Japanese Learning Tools – the Timer

Power Tools

One of the tools in your Japanese toolbox – especially if you are a self-learner – should be a timer – or more than one. If you are taking classes you have the discipline of set tasks and homework. By yourself it is easy to lose track, waste time reading English sites about Japanese (gomen gomen) and generally not really know how you are doing. At least in time-terms timers can help with this.

You should set aside time for practicing things like reading and listening, and it is surprisingly difficult to accurately assess how much you are doing if you don’t time it. Right now I am having a campaign to improve my kikitori (hear-catching, or listening comprehension) which is decidedly my short suit in Japanese. I am putting in three hours every day, and I need to keep track of that time. The best tool I have found for the job is the online stopwatch.

Why do I recommend this one? There are occasions for a count-down timer (I’ll mention them in a moment), but if you are trying to track a daily target it is better to have a count-up timer. This one can be stopped and resumed as often as you want, so you can get to your target in increments. Even if you close the window it will remember your time when you go back to the site (if you haven’t stopped it it just keeps on ticking), and if you are by any chance actually dumb enough to reset the timer by accident (like – ahem – certain dolls) it still keeps a record of your recent times in the slots below the stopwatch.

Japanese learning timer

I’ll be frank and tell you that I am a terrible record-keeper. At the start of my campaign I set up detailed record-blanks for myself to record exactly what I did every day. Guess how long that lasted. Some folks can do things like that and some folks can’t. Dolls are notorious for not. However I found this timer keeps as much record as I absolutely need – an idiot-proof track of exactly how long I have spent on my campaign-listening each day.

Another good feature of this timer is that it displays the count-up in the tab, so if you are working in another window you can still see your time progress at a glance.

A count-down timer is useful when you, say decide on an hour’s reading or listening right now. You can set the timer and tell yourself you won’t stop till that ping goes. There are several good count-down timers online or you can get a physical one.

Here’s mine which I got in Japan and love to pieces:

100_3360

As you can probably guess I use it to time reading sessions – not because I regard reading as a chore, but because I have so little sense of time that it is useful to decide to read for an hour or a half-hour and actually know what is happening.

Being shaped like a bear or other cute animal is not absolutely necessary, but highly recommended.

Japanese Kanji for World and Kingdom

Kanji, Language/culture, Profound,
The Sacred Monarch: uniting the three worlds
The Sacred Monarch: uniting the three worlds

Today let’s look at the kanji for world and kingdom.

A friend watching Doki Doki Precure with Japanese subtitles was becoming a little confused by various words for world and kingdom, so let’s look at the basic ones. What do they mean, and how do we remember them?

As usual, let’s look at them in the light of traditional symbolic thinking.

The word for “world” is 世界 – sekai. It consists of two kanji: 世 se meaning “generation” and 界 kai meaning world.

世 se shows a mother holding children* – generations. It has other pronunciations and related meanings (world, society etc.) but its root-meaning is generation(s). The pronunciation is really a gift (at least in 世界) because it looks similar to せ and that is exactly how it is pronounced (it is theorized that the kana せ is actually a simplification of the kanji 世 ).

界 kai means world. This is a very fundamental kanji. There are two great symbols for the world (cosmos) in traditional thought. One is the house – the house is always a microcosm of the universe, with the hearth-fire as its central sun (heart). The field is the symbol of the world seen as the “field of action” (this is fundamental to the symbolism of the chess-board), or as the “place of growth”, or manifestation.

As you see, these two fundamental world-symbols, field and house, make up 界 kai. 界 only ever has one pronunciation, so if you want a mnemonic you could say “the world is not quite the (heavenly) Sky – so we cut the S off and just say kai”.

These two kanji together make the regular word for “world”, 世界 sekai.

The word for “kingdom” is 王国 oukoku.

王 ou means monarch. It is such a fundamental concept that it has no consonants. It is just pronounced ou. To understand the kanji we need to understand the concept of the Sacred Monarch, who occupies the middle position betwen World and Heaven, mediating between them. The Sacred Monarch (originally a Sacred Queen, later a King) carries the Mandate of Heaven and mediates it to Earth. The kanji 王 ou depicts this [for much more on this kanji and concept, please see this article (note that the kanji reading there is Chinese not Japanese)].

国 kuni/koku means “country”. Here we see the Sacred Monarch surrounded by what she rules. In traditional thought a realm is precisely the Sacred Center and its periphery. Without the Sacred Center there would not be a realm or country but a mere wilderness.

