Genki Japan Blog はじめまして。

Learning anything, let alone a foreign language, is like boiling water. To boil water, you simply set a pot of cold water on something hot and wait until it begins to bubble rapidly. That’s it. It’s not hard at all, and that boiling water can used for cooking a variety of things once it boils, much like how you can use your language acquisition for any number of things once you have it. There’s only one catch: you can’t turn the heat off at any point in time or the water will grow cold and you’ll have to start all over again regardless of how far along you were in the boiling process. So, if the water is foreign language, then what is the heat? It’s study material and native material you watch, listen to, or read. I’m not going to focus on the study material, as I’ve reviewed all kinds of that on this website, but rather on native material. By native material I mean anything that’s intended for native audiences. Since this particular blog is about Japanese, it means things like anime, ...

ICO will always hold a special place in my heart, and is one of the best games that came out for the PlayStation 2. It’s a beautiful game in every sense of the word, and I dare anyone who says that video games aren’t real art to play this game and its prequel Shadow of the Colossus . These games are really art games, in the same sense that some films are art films. ICO is simplistic, minimalist in nature, and manages to accomplish its goal to make the player feel a real connection to the characters, not in the role-play sense, but in the sense that Yorda is someone you actually care about, the castle really picks at your brain, and you feel the burden of Ico himself. Unfortunately, the NTSC version of the game leaves much to be desired, seeing as how it’s unfinished. You can beat the game, but the AI isn’t as good as other versions of the game, some of the puzzles are different, and some of the extras are missing. That doesn’t make the game bad, but it certainly isn’t that great. Luc...

When I reviewed TextFugu for a second time , I mentioned Gakuu and how TextFugu members could get 80% off. Well, I decided to give it a go and see what to make of it. What I discovered is a goldmine for sentence mining, and a great way to understand the way the Japanese talk, especially when things aren't nice and clear like they are in textbooks. My first impression was that it was TextFugu for intermediate and advanced students, and what I found was something different, and almost better. It won't overshadow TextFugu, which will continue to grow into its own advanced material, but is excellent as a suppliment for a textbook, or an amazing find if you're an input person. Output people, I'm afraid this might not be your cup of tea. Apparently the Gakuranman, as he studied Japanese through textbooks, discovered that they just weren't doing it for him the way they were when he was a beginner. Basically, they didn't seem to be teaching "real world" Japan...

Yes, I know it's Monday, but I was busy Friday working on my second part of Anki. Anyway, Today I'm reviewing The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Plot Overview: Cynical Kyon finds himself going to high school surrounded by aliens, espers, time travelers, and one very, very powerful teenage girl, Haruhi Suzumiya. I'm sure everyone has heard of this anime before, as it seems to have taken the otaku subculture by storm, thanks to it's witty characters, excellent script, and that one dance . Basically, Kyon meets Haruhi, an eccentric girl who wishes to meet aliens, espers, time travelers, and basically anyone who isn't "normal" since that bores her. Dragging our poor protagonist into making an unofficial club, the SOS Brigade, of which its sole mission is to find these abnormal characters and have fun with them, she then manages to kidnap (I think Koizumi came willingly, and she apparently inherited Yuki along with the room) a few other students to complete th...

In my last post , I reviewed Anki, a flashcard srs (spaced repition system) program that is almost essential for language learning. Now, I'm going to talk about the most common ways to use this flashcard program, as people have come up with ingenious ways to use this program to help them learn that I for one wouldn't have thought of by myself, but I'm a bit slow I think. The most obvious way to use flashcards is to memorize facts. When I was in second grade, our teacher was obsessed with using flashcards to teach us math. We would have contests and competitions over these flashcards and who could get the most right or recall the answer fast enough. To share a little secret with you, math and I still don't get along, despite the flashcards. When learning a language and being told to make flashcards, most people try to make flashcards in the same way that they use them for mathematics or science, or any other subject. You write out the Japanese word on one side and the En...

Okay, so today's topic is a bit different than I originally intended. I was going to do a post about how studying is supposed to be fun, not taxing, and then I realized that I have a ton of reviews to do for anime, games, movies, learning tools, etc. As such, today's review is for Anki , my favorite flash card program. Back in the day when I was first thinking of reviewing flashcard programs, it was going to be iKnow/Smart.fm vs. Anki , but since iKnow is no longer free, it therefore is no longer worth my time to use and Anki wins the day just for being free. Flashcards can make life much, much easier for anyone learning Japanese, regardless of what method you go about using. If you study via the academic method, vocab lists are king, and flashcards can be pain to buy or make and quiz yourself on. The input method usually has the most flashcard users, as they rely on repition rather than instruction to give them the bulk of their knowledge, and even output people use them often...

When most people think of success, they tend to think of the past and present tense; what they have accomplished and what benefits are they reaping right now. For me, success isn't something tangible, nor is an accomplishment I've already made or a reward I'm enjoying at this very moment. For me, success is a mindset, and it's taken a lot of hard failures for me to realize this. Success in a language, or in anything for that matter, starts with your mind. You can't get anything accomplished if you don't put your all into it, and you won't put your all into it if you don't think it'll be worth it. It's more important than your method you use (as you can see, on this site I advocate them all, so long as they work for you), and it's more important than what book you use, what blog you read, or what website you're engrossed in. Growing up, the people around me and my own experiences taught me the greatest false lesson ever: never get your hop...