Not much going on here.

I don't know what to say in the blog. I have a lot of work. I don't get adjectives... are we going to study that some more?

Satosensei always confuses me with his comments.

I'm not quite sure what Satosensei was writing in his response. I get that he likes beer, but the last sentence... hmm... I really ought to know, too.

Anyway I went to a party last night and met someone who did the JET program. It sounds very cool. He learned a lot of Japanese while he was there. I was just yesterday morning doing research into applying for this program, so it was somewhat of a coincidence to then run into someone who'd done it.

His Japanese girlfriend rolled up a little later on so I got to talk to her a little bit. She was very encouraging. Although I feel kind of silly saying the things that I know how to say because I'm learning such a formal way of speaking. Nobody seems to talk the way that I do.

Okay I ought to go write my Chinese diary now. I learned how to say twin this week so I can write about that. How convenient.

Hmm...

So I unfortunately did not get the first grant that I applied for. But I refuse to be discouraged! Especially if I listen to the Carter Family for support. I still intend to get to Japan sometime in the couple of years on someone else's dime. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm quite open.

I had this embarassing moment the other day when I saw that one of my favorite breweries introduced a seasonal ale called Hanami. I thought, hmm, I wonder if this'll be any good, so I bought it without reading the label. I totally had this brain laps when I realized that it was for the cherry blossom festival! I mean, I like the cherry festival and I like cherries, but I am not particularly fond of things that are cherry-flavored. And that's what the theme of this beer happened to be. If anyone wants to come over to my place for a cherry-flavored beer you are welcome, because I don't think I will get them out of my fridge anytime soon otherwise.

I have to miss Japanese class

What a bummer. I plan on going to Professor Noguchi's section, but it just won't be the same (although Dougsan from my Asian Art class will be there). Alas. That's all I can think of in terms of this week.

My blog must feel neglected

So it's been a while, alas. I forgot to write this week due to lots of studying, which I feel paid off on the big exam. Jennysan and I got together a couple of times (also Dougsan from one of Noguchisensei's sections) over break to benkyoshimasu.

Anyway I didn't really encounter any Japanese people which seems to be the impetus for my writing in my blog. I am gearing up for another intensive yoga weekend, where I'm sure to encounter at least one. I know because I actually emailed her. I've started researching ANOTHER grant propsal because I want to get some money to go to Japan after I graduate to study and teach yoga. I heard that yoga is getting really big there, but that in Japan the interest is in studying yoga from the United States, not from India. So you have this kind of roundabout way in which an Eastern tradition moves to the United States, becomes very Westernized, and then people in Japan get turned onto it and it moves back to the East. Whoa! So how does that all work out? That's the crux of my research question, although there's some other questions involved, too. If anyone knows anyone who practices or teaches yoga in Japan I'd really like to get in touch with them.

Okay I guess that's all for now.

not much to write about this week.

I AM TOO BUSY but I'll write a little bit anyway. I wrote a grant proposal to go do reasearch in Japan this summer; on Wednesday I had this strange experience where I called a museum to see if I could do research there this summer if I get the grant. But they didn't speak English! Oh no. The weird part was that I was talking on the phone with a Japanese person. Not that that's weird, I guess... what I'm trying to say is, I'm so used to hearing recorded Japanese in these canned circumstances through courseworks. So hear I was again hearing a digitized version of a human's voice, but it was actually a real human!!! It was one of those disequilibrium moments where the sheltered academic environment of Butler library brushed up against the real world. Hmm... I hope I get this grant.

My step-mother called the museum later on to feel them out about my visit and they are apparently excited about the prospect of me coming. And they can get me a translator from the Matsue tourism board. So the story has a happy ending.

My composition!

はじめまして。なまえはコンラドです。ニユーヨークからきました。２４歳です。Columbiaだいがくのさんえんせいです。　せんこうはちゆうごくごです。いちねんからちゆうごくごをべんきょします。せんでつからにほんごをべんきょうします。わたしはまいにちColumbiaのButlerとしよかんににほんごとちゆうごくごをべんじょします。どうぞよろしく。

Bad weekend for traveling = good weekend for Japanese.

Due to my tireless dedication to school I managed to spend about 8 extra hours in airports this weekend, which means I got lots of studying done for Japanese. I missed my flight to Denver on Thursday because I was meeting with a professor, so I had to wait for the next one, four hours later. Last night I went to the airport and waited on standby for four hours to get on the redeye, because I was concerned that my flight later this afternoon would be canceled due to foul weather in New nfrYork. So I made a big dent in this week's vocab and started on some katakana as well. I also started a new method for studying Chinese (reading characters instead of Pinyin) which is really slow right now but I'm hoping will improve fluency later on. I am constantly making more work for myself.

