Studying Japanese Language/Literature/History

I am still trying to learn japanese over watching Dramas ...I will see what comes out of it :D

anyone else having issues with livemocha lately? i'm 102 unit 1 lesson 2 all of a sudden it expects me to know kanji which is sort of a pain cause i didnt realize the review would want me to know them or i would have paid more attention to them during the 'learn' portion. no biggy but so since i didn't pay attention to them i got a few answers wrong but it still marked me 100% at the end. the whole thing is loading a little sluggish today and the last time i tried to log on and do a lesson the whole thing was lagging and choppy and images weren't where they're supposed to be, like things were overlapping and just.. wonky.

boutux wrote: no i won't be in any major city. u have to be fluent in japanese to be placed in tokyo, osaka or kyoto. i would most likely end up in a suburban or rural community. i'm still not worried. :D go brave or go home as they say!

You'll be fine :) I don't know you THAT well, but you seem very resourceful. I've picked up and moved cross-country to a big city I'd never visited, all alone, didn't know anyone...and it was great! (of course I didn't have the language barrier) It's really fun to shape yourself and grow into whoever you wanna be.

ladyfaile wrote: huh. that seems a little backwards to me :D considering there are more english speakers in the cities to begin with

It makes sense if you think about it from the perspective of the company. Everyone wants to go to the big cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, etc, so they get first pick. Obviously being bilingual is a huge advantage (both the skill and the smaller candidate pool) and boosts your qualifications, so those people are gonna be selected first. Also, the bilingual people know they have that bargaining power and can say "i won't work for you unless i can work in XYZ city." [I'm not sure this bargaining power is very strong though, there are a lot of other people willing to take the job]

ladyfaile wrote: anyone else having issues with livemocha lately? i'm 102 unit 1 lesson 2 all of a sudden it expects me to know kanji which is sort of a pain cause i didnt realize the review would want me to know them or i would have paid more attention to them during the 'learn' portion. no biggy but so since i didn't pay attention to them i got a few answers wrong but it still marked me 100% at the end. the whole thing is loading a little sluggish today and the last time i tried to log on and do a lesson the whole thing was lagging and choppy and images weren't where they're supposed to be, like things were overlapping and just.. wonky.

As for the sudden kanji, it gets worse when you reach 201, especially the speaking practice. And I also noticed it was slower and the optional quiz scores weren't accurate.

Mirichan wrote: I am having an very important project work abot the japanese literature next week and I am an complete newbie on this area... ;(

I'll send you a PM :)

I totally understand what you mean. The thing that makes the speaking practice so difficult is that they use kanji that weren't even introduced in the lesson. On kanji in general: I feel I may need a kanji support group, lol. There's just so much info associated with any given kanji. kunyomi, onyomi (of which there may be like 1000 *major eye roll*), stroke order, radical, kanji that have the same reading and general meaning but different nuances *sigh* I think it may be a little better once I become more fluent. Then I will know what is important/relevant/common/etc.

ladyfaile wrote: i was listening to some jrock on the way home and a song i've heard a thousand times was playing and all of a sudden it was like a lightbulb moment, one line of the chorus suddenly made sense.

i know exactly what u mean cuz i've had those moments too. i've been slacking off on my studying and i like reading everyone's progress here cuz it inspires me to push on and not let the time pass by. i want to go to japan with a lil more than survival japanese. i did buy a book on amazon recommended by a guy on yt who will be going to japan in march as an ALT as well. the book is called ganbatte means go for it and it gives advice for moving over, the culture shock, survival japanese etc. i will definitely give a review in the resource thread when i receive it.

but i think i need to make time to do at least 1 hr of japanese language training a day before i have to leave.

i check for new posts on here daily lol i wish it were a little more active but what can you do. even if people just dropped by to say "i learned this new word today" that sorta thing, it would help encourage others to keep at their lessons. the hardest part of self-study is staying motivated to DO IT without a teacher over your shoulder, deadlines etc.. in Tae Kim's guide today i was reading about some of the different uses of the te-form. so far i'm finding it easier to grasp than some of the other stuff but i'm still not up to speed with conjugation so that doesn't help. need to go back and re-study some of that so that this stuff will not just 'kinda make sense' but get to the point that i can use it to form sentences lol

and yeah Boutux we will need many many updates on your progress and your daily adventures in Japan. don't forget that even mundane things over there seem cool and exciting to dorks like me :D haha but seriously i hope you'll have time to give us little updates now and then