All-Star Superman. How to make yourself Super.

June 13th 2011: Didn’t realize this post was set to private this whole time =P

As the title suggests I watched All-Star Superman. But why is there a picture of the drama Bartender? Cause I am watching that as I type this on my phone, which I will probably never do again because the Word Press iPhone app is so slow it makes a tortoise laugh manically. As for Superman, I watched it because I have watched all the animated movies DC and Warner Bros have  released so I thought I might as well not break the habit. Doesn’t seeing superheroes make you want to do something “super” yourself? Of course it does. After recovering from a medical setback as I’ll call it, I am back into the studying circuit and pushing myself even harder than before.

I feel I have neglected 한굴（韓国語、Korean）for far too long and it’s time to start back up with it. I took 2 semesters of it in college, I should of stuck with it but my studying habits and techniques didn’t give me enough confidence to take both Korean and Japanese at the same time. Now that I am out of school I think I am studying even more, I am glad I have the privileged of having so much time to do so (and no I am not rich, but I’m working on it.) I’m using Rosetta Stone at the moment to learn Korean, I’ll write a review about it after I do all the levels, I am sure it’ll at least help me grasp the basics (once again.) So after I do the Rosetta Stone I do some listening in Korean, which is right now two dramas that I watch, High Kick and Coffee Prince. I’ve seen Coffee Prince before but have yet to see a better Korean drama so I am watching it again. High Kick is alright, it’s a comedy about a family of nut jobs, really they’re all crazy. But it’s pretty funny and it’s good listening so it’ll do. I do have a couple of books from when I went to school, I may use them for sentences (gotta practice typing in Korean!) and put them into Anki. After that’s done I do my usual Japanese studies throughout the day. I hope I can keep this up.

I have also decided to up my English vocabulary a bit so I am playing….My Word Coach for Nintendo DS…haha. I will start to write posts more regularly and you can decide if my “Expression Potential” has gone up at all. I also play brain age every now and then, good for stimulating the Brain I have heard and so far I think it works. But what there’s more! I’ve been reading up on memory techniques and am trying to find a way to employ them in my studies, this week I have tried to apply Mnemonics for any new Japanese words I am learning and they seem to stick immediately (if the association is strong enough) instead of after seeing it in Anki a dozen or so times. I do all these things everyday and I enjoy doing all of it. Of course i don’t have much time for socializing and gaming and all that, but for now that’s okay.

So are any of you readers doing anything to make a more “super” you this year? Okay episode 1 of Bartender is done now watching Coffee Prince ep 2. Bartender seems interesting enough, I’ve seen a drama with every other 嵐 member in it (shhh秘密です) so why not.

Sorry for my random writing style, I usually write things on a whim, and I don’t do drafts, I got through school alright that way (actually I just found teachers that liked my writing style and kept taking them.) So feel free to leave a comment, I’d like to know how everyone else studies, or let me know if you want me to go into more detail about my study methods, it’ll make me think.

Jury Duty and Moderation.

So yes I have jury duty. I am sitting in the Jury Assembly room as we speak, and will be here for another 6 hours or so. So I thought I might as well do a blog update, maybe I’ll do a lang-8 post as well. So the post title has Jury Duty in it but I think I am done talking about that. I will be discussing a few things I have learned as far as learning techniques.

In my previous post about a month ago I said I was doing the Beachbody Insanity workout. I am still doing it, I am on the 5th week which is the recovery week. I also(recently) decided to do some calorie counting to help burn more fat. When I began the workout I found myself getting extremely sore in the shin area, I dunno what that bone is called but it always hurt in both legs. After not doing Plyometrics (jump training) for several months I shouldn’t have tried to do it like I did before. So I modified most of the plyo moves in the videos so I can do them without jumping and still feel the burn.

