Steve's Japanese blog: The Nara

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The Nara

Just got back from Nara. Saw a bunch of old temples and shit. One building was actualy 1,300 years old. The whole trip was through a bus tour company, and the tour guide woman constantly spoke in super-keigo and almost never shut up. Got pretty annoying on the bus when she starts pointing out lots of innane things along the road. The scenery was amazing though. If you ever come to Japan, take a bus trip between Nagoya and the Oosaka area, and stay awake to look out the window. Most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. Mountains, with rice fields and villages built right into all the little nooks and crannies. Just wonderful.

Well, pictures may be forthcoming. My camera's still fucked up. Check facebook, as I'm certain to be tagged within the week.

Oh, and at this park in Nara, the deer are everywhere, and walk among the people and beg for food. Really weird, as they have absolutely no fear. You can just pet them. And feed them. They somehow know to leave the people selling the food alone, but bug the hell out of the people who buy it.

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Things that have helped me.

Anki - A flashcard system for which you can make your own cards, and which will show them to you just before you're likely to forget them.

Fluent in 3 Months - Benny the Irish Polyglot travels the world learning all sorts of languages to fluency in just 3 months! Visit to learn his secret and what is his current mission is.

AJATT.com - Much like Benny the Irish Polyglot, but focused on Japanese. Attitude, dedication, and immersion are everything. Don't forget fun!

thejapanesepage.com - A forum for learning Japanese. Since it's become huge, I don't really go there anymore, but I still recommend it as a good jumping off point.

guidetojapanese.com - Famous Tae Kim's. This has been an excellent resource for grammer like, ten years, and is now expanding into a guide for Learning Japanese in general. He builds the language from the bottom up, instead of from the outside in. Excellent.

jisho.org - A dictionary that takes Jim Breen's WWWJDIC and makes it much prettier and easier to access. Search by Japanese, English, or Kanji by radicals. NOW WITH STROKE ORDER!

nihonjin - Better than anything or anyone else, they are experts at the language and can help you with anything, as long as they can communicate with you well enough.

classes - While classes helped me make some progress at first, the overall effect has not been great. We parted at odds. Did get me into study abroad program, though.

jdictionary sentence parser - Type in a sentence or even just a bunch of words and it will break them down and define them. Very handy when reading, as it is much quicker than looking up every word alone. Helps a lot with slang and colloquialisms.

readthekanji.com - A kanji quiz site that shows you a kanji or combo in context and asks you to provide the reading. Costs $10 for a lifetime account to go past JLPT4, but I found it worth it.

Anime - or anything subbed or with a translation. It takes lots of vocabulary and grammar to be able to pick sentences apart audibly, but feels really cool when you get there. It's like a fun, ongoing test of your listening comprehension.

Manga - Manga flows like real conversation, so you learn how people talk, and instead of just having the English, you must find it for yourself. This encourages passively learning new words and being more adept at doing so.

TimWerx.net - I've never used this site directly, but whenever it comes up in the google results, it's been a gem.

Google - If your google-fu is strong enough, you can find almost anything. Sometimes the most frustrating problems are solved by the simplest and most obvious searches that you just didn't expect to work.