and tests for myself! If I know the material already on the test-- well, first of all, it takes away the authenticity of being able to have not studied some of the material (which is something I do often-- it's all a part of the fun), and secondly, it's not much of a review if I wrote the questions and answered them myself as well, unless I wrote the test a month in advance! Which would mean, I'd have to start planning for the test as soon as I begin a new unit. (I wonder if that's what real teachers do. In fact-- I should ask them.)

I used to have great fun creating Hiragana and Katakana quizzes for myself, which was much easier because I could structure the quiz without having known any of the characters yet:

Yeah, it's not such a great picture. 

Sorry...

But, as you can well imagine, I used lots of creativity and variety in my quizzes.

Just how creative do you think one can get with learning this kind of material? :(

Beside that, I have been doing pretty well with this new schedule! P.S. I am LOVING the book "Kanji Pictographix", which is a book that helps you easily memorize well over 1,000 Kanji pictographs, as well as both the Kana syllabaries. If you are looking into the study of Japanese writing, I highly recommend this book!

Have a great week!

--JP Otaku

About Japanese... umm....

I've been on it like skin on grapes! :D

Now, obviously, 3 months of absence is WAAAY too long to be catching you up on it all. So, what I'll do is, I'll mention the most important steps I've made, and just add in the rest.

First of all, I made a JAPANESE BOX! It's FULL (quite literally) of almost every single book I have ever bought pertaining to Japan, learning Japanese, things related to Japan, mangas in English that were translated from Japanese, notebooks in which I have written in or about Japanese, and much, much more. (Please stop drooling. ;D) 

Now, to make this box, all I had to do was to pretty much cut the flaps off of a cardboard box. Right now it is quite heavy, and as I am typing this it is in the same position as when I first took the picture. Now it might not be pretty, but I will of course decorate it by covering it with paper or something to that effect.

What purpose does the box serve? Well, of course, it puts all of my books straight in my face, so I'll never have to go looking around for them like a treasure hunt. But, it also gives me an inventory of the different types of books that I have, so I won't have to impulsively buy any book that I feel the need to buy at that exact moment. It also is a very effective inspiration, because it is just exciting to know how many books that are in there that I've gotten over the years. I have books in there that are 5 years old, and others that I have just gotten last week. That kind of visible persistence would spur anyone to get up and do what they most would like to do.

I should prolly go over what's IN the box! To do this, I will break up the types of books into four categories: 

1) Books about learning Japanese;

2) Small books about learning about Japanese;

3) Workbooks on learning Japanese;

4) Books about Japanese culture;

5) Books in Japanese;

6) Japanese entertainment-type books.

I'll post each of these categories after another. Thanks for reading, and cya tomorrow! :D