Study diary

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:

• Seb Pearche: Grammar is cheating: the brain vs. language learning (2014)

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
  • Matt vs Japan: Anki Tutorial | Deck Options and Anki’s Algorithm
  • MIA: About half of the super interesting and nerdy Low-key Anki tutorial
• 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

• 1988: Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. E31 (raw)
• 1989: Madou King Granzort. E16 (raw)
• 2016: Boku no Hero Academia. S1 E9–13 = end

Articles

• Euronews: Assita Kanko: Leopold II is part of the uncomfortable truth of who we are. We can’t erase him ǀ View
• BBC: Atatiana Jefferson: ‘Why I will no longer call the police’
• The New Yorker: Postscript: Remembering Aimee Stephens, Who Lost and Found Her Purpose
• Rolling Stone: Seattle’s Autonomous Zone Is Not What You’ve Been Told
• Jason Hickel: The case for reparations
• GP: Anna Björklund: Alexander Bards fall är ett modernt gladiatorspel
• Vice/Eric Cervini: Spying Before Stonewall: How the FBI Secretly Tracked Gay Activists in the 60s
• The Japan Times: 900 LGBT couples have been certified in Japan since 2015, survey finds

Video

• Alain de Botton: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person
• Slavoj Zizek — White Guilt & Victimhood Culture
• Slavoj Zizek — Why white liberals love identity politics
• Marques Brownlee: PS5 Impressions: My Thoughts!

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:

• Ryan Schultz: Anthropologist Dr. Tom Boellstorff Teaches His Course on Digital Cultures Within 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:

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

• Ajatt/Khatzumoto:
  • Critical Frequency: A Brand New Way of Looking At Language Exposure
  • Khatzumoto, You Say to Imitate Japanese People Faithfully, But Why Do You Overuse Kanji? Isn’t That a Bit of Hypocrisy? Also, Why Are Your Thighs so Thick? It Doesn’t Really Seem Appropriate for a “Heterosexual” Man? Could You Do Me a Favor and Never Wear Shorts Again?
• Ricardo E. Schütz: Stephen Krashen’s Theory of Second Language Acquisition (1998)
• Steve Kaufmann (video): Anki Vs. Input-Based Learning

Anime

• 1988: Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. E30 (raw).
• 1996: Meitantei Conan. E1.
• 2016: Boku no Hero Academia. E1–8.

TV

• Moesha (1996), S1 E2

Video

• The Life-Sized City: The Unholy Trinity of Bridge Stupidity in Copenhagen