Getting serious

With my homework load fairly light over the weekend, I finally decided on something that I've been mulling over since I got here. Since I have discovered Anki, it sort of feels like any ridiculous goal for learning vocabulary is possible, so naturally I feel inclined to test this notion and try to learn all of the JLPT1 vocabulary. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is a standardized test for certifying a foreigner's level of linguistic competence that's given once per year, with four different levels that you can attempt. The beginner's level, 4, tests knowledge of about 100 kanji and 800 words, which is supposed to be equivalent to about 150 hours of study. Level 1 tests about 2000 kanji and 10,000 words, corresponding roughly to a Japanese high school graduate's level of literacy. Somehow this is supposed to be reachable within 900 hours of study, but I have my doubts about that figure.

Anyway, I downloaded a flash card deck for it for Anki, and just had to work out the scheduling. The most obvious goal, and the one that would do me the most good, is to get this done before the placement test at the start of the next semester. This would go a long way into putting me into harder classes where the speaking and listening requirements also increase substantially; otherwise my main improvement will only be with the written language. There are two cards per word or kanji, one for recognizing the word and one for producing it, for a total of 17474 cards. To give myself a proper amount of time to review everything, I've worked this out to 160 new cards per day.

Everybody seems to think I'm insane. I'm ok with this. Now that I've told enough people my absurd plan, and nobody thinks I can do it, I have to prove everyone wrong.

Additionally, the amount of homework from my classes, while it's still light right now, is increasing. It might soon get to a level where I have to take it pretty seriously. So, I'm finally starting to get serious about studying.

Mostly quiet on the Eastern Front

I've skipped a couple days' worth of posts due to school and other occurences, but this also has the effect of allowing me to make a full post. Hoorah!

Tuesday, I woke up early to go to the bank, withdraw money, and then pay my rent and class fees before the 10:30 am rent deadline. During mild rain I set out on my creaky bike. I got halfway between the first and second lights after Ninna-ji, standing and mashing the pedals as usual since the bike is too small, when suddenly the left pedal (which had more of a grinding feel anyway) starting feeling wobbly. I sat down immediately and looked down at my foot while pedaling. Within one more pedal revolution, the left crankarm of the bike fell off. Great... either the nut that holds the arm on wasn't properly torqued and I pedalled hard enough to loosen it, or it wasn't there in the first place and I finally managed to break the rust. Anyway, I got to do some extra walking, but still wound up getting everything done before the rent deadline. Although it's been established that there's nothing that happens if you don't pay on time, I wanted to get it done on time anyway.

After classes, I got the bike fixed at a nearby shop for a pittance. The bike no longer creaks with every pedal stroke. I got the third and last of my textbooks, the one for my conversation class, which brings my total textbook expense for the semester to 6210円, or about $59.14 at the current rate. After five semesters of buying textbooks for UNM, this is astounding to me.

Wednesday I had only one class session, and the weather was fantastic, so I went to Kinkaku-ji. While I didn't have the mental energy to make a blog post afterwards, I did do a pretty decent job of captioning my gallery of it. Here's a direct link to the gallery.

Anyway, I have now been to every class at least once. Out of ten 90-minute class sessions per week, one is taught in English. My language class teachers have demonstrated that they can speak English just fine, but without actually saying it they've conveyed that we should only bail out and cheat when we absolutely can't think of how to ask something in Japanese. So far the workload is low. I did one assignment during the week, and I did about half of my weekend's homework today in about an hour. This means I should be able to get a good amount of kanji study in over the weekend. For this semester's kanji, I already know 140 out of 252 of them reasonably well; over the weekend I could get to where I know all of them reasonably well, and if I review them enough I could know them all permanently by the end of the month. Because learning this amount of kanji sounds relatively easy to me, I'm going to up the ante and study the B class's kanji as well. I think it's worth the effort for me to try to bump up to A next semester instead of going to B like normal.

In other news, today, I got a friendly simultaneous reminder that it's good to be in Japan, and that it's also still a good idea to pay attention instead of being a retard. After my classes and buying a composition notebook for the weekend's homework, I noticed my keys were not in my pocket. After a moment of panic, I decided the most likely cause of this was that I left my keys sitting in the bike lock. I got to my bike, and sure enough, it was there, locked, with the key sitting in the lock, untouched. I wouldn't ever expect to see my bike again if I did that at UNM, but then, at UNM they don't have multiple bike parking lots like this:
The second floor.
The first floor.
A constant line of people going in to the 2nd floor - the first floor is closed and full. Since my shot of the first floor has an admittedly crappy exposure, to put this into proper perspective, there's parking room for approximately 6000 bikes on the first floor alone. There's another bike lot the same size as this one at the south gate, and a 2nd-floor-only lot that's not quite as big at the north gate. There are lot attendants almost always on duty making sure that the bikes are packed in nice and tight. The traffic, the attendants, and the fact that it's Japan probably all deserve credit for my bike still being there.

Admittedly, if my bike had vanished, I wouldn't have been terribly upset. But, I would have been disgruntled that my room key and helmet were gone. It would cost me at least 50% more to replace the helmet than to buy another bike of that caliber.

Lazy Sunday

I woke up this morning and eagerly checked my mailbox for news of my new toy, not really expecting anything since we're not supposed to have a manager in on Sundays. But, the manager was here, as was a note saying that I had a package waiting for me in the office.

My first internet order in Japan! Somehow that makes it seem more exciting.

There it is, the ultimate quick reference for learning a foreign language. A writing pad for characters, variable speed text-to-speech, and tons of other useful things will make it a worthy replacement for the two dictionaries I've been toting around.

The only snag is that the interface is entirely in Japanese. This is Japan, after all; these toys are made for the Japanese to more easily learn and understand English, Chinese, Korean, etc. Still, it contains all the information I need to know, it's just slightly more difficult to learn how to use it.

With that in hand, I finally felt some motivation to do some homework. Even with the help of my new gadget, it's slow-going and difficult. There are a couple of new grammar items in there, and trying to figure them out with the usual English narration I'm used to was difficult. The guided compositions are also significantly harder than what I've been doing in Albuquerque, requiring a lot more creativity to do without sounding completely amateur. I have been surprised and pleased to run into and be able to use a lot of the new kanji I learned last weekend. Being able to remember them was also surprising, since I haven't been reviewing like I should since last Monday. I think that says a lot about the spaced approach Anki uses.

I took a break from my homework due to hunger, and fixed up some curry and rice. As an experiment, I sautéed an onion and added it to the beef curry sauce, then decided to throw in a healthy portion of crushed red pepper to give it some kick. The idea was sound, but the execution was flawed... I cooked way too much rice, and added way too much pepper. I really need to get these basic cooking things down so I can move on to learning how to make awesome Japanese things.

In other news, Typhoon Jangmi's position as of about 2 hours and 20 minutes before this post was about 100 miles southeast of Taipei, moving NNW at just shy of 14 mph--the eye is going to hit within a few hours of now, and the storm is already over the island. It's been 17 days since Typhoon Sinlaku hit Taiwan as a much weaker category 2, and caused massive flooding, moodslides, and agricultural damage from over 5 feet of rain. I doubt they've recovered from that one yet. This one is expected to hit as a category 4 and currently has waves around 30 feet. This is not going to be good.