Not that I have that much to write (well, we'll see - I can probably still make this long), since all I've been doing all day, every day is study\. I've been to Gusto four of the last five days, each time for at least five hours, to study (see this entry for a short list reasons I find Gusto suitable for studying/schoolwork, although i notice that it fails to mention that Gusto is a lot warmer than my room, which is also very important).
Y'know what? In the name of organization/readability, today's entry is gonna have headings.
About what I've been doing the last five days (studying):
I finished going through Tobira today. I had hoped to do it in three days, after doing the first third in one day, but, as it turns out, the book really does get harder/have more content per chapter as it goes on, as I remembered (not just the way I perceived it), so it ultimately took me about four and a half days. I've got of 2/3 of it (that is, of the parts of it that I didn't already know solidly, which was, liek, 2/3 of the list content of the book) entered into my SRS (flashcard system). In each chapter there are two or three (or four) readings, which have an accompanying vocabulary list of words that appear in the readings, to help you understand the reading. Only a subset of the words on those list were mandatory to memorize when we used the book in class, so of course I only memorized those words (and then, only the kanji of a large subset of those words were required). This time, however, in the spirit of getting as many words as possible (especially since information about the words is already conveniently gathered for me, and in a source I trust), I memorized the entire lists and all the kanji. This meant learning some weird words with English translations like "Batter being hit by a pitch (in baseball)," but it was fun.
This might be immoderately nerdy to say, but reviewing Tobira was amazing and, for an activity that meant sitting and studying for 25 hours or so, really exciting. This was partly because it was a lot of stuff I sort of vaguely remembered and which thus pushed "oh yeah!" buttons in my brain, but, more than anything, it was because I've completed RTK1 now. What's exciting, specifically, is how different studying Japanese is now to how it was before. It would be a gross exaggeration to say it's transparent now, but it's definitely a whole lot more translucent. I just notice so many things about words and the way they're connected and things... It's really amazing. And so much easier. Plus, Tobira really is good for a textbook (a medium which I am increasingly coming to doubt as useful to language study).
About a criminal apprehended at Mitaka Dorm:
In other news, notably: Mitaka Dorm (where I live) was in the news! But not in a good way. T
My translation of the article I just linked to:
On the 10th in Mitaka [yesterday], a 24 year-old man (unemployed, with no permanent address) was caught in the act of trespassing inside a building of Tokyo's University of Tokyo student dormitory, and arrested. It seems that what appears to be the remains of an infant were found in his bag.
According to police headquarters, on the afternoon of the tenth, the man was discovered trespassing on University of Tokyo Mitaka Dorm's grounds by staff, who reported him to police. The man was arrested there, and in his rucksack what appear to be the remains of an infant were found. They were severely decayed, and the man is saying that it's the remains of a child of his own that was born five or six years ago. Additionally, a woman who knows the man living in the area of Tokyo said at police headquarters is saying that she gave birth ten years ago, took care of the child at home, and then handed the child over to the man.
The police are still getting more detailed information from them.
Scary! In general, Japan is very safe (much more than the US), and Mitaka is kind of an upper-middle class suburb that's quite nice, so such an event is really surprising.
Koutaro messaged me after he saw it on the news and told me about it.
Actually, I saw the camera man from the news crew today filming from outside the dorm grounds as I was leaving today, but didn't really think much of it. Koutaro was asking me if there were a lot of police here, but I was out most of the afternoon yesterday and didn't see anything.
Plans for the near future:
Some people are going to Kamakura tomorrow... Fff, I really want to go (I still haven't been!). But I have to meet with Heiwa Nakajima, which... Well, I don't know how that'll be. 9_6 Well, hopefully I'll go to Kamakura when it's warmer, anyway.
I think I'll go to Kyoto with Miyamoto in a couple weeks! He's from the area, so he offered to guide me. Needless to say, I I'll lodge with Joon Woo, who will also be there, to save us both a little money, though Joon Woo will probably be doing his own thing during the days. I'll probably only stay two nights, to save money and time, but I'm really looking forward to it! Kyoto is pretty much the only place I knew I wanted to visit no matter what since before I got to Japan, and going with Miyamocchan is such a lucky opportunity. Wu Di, Chen Ken, Yang Rui (and maybe Yu Cheng?) are also going to be in the Osaka/Kyoto at the same time, but I'm not sure if we'll rendezvous with them or not.
Other plans: study. Continue reviewing RTK and Tobira via SRS, and next dive into the JLPT Level 2 study material. After that... I dunno. I guess I'll probably just buy a bunch of books and manga to read and rent/stream a ton of video. I'm not yet there, but I do sense that I'm approaching a point (mind you, I'm going really fast right now) where I'll need to put down the lists and just plug myself into having as much native Japanese as possible flowing through my brain. Not sure if I want to go through the J5 textbook lists... I'm sure there are a lot of good words, but the book is not so great, and I came to be really distrustful of the vocabulary list translations last semester. If I go through the JLPT Level 2 list, that'll probably cover most of it, anyway...
Still no entry on Hokkaido/Hakone, but,
After completing RTK I gave myself a night off to compile this video that I took on the Hakone trip. As for some of it... Well, maybe taking video on a trip with Boccha sensei wasn't the best idea, and I hesitated to tag people... But, ah, no sense worrying about it. XD To paste the description I wrote on Facebook:
Video I made of AIKOM and Friends trip to Hakone, 22-23 Feb 2010.
Thanks to everyone for being a good sport and letting me film them! I tried to get at least a little of everyone in, but I know there are a couple people I missed.
Some stats on this video:
Number of jokes about Takao Kasei's name and 高尾山: 2
Number of times I get accused of tousatsu: 3 (plus two that didn't make the final cut)
Accurate descriptions of Hakone Sekisho: 2
Fictional descriptions of Hakone Sekisho: 2
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