Gapnotes

Notes from the gap

Karl Andersson

Karl Andersson is attending the MA Visual and Media Anthropology programme at Freie Universität Berlin. He has a background in journalism and is currently researching Japanese subcultures. 日本語で話せます！

Week 25: 15-21 June 2020

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I start feeling that the kanji become my friends. As if I’ve been to a huge mingling party for years on end, and finally started to get to know the people there, one after the other. The feeling came not from Heisig, but from when I started to write down the words in the sentences in the Japanese Core 6000 deck. All of a sudden the words became so much easier to pronounce and read fast – I read them out loud along with the speaker. It felt as if I recognised them as individuals. Friends. Male, female and in other forms. Magic, love, ecstacy!

I finished the second volume of Yankī Shota to Otaku Onēsan. It’s such a lovely story that centers the conflict (?) of 2D and 3D realities, in the form of a woman (the otaku) and a boy (the shota) who always seem to end up together, which causes the woman stress about whether her interest in fictional 2D shota says anything about her predilections in the 3D reality. Again, there are several scenes with direct bearing on my research. The fact that they are there says something about what the readers have on their minds. Pop culture is a perfect source.

As for the language, thanks to having mastered the 2,200 kanji in Heisig (which I keep repeating in flashcards), I can understand so much more in manga now than before. I’ve never been as immersed as when I read the last three chapters of Yankī Shota in one sitting (in my favourite corner of the sofa) on Wednesday. I had planned to do other stuff, but I just kept sitting and reading. I felt like a child who has just discovered reading (and who has his long summer break from school so he can just read all day long). Japanese is opening up for me. A whole world of literature and research is becoming accessible.

I absolutely loved this text, which I found via Khatzumoto’s email:

It turns everything I’ve known about language learning upside down. Ever since I studied Czech at university, my approach has always been “just show me the grammar tables”, because I felt that private language schools always tried to hide those since they thought people were intimidated by grammar. And although I still stand by that criticism, it doesn’t mean that grammar is the way. This text, Krashen’s principles, MIA, Ajatt, and so on stress the importance of input. Two mind-opening excerpts:

In the last few decades, classroom language teaching has undergone a major upheaval in the English teaching world, possibly because people cottoned on to the fact that they were hopeless at German even after studying it for 5 years. Now, the emphasis is on “communicative competence.” Accuracy, which used to be paramount, has effectively been replaced by fluency, and grammatical errors are given minimal attention.

…

And you can study as much grammar as you want, because you’ve already internalised the language that you’re analysing. Using grammar rules will no longer be blindly gluing words together, but understanding why the language you already speak works the way it does. Now you’ve got some bread to put the butter on.

Made a PS5 meme with Wataru.

Japanese

  • Flashcards Deluxe: 51 min per day
  • Anki: Ca 90 min per day
  • 新にほんご500問 N2: Week 4 (pp. 213–), test: 23/35.
  • Manga: 星海ユミ: ヤンキーショタとオタクおねえさん, volume 2, chapter 12–15 + extra, pp. 61–154.

Anime

Articles

Video

Week 24: 8-14 June 2020

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I worked on my film a bit during this week, but also read and translated a bit from a Japanese book.

We had the Editing Forum on Tuesday. I also got the first feedback from my supervisor on my rough cut and thesis outline. Overall very positive – we’ll talk more next week.

The same night, from 1 to 3 am Berlin time, I watched the final presentations of Tom Boellstorff’s course Digital Cultures at University of California, Irving, but now being taught and presented in Second Life:

I was very impressed by the presentations, not least the timekeeping, but also by how skillfully the participants navigated SL, creating nice avatars and all. Not that it’s hard, but just the fact that they gave an effort.

I’m keeping up the kanji and also started the Japanese Core 6000 deck. The blue bars are new items, so after having learned the last of the new kanji (first five days), I only reviewed for two days (green), and then I started the new deck:

Anki stats 14 June 2020
Anki stats 14 June 2020.