The kanji 玉 is actually not 王 the Monarch herself. It means ball or jewel. The Crown Jewel, and the Crown itself, is what adorns the Monarch and is often used as a synonym for the Monarch or her rule (terms like “property of the Crown” are still used in English). We could go further on the meaning of the Jewel as the Central Treasure (the Jewel in the Lotus) but that would be too much of a digression. What we should note here is that once we grasp the centrality of the Sacred Monarch we can see how Jewel and Monarch are closely related concepts. The jewel is a small-thing** that represents all the splendor and centrality of the traditional Monarchic concept. Therefore the kanji for jewel shows the Monarch 王 with a small-thing 玉. It implies both the small-thing that adorns the Monarch and the small-thing that is in itself Monarchic.

So the country, an ordered- or ruled-place (kosmos as opposed to kaos), is represented by the periphery with its central monarchic-jewel　-  国.

We may also note that the kanji of 王国 oukoku, kingdom can be reversed to give us 国王 kokuou the Monarch of a country.
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Notes:

* While 世 generally means world or generation, the connotation of mother-like care is not completely absent. 世話 sewa means caring-for or looking-after.

** Smallness is symbolically important, as “the Jewel in the Lotus” represents the Center that is not extended quantitatively into manifestation, but upon which all manifestation depends.

Japanese Pokemon Name Meanings

Language/culture
250px-659Bunnelby
You think Bunnelby is a rabbit? In Japanese it’s a wallaby. Learn more surprising facts at the new Japanese Pokemon site

Announcement:

Have you ever been fascinated by the original Japanese names of Pokemon but wondered what they could possibly mean?

A new sister site Administered by our own Cure Dolly is bringing a daily feast of fun facts and in-depth analysis of Japanese Pokemon names to the Web for the first time in English.

You’ll learn, among many other things, about mediaeval armor, ancient schools of ninjutsu and their surprising relations to Japanese Pokemon.

Pop along to Japanese Pokemon and complete your education!

Japanese Kanji for Left and Right – why they are what they are

Kanji, Language/culture, , ,

The kanji for left and right may, on first sight, seem slightly confusing. It is not until we understand a little about traditional metaphysics (which was how the ancient Chinese, Japanese and everyone else before the last few centuries actually thought) that they make sense.

Why is the left hand crafty?
Why is the left hand crafty?

The kanji for both left 左 and right 右 feature a hand. This is normal, as the concepts “left” and “right” are always linguistically associated with hands. In English we speak of “the left-hand side” etc. The hands are each holding something representative of their particular side. Migi (Right) holds a mouth 口. Hidari (left) holds a symbol that means craft 工.

Why is left associated with craft? In the literal-minded thinking of the modern world, this seems counter-intuitive, since it is the right hand that is dextrous (from Latin dexter = right) and most capable of making things.

Then we look at the kanji for migi (right) and that has a mouth. Why a mouth?

Why does the right hand hold a mouth?
Why does the right hand hold a mouth?

Traditionally every action has two components: Wisdom and Method. These correspond to the cosmic duality of Essence and Substance. To do anything we must know how to do it. In the modern West, this has come to mean technical knowledge alone. In Japan there is still the concept of the Way 道 — the proper way that a thing should be done within the harmony of earth and heaven.

Wisdom is the teaching – the “word” by which we know the Way. Method is the physical actions that make the Way manifest in whatever we are doing.

The kanji for the Way 道 on its own is pronounced michi which can mean a literal road or the Way. In combinations it is pronounced dou and is found in the names most of the traditional Arts, because each art is precisely a Way which correctly followed leads to a measure of enlightenment.

Tatoeba (for example):

弓道 kyuudou is the Way of Archery

剣道 kendou is the Way of the Sword (kendo)

茶道 sadou is the Way of Tea (tea ceremony)

書道 shodou is the Way of Writing (traditional calligraphy)

Wisdom is the Teaching of the Way; Method is the Following of the Way. Vital to the Way in any form is the Sensei, the Teacher of the Way.

Wisdom and method are not equal. Wisdom must always lead and Method follow or the work will be out of harmony and not in the true Way.

Symbolically the right hand (the superior hand) is the hand of Wisdom and the left hand (the supporter hand) is the hand of Method. Therefore it is natural that Right  should have a mouth symbolic of the teaching of the Way, while Left represents the physical and outward aspect of craft.