So the test was really LONG. I think I've hamstrung myself at the moment by doing all my studying in hiragana, as my brain just doesn't translate that fast into hiragana yet. Unfortunately I haven't done the equivalent studying in Romaji, so if I wanted to write in Romaji I would have to translate everything into hiragana in my head, and then into Romaji. Wow, that would take a long time. Again the hope is that this will lead to more fluency later by eliminating a translation step in my brain, but for now it is slowing me down terribly. I barely finished on time, and, from my experience with Chinese, I'm sure I made some translation mistakes. Rats. I'm hoping for rapid improvement in fluency. If anyone has any recommendations I'd be glad to hear them. (If you write in Hiragana though, I probably won't understand.)

Well I suddenly have this gift day in New York with no plans, and I certainly don't want to spend it blogging. We'll see how far into the day I can make it with approximately three hours of airplane sleep.

Good morning, I love Sundays!

Hey it's that day when you can listen to wkcr (www.wkcr.org) again, so i'm in a good mood. Also I'm in Piermont and the river is partially frozen so it's really quite beautiful. And I made some really good coffee.

Okay so I think I spend more time studying Japanese than Chinese, even though Chinese I have four times a week. My brain is so much more attuned to learning Chinese so I just soak that up. The Japanese leaves my brain every night when I go to sleep. Argh. This morning I feel as though I don't know anything again.

I recall that someone asked me about the rest of the days in Chinese: sorry to let you down, in fact the answer is that Sunday is Sunday, but from the on it's very simple: 星期一，星期二, which is like weekday one (Monday), weekday two (Tuesday), and so on on through Saturday, (weekday six).

So apparently Japanese people really love yoga, because I met another person in yoga class from Japan. Man was she flexible. Okay that's not jealousy, just an observation. She asked me if I'd been to Japan so I said, にほんへ きませんでした. My yoga teacher likes to go to Japan and teach a couple of times a year, so I guess I can understand why she has this following of 日本の學生 (do I need a 人 in there?). My teacher is always talking about how the Japanese are great students and interested in learning yoga, so I guess in answer to your question, Satosensei, you should give it a shot. And I can refer you to my teacher who will be very excited about having another I generally prefer not to make broad cultural generalizations, especially when it implies that somehow Americans are not such good students in comparison. I totally can believe it, though. But if you have any sort of cultural insights as to why it might be that the Japanese are more committed students than I'd love to hear about it.

In other news, I wrote a cool paper about a Muromachi jar for my Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Art class. I'm very pleased with myself.

I met a Japanese woman, it was so cool.

There's a friendly Japanese lady who joined my intensive yoga group named きおこさん. We are friends now. At the end of class my teacher said, who wants to be 居お子さん's (the previous is not her name, it's some 漢子 that's much more rare, she told me how to type it in to the computer but I forgot, oops) buddy in case she's absent from class? So I volunteered because I thought, I need more Japanese friends to speak Japanese with! So I got to say, おでんわばんごですか? And I told her my phone number in Japanese. And she said that she was going away for a while, so I said, どこいきますか. She said　私は日本にいきます. (Or something like that. What's up with this Hiragana thing putting kanji in for me? So frustrating.) Haha! I'm so pleased with myself. Okay My productivity is way down thanks to blogging. I thought I'd never fall prey to that trap. Blame Japanese class.

Good morning from Piermont, where the river is starting to freeze. My brother is trying to froth milk without any success and getting quite frustrated. Thanks to all my fans out there, sorry to keep you waiting. In answer to all your questions, "bao kang rui" is my Chinese name, I'm hoping to remain generally anonymous on the internet at the moment, So far it's working. Also to elaborate on some other reasons for taking Japanese, my dad married a Japanese woman and she generally doesn't talk that much because she's not very confident in her English (although if I could speak Japanese nearly as well as she speaks English I'd be very pleased with myself), so now we have something to take about, namely, Nihongo. So she helps me out. I think she's taught Japanese in the past. Also I have a little brother who is very small, but I imagine one day he'll be able to speak Japanese, so I can chat with him. At some point. I hope. So I go out to there place every Wednesday night and hang out with my little brother, and then Fumikosan (so she said I could refer to her as Fumiko because she's my step mom, but it would still be polite to refer to her as Fumikosan when I mention her in the third person, correct?) comes home and we talk about Japanese. Actually my Dad speaks a little bit too, so he can explain everything to me so far.