Loving Anki so far although my learning went down a bit from Flashcards Deluxe in the beginning, but I think it was only because I was used to a certain system. I love Anki’s flexibility, customisability (although FD can do a lot too), and user base (lots of shared decks and add-ons). I don’t like that it’s tied to the computer unless I buy the Ios app for 30 euro, which I consider a total ripoff for a flashcards app, no matter its features. But the web version seems to work great on mobile devices. Not sure if it needs internet though. I’m mentioning these things simply because it’s so important that you can grab your flashcards app anywhere and at any time. It shouldn’t be something you do only when you sit down at your desktop computer (which I happen to do most of the time anyway at the moment, but you get the point).

Been looking just a bit at Khatzumoto’s blog. I don’t want to read dozens of posts in English instead of engaging with Japanese, but what a goldmine of inspiration it is. This is probably the most beautiful and inspiring thing that has been written about kanji – from the post with the long title:

So I love kanji. I love them. I love seeing them. I love touching them. I love writing them. I love reading them. They are beautiful to me. One guy once joked that I’m aroused by them — I’m not, but I do I find them aesthetically pleasing. It’s like seeing Megan Fox in Transformers or Schuyler Fisk in Orange County, you’re not aroused, but you’re undeniably faced with a visually appealing image. Each kanji has a unique feel, a unique personality. Each kanji is a friend; she can talk to you and tell you a story.

Again, I love kanji. And I believe the actions taken by the Occupational Government in the 1940s (and by the Chinese Communist Government in the 1950s and 1960s) are literally the worst thing you can do that doesn’t involve harming people, harming animals or confiscating private property. It was cultural vandalism (and borderline civilizational suicide) to attempt to truncate, abbreviate and even destroy the kanji lexicon. I don’t force other people to use kanji like I do, but I’ll be damned — damned, I tell you — if I’m going to submit to the fiat of illegitimate governments (and the Communist Party is about as legitimate as my disastrously effeminate thighs) without a fight.

I started watching My Hero Academia (finally!) with S, and it’s quite enjoyable. Which I can’t say about Detective Conan, which we watched the very first episode of.

I’ve started reading the second volume of Yankee Shota to Otaku Oneesan, which is so well written and amazing, and even has bearing on my research – I might quote from it!

In news, the Palme murder investigation was closed and a suspect, dead since 20 years, was named. I got very interested in that suspect after seeing a TV interview with him from shortly after the murder. Psychological issues seem to abound, and this blog post sort of mentioned them, and why they contributed to the police dismissing him as a suspect back then.

Japanese

  • Flashcards Deluxe: 64 min per day
  • Anki: Ca 45 min per day
  • Manga: 星海ユミ: ヤンキーショタとオタクおねえさん, volume 2, chapter 9–11, pp. 1–60.
  • 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: Random videos by Okada Toshio

Language acquisition

Anime

TV

  • Moesha (1996), S1 E2

Video

Week 23: 1-7 June 2020

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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

Anime

Articles

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

Week 22: 25-31 May 2020

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On Tuesday we discussed my rough cut in class and it was extremely useful. Will have to change quite a bit. Important parts. Really enjoyed it.

Tonight I finished the outline of my thesis. It feels a bit uninspired but I’ll have to take a step back and look at it again. It’s at least good enough to send to my supervisor. Maybe he can point me in the right direction – I guess that’s his job.

I’m very focused on kanji – the power of continuing feels exhilarating at the moment! I’m at 2,100 in RTK edition 6 now – only 100 kanji to go! Plus the 150 that were lost on the way in the flashcards deck – I’m only at 1,950 there and that’s the one that counts since I don’t remember any kanji outside the deck.

Flashcards Deluxe statistics this week

SRS’s are so amazing! Can’t believe I’ve never used them before outside proprietary versions such as Iknow and Memrise. I’ll do the switch from Flashcards Deluxe to Anki though.

I’m watching and listening to a lot of MIA and AJATT for inspiration – I’m a bit infatuated with Khatzumoto (but then who isn’t). The input hypothesis for language acquisition. I had never thought about it let be tried it, despite having learned several languages, but it seems to make sense. Output is overrated. The focus with which these mostly young men tackle language studies reminds of an extreme sport, discussing the best techniques and publishing beautiful statistics. Almost like the world of road cyclists using Strava and Veloviewer.