Dorje, symbol of Method, held in left hand
Dorje, symbol of Method, held in left hand

Interestingly, in Tibet, Wisdom is represented by the bell and Method by the dorje (Sanskrit vajra). The dorje [pictured right] is the same essential shape as the 工 of hidari (the dorje elaborated and 工 reduced to barest essenitals), while the bell emits sound (symbolic of teaching) like the mouth 口 of migi.

Naturally, in rituals, the bell is always held in the right hand and the dorje in the left hand.

To ring (a bell) in Japanese is 鳴る naru. This kanji also contains a mouth (sound) and also a bird. “The language of birds” is in various traditions symbolic of the language of angels, and the ringing of bells symbolic of that same angelic teaching.

Kanji do make sense read in the light of the traditional wisdom that underlies them, and the kanji for right and left, migi and hidari, are easy to understand once we are aware of the thought-world from which they emerged.

Easy Japanese Listening Practice – Paboo Project

How-to, Kawaii,

I am always on the lookout for Japanese listening practice materials. Listening is by far my worst Japanese skill, lagging badly behind the others. Actually I sometimes find English hard to hear too, so this is a general problem for me.

I have just discovered a new resource for easy listening practice in the Paboo Project. This is a series of free anime for young children. As it is intended to be free, it probably won’t be taken down from YouTube the way Anpanman and other favorites continually are.

easy-japanese-listening-practice
Charming characters for Japanese listening practice

The show is actually centered around romaji letters and English words, but don’t let that worry you. The English content is actually tiny – a very brief introduction to today’s moji (English letter in this case) and some letters and a word acting as the dea ex machina near the end,in the manner of Popeye’s spinach or Anpanman’s atarashii kao (new head*). Other than that (and the shop signs) the show is 100% Japanese and excellent for easy Japanese listening practice.

The show features an endearing cast of characters as well as a dastardly couple clearly based on Baikinman and Dokin-chan – but not so villainous and not so regular. They only appear occasionally. The shows deal on the whole with much more everyday situations, so they are good for everyday Japanese listening practice. A little childish of course, but then this site isn’t called Kawaii Japanese for nothing.

Here is a sample to enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCpA2XfoFpI

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* Kao is regularly translated as “face” while atama is “head”. Here is an example of the fact that words are rarely exactly equivalent in nuance across languages. “New face” does not convey what is meant by atarashii kao in Anpanman. In English we need to say “new head” to get the same sense.

Japanese Miiverse/NNID outside Japan

Diary, How-to, ,
japanese NNID outside Japan
You SHALL go to the ball… I mean you CAN access Miiverse on a Japanese 3DS outside Japan

Can you sign up for a Japanese NNID outside Japan? Can you be a part of Japanese Miiverse in America or Europe?

That question troubled me for quite a while. My 3DS was purchased in Japan and would only connect to the Japanese eShop. I heard rumors that if one signed up one would not be able to log in because one’s IP was in the wrong region.

That would have been disastrous for me since I am in a place where getting imports is very difficult and my 3DSLL will not play non-Japanese games, physical or digital. So If I lost eShop access I would be up the proverbial gum-tree without a paddle.

It was particularly annoying as, with the introduction of NNIDs to 3DS, Nintendo cut off access to free e-Shop items (such as demos and apps like the children’s ebook reader Honto) for recalcitrant customers who did not register NNIDs.

I did a lot of asking around (there is very little on the subject on the internet). In the end I felt as sure as I was going to get that it was safe and took the plunge.

And I can assure you all that it is safe. I now have a Japan-based NNID. Officially I am in Japan.

(Please note: I cannot confirm that this will work with WiiU).

You actually can choose other countries in the region, I think, so if you wanted to be Korean you could (possibly useful for excusing one’s poor Japanese without making people think one speaks English. However since you want to be working in Japanese I would reccomend sticking to Japan). You can also choose your prefecture. I chose Aichi, which is where I was when I first got the 3DS, and therefore the one the machine was already set to.

Beware though – your initial choices will be locked forever. Not your privacy settings and so forth, but things like your country can never be changed. And your user name can never be changed, so choose it carefully! If you delete your account you will lose all your digital games, so you are really locked into your initial choice.

Fortunately your display name is the name of your Mii and you can still change that at will. But when people view your profile, your user name will always be there.

