Rating My Blog

For everyone who has to rate my blog today, you can use these links and descriptions to check out all of the rating categories.

Language

Studying
Katakana
Composition 3

Content

Check out the flash cards and music on the right hand side bar and these posts:
Tanaka's bad day. (Spicy)
Weekend
Broccoli Ocarina
Anime

Layout

Have a look around.

Communication

These are my most commented posts:
I moved
Anime
Katakana Analysis
I may have left you comments too.

Consideration

Besides everything I've done in the blog entries themselves, there are links at the top right to translate the entire blog into English or　日本語 (Japanese). Google translate doesn't always do the best with words in Hiragana that are supposed to be in Kanji so not all the translations are 100% accurate. Sorry すみません.

Update Regularly

Check out the right side bar. Towards the bottom you can see all 20 posts on my blog this semester.

I hope everyone liked my blog.
じゃ　また　らいねん、
Josh

二十ねんごのわたし -- Me 20 years from now

日本に　います。　にほんの　せいかつが　とても　たのしいです。人が　すてきです。


わたしは　IMCの　しゃいん　です。　ミラーさんや　山田さんなどと　はたらきます。とても　いい　しごとです。　　


ときどき　ミラーさんは　わたしに　チリソースを　くれます。チリソースは　すきじゃ　ありませんが、　ミラーさんが、わかりません。　


せんしゅうの　金よう日の　ばんに　木むら　いずみさんと　しょくじします。　きむらさんは　たくさん　からい　たべものを　たべました。それから　四十分　おてあらいに　かかりました。いま　げんきです。


まいしゅうまつ　山田さんの　うちで　山田さんに　えいごを　おしえます。　山田さんは　えいごが　とても　すきですから、まいにち　二じかん　べんきょうしますが、なにも　ならいません。たいへんですね。でも、山田さんと　おくさんは　しんせつです。そして　いつも　たくさん　コーヒーが　あります。


たくさん　くにへ　いきましたが　日本が　いちばん　すきです。

植松伸夫 -- Nobuo Uematsu

One of my favorite Japanese musicians is Nobuo Uematsu.



He's the organ player/primary songwriter for The Black Mages and he wrote the music for almost every Final Fantasy game out there.

Some of the music is a little heavy, so you've got to be in to that sort of stuff to like it. I'm putting one of the more "friendly" songs in the "song of the day" box over there. Check it out if you have time.

わたなべさんは えいごを ならいます。

わたなべ　のぶおさん　きょねん　アメリカへ　きました。　えいごが　へたでした。ほんや　いきました。　そした　えいごの　ペーパーバックの　ほんを　かいました。わたなべさんは　ワクワクでしたが、その　ほんは　とても　むずかしかったです。　わたなべさんの　ともだちは　えいごが　わかりました　から　ともだちの　アパートへ　いきました。　わたなべさんの　ともだちは　わたなべに　コーヒーを　あげました。そした　わたなべに　えいごを　おしえました。まいしゅう　ともだちの　アパートヘ　バスで　いきました。　いま　わたなべさんは　えいごを　だいたい　わかりますから　ともだちに　えいごを　ならいません。　まいしゅう　ともだちと　サッカーを　します。

Katakana used in this story:

アメリカ – America　(loan)
ペーパーバック – Paperback (loan)
ワクワク – Excited (onomatopoeia)
アパート – Apartment (loan)
コーヒー – Coffee (loan)
バス – Bus (loan)
ペラペラ – Talkative (onomatopoeia)
サッカー – Soccer (loan)

にほんへ いきます (Written assignment 2)

こんにちは　やまださんと　やまださん。

ジャシュア　ロペズ　です。　はじめまして。　
　
いま　コロンビアだいがくで　にほんごを　べんきょうします。わたしの　だいがくは　
おもしろいですが、やさしくないです。まいばん　ごせん　一じまで　ねません。

わたしは　コンピューターサイエンスで　はたらきます。にぎやかじゃ　ありませんが、　とても
おもしろいです。そして　にほんで　コンピューター　サイエンスを　べんきょうします。

らいねんの　六がつ　四かに　にほんへ　いきます。　もう　ひこうきの　きっぷを　
かいました。この　りょこうは　すてきです。

どうぞ　よろしく　おねがいします。

天空のエスカフローネ

Time for another anime.

