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Yeah, “Jvlogger” refers to non-Japanese YouTubers vlogging about Japan, aimed at other non-Japanese people (though they tend to get lots of Japanese subscribers too).
Yes! Some of you guys now like them too :D I’m glad I downloaded the completely wrong album by mistake ;)
They’ve made 3 albums and I’ve listened to the latter 2 so far. Since they won’t be putting out any new music, I’m kinda holding off listening to the other album for a bit, to pace myself hehe.
I learned that the bassist and drummer from Stereopony joined another band together called… Draft Kings, I think. I’ve only heard one of their songs but they’re not bad (however, I think I prefer the singer from Stereopony, although she’s starting a duo called Alice in Underground which I’m not really a fan of).
Also, Stereophonics are good too :)
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I’ll have a look at them all tomorrow, hopefully. Right now, I’m procrastinating badly and should really go to bed haha :/
I’m subscribed to Rachel and Jun and watch Gimmeabreakman’s videos from time to time but wouldn’t really say I “follow” the community. I’m definitely more aware of other people in the Jvlogging community after the whole “Mira-gate” thing a month or so ago, though (man, was that entertaining to watch unfold). I hadn’t really heard of Unrested or Sharla In Japan or many others until then.
I’m also subscribed to TheJapanChannelDCom, but he’s kinda his own entity, away from all the main Jvlogging crowd, the whippersnappers that they are (besides Victor, of course).
I went through all of RTK 1 diligently, and now use the method missingno15 described in regards to the actual readings.
To be honest, I do think I could have done RTK in a more efficient way. The best thing to come out of it was a familiarity with kanji in general rather than being able to remember each and every one of them. Before RTK, kanji were basically a mass of inscrutable squiggles, but after, they made sense as individual characters and became way less “scary”. If that makes sense. If I’d focussed on gaining this familiarity rather than doing countless reps on the old flash cards trying to nail down all the English keywords perfectly, I could have finished much quicker, and possibly had similar results.
What I mean by “focussing on gaining familiarity” is to just learn the radicals and how they fit together to form kanji, also stroke order. Don’t bother with the English keyword “meanings” as much as they’ll come with learning vocab. I did RTK 1 a few years ago and I’ve now forgotten the vast majority of the meanings that I worked so hard to memorise. Nowadays, instead of recalling the Heisig keyword for 動, I just think of the words it’s featured in like 運動, 動く, 自動車, and that helps me with the meaning when I see new words. If I hadn’t specifically learned that Heisig keyword, I would have got the meaning eventually through vocab, which is basically what missingno15 is talking about in relation to kanji *readings*.
But maybe learning all those keywords and them gradually being phased out is how RTK is supposed to work. Maybe if I’d taken a more streamlined approach, it wouldn’t have worked as well. I really can’t tell unless I could go back and do it again.
When it comes to learning readings though, I’ll agree with something I think missingno15 was saying. Even if you learn the readings for a kanji, when you come across a new word featuring that kanji, you may be able to guess how it’s read (with a certain % success rate), but you still have to learn *which* reading is actually used and what it means, so does the reading actually help much in that regard? I think readings do help a little in *remembering* how a word is read after you’ve already seen it, but as has been said, these readings can be naturally acquired over time by learning lots of words.
@michicachan999: “The guy in the first video” is missingno15 himself ;)
@missingno15: You said in your video you were taking a year off to focus on programming. What exactly are you working on? Just curious :)
Also, it’s weird seeing you on video for the first time after having “known” you for a few years already!
Also, thanks again for Tobira, it’s pretty good :D Still not finished it as I’ve been busy with uni stuff for most of the time since I got it, but I’m getting there; about halfway through atm.
Eh, it was a few years ago now that I tried it so I can’t quite remember. I have a feeling I didn’t get much more done which was also part of the reason I stopped.
Another aspect of the napping I struggled with was actually taking the naps on time. If I’d planned to nap at a certain time each day, often when it got to that time I’d feel “I don’t really want to sleep, I’d rather just stay away awake and do stuff. I’ll just nap later”, which lead to just not napping at all. Even though I was technically gaining more time awake each day, it felt like sleeping during the day was wasting time (even though it wasn’t due to the shortened sleep at night).