We watched the docking of Dragon into ISS live! Which propelled me into a Wikipedia orbit of the American space shuttle programme, its disasters and eventual discontinuation in 2011. S told me we do this kind of procrastination because of stress.

Japanese

  • Remembering the Kanji: Kanji 1876–2100
    • Flashcards Deluxe: 106 min/day
  • Radio: FM Haro in the mornings

Article

15th German (Göttingen) International Ethnographic Film Festival (GIEFF) – online

  • Murghab (Martin Saxer, Daler Kaziev, Marlen Elders, Switzerland/Germany/Tajikistan, 2019, 81 min)

Recent video

Week 21: 18-24 May 2020

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I went into the zone with the rough cut this week, as planned. Edited until 3 or 4 in the night, got up around 9, did my kanji reps in the morning and learned new kanji after lunch, and then editing again from 15. I watched two more versions with S, but the huge difference was between the first (55 min) and second (32 min). The final version happened to become quite exactly 30 minutes, which feels like a nice format, and which I know that at least one film festival has as their limit for short film submissions.

The upcoming week will be all about the thesis.

Flashcards Deluxe statistics this week

Japanese

  • Remembering the Kanji: Kanji 1651–1875
    • Flashcards Deluxe: 109 min/day
  • Radio: FM Haro in the mornings

Article

15th German (Göttingen) International Ethnographic Film Festival (GIEFF) – online

  • Sky, Earth and Man (Carolien Reucker, Germany/Morocco, 2018, 70 min)

Week 20: 11-17 May 2020

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The power of continuing: I kept up the kanji studies and am now at kanji 1,650, which is three fourth of the goal of 2,200 kanji. Since I started on 30 March 2020, that makes 48 days for the first three fourth, which would mean 64 days for the whole book if I keep up this pace. Plus a week of capturing those kanji from Heisig that are not part of the flashcard deck I’m using, probably due to a glitch in editions.

However, I have a deadline coming up on 1 June 2020, when I am supposed to have handed in both a thesis outline, as in draft, and a rough cut of the film to my supervisor, so I might have to focus more on that than on kanji over the next two weeks. I finally exported the rough cut I’ve been working on so far, but will remake it from the bottom up after feedback from S.

We watched some films at GIEFF – I am Sheriff was the gem among them. S participated in a Q&A after his film was shown.

We had the first classes of Editing Forum and Gender and Film. I will not take the latter as at this stage I’d rather only do readings directly related to my research. As for the first one, my rough cut will be dicussed in class on 26 May 2020, which means my actual deadline for the rough cut is in a week: 25 May 2020. Time to get to work!

Took the road bike for a round today, 60 km in the north, just like last weekend. And I finished the Yankeeshota manga, so sweet!

Japanese

  • Remembering the Kanji: Kanji 1431–1650
    • Flashcards Deluxe: Ca 75 min/day
  • Radio: FM Haro in the mornings
  • Podcast: 男性BLマンガ家と中性マンガ家のふたりぐらしトーク公式番組, E1–5
  • Manga: 星海ユミ: ヤンキーショタとオタクおねえさん, chapter 7–8 (end), pp. 95–146.

Anime

Article

15th German (Göttingen) International Ethnographic Film Festival (GIEFF) – online

  • I am Sheriff (Teboho Edkins, South Africa/Lesotho, 2017, 29 min)
  • Lost Boy (Shin Thandar, Germany/Myanmar, 2019, 15 min)
  • A New Era (Boris Svartzman, France/China, 2019, 71 min)
  • Warehouse (Constantinos Diamantis, Lillian Dam Bracia, Malwa Grabowska, S. Buse Yildirim, Greece/Germany, 2018, 8 min)
  • Ghost Tape #10 (Sean David Christensen, USA/Vietnam, 2018, 28 min)
  • Chidra (Nadav Harel and Arik Moran, Israel/India, 2018, 40 min – watched first ten)
  • The Stone Guest (Marina Fomenko, Russia, 2018, 8 min)
  • First Harvest (Martin Gruber, Rika Shinkai, Germany/Japan, 2018, 7 min – watched first five)