十八番 －Ｆｉｎｄｉｎｇ ｔｈｅ Ｂａｌａｎｃｅ

Recently Ive found myself quite busy with various project on the go aside from my Job and 日本語。 This has led to a continual struggle to find an appropriate balance of all the interests in my life. I'm not going to sit here and whine about how I have to much stuff to do, I just want to keep a record of my high intensity and low intensity periods of learning.

My Anki deck count is 484 cards, no where near my initial goal of adding 30 cards a day. Nevertheless I have been diligent in using what free time I have. And now I'm starting to have more free time I will try and ramp things up a notch!

Currently Sub2srs is my favourite tool for sentences.

With Sub2srs I first visit D-addicts Japenese subtitle list find and interesting drama. If I like it I will rip the audio and split it into 3 min segments for my mp3 player then another batch split using the sub timing. I then watch the drama again with anki, the subtitle text file and the list of audio clips open and grab what sentences I like as I watch and copy them into Anki. I prefer this than having to create a whole new deck or adding in potentially 100's of shit cards from the sub2srs rip.

Well that will do for now...

Oh and 秒速5センチメートルスクリプト continues very slowy. Bout 5 min in so far :D..

十七番 －Avoiding boredom

Progress is still continuing steadily however I have felt my first pangs of SRS boredom. This must be avoided at all costs! Ive been thinking about why I am feeling this and have concluded that I am spending to much time on smart.fm looking for sentences. While this is such a fast way to get sentences for Anki, I'm losing a bit of motivation because it is such a mechanical process. Im going to keep doing it but break it up with a new project aimed at giving something back rather than just continuosly using other peoples work.

And so begins... 秒速5センチメートルのスクリプト

I love this movie and cant find a script of it anywhere so the heck with, I'll write my own! Not sure how long this is gonna take me, but I'll format it all nicely in a word doc and post it up for others to use.

And now for a lil' bit of 日本語

俺の金曜日の夜

仕事が終わってから奈央子さんのパーティに行った。そのパーティはイタリアのレストランで行われて皆さんにった。食べ物と雰囲気すごく良かったな！その後たちはTattersals Clubに行ってカクテルを飲んだ。夜は楽しかった！


じゃあもういいから。。、じゃね　

十六番 ー 何？？？？？？？？？？？？

Not much to say I think, just an update to try and keep some record of my progress.
Have focused solely on using Anki for SRS after finding the site http://smart.fm/home. Awesome site with a huge range of 例文 which usually have accompanying audio!

My deck is up to about 180 card so far and progress as usual is not going as well as planned. I can thank ridiculous work hours for that, but hey thats life. Hopefully next month will yield better results!

Aside from the SRS I have managed to find another person for langauge exchange and hopefully more in the coming months.

So the game plan has been changing as expected. Basically just to find ways to be as efficient as possible. e.g using scripts and text that is copy and pasteable into Anki. The whole mp3split thing seems like it may be to time consuming to be worthwhile , need to still play with it more though.

hmmm.. what a boring post, how can I make this more exciting...何もないで。。：ｐ

十五番 －RTK１ が終わった！

Its been a long time coming but finally I have finished RTK1! Didn't quite get there before my Japan trip but it allllllll good! Im back with a kick ass dictionary and a huge amount of DVDs and comics to get through. So what does a finished 2042 漢字 look like? Well it looks a little like this:

Yes its pretty awesome... well the feeling is... maybe not the picture. Its also a weird feeling of where to start next, so many options and different learning material out there! So I will now attempt to lay down a bit of a loose game plan for the next few months:

Reading / Writing: Build up input in Khatzumemo

1. Gather example sentences first based on simple language groups: Verbs, Adverbs, Adjective, nouns. Good starting point: www.studyjapanese.org
2. Gather sentences based on particles.
3. Gather sentences from comics (Primarily Death Note)

