Genki Japan Blog はじめまして。

I really wanted to do a review for LingQ , and I wound up doing a long and crazy post about things that didn't have much to do with LingQ. As such, I am redoing this post in hopes of better clarifying what LingQ is and how well it works. For starters, anyone even remotely familiar with Steve Kauffman will know that he's a huge supporter of what is normally called the input method. That basically means that you learn a language simply through exposure to it. No grammar drills, just listening, reading, and anything else you can think of that will expose you to the language. As such, that is exactly what LingQ strives to do. The most frustrating thing about learning an Asian language through the input method, in my opinion, is that if you're reading a book or a non-editable pdf, if you come across a kanji you're not sure how to read, you can't just type it into a dictionary. That frustrates me a lot! That's why LingQ is so good about that. You just hover your mou...

I'm currently doing a ton of work, and preparing an article for Nerdy Goodness regarding the new The Last Airbender film, but I decided to take a break from everything and review this rather controversial method for learning the Kanji, despite the fact that it's Friday and I should be doing a Friday Review. The method in question, Heisig's infamous Remembering the Kanji Volume 1 . Why? Because, I myself have struggled with Kanji in the past. Heck, I struggle with Kanji in the present! Anyway, I was desperately looking for a method that would help me remember them (you've gotta know 2,000 of the things, you know). Although I learn best by repitition, it just wasn't cutting it. I know a lot of kanji just from regular use, but when I don't write them often enough, I just can't recall them! For me, I think I've found the answer in Heisig's method. In fact, I like it so well, that I'm going from the beginning onward rather than finding the trouble ka...

I told you I wasn’t gone for good! Today I’m going to be mostly bashing Rosetta Stone’s language learning software. This review goes for Rosetta Stone whether you’re learning Japanese or any other language that this software purports to teach. It purports to teach because Rosetta Stone is particularly bad at teaching anything, except how to look at pictures and repeat words. It’s aimed mostly for travelers, but doesn’t really get you conversing, and it’s expensive to boot. Really, there’s only a couple things it does well, but this isn’t enough to make up for all the failing this software does. If anyone from Rosetta Stone actually reads this, please use the criticism to improve your software! You probably already know that Rosetta Stone teaches you language easily, right? I mean, that’s what the advertisements always tell us! What Rosetta Stone tells us and what it actually does are like night and day, but if you really don’t know much about Rosetta Stone, here’s what allegedl...

It was the showdown of a century, but not really. Everyone made a big deal out of Joey Chestnut as usual, which I don't quite understand. I have a hard time watching Joey eat, as he looks like he's about to puke with ever bite he takes. Anyway, they gave him the whole "American Hero" treatment, mentioned that everybody, save for me, was counting Kobayashi out of this contest since he lost last year, etc. Anyway, when the eating started, it was pretty obvious that Kobayashi wasn't doing well. I read earlier that he has TMJ, which makes chewing extremely painful, and earlier in the program, he mentioned that his new stradegy was to inhale the bread to eliminate chewing. This plan obviously didn't work. Skipping forward, Kobayashi never really took the lead this match. He was always two or three hotdogs behind, but it doesn't matter, as Kobayashi kicked Chestnut's butt in pizza eating earlier this year!

It's that time again! No, not time to spin the Wheel of Morality, but time to watch the Hot Dog Eating Contest! Full coverage coming soon! Hopefully, it'll be a win for Takeru Kobayashi. Jeez, what a short post. I should probably apologize for a lack of updates as well. I've been suffering from major computer difficulties in the form of vurtumonde virus, and I may have to do a repair install to get my system up and running good again. It was a pain in the but to remove, so thanks to out to Malwarebytes for helping me in that regard, although I'm pretty sure there are still a few traces of it left, seeing as how system restore is still disabled. As such, updating these blogs has been difficult, but hopefully things will pick up soon. Check back often!

This is another free tool to get you started with the basics of Japanese grammar. This is actually how I first started learning, you know, when I was 14 and had no earthly idea how I was going to actually be able to find great resources for learning and there actually wasn't a whole lot on the Internet at the time. That tool is Japanese-Online . Japanese-Online has changed a lot since I was on there last. The basic drill goes like this: read a conversation in both Japanese (written in romajii for the first few lessons) and English. Go through the vocabulary list, work through the grammar lesson, then answer the questions at the end. It's very easy to understand, the biggest difference between the site now and 9 years ago is that the vocabulary list has shrunken considerably. Other than that, it's a great way to get the feel for the language before you dedicate yourself to it. Oh yeah, you have to register on there to get the lessons, but it's absolutely free. The...

Plot Overview: I’m afraid of giving too much away. Vash is a man who’s wanted for 6 billion dollars for the destruction of July city. Even though people say he destroyed July, no one was killed. There’s a lot of philosophy and morals. Plus, this is one anime that has strong Christian beliefs. If you like to have to really work to figure out a character’s psychology in order to learn why a character behaves the way he or she does, then this is for you! However, it doesn’t do it in a tricky way, like, say Paranoia Agent or Serial Experiments Lain . It’s an action-packed show that doesn’t rely solely on watching our protagonist invent new fighting moves to win the day. Artwork: The artwork is okay. There’s a lot better in other anime, but that shouldn’t discourage you from watching this. The character designs are great; especially Legato’s. The only problem is that sometimes it doesn't look as great as it could. Vash's design is great, and it's easy to pick him out amongst ...