You also get the choice of setting Miiverse to show worldwide posts or posts for your language only. I set mine to Japanese only. Partly because when I am fooling with Miiverse I also want to be learning. Partly because I really don’t need a lot of clutter from languages I don’t know or am not trying to improve. Partly because there is far too much English-language trivia around anyway. I really don’t need more (and I probably see less than most people!) You can change this setting after sign-up, by the way.

More importantly, in relation to the Japanese-learning methods advocated by this site, it is important to set up as many Japanese-only environments for yourself as possible and Miiverse gives a golden opportunity for a new one.

kawaii pictures Japanese Miiverse
Follow the right folks for kawaii pictures on Japanese Miiverse!

Another important setting that I don’t see a chance to change later is whether you want to connect to Miiverse via PC etc. You do. You definitely do. There is absolutely nothing to lose here as you don’t need to use it if you don’t want to. But you will want to.

If you choose “yes”, you can access the whole of Miiverse via your PC and other web-enabled devices. This means that you can use Rikaichan while browsing posts and writing replies, which is invaluable. Not while making original posts though as this can only be done from your 3DS while playing the game – which restricts original posts on a game to people who own and play it.

You can also access your screenshots posted via your 3DS on the Web version of Miiverse. This finally solves the age-old problem of getting decent screen-shots from a DS as you can then copy and use these (you actually can’t download them in the regular manner but there are obvious ways around that).

So – good luck with Miiverse. See you there!

(I am kinokononingyou by the way!)

Dolly on Twitter

Diary, Reading Practice

Cure Dolly on Twitter

NOTE: I am afraid this article is now out of date. I no longer have a Twitter account associated with my English language identity, even in Japanese.

If you would like to practise Japanese with me, I have a Japanese Twitter account. Feel free to  follow me or tweet me (in Japanese).

The current Trend words on Twitter  are ★ありがとう、★大丈夫(daijoubu)★大好き(daisuki)、★お願いします(onegai shimasu) ★楽しみ(tanoshimi)　★お疲れ様(otsukaresama). I wonder what the English ones are. Rather different I would guess/

Making Japanese Websites more Readable

How-to, Power Tools, Reading Practice, ,

Note: You can also increase text size in your browser without enlarging everything else on the page.

Comes a time when you will want to be perusing Japanese websites. It is excellent practice, of course. And you may well prefer the atmosphere of Japanese sites to the tone of the Western “internet” where even the most kawaii-oriented often seem to feel obliged to drop in some coarseness and cynicism just to show they are still part of the culture that brought us – whatever it did bring us (I am afraid my knowledge of Western pop-culture could be written on the back of a postage stamp with a stick of chalk. And I aim to keep it that way).

Well as you probably know, Japanese sites seem to have a liking for small pictures and small print. You can blow up the whole page with by using cmd-+ (ctrl-+ on Windows) several times, but that gives you a very clunky-looking page.

The trouble with not doing that is that you may well not be able to recognize the kanji at microscopic size – especially the more complex ones. When we are super-familiar with a language it is amazing how little information we need to interpret it. I can read English at much smaller sizes and with far less light than I can read French. That is because we recognize the general shapes of the words. We very rarely read all the letters of a word (even if we think we do). In a foreign language we need to see the whole word clearly. With a language like Japanese, with a different “alphabet” and those kanji, we need even more visual information. Japanese people can recognize kanji when they are blurred, when the individual strokes are scarcely distinguishable, when they are in poor handwriting or weird fonts. Or when they are tiny. We may need a little more help.

The best answer to this is a digital magnifier. I use one for the Mac called Zoom It ($2.99 on the App Store). There will be similar ones for Windows.

magnify-Japanese-text

You can change the size of the loupe to anything you want and also change the shape from round to a horizontal rectangle (good for reading a lot of text). You can also adjust the zoom from just a little to huge and anything in between.

It is a simple device, but when it comes to reading that tiny print the Japanese are so fond of, it is the best 300 yen I ever spent!

Note: You can also increase text size in your browser without enlarging everything else on the page.

List of Japanese Computer Menu Terms: a handy guide to your Japanese-speaking devices

How-to, ,

kindle-fire-japanese-input-home-screen2Setting your computer’s (and other devices’) language to Japanese is an important step if you are serious about any degree of self-immersion.

