On Wednesday I reached the end of Heisig’s Remember the Kanji. If I started on 30 March (I think I might have started on that Monday), it took 65 days. But reaching the end of the book only means having completed all the 2,042 kanji in the flashcards deck, which is based on an older edition! So I downloaded an accurate version to Anki, which I have wanted to start using anyway instead of Flashcards Deluxe, suspended all cards and then went through them manually to unsuspend the 158 kanji that weren’t in the other deck. (Not sure if that’s the way to do it but at least it worked.) Since it was Wednesday, I set Anki’s “new cards per day” limit to 32 in order to finish this week, which I did.
So it took me 69 days to learn 2,200 kanji, and I kept up the drill every single day. I found a quote from an article on self-discipline that is very applicable:
Self-control alone doesn’t guarantee success. People also need a “burning goal” that gives them a reason to activate these skills, he says. His students all have the sitzfleisch to get into graduate school, but the best ones also have a burning question they want to answer in their work, sometimes stemming from their own lives.
Switched from FM Haro to a live news channel. It loops a bit but I don’t watch for longer stretches of time anyway, and every day there is new content. Found the very active Youtube channel of Okada Toshio – the editor of Otakuology Annual.
Through Ajatt/Khatzumoto’s Twitter I found some “golden rules” of language learning. I liked this aspect, how one doesn’t just acquire new words and phrases in one’s target language, but actually extends one’s own self:
It is not really possible to speak a different language while maintaining the same mannerisms, in insisting upon the same attitudes or adopting the same social strategies. This does not, however, mean that one is abandoning one’s personality. In time one develops what might be described as a parallel personality in the new language – something that is recognisably oneself.
Had a bit of an anime marathon today and started watching Wataru and Granzort without subtitles. The plot is pretty much the same in every episode anyway! The bliss when I get a full exchange of words between two characters! It only happened clearly once, in Granzort, and I only remember the wording of the question from Rabbi to Daichi: “何を作ってるの？” With the reply something that would make them win the race.
And I finished Evangelion, both the series and the End of Evangelion movie, which provides an alternative, or the intended, ending episodes, which I think were changed to softer ones due to TV Tokyo complying with parental complaints or something. But even those soft last episodes were amazing, like nothing I’ve seen in anime before, which also goes for the movie. I was not surprised to learn that Anno Hideaki has suffered from long strands of clinical depression.
Evangelion is done with cheap animation, in the sense not so many moving parts, but it so totally works. A couple of scenes contained the longest non-moving parts I’ve ever seen in an anime, with no words either: First in the elevator with Rei and Asuka, then when Shinji has Kaworu locked in his eva’s hand. I imagine the director waiting for just the right moment. Oh, how I loved it! And in the very same episode, all of a sudden Händel’s Hallelujah, accompanying a whole angel attack. Then avant-gardish German words drawn on screen: NEIN and TOD. Jesus. No wonder this series is legendary.
More TV series! We tried Black-ish on Amazon Prime and although it’s smart and modern, at the end of the day it’s quite a traditional sitcom about an upper middle class family. But the pilot of Moesha from 1996 was so charming!
Finally got to see Parasite, which was fantastic, perfection. And tonight we watched a documentary on Audre Lorde in Berlin, which was so inspiring but also sad when we realised that May Ayim died in 1996.
Saturday we broke our isolation and demonstrated against racism at Alexanderplatz with some 15,000 protesters. It was a very powerful experience.
Japanese
- Remember the Kanji: 2101–2200 + the 158 “lost” kanji = finish!
- Flashcards Deluxe: Ca 84 min per day
- Anki: 54 min per day studied
- In the mornings and every now and then: JapaNews24 ～日本のニュースを24時間配信 (live)
- When falling asleep: 岡田斗司夫 (Otaking/Okada Toshio):
- 岡田斗司夫ゼミ#336（2020.5.24）甘くない試験に出るチョコレートの歴史 / OTAKING talks about important chocolate for humanity
- 宮崎駿がヒロイン初登場シーンに怒り爆発！ 未来少年コナンのラナは大塚康夫には絶対に描かせない！ / OTAKING explains about “Future Boy Conan” Part 1
- 未来少年コナン解説＃４『バラクーダ号』/ OTAKING explains the Future Boy Conan is “Barracuda” with a 1/24 scale model
- ガンダム完全講座＃55「ランバラル特攻」第2回（全4回）/ Analyzing Mobile Suit Gundam＃55
Anime
- 1988: Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. E27–29 (raw)
- 1989: Madou King Granzort. E14–15 (raw)
- 1992: Chameleon. OVA2 (52 min)
- 1995: Neon Genesis Evangelion. E22–26 (end)
- 1997: Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (87 min)
Articles
- New York Times: Learning How to Exert Self-Control (2014, on Walter Mischel, “the marshmallow man”)
- David Bond: ‘Golden Rules’ for Language-Learning
TV
- Black-ish (2014), S1 E1–4
- Moesha (1996), S1 E1
Film
- Parasite (South Korea, 2019, 132 min)
- Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 (Germany, 2012, 84 min)
Video
- Marques Brownlee: Reflecting on the Color of My Skin 🙌🏻
- Casey Neistat: What Black Lives Matter Protests are really about
- The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: Trevor Breaks Down Reparations & White Privilege – Between the Scenes
- Mike Perry: Stop Censoring Your Work (Adobe 99U 2017)
- Lidingö Stadshus: Getskötarna på Lidingö
- Matt vs Japan:
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