Okay so I'm a bit anxious about learning how to type in Hiragana. How do I do it? Help! I'm not super capable with computers. Okay I'll give it a shot. Argh.

Also I'm getting a bit frustrated with myself learning in hiragana. It will get easier, right? Like I think I wrote iraku instead of ikura. Why? Also kurasai instead of kudasai. Where am I getting this from? I'm hoping if I recognize my deviant ways in my blog I will somehow be forgiven. What a strange idea that I have this indirect method of communicating with my sensei. Okay I'm going to explore this typing in hiragana concern.

Also since I know the Chinese characters for a lot of the words we're using should I use them or just Hiragana for now? I still have an automatic reaction of translating them into Chinese so I think it would be helpful for me to accustomize myself to seeing them in a different context. Maybe I can write the kanji with the hiragana on top the way they do in the textbook? This leads me to another topic which is that I was explaining the whole writing system in Japanese to a friend and he said, oh, are there other languages that use Chinese characters? And I said, maybe Malaysian (there's a Malaysian restaurant a couple of blocks from me and their sign is in Chinese characters), and then he said oh so the languages are symbol based because there are these symbols and they are read differently in different places? And I didn't really agree with him, for some reason I found this very offensive, but I couldn't really disagree with him. There must be some linguistic argument about this but I don't know what it is. Alright my mom is here so I need to be familial.

Columbia's best kept secret.

Sunday mornings at Butler, probably the only time you can practice your Japanese aloud in the library because you have the place to yourself. Getting up early on Sundays (which is apparently also "Sun" day in Japanese, too? For some reason that never occured to me that it was that sun we were talking about until Chinese class the other day when I learned that Sunday is Sunday in Chinese, too. wow) is so worth it when you can listen to Amazing Grace on WKCR from 0800-1000. This is about the extent of my religious proclivities on Sunday but it gets me all relaxed and ready for the day of rest, even if I plan to spend it in Butler. Can I take another little minute to rave about KCR programming on Sundays, because it just gets better with the Moonshine show and the Tennessee Border Show. Although probably my favorite show on KCR is Across 110th Street on Saturdays from 1200-1430. Anyway KCR is the Columbia radio station, 89.9 FM, which has been my favorite radio station since I was maybe 2. Check it out if you've never heard it.

So my reasons for taking Japanese this semester are worth elaborating on. I was having a discussion with a friend of mine over winter break and she was extremely jealous that I was studying Chinese in college. She was able to opt out of her language requirement in college because she satisfied it in high school. Now she feels as though she won't have the opportunity to learn another language in her life. It is a big commitment, to be sure.

I'd only registered for three classes this semester, in anticipation of going away every weekend racing bikes with the Columbia Cycling Team. An unfortunate and myseterious injury has sidelined me somewhat indefinitely, so I decided I probably had room in my schedule for another class after all. Hopefully I will get out racing at some point, but even so, studying a language is very portable - I don't need to be in a library doing research and I can study audially (is that a word?) with an iPod. This is great for avoiding carsickness in long van rides, or even while training doing endless laps in Central Park (my brother got me an iPod mount for my bike for Christmas, awesome - only one headphone y'all! that's the law!). Lastly studying a language is great for my frenetic lifestyle, which involves lots of short breaks between classes, when it's tough to settle in to a long reading, and commuting from downtown on the train.

Alright, I have a couple of more reasons, but I'm going to leave my handful of readers in suspense in hopes that maybe they'll tune in next week...

Try to teach Japanese to your brother

Alas, I was literally all set to go to Japanese chat club today, but I at the last minute decided to drive up with my brother to my great aunt's house in Connecticut. Some close cousins are also in from Chicago. Cars have an incredibly soporific effect on me, but I managed to stay awake for the first half an hour or so to explain the extent of my limited Japanese to my brother. This was very amusing for the both of us. I stumbled over 'Your car is over there,' and 'Is this your bag?' Nice! Also when we drove through Chappaqua I told him, 'Susannasanwa New Yorkno Chappaqua karakimashita.' (I hope I got that right-please correct me if not.) He was a bit surprised at the extent of the personal knowledge I have of my fellow-students, but I explained to him that actually, Japanese isn't a class but an intimate social gathering. 'Party desu!'

I tried to memorize all the vocab that I could for last night's quiz in hiragana but it totally backfiired and I think I wrote desk instead of clock. I admire my own effort, but I think I was a bit too ambitious in my adoption of new study techniques and probably ought to have stuck with the language system that I could most easily remember under stress. For better or worse, I'm forging ahead, which is perhaps why I described my 4 month old half-brother to my aforementioned brother as big instead of small. I think I'll go work on that right now...