The Vision of Escaflowne

これは　ふるいですが、　いいです。　I first watched it like 七 years ago, and it wasn't new then, but I really dig this show. とても　たのしいです。　

It's basically a fantasy style "Girl gets pulled into another dimension" show, but it has mecha too. I think it's pretty rare to find a show that has both. So there's sword fights, dragons, seampunk airships, and a little bit of magic, and then there's space travel, and giant fighting robots. Oh, and don't be misled by the girls fawning over that track dude in the first episode. I promise, this is a shonen anime. That guy's in like 2 episodes. It's really not about him.

たいへんですね。

Who is this little guy? たなかさん maybe?



Seems like he's having a bad day. たなかさんの　たべものは　おいしくなかったです。　ざんねんですね。 I kind of feel sorry for the guy. Although it looks like the bitter stuff made him grow arms! (*_*)

Here たなかさん,　ケーキを　たべませんか。 とても　おいしいです。



Aww look. He likes it!

そろそろ　しつれいします。　じゃ　また。

Katakana Analysis

Okay, lets talk about Katakana!

For one of my Katakana sources, I brought Final Fantasy IV, one of the best in the series for those who know (Melissa maybe?). There's a lot of talk about crystals in the game, and whenever they're mentioned, the game writes it as クリストル. I tried to see if there was a word for crystal in Japanese and as far as I can tell, there is. Writing it in katakana doesn't really put any emphasis on the word in this case and it doesn't have to be a loan word so I was a little confused. Then I realized everything in the game was written in hiragana and katakana. No kanji. I'm not sure why this was done, maybe to save space in the original game cart. Anyway I can only assume that since the correct way to spell crystal in Japanese requires kanji, Squaresoft (the company who made the game) decided to use katakana so the word wouldn't look misspelled.

Yuxi brought song lyrics to class which included the words シアクセ　（Happiness), and イイヒト (good person). I believe both words can be written in Hiragana. But when people express their emotions in songs. Considering both of these words are things that could be expressed with emphasis, I guess writing them in Katakana makes the emotions in the song a little stronger. It's a little weird though, because it's impossible to tell how something is written when you're only listening to it. I don't know the song though. I guess the emotions would be apparent in the way it's being sung. If that's true, then the Katakana is probably there to make the written form match the way the song sounds.

さとうせんせい　told us Japanese was one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn. I guess every textbook has it's own approach to teaching it. I saw one that only used loan words for nouns in the first two chapters. This kind of book would have to give a pretty in depth description of katakana early on. Our book doesn't make a very big deal about the katakana, probably because most of it is in hiragana and kanji. I guess it all depends on how much the textbook intends to use katakana while teaching Japanese.

へやは あたらしい です

いま　わたしの　へやは　ニューヨークに　べんきょします。　きょう　かえります。　

What I'm basically trying to say is that I moved to an apartment in New York today. I'm still waiting for my roommate to show up (if I even have one).

If anyone wants to study for げつようびの　テスト, にちようびの　ろくじに　Lerner Hallの　さんかいで　べんきょしますよ。

じゃ　また。

にわで はたらきました

みなさん　こんにちは

せんしょう　の　どようび　わたし　の　ともだちに　コルンビアだいがく　の　にわで　あいました。　CUFSUと　にわで　はたらきました。　それから　ひるごはんを　たべました。　ごはんと　やさいを　たべました。　ごご　じゅうじに　ちかてつで　かえりました。

じゃまた

ブロッコリーのやさい

Youtubeで　これを　みつけました。

どうぞ



(I know it's nowhere near Christmas, but this is too weird not to post.)

インターネットは　へん　ですね。

So Columbia offered me housing on 108th st. I think I'm going to take it. It will be great to not take the subway every day to school.

