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I know,
I've been gone 3 days.

I know; me? Who always posts 2-5 times a day. Gone, for 3. Seems weird.

Surprisingly, I wasn't gone due to mental instability, for once. Quite the opposite, oddly enough.

I had a fantastic fucking day, visiting Jay, a while back. Told you all about that. The days continued to be rather pleasant from there.

Anyone who knows me and my hobbies knows that I hammer at them with a kind of hyperfocus, until I grow bored of them. This week it was Japanese; I got beyond where I was in 2005. So, I'm all caught up. I've renounced my hatred of "Youkoso". Actually, I rather like the pace. My issue is the kana -- opposite of 2005. I'm more or less learning it by exposure -- I have a typing program now for Japanese. NJStar. Seems cool, font-limits aside. It's like MS Office.

I'm slowly trying to introduce kanji; usually just stuff I use a lot. Weekdays. Words I say over and over (benkyou). That may be a little premature.

I'm still relying on roomaji for the initial workup. I have a pad of paper I use for that. I write "wo" and "ha" for the particles, so I remember to type them correctly.

My IME decided to tank; nothing I do seems to revive it.

It's times like these that the Mac-nuts have a point: PCs have a lot of flaws. At least they're more linear, fuck.

What the fuck makes a Mac "intuitive", anyway? And, why do I want a computer to be simpler than Windows XP.. when I'm damn comfy with XP being pretty easy to navigate? Anyone know?

I have no answers to these things.

BUT: Japanese.

I'm getting "skilled"; I say this in quotations as a marker to my relative beginner-ship. My issue with my learning curve is that I insist on taking the -masu way out all the time. If I'm gunna conjugate, I ought to know more than the super-polite way (as simple as that one is to remember)...

I'm getting better at a more rapid pace than I once anticipated. My keening to "read a book in a year".. might actually fulfill itself. I have 1 Litre no Namida here, Berserk #1, and an assortment of random books on Nihon en Nihongo. They don't look that cool, the Japan stories.

I found out something that peeves me a little -- when learning Japanese, it is widely advised not to read kid's books. Why? Because kids use different slang than the adults. So much for the "French approach"! Yeah, it took me 5 or so years to find out about that; good thing I only bought 2 kid's books. Fucking expensive.. when I could have bought adult books with more in them.. for less.

I'm hoping that within the year, I'll be able to purchase more reading material.

Will 1 Litre no Namida pose that much of a challenge? I'm starting to understand the basics real quick. It was completed 1988-ish; was polite-language still more abundant then? Berserk seems like more the challenge -- 80s slang? Hoboy.

I guess magazines would be good. There's something called the Hiragana Times via internet. It seems basic enough. But would that be enough of a challenge?

Another thing I must take care of: my written kana. In order to do kanji, I have to lightly draw a square, and "map" out where the stuff will go. My littler kana usually looks gimpy -- silly me, and my sloppy writing. Even Mr. L, the ol' Japanese teacher of grade 11 noted that my skills in that end sucked; he couldn't read mine, but, he understood that (back then) I was picking up hiragana like a motherfucker.

Enough about all this.

I'm going to Mom's tomorrow to work on the crib for Anni's baby.

Better find some grungy clothes.

You Missed:

*DISCLAIMER
* WHO TF IS ALL THIS??!
* INTRO, 2
* NAQ

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Circa 2010