I also applied this to my studies a while ago. I wouldn’t have finished Remembering the Kanji vol. 1 if I tried to do 100 kanji a day. Instead I only did 10 Kanji a day, it took nearly a year but I got through it and still do my reviews everyday, I try to add about 5 from the RTK3 everyday, but if I don’t it’s okay. When I began reading some Japanese novels I realized how many RTK3 Kanji there were popping up, so I figured I should learn them. I am still taking the JLPT2 this December,I may be shooting to high for my first time but I feel very confident about the test, I already recognize double the required Kanji and I use my SRS everyday as well as plenty of Japanese immersion.

On an aside I noticed that when I study Japanese I do better on my reps when I don’t listen to Japanese music or shows while I do it. Probably because i’m not much of a passive listener, if I hear I sound I try and figure out what it says. As we speak in the Jury Assembly room I can isolate peoples conversations, or I can choose to hear the general noise that a bunch of people talking sounds like, which is pretty annoying. So while listening to Japanese music or shows I pay attention, but with English songs pretty much know already I don’t have to think about it so I can just worry about my SRS reps. I guess I could listen to classical music but until I know the songs well I’d be pretty distracted.

So in conclusion do what you can, don’t follow along with the in-shape people on the DVDs, you’ll just burn out. Don’t try to do a polyglot’s daily routine, you’ll burn out as well. Just do what you can, even if it’s just a minute, or even less. I guess I am echoing AJATT’s recent post topics, but it’s true. I use the EpicWin iPhone app to make the things I do seem rewarding, cause no one is praising me for all the exercise and studying I do, I don’t even praise myself, so this program helps a lot with that.

Reading Contest Over , what I learned.

So the reading contest started by lordsilent is over. It was called Read More or Die. Well I indeed read more than I did in the other contest, so I guess I get to stay alive. What did I learn? Pretty much what learned from the last contest, that I like to read Harry Potter books. I really regret not buying the 3rd book 「ハリー・ポッタとアズカバンの囚人」。If I did I could have easily gone over 1000 pages, after a while I was doing a chapter a day and finished the second book on the 19th or 20th. The other ~230 pages (I read 730 total really 750, I watched Akira then I saw that it was past midnight and I was like NOOOO! But that’s okay) was reading blogs, manga, watching dramas and anime with subs, I had a lot of material at my disposal. I really didn’t want to read much manga this time around though. I don’t know why, guess it’s all the eye movement, I can read a blog post faster than a page of Manga. Did I learn anything else? Yes…when you read do only that, READ. Don’t look stuff up while you read, takes the fun out of it. I’ve even read some people like to mark off pages and go back to it after some minutes and then look up the stuff they weren’t sure about. I don’t do this, I like to keep moving forward and finding new material, just keep reading and you’ll understand that word or grammar point eventually. I can’t even open up the Harry Potter books again to sentence mine, though I really want to, got the audiobooks for them and everything too… but if I have to force myself maybe I really don’t want to do it. I wish 堀北真希 would just magically appear in my room and just start talking non -stop, I’d hang on her every word, I’d be fluent in like  a week.

Today I wrote on a post-it and post-it’ed? it to my computer, which it right next to my face. It says 毎日百文章＝百日万文章。100 sentences everyday equal 10,000 sentences in 100 days. Sounds good to me, I should start on this goal right away. Just looking at 10,000 on it’s own like that is daunting, even 100 sentences a day, that’s crazy. But I figure…if I can find 10 sources I really like and take 10 sentences from each everyday then that doesn’t seem so bad. I really wonder if I can do this, I better start now before I get a full-time job, which will probably be very soon. Even then I will still find a way. Maybe I should make a sentence-mining contest, the reading contest encouraged me to read more than I ever could have imagined, and I  was doing more of that then adding sentences. Now it’s time to put the focus back on sentence mining, along with my usual daily study routine..

Oh yeah, I also figured out my speaking ability has taken a dive, or maybe it was just because I was nervous. I found a language-exchange partner for a little bit. I understood pretty much everything she said, but could barely say things back. Might use some of the irish polyglots strategies for speaking, I really know more words than I give myself credit for, I just find myself looking for particular words when I should just be saying anything random thing, I do that in English =P

Reading Contest and Learning Techniques.

