what i learned this week

getting help on your kanji homework from your japanese friends at an izakaya is way more fun than sitting at home alone looking things up over and over in dictionaries.  it's faster too -- i think i got the problems done in 1/4 the usual time last night.  i also remember the explanations my friends gave more vividly than i would something printed in tiny text in one of the tomes i consult.  the only pitfall?  you get soy sauce on your homework!  think i can live with that, though.  we really had a good time and i was tickled that they were so interested in helping out. they were knocking back draft beers and arguing among one another as to what the best translation was, even looking up characters on little side tangents just out of their own curiosity.

it was fun to see them really get into analyzing their own language from a non-native speaker's perspective.  i don't get to do that so much either, so when megu-chan wanted help translating an english paragraph i enjoyed helping her out.  can even see why she was having trouble -- the english original was very poorly written and even missing a word!

i just finished watching attack the gas station.  well, not really.  it was pretty boring.  there was truth in advertising -- they did indeed attack a gas station -- but it didn't really pick up from there.  the social commentary reviews claimed was there, well, it was pretty light if you ask me.  before long i dragged my laptop into the living room and started looking up reviews for canon wordtanks.  at this stage of the game in my japanese study it's becoming clear i need to know usage as well as vocabulary and a word tank, while expensive, will do the trick much better than my current hodgepodge of dictionaries both dead tree edition and net-based (wwwjdic is the best!).

as hard as i was working this week i also spent a lot more time out socializing with friends than i usually do.  tuesday i watched the sox stomp all over the nationals at riviera, a great sox-friendly bar here in new york, with shan & todd.  wednesday i went out for sushi at todai with buddies from work.  then, last night was the great drink-while-you-study-a-thon.  never tried that one before but hey, i was ready for class tonight so i guess it worked all right!  truth is i was planning to go straight home after my calligraphy class but my japanese friends weren't having any of that and when they found out i was going home to study japanese they said "hey!  we'll help you study japanese!  you'll be done with your homework in 30 minutes and you'll get to drink beer with us!"  i had to admit it did sound pretty good!

thanks guys!

Comments

[eladyland]

Well hello! Nice to hear from you. I love your site and have been a fan of it for a while... how did you get started with the kotowaza?

I use Tuttle's Kanji Learner's Dictionary for the kanji lookups and Langenscheidt's little yellow pocket Japanese dictionary for the odd word here and there. Both were immensely useful while I was living in Japan and getting online with the language but the Langenscheidt one is of course a little unwieldy now that I have to look up more complicated words.

Never heard of the Luminous dictionary before. Pretty name. What about it works well for you? I haven't found much about it on the web but it looks like there are separate wa-ei and ei-wa volumes:

http://www.kenkyusha.co.jp/guide/lumEJJE02.html

[Eric Bohn]

Howdy! I've been kinda hovering ever since I noticed you linked to me... basically looking for an icebreaker. Found it!

Which "dead tree" dictionaries do you use? Try Kenkyusha's "Luminous" if you haven't already.