Silver Case

Bought two Hokkaido Tarabakani たらばかに King Crab from Isetan today.  I believe the Hokkaido species are red king crabs.

Not going to do much preparation for them…  just prepare some ghee with garlic,  some lemon, and hopefully some freshly-grated horseradish cocktail sauce (I don’t care if cocktail sauce sounds cheezy or not).   If I can find a nice ripe mango I’ll slice one up to accompany it.

Other dishes?  Dunno. I bought some bonito flakes, some dried kelp, dried hotate (scallops), some kana surime (fish/crab paste), and white miso, so I will probably brew up some sort of soup, too.

I scrambled yesterday and for several hours studied the Japanese katakana alphabet, used to phonetically spell foreign words. This morning I did the last few letters and found that on long series of electronic flashcards I score about 95% and usually half the errors are typos from answering too fast.

This compares to a few weeks for me to properly memorize all the hiragana. Why the difference? I’m not sure. The katakana doesn’t look naturally easier to remember than the hiragana.

The obvious answer is that I just didn’t push learning the hiragana fast enough, or once having learned the hiragana, I had the confidence to master the katakana, so I wasn’t sheepish about moving briskly. Alternatively I was wondering if I started to expand some dormant chunk of my brain muscle, so I truly could memorize the katakana faster.

One other point is that when mastering the hiragana, I also forced myself to master writing it, rather than simply recognizing it. I’ll bet that my writing isn’t as sharp or fast on the katakana. However, even if it’s only 85%, I am sure that within two hours I can have that to the same %95+ mastery level.

Anyway, now this liberates me substantially to move on to reading a lot more stuff. I have a book ‘Writing Katakana’ by Jim Gleeson that has a lot of phonetic word translation exercises, so it will be useful to go through that. *Note to anyone that buys that book… do the exercises in pencil, not pen like me, so that the exercises are reusable.

Still working at it. My trip to Tokyo meant I missed the first two classes, but that was ok, as they started teaching them hiragana, which I had already been teaching myself. I am pleased to say that I know all the hiragana now

あいうえおかきくけこさしすせそたちつてとなにぬねのはひふへほまみむめもやゆよらりるれろわをんわを

(there iare more than these, but they’re either just accent mark variations that sound different ふぶぷ　or short combinations to make a sound きょきゅきゃ）

Anyway, I’ve got this class twice a week for two hours starting at 720pm. It’s always a race to get there on time but I’ve managed. This was a particuarly tiring week, and on wednesday night I was vvvvvery close to flaking, but at the last minute I decided to do the right thing and went. Glad I did as the teacher, young japanese girl, adds new stuff every week, so falling behind would be bad.

The instruction seems ok, but am glad i am sticking with my plan to keep my training hetergenous. The grammar instruction is good but the examples in the textbook are dry as dirt. Really lifeless dialogs and vocabulary. This is where japanesepod101 is so much more interesting. I also don’t get much practice getting to speak. I’m thinking about finding a tutor to once a week go through speaking exercises so that I can actually do the stuff out loud, rather than only write things out on paper. There seems to be a huge difference between properly writing a sentence on paper and saying it out-loud on the fly.
My biggest suprise has become my biggest annoyance. She says we do not have to learn katakana (phonetic alphabet for foreign words  ex:カキコクコ　サシスセソ　etc ). But the textbook is full of foreign names and other katakana, so I have to use her legend to check the words. It’s really irritating. I have decided tol quickly learn katakana  to solve the problem.  I want to know it anyway so I can read more signs and labels.

I wish i could report as much success in my running and diet. The first part of this week was largely grueling and I was going to bed three hours later than normal. I’m taking a three-day weekend (Ling’s birthday on monday) so I should be able to catch up on all this.

While in Tokyo, Ling visited Kappabashi District bought me some onigiri molds and a hangiri for preparing Japanese sushi rice. A hangiri is a round, shallow, flat-bottomed bowl made of cypress woood an bound wtih copper bands. It helps quickly dissipate extra moisture and evenly cools the rice. Tonight I used it to mix in the furiake for my onigiri.

