しあわせ

There is a recurring theme on a lot of blogs and forums that Japanese can only be written intelligibly using kanji. They have the idea that Japanese written only in kana (or romaji) cannot hold enough information and becomes difficult to read if not unintelligible. These ideas are mistaken. Kana is perfectly suitable to represent the sounds of Japanese, and that is all writing is, a representation of spoken language.

There are two examples of kana usage in Japan that demonstrate this; braille and morse code. Read the rest of this entry »

I read some comments made by Amelia Cook of Chocochip Languages on a (ill concieved) campaign against romaji web site today. Based solely on the level-headedness of her comments, she comes across as an enthusiastic, thoughtful and caring teacher who can convey her enthusiasm. Following her links to Facebook, I found a page about her courses in Sheffield. If you are in the Sheffield area and want to learn Japanese I suggest you check it out.
Chocochip Languages Japanese courses in Sheffield
They seem to have many options for courses and an interesting approach. While you can learn a lot by yourself if you are disciplined, a class; classmates; a teacher and a regular time for Japanese can be incredibly useful.

(unfortunately since it seemed to insist on a Facebook account I couldn’t comment on the no-romaji site. But in the spirit of fixing the Internet I’m working on a post in rebuttal.)

In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Touhoku people are slowly rebuilding their lives. However with so much wiped out I can only guess at the difficulties facing many people. Having a small child in an evacuation centre must be especially difficult. A Japanese friend of mine sent me the following information about a project addressing a specific need in the disaster area.

I can certainly vouch for my friend and the sincerity of this project. Please consider supporting them.

In some areas, people didn’t just lose their family, friends, pets, houses and jobs, but also the assurance of feeling part of the universe. Just to see cloths from the other end of the world will remind them they haven’t been forgotten.

Send Cotton-Muslin Squares to Japan Tsunami Areas
We are sending Muslin Squares to help young mothers and mothers-to-be in the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear affected areas in Japan.
Muslin Squares are large cloths used to wipe babies’ mouths, for breastfeeding or as burp cloths. They are not traditionally used in Japan, but we know they will be extremely useful for mothers who are struggling to wash and dry clothes in the evacuation centres. We have been contacted by NPOs, supporting organizations and maternity centres that are in desperate need of supplies for clean cloths for mothers.
We have already sent more than 1,500 Muslin Squares to help, but they need many, many more. We pack two large muslin squares per bag, and send them with instructions.

Please help us to help young mothers during a very difficult time. Your donation will be used to buy Muslin Squares and to ship them to Japan.
To donate, please go to the Muslin Square Project webpage　(Japanese)

For bank transfer and cheque payment, please contact msayaka@gmail.com.

London Mothers’ Praying for Japan, Muslin Squares Project | Contact: londonmothers@gmail.com (Sayaka)

You can read about the Project in Japanese (or just look at pictures) at Sayaka-san’s blog

cross-posted on microblog

The Japan Foundation has announced for the first time that the JLPT will be held on Sunday July 3rd at SOAS in London. The deadline for applications is April 4th.

The SOAS web site hasn’t updated for this information as yet, but the contact details are there to request information and/or an application pack.

This is fantastic news. Unfortunately I doubt I am ready to sit a test in 4 months time. I think it’ll be December for me. I have a month to ponder spending £70 on a trial run… Maybe if I work really hard.

Flashcards Deluxe is a standalone app for the iPhone, iPod or iPad. I’ve been using it to learn Japanese vocabulary and kanji since I first got my iPod Touch. I thoroughly recommend it.

Today sees an update to version 2.7

The most noticeable change is there is now some eyecandy in the form of themes for your cards. This makes it a bit more pleasant but isn’t really earth shattering. Although I’m very fond of the Deep Blue theme that is a graded background from Black to Dark Blue, which is more pleasant than the solid black I was using. More notable changes have been quietly made to the interface. The icons used are now more consistent with the iOS look and feel. There are extra options as to what information is displayed with a card and although I no longer have the previous version to compare it with I feel the preferences panes have been more consolidated. Also welcome are two modes in preferences so the advanced preferences are initially hidden from basic users.

The major change is the help files which have been vastly improved and are now also searchable. The help and documentation were some of the weaker points of this app previously. This is no longer the case, the contextual help is now quite comprehensive. I like that it is in the application itself and doesn’t require the user to go to a web site.
Read the rest of this entry »

Smart.fm, formally know as iKnow, is going back to its original name and going behind a paywall. Quite a steep paywall as well at 1000円 or $12 a month. And in the process finally abandoning the last of the community/social aspect of their business.
They have a lot of disgruntled users. (also complaints at koohii and tofugu) But I expect them to disappear as their user base shrinks by about 95% if newspaper paywalls are anything to go by.The (ex)users may well delete their vocab lists before they go which will lead to patchy results in the community lists search feature of iKnow. I’ve had a look at the new site. It feels very much a cut down version of the free community based site. Any subscription money you have would be better spent on a couple of good textbooks. Read the rest of this entry »