On Sunday I finally took the JLPT N3 exam of 2011 in the Humanities building of San Francisco State University, San Francisco, United States. It wasn’t a completely new experience since it’s like any other big exams, but there are some unique parts of it that are worth mentioning. In this guide I will talk [...]
最近、元気ですか？ Now we shall, finally, learn how to say no. We know that “da” and “desu” are to-be indicators. “Gakusei-desu-ka?” means “Are you a student?” But what if you want to make a negative statement, such as “No, I’m not a doctor” or simply “no”? That’s what we are going to learn today. Just as [...]
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It’s finally the holiday shopping season and what goods are out there for us anime fans to shop for? Well, I have spent quite some time on research and put together this HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE of Anime DVDs for you. We all love collections. It can be old classics like Saint Seiya, [...]
Naturalness Meter: High Vocabulary Expectations: country names, job titles, basic pronouns, basic greetings, several surnames. Expression Expectations: honorific suffixes (-san, -kun, etc), pronoun omission. (Starting with this session, I’ll use dots (.) to separate kanji readings: 写真 sha.shinn) Happy 11.11.11… Well not anymore when this session is actually published. Oh well, happy veteran weekend [...]
Naturalness Meter: High Welcome back to Chalkboard. Let’s continue what we learned last time and take a look at だ’s polite form today. Desu Before we get into the when’s and where’s, let’s understand what this “polite form” is first. Polite speech, or 丁寧語 (tei-nei-go), refers to a group of verbs, nouns, adjectives and indicators [...]
Naturalness Meter: Extremely low (What is this naturalness meter? In order for me to help you deeply understand the intricacies of this language, we have to study the mechanical structure before we get into “how people actually talk”. When you see the meter rises to “medium” or “high”, you know you are on your way [...]
So you are learning Japanese and having difficulties reading engadget.jp, nicovideo.jp or anywebsite.jp. Today I’m going to introduce you the best Google Chrome plugin I’ve found yet – Rikaikun. Many people are like me who are too lazy to copy – paste – translate and revolve this merry-go-around countless times. It’s tedious and boring, and [...]
Last time we went over mainly the writing part of Kanji. Yes remember pictograms and ideographs and all those fun we had? Today I’m going to dive deeper into a special area about Kanji that you’d have to pay special attention to. It’s what confuses most people – the reading of kanji. Like we [...]
I’m 120% sure that everybody has seen some form of Kanji, or more commonly known as “Chinese characters”. These unreadable and complicated little structures at one time powered the entire east-asian civilization, spanning from Vietnam, China to Korea, Japan. So what exactly are these characters? How do they work? And how should I approach them [...]
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?”-Frederich Nietzsche Monsters come in a vast multitude of forms and varieties. From the serpent-haired Gorgon Medusa to the reanimated monstrosity known as Frankenstein’s Monster; monsters are a staple [...]
I apologize for the lateness of the review (a seemingly more common thing nowadays, huh? Oh well), for I have been wrapped up in my studies. I wish they were studies on the occult, however. That would be much more fascinating than boring ol’ regular school. It’s possibly more life-threatening, assuming this stuff was real, [...]
“A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and en-kindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.” -George Jean Nathan Love is a truly unique and fascinating emotion. Authors have written about its power, singers have written [...]
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” –John Lennon “Growing up” is an essential and unavoidable aspect of every human being’s life. We often think maturity is measured in the same way age is measured; a numerical set of years. However, children can grow up surprisingly fast even at a young age when they are [...]
Hmph. This mystery is starting to bore me. Whether or not this show is any good at all is of no concern to me. Accessing my wellspring of knowledge, the fragments of Chaos all come together to form…an opinion on an anime series. That’s pretty anticlimactic. Gosick Episodes: 24 Originally aired: 27 December 2010 – [...]