So we’re about a few days past the halfway mark of the “Read More or Die” contest this month. I’ve been getting most of my pages from 「ハリー・ポッターと秘密の部屋」which is just over 500 pages, and I plan to finish that today, too bad I probably won’t be able to get the third book until after the contest is over. I wouldn’t have gotten through the book so quickly if it wasn’t for this reading contest, I’ve been doing about a chapter a day. I plan to go back through the first two books to get some sentences out of it, there were many interesting words and Kanji that weren’t in Heisig vol. 1, or even vol. 3 for that matter. I am glad I decided to start going through volume three albeit slowly, but that’s how I do things.

I also have been been reading a lot of things in English this month as well (I know, shame on me). I’ve been taking a look at Benny the Irish polyglot’s book “The Language Hacking Guide.” I’m about halfway through the PDF and plan on looking at the other content that comes with it later, the interviews that come with it are what makes it worth it to me. I mostly bought it because I like to support people, I’ve been following many language learning blogs and it is inspiring to see them grow and finally start making some money for all that info they’ve been giving people for free. The blogs I follow most are AJATT, Tofugu, and Fluent in 3 Months. The learning techniques I have gotten for them and other bloggers has helped me immensely, I think I have learned more Japanese this year than all the years in school combined.

Also for the Harry Potter books I’ve been using the Parallel reading technique, you know, what Tom Hanks does to learn English in that movie “The Terminal.” Basically you read a page, or several pages in your mother tongue and then read that same material in your L2. This technique does indeed work if you have enough focus. At the very least it prevents you from grabbing for a dictionary every couple of minutes because (if the translation is good enough) you pretty much know what it is being said. It also allows you to point out words and phrases: “Oh so that’s how you’d say “Moaning Myrtle in Japanese（嘆きのマーテル）” etc, etc.
The other book I have been reading is “How to Develop a Super Power Memory” by Harry Lorrayne. I doubt this book will help with learning languages, but I might be able to find a way to use it in such a way. But this book will definitely help my overall observation skills and help me remember things like 50-digit numbers, peoples names and faces, or at least that what it promises. After a few days I have found it easier to remember some things after only seeing it once. We’ll see how much better I get as I progress through the book. Because of all of this reading I haven’t been adding too many sentences to my SRS lately, I need to get back on that. I have about 1340 sentences, I use the online SRS “surusu” made by Khatzumoto of AJATT. I still don’t think I am using the full potential of it, every now and then I go on it and see new features and have no idea what they do.

Anyways there’s my update, there is a lot more going on but I can’t show you all my cards just yet =P

こんな夢を見た。

So I’ve had some weird dreams as of late. Dreams are supposed to be the accumulation of your thoughts from the day, then they are all joined together in a way the brain sees fit and then shows them to you. The way my thoughts comes together is quite surprising. My dreams, as well as other peoples, are personal so I won’t really say much about it. But i think it is strange how things just all make sense in a dream while you’re in it, then you wake with a “wtf just happened”? Things and people I try to let go of seem to resurface. Those things made me feel a way I didn’t want to, so today probably won’t be a very good day emotionally, the rain isn’t helping much either (I say that but I kinda like the rain, though I did want to go workout outside today.) Well before this point my dreams have given me several ideas and I’m glad they were so vivid and most of the details were there, I just have to fill in the blanks later myself. Does anyone else have weird dreams on a daily basis? I know there are some people who don’t dream at all. Nothing wrong with that, it probably just means you have your sh** together mentally.

So about the title of my post 「こんな夢を見た」which basically means “I had a dream and it was like so….” It’s how all the stories in “10 Nights of Dreams” or 「夢十夜」begin. I’ve never gotten through all of the stories (reading in Japanese) but I hope to get through them all some day. 10 Nights of Dreams was written by Natsume Souseki 夏目漱石. I don’t know a lot about him so google him if you’d like. But if the dreams in the stories were really his, he had some very vivid and trippy dreams. I won’t just publish mine on a blog for all to see. Maybe if I have accumulated enough interesting ones I can publish in a book, or mix them in with a larger project I may start.