Talking: Language exchange and friends

1. Attend Auspeak Language exchange meetups
2. Skype
3. www.mylanguageexchange.com
   

Listening: Music and Movies made into Anki flashcards

1. Experiment with Mp3 Split and Sub2srs to create flash cards with text and sound from favourite music and movies.
   

映画リスト

• 秒速5センチメートル
• ザ・マジックアワー
• 舞妓Haaan！
• タイガー&ドラゴン（ドラマ）

　　音楽リスト

• リップスライム　
• Soffet
• 山崎 まさよし

Well looks like there plenty to keep me occupied considering all the tangents of interest that I will inevitably veer off into while making my through all of the above! Exciting times ahead..how to finish this post? hmmm... how about the first of many aforementioned tangents:

Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉)

日々旅にして、旅を住処とす

十四番 － 一ヶ月 残る

Well what a month of setbacks, both good and bad! Still I have now made it to 1500 leaving 1 month to achieve my goal of finishing Heisig Vol 1 before I go to Japan. Only made it through 400 the last month due to holidays (the good), sickness and working overtime (the bad). But enough excuses, I will prevail!
Oh and another interesting point I found out over the last month: Don't use noise cancelling head phones to listen to Japanese at work, it may really piss of your boss! hehe. No I didn't lose my Job but not sure if / when I will be able to use head phones at work again.

So to keep with the current trend another great Kanji poster pic: 1500 Wohoooo :D



And finally some Japanese ripped from one of my favourite animes: 秒速５センチメートル,

（アカリ）
　
ねえ

秒速５ｾﾝﾁなんだって

（タカキ）

えっ　何？

（アカリ）

桜の花の落ちるｽﾋﾟｰﾄﾞ
秒速５ｾﾝﾁﾒｰﾄﾙ

（タカキ）

うん

アカリそういうこと
よく知ってるよね

---------------------------------> fin.

十三番 - 千百漢字。。。。やった！

Well its been a month and I'm up to 1100!. At this rate I'm confident I can easily get through 2000 before I go to Japan in February (pending I don't party to hard over the next couple of months...) So not much else to say this post, still vague from a bucks party on the weekend but I thought I should at least post some progress to look back on.. and here it is:

A quality pic of my Kanji poster..wooooooooooooooo

I should at least add some 日本語　to the post so here's a sentence I've been meaning to type up and add to Khatzumemo:

ぼくたちが最初にあったときもしぼく早く話したらあなたはあまり理解できなかった。

十二番 －六百漢字！

Almost a month since my last post so thought this would be a good milestone to track my progress. That's right: 六百漢字...すばらしい！　For a while around the 300-400 range I felt a bit bogged down with kanji and was wondering how I would manage with so many to go. However with a few good review sessions and implementing Anki into my reviewing all came good and now I'm speeding through Heisig keeping an average of 85% correct recall when reviewing!

Also I'm now using my Kanji Poster to track my progress through heisig which is great motivation to see how many I've got through. I should of started this earlier!

Thought I would leave the hat in the Image to make it a bit more interesting!

So everything is still progressing well, although speaking isn't getting very far due to the large amounts of time spent on Heisig. 日本語がわかるようになってきたでもあまり話せない。...忍耐...

No new vocab but need to type up part of this letter I have been drafting to send to a long lost Japanese exchange student that once stayed with my family...

さちこさん、ひさしぶりです！げんきですか？ぼくは元気です。ぼくは二月から日本語のべんきょうをしてます。ぼくの日本語のべんきょうをしたかったのと、あなたがどのようにしているかしりたくてﾒｰﾙをかいています。今ぼくはシドニーに住んでいてけい景観設計のしごとをしてます。二月に二週かんともだちとほっかいどうにいってスーキーをします。たのしみです！そのあとで一週かん東京にいきます。あなたはなにおしてます？

お返事もらえるとうれいしいです。
ではまた。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　アンドリュー

That will do for now... Oh one more thing, I finally got the Simpsons in 日本語!!
Yeah it doesn't seem like a big deal but after ordering Season 10 from amazon.jp and finding it was only the English version (ばか...) I was a bit nervous this one would be the same! Fortunately this was not the case so now I have complete season 5 and many hours to laugh at how the Simpsons humor gets translated in 日本語.