Overall, I didn’t really like it, it didn’t work for me. Maybe you’ll have more success though. Try it out and let us know how you found it.
What I really need right now is not to have more hours in the day, but to be more productive in the hours I do have. If I were to be given a couple of extra hours each day, that would just mean a couple extra hours procrastinating ;) I could sleep 8-9 hours a day and still get plenty of studying done since I’m off for the summer, but I don’t because I’m lazy and undisciplined and lacking all motivation (though that applies to everything, not just Japanese).
What sort of bad habits could it lead to? As long as you learn dictionary form at some point, you should be fine, right?
Tobira is pretty good, but yeah, there’s no way you’d be able to tackle after only doing TextFugu. Maybe have a look at Tae Kim’s guide? It covers stuff TF covers plus lots more.
guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
Do you not need to give it a week or two to start working (in other words, stop feeling like death)? I can’t remember, I haven’t read about it in a while.
I tried it but found it really difficult to nap during the day. It would take me ages to get to sleep meaning it was difficult to know when to set my alarm so that I’d get 20 minutes (plus it takes away from that extra time you’re supposed to be getting during the day).
By “council worker”, I was assuming he meant “civil servant” or “someone who works for the council”, but maybe he didn’t.
And yeah, しかいじゅいぎょういん isn’t related to 協議会の労働者（きょう・ぎ・かい・の・ろう・どう・しゃ）in any way, I think you copied the wrong word. Did you mean 市会従業員（し・かい・じゅう・ぎょう・いん）?
Just a word of warning, TextFugu is for absolute beginners. It’s the kind of thing that might have helped when you started your degree but definitely not now that you’ve finished. The content that is here could likely be covered in much less than an academic year (maybe even one semester if you worked quickly enough), so unless your university went at an absolute snail’s pace, TextFugu won’t be of any use to you. If you have already spent money on it, have a look at the later lessons and you’ll see my point (then get a refund). Also, there won’t be any more difficult content for the foreseeable future, despite what Koichi says.
I’m just wondering, shouldn’t a degree in a language leave you with language skills enough to live comfortably in the given country, or enough skill to do translation work (with a little extra specialised training afterwards)? Not necessarily “fluent” but… “semi-fluent” (though I guess it depends how you want to define that). To be fair, I’m going into my 4th year of Computer Science and don’t feel that qualified to do much, but I thought languages might be different… for some reason.
You learn something new every day :)
Now, if I could just learn a second new thing about Japanese today, that would be great. The fact I haven’t yet shows I should really get some more studying done…@Eihiko: There’s a difference between passive and active vocabulary. Active is when you can actually use the words in a sentence, whereas passive is when you can understand a word when you see/hear it but couldn’t necessarily come up with it off the top of your head. Just because you can’t recall a word easily when speaking with a native doesn’t mean you don’t *know* it. Really, Anki should be getting the words into your passive vocabulary and practice and experience should be shifting it into your active vocabulary. Failing a word because you don’t think you’d be able to come up with it on the spot probably isn’t helping the spaced repetition algorithm work as effectively.
When you think about it, Anki is actually only testing your passive knowledge of the words. It’s giving you the word and asking for the meaning/translation, not asking you to produce the words from memory. Since it’s only training you in this way, you can’t reasonably expect to have a mastery of the words just from answering flash cards in Anki. And now I’m just realising other people have different deck set ups than I do, so it depends how you do your cards.
TL;DR – You’re probably being a bit too strict with your cards because of reasons.
“Because it looks fine to me.”
Really? Can you just join the two together like that? はれ ときどき あめ doesn’t look right to me. Maybe make it はれ で ときどき あめ, or stick a comma in there instead. I’m not sure, but it doesn’t seem correct as it is.
I was about to say just leave a translator’s note. Like with that word game you were talking about before, the translators totally mangled it while trying to turn it into English. Sometimes it just doesn’t work.
I’ll have a think of how you might be able to word it, but in the mean time, I’d say leave a note instead.