わたしの しゅくだいは ダメます

だれのせんこうは コンピュータサイエンス　ですか。 アィさんの　ですね。　Anyway, if you don't know java, just skip to══╗
                                   ║
╔══════════════════════════════════╝
║ I had an assignment that was supposed to run さん algorithms
║ in an HTML page. I did it, but I commented　out 　　　
║　the line of code that switches between algorithms while I
║ was testing it and I forgot to uncomment it before I turned
║ it in. Instead of さん different algorithms, it did いち　
║ algorithm さんかい. じゅう POINTS OFF!!!!! For に　lousy slashes.
║ ダメます！
║
╚══(there)══╗
            ║
╔═══════════╝
↓

Anyway I think the flashcard site I linked to is a little inconvenient. I'm going to try to build my own flash card applet that will hopefully be cleaner and easier to manage. Would anyone use this? I might be able to make it work on an iPod/iPhone too if that makes it any better.

わたしは　はたらきます.　So that's all for now.

まいにち べんきょうします。

こんにちは

ちかにかいで　べんきょうします。　ここは　しずかなです。　ごぜん　よんじはん　にます。　ごぜん　ななじ　にます。　こんばんは　やすみます。

じゃまた。

Flash Cards

If anyone is interested, I made some online flashcards with all the vocab for the first test.

http://bit.ly/2fz7Zz

あにめを みってください

みらさん　こんにちは。

Who else think this video was hilariously awkward?




Anyway it sems like I'm the only one who hasn't posted some kind of anime yet. So...　どうぞ。



This is the first series I ever watched, back when I was じゅうよんさい. Unfortunately, I could only find an えいご　dub to post here. わるいです, but the にほんご　version おもしろい　です。

I didn't know there were different kinds of Anime at first, しょにん　or しょじょ,　and a friend of mine suggested I watch this one. I didn't realize it was a しょじょ at the time.



Still, a small group of people with mystical powers saving the world from bad guys who also have mystical powers? Sounds sort of like Buffy or Harry, and the fight scenes were pretty good.

Okay, back to studying. げつようび　is right around the corner.

まいにちね ねません

こんにちは

This class is really starting to get hard. I feel like I don't sleep at all anymore. きの　わたしは　ごぜん　しちじ　から　ごせん　くうじ　まで　にます。

Last semester I had a physics class that was really kicking my butt. Then a few of us from class got together and formed a study group and it really saved my life.

Would anyone be interested in doing that for this class? I was thinking of getting together once a week for an hour or two (or more if a bunch of people want to).

I'm free before and after class on Tuesday, and after class on Thursday.

There's a form you can fill out and you can view everyone's availability.

Form: http://bit.ly/1a9g3a

Results: http://bit.ly/12x1Qy

Kind of amazing

This has nothing to do with Japanese but it's too awesome not to post

Guestbook Issues

Hi everyone,

I can't type hiragana at work so this will have to be an English post.

It seems the guestbook at the bottom of the page doesn't like Japanese characters very much. They all come out as these weird unicode symbols. Thanks to Melissa and Hein for leaving comments, but I can't see what they are (Q_Q). The regular comments should be able to show the hiragana without any trouble so I'm probably just going to get rid of the guestbook.

Why Japanese?

I get asked that question a lot. The short answer, of course, is:
"I don't know. Why not?"

A better answer is that I'm probably only going to get to study a foreign language at Columbia this one time and I don't want to waste it on something like Spanish, which I could probably learn anywhere; most of my family speak it as their first language.  

I've actually tried to learn Japanese before. I don't know why, I've always just wanted to. It probably has something to do with Anime and video games,but it's also Japanese music, and Japanese history. I definitely want to go to Japan and it would be great if I wasn't just
a dumb American touristwhen I'm there. Plus the language just sounds cool when people are speaking it.

I have some of those Teach Yourself Japanese books, I've tried Rosetta Stone. You can only do so much with that stuff though. What I need is a real class.

So here I am, ready to learn!*

*May not actually be me in the picture

Seriously though, there's no part of this class I'm not excited about (except for maybe the tests). I want to learn the language, have fun, and maybe make some friends along the way. I especially need to have more Japanese conversations because putting everything together has been a challenge. I know what the words mean, but I don't always know exactly how to put them together. If anyone wants to have a study group, I'm up for it.

That's about it, I have an appointment with a textbook now so I'll see you in class.じゃ　また

はじめまして

わたしは　ジョシュアです。
コランビアだいがくのがくせいです。
さんねんせいです。
BMCC　からきました。

ニューヨークから　きました。