Fridge Haiku – Desktop Poet

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Desktop Poet is a fun little program from Mariner Software. It replicates those little packs of magnetic words you find in bookshops that allow you to compose poetry on your fridge. This program allows you to do the same on your computer. And as such is much more convenient.

As words can be imported from simple text files I thought it might be interesting to use it to play at making sentences to improve my Japanese grammar and reading. Haiku or any poetry might be a bit advanced.
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にほんごをまなぼう Lets Study Japanese

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

nihongo wo manabo banner

にほんごをまなぼう Lets Study Japanese is an interactive site based around school activities made by the Japanese Ministry of Education.

It is almost completely in Japanese. There are some English explanations of what to do, but otherwise it’s an immersive program. You click on pictures and you get a dialogue or a description written in kana and spoken to you in Japanese at the same time.

Both polite Japanese, the masu desu form, and casual plain Japanese is provided. The children mainly speaking plain form and adults polite form.

It sems to be mainly a teachers resource but I’m sure most students would be able to navigate it by themselves and learn new things. You might need to know your kana, but even then you could read along with the audio to improve your kana and there are learning kana screens as well.

sections include
15. じかんわり(jikanwari – timetable) for telling the time and dates
4. からだのなまえ(parts of the body)
3. トイレ (toilet)
10. きゅうしょく (school lunch)
11. そうじ (cleaning)

There’s a lot of vocabulary here presented in an interesting manner, it’s worth a look. I’ve learnt some new words already.

It needs shockwave and java I think. On my setup some of the voicerecording modules don’t seem to load, but you might have more luck. Also some directories seem to be missing. It also uses frames as well as shockwave which makes it hard to bookmark sections unfortunately. The last update was Heisei13 which I think is 2002 so it’s a bit dormant perhaps.

Yotsuba&! • よつばと!

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

yotsubato cover

よつばと! :あずまきよひこ

More “Feel Good”-ness from しあわせ!

Yotsubato is a manga from the creator of my favorite anime “Azumanga Daioh“, Kiyohiko Azuma. It is about the day to day existence of a pre-schooler living in Japan with her adoptive father. (Yotsuba may not be Japanese herself). The manga’s subtitle is “Enjoy Everything”; which Yotsuba-chan surely does as only a five year old can. And so the look of delight on her face as she laughs ははは!never fails to cheer me up.

There are 7 volumes available. (I got mine while in Japan and via Amazon.jp In London you can get them at JP Books in Mitsukoshi.) Yotsuba always speaks in kana, sometimes mispronouncing words too. The adults speak in Kanji, but it all has furigana so it’s good for learners. The artwork is very clean and detailed line drawing that gives a good sense of Japanese life. — check out 第9話 「よつばと復讐」[Yotsuba and revenge] here.

Bonsai Maple Syrup

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Tomoko-san, another friend of mine from the “Chickens”, is one of the directors and performers in this play at the Pleasance Theatre Islington
June 21, 22, 23 at 19:45, Sunday 24 June at 18:00
Tickets £10 (£7 concessions)

Bonsai Maple Syrup

Hiroshima, 1947. Canadian journalist Henri
Corbeil is sent on a six-week assignment.
He does not return home for almost a year.

Montreal, 1971. 24-year-old Hélène Corbeil
retraces her father’s journey through Japan.
Armed only with his journals and interviews,
she hopes to find the mother she never knew.

This bout of visual theatre explores hand in
hand melodrama and satire, tragedy and
parody, as the international cast concieve a
poignant, sensitive, albeit sometimes silly epic,
in their native English, Japanese and French.

Bonsai Maple Syrup

I saw the dress rehearsal last night and it’s quite a performance.
The company has put a lot of work into it and it deserves an audience.
I was pleased to be able to understand the Japanese except for one long speech, but that is given a translation by another cast member anyhow.
As a bonus the venue is really good– There’s a great courtyard and pub/restuarant below the theatre.

–update 14Sept–
The company has a promotional video on YouTube showing their work on this show.

––old event––
links in this post are that are no longer active have been removed

My Father 父ちゃん

Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

Another comic-like page. This was inspired by a small manga that 千賀さん made about her father and her time as a child in Yokosuka. Essentially it is a piece of guided writing made by answering the questions in a handout.

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Summer Holiday Slides

Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

Summer 05

Another presentation I did. This time of my trip to Japan, 僕の夏休み。 A fair amount has furigana but you might need to get out a dictionary.