chelshock, posts by tag: japanese learnings - LiveJournal

i've suddenly figured my kanji training game out. feels good~

... not like i've read that many. but if i had to choose, i would probably end up saying that my favorite manga is saint young men. i read it here since there's apparently no plans anywhere to license it in the states. WHICH IS A TRAGEDY BECAUSE IT'S HILARIOUS.

but anyways, it's not fully scanlated yet, but i'm sharing my favorite parts. the storyline is basically following jesus and buddha as they take a modern-day vacation down to earth and live in an apartment together. most of my comments are going to relate to the jesus jokes, but i'm sure the buddha jokes that went over my head were also just as hilarious. a knowledge of either religion (or both, of course) would be beneficial.

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i should start banning some songs from my driving playlist, because listening to "toilet paper man" while the whole road is covered in ice is not a good thing. i tend to feel the urge to headbang to nakai's (as boo calls it) "screeching through each line" brand of singing and it does not give me much control if the car happens to fishtail. this also goes for "get your dream", "harukana yakusoku", and "lucky man". i have a dancing in the car problem. seriously.

there are many downfalls to living on a corner lot. in the summer, it's mowing our huge lawn (which i have done a total of once in the ten years we've lived here) and in the winter, it's the lack of house/tree barriers for the wind and cold. i always forget how much having other things around the outside of the house helps with the cold until winter comes around again. it's FREEZING all the time. i have long-underwear-style fabric leggings under knee-high cable knit socks and my legs are still cold. this is turribul.

because of the weather, the mitsuwa trip with my japanese class was canceled. we're having a sushi party in the classroom for the last day. still awesome and delicious, but not as amazing as katsudon. mmmm katsudon.

apparently a lot of the schools up north had a snow day today. i'm hoping for one tomorrow, but that's probably not going to happen. we had two snow days in a row this time last year, so it's not unheard of, but i doubt we're going to be that lucky. it'd be nice, though. i could use the extra sleep.

weather whining aside, WTF HIRO YOUR PHOTOBOOK DOES NOT HAVE THE NUDE PHOTOS THAT I WAS PROMISED. my copy's coming in tomorrow, so i'm only going by what's been uploaded, but still. at least there's a lot of shots of hiro eating to satisfy the weird hiro-eating-fetish that no1_antielitist and i share. (AS IT SHOULD, because the calendar had NOTHING.) but nudity aside, it looks like a pretty good photobook! nothing's ever going to top his first photobook for the richie pseudo-child love, but it does have this gem. for being billed as his first "grown up" photobook, he sure looks like a manchild in most of the photos. but that's how i like him, so it's all good.

first, WTF POUPEE. i am so confused about the deleting/category changes but all i know for sure is that i am not happy about having to delete my deco-den dsi cover :(

is anyone else trying to buy hiro's new nudie photobook? the only place i can find it for sale at is yahoo! japan and between my very tenuous grasp on japanese and two online translators, i'm scared to actually make a purchase. did anyone else buy it from somewhere? neither cdjapan nor yesasia is stocking it. (yet? hopefully.) UGH. NEVERMIND neocopasetic IS AWESOME AND LINKED ME TO ANOTHER SITE. idk why it would take my credit card but not my debit, but whatever. the end of my year is going to be so hiro-full! his calendar ships in a few days, then this ships next month! ♥

daylight savings time is still throwing me off and i don't even know how. it probably has to do with me going to sleep at 4am on monday, too. my brain and body are not communicating anymore.

[edit:] ALSO because i forgot about this yesterday, did anyone else make this connection in the new jun/aiba photoshoot?

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my mom has a beautiful garden in the front of the house. neighbors compliment her on it quite often! it's really her pride and joy. well, until this season, when we got a few unwanted visitors. at first, we thought a rabbit who frequented the yard was eating all the flowers and leaves, but mom thought it was cute so she let it be. then she found holes all over the front yard.

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i've got mixed feelings about this. on one hand, mom's garden is being destroyed and she's actually really broken up over it. plus we just got rid of these awful garden grubs that half of our block had that were tearing up the grass. we can't have a nice yard anymore. on the other hand OMG MOLES THEY ARE SO CUTE I WANT TO SEE ONE.

mom said that she had no idea how to even catch a mole short of calling an exterminator. like the fool i am, i told her i knew how to catch a mole, then backpedaled when i realized that i was about to share information i learned from a japanese variety show. lol so lame.

OH, ALSO! HAPPY BIRTHDAY operation_idol! hope it's been an awesome one ♥

i went to my first japanese class last night. pops went last week when the class actually started and i think he expected to be able to teach me what i missed, but i ended up helping him with his grammar and pronounciation. he's such a perfectionist, but because of the week he's had (grandpa's brain surgery is today and grandma was recently put into assisted living) he had no time to study except for the few hours with me on wednesday. he was really nervous on the way to class, so we ran over the grammar and hiragana sounds in the car. i also suggested that we start using the grammar as much as possible, so i said "oyasuminasai!" to him instead of goodnight and it took him a moment to reply. aw, pops.

it was a lot of fun, though! the teacher brings in a japanese snack each week and pretty much forces us to try them. XD this week was a... i don't even know. they looked like churros, but they were kind of the consistency of cheetos and soy sauce flavored. i liked them, but pops is not very fond of soy sauce, so i ended up eating the other half of his along with mine.

there's a few people in class who are that kind of student. the ones who have self-studied and are ready to flaunt their knowledge at any opportunity. one of them sits next to pops and he's constantly saying things before the teacher can finish and using vocabulary we haven't learned yet. and it's not even impressive vocabulary - it's random words that don't really even apply to what we're learning. ugh. we do have a sixteen year old girl in class who is pretty precious. she's apparently studying a few languages at the same time. i would get so confused. D:

the teacher praised my pronunciation a few times in class, which i was a little surprised about. i completely credit that to the sheer amount of japanese variety shows i watch, which is pretty sad, actually. she also told me that i did a good job at the end of class when we were saying goodbye. when she realizes that i'm almost at the end of my japanese knowledge, she'll change her tune. haha.

my favorite part of the night was when nakamura-sensei was talking to us about one the characters in our dialogue because his name was shingo. she said something like "shingo! a man's name. NEVER A WOMAN'S NAME." all i could think of was


ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT, SENSEI?