It isn’t just the limited number of words you will be using in computer-ese. It has a much deeper psychological significance in making Japanese a part of the reality of your life, forcing you to see and think Japanese at unexpected moments, which helps to re-adjust the balance of your mind toward Japanese.

You can, and almost certainly will, switch back occasionally when you need to understand something complex. It is very little trouble to do so (just enough to stop you cheating all the time!) Don’t worry when you need to do that. The main thing is to have your interface in Japanese 90% of the time, and that really isn’t difficult.

Navigating a Japanesed computer or tablet is easier than you think. A lot of the menu items are actually just katakana-ized versions of the regular English names. If you can’t work out things like ウインドウ、ツール、ブックマーク and ヘルプ you can always type them into Denshi Jisho or use the sneaky Dolly shortcut of typing them into any typeable area of any webpage (the search box usually) and Rikaichan them. And of course everything is still where it was before, so you will find most things naturally.

Also, most of the regular menu actions have keyboard shortcuts, and you can recognize them in the menu by the bracketed shortcuts. Even so I would recommend saying the Japanese names to yourself each time you use them until you know them well.

As for the kanji, some of them are easily recognizable (開く, open for example) others probably aren’t. Don’t forget to pronounce them to yourself as you use them (きびしい人形ね).

List of Japanese Computer Menu Terms

In alphabetical order of English terms
Note: This list has become rather long. Please don’t be daunted by it. The aim is to give you a reference for anything you might run into. Actually a lot of what you encounter won’t be on this list. It will simply be katakana-ized versions of the English terms you know already. You don’t need to know this list! Just bookmark it and use it when you need it.

操作　そうさ　action
追加　ついか    add
適用　てきよう　apply
閉じる　とじる　close
環境設定　かんきょうせってい　configuration (preferences)
作成　さくせい　create
切り取り 　きりとり　cut
削除　さくじょ    delete
編集　へんしゅう　edit
検索　けんさく   find (also the term for “search” in general)
次を検索　つぎをけんさく   find next
強制終了　きょうせいしゅうりょう   force quit
書式　しょしき　format
全画面　ぜんがめん　full screen
履歴　りれき　history
入力　にゅうりょく　input
言語 げんご　language
一覧　いちらん　list
読み込み中　よみこみちゅう　loading
場所　ばしょ　location
管理　かんり　manage
新規　しんき　new
開く　あく　open
上書き　うわがき　overwrite
貼り付け　はりつけ　paste
印刷 　いんさつ　print
再生　さいせい　playback
終了　しゅうりょう　quit
最近　さいきん　recent (as in 最近開けたファイル, recently opened files)
ゴミ箱　ゴミばこ　recycle bin
やり直す　やりなおす　redo
再読み込み　さいよみこみ　reload
再起動　さいきどう   restart
実行　じっこう　run
保存　ほぞん    save
保存先　ほぞんさき    save location (destination)
検索　けんさく   search
設定　せってい　settings
表　ひょう　table
元に戻す　もとにもどす　undo
取り消す　とりけす　undo
無題　むだい　untitled
利用　りよう　use
使用　しよう　use
利用者　りようしゃ　user
表示　ひょうじ　view

We will be adding to this list over time. Please do not hesitate to add new words in the comments (we will pop them into the main list), or ask about ones you can’t work out.

 

The Melonpan song

Kawaii, Little Notes
Melonpanna-chan
Melonpanna-chan

Time for your daily dose of KAWAIIII!

Here is a song in very simple Japanese that kawaii-lovers will adore (well this one does, anyway).

Perhaps partly because I have been watching some Anpanman movies in which Melonpanna-chan plays a prominent role – notably the adorable  夢の猫の国のニャニー　(Yume no neko no kuni no Nyanii – Nyanii of the Country of the Dream-Cats) this song really hits the proverbial spot with your devoted dolly.

Even if you are a beginner you should be able to follow this song – it is very simple and subtitled mostly in kana. The lyrics are just inspired. I truly wish I had written this!

Teeny study points:

入ってる （はいってる）means 入っている. It is a very common contraction in spoken Japanese, but the textbooks don’t prepare you for it!

Interesting to note for pronunciation purposes is how, when carefully pronounced (as in this kind of singing) the ん sound is “syllabic” (actually it is a mora, to learn all about this, see my Amenbo no Uta article). It is worth listening to how each kana is pronounced.

For those interested, we also have a much fuller exploration of grammar points in this song.

Have fun!