Onigiri are essentially triangular rice balls mixed with flavorings and fillers often wrapped in crispy nori or grilled with some sesame oil then brushed with  shoyu.

Using my molds I made onigiri tonight and I used a new bottle of furikake (a mixture of sesame seeds, bonito flakes, seaweed, and other seasonings, often including, apparently, msg). Tonight’s furikake was great; it had wasabi mixed in it (japanese horseradish). I don’t care for the noxious nose of wasabe, but this was just enough of a hint only to be nice smell with none of the ammonia-like punch. Onigiri fillings? Zapped some unagi (eel) from the freezer, some pickles, and another really nice garnish, some sort of preserved sea kelp with fish roe. They were the nicest onigiri I’ve made yet.

I also grilled one onigiri in a pan with some sesame oil. It was pretty nice, although I wish I had brushed on more shoyu before eating it.
I enjoyed this furikake so much that sometime I’m going to make my own.
That was the extent of my cooking this week, riceballs and liquifying some fruit in a food processor to mix with seltzer water. I brought home some Christmas wines from work, and briefly considering making some sort of braised beef recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but didn’t really have the mood or the appetite for an all-afternoon kitchen job.

I was sitting in the office (48th floor) talking to a colleague when I heard someone say “earthquake!” then I stopped and realized, “oh yeah, the floor really is shaking…” I guess the tremors felt much faster than I expected. Higher frequency?

Anyway it really did occur as shown on the Japan Meteorological Agency’s site. (Apparently earthquakes are a meteorological phenomenon?):

Earthquake Information (Information about Seismic Intensity at each site)
Issued at 13:27 JST 09 Jan 2007

4.3 Is apparently considered a ‘light’ earthquake.

Under everyone’s desk is a white hardhat you’re supposed to put on in a serious earthquake. I’ve been searching for four days here for a winter hat that will fit me. The largest I’ve found is 60cm, and that is still many cm from working.  So good luck on finding a hard plastic hat that will either! haha

One good way to find cool stuff in Tokyo is to set off on meaningless missions. So this morning I found the location for the flagship Muji store and browsed what was playing on the arts scene. Nothing grabbed me by the throat for attention, so I semi-arbitrarily chose the Boroboro Dorodoro Exhibition – The Return of Japanese Subculture at the Watari-Museum of Contemporary art.  There were two artists showing there,

Misaki Kawai, Taylor McKimens 

American McKimens had one 3-d display that looked like water leaking from the roof, falling and puddling on the floor. It looked nice and was clever.  He uses primitive materials (they look like cheap, strong tempra paints) but paints in a very heavy, simple, bright style, so it works.  I didn’t care for his paintings, they didn’t click with me.  Strange pictures of blobs and of hairy male torsos in underwear.

Kawai had a really cool 3-d display too. Even Luke enjoyed. it was an exceptionally large 3d diorama (is that a contradiction of terms?) of some sort of fantasy space house.  It was made, also, of terribly primitive materials, but painfully detailed.  Her use of lighting and sound gave the display a warmth and life and reality it would have otherwise been lacking.  I wonder what they’ll do with it once the display is over? It’s huge and brittle.
Venue: Watari-um, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art
Schedule: From 2006-10-14 To 2007-01-28
Address: 3-7-6 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001
Phone: 03-3402-3001 Fax: 03-3405-7714

From here we bumbled through side streets to Harujuku. It was nice to go through Harujuku from the side because we got to see a lot more of the tiny little fashion places I’ve always hear about, not just the big retail stuff  running into the main intersection.

I bought a Canon Wordtank G90 Electronic Dictionary at Yodobashi Camera in Shinjuku today. I chose the G90 instead of the V90 because the V90, although it will pronounce words for you, only does it for the Chinese dictionary. I have no interest in Chinese, so there’s no reason to pay the extra money.
The G90 has an English ‘quick reference’ but I don’t think it’s complete, or at least not thorough. The ‘quick reference’ is perhaps 15% of the entire manual, the balance being in Japanese. For example, it is mentioned that you can turn the menuing to English from the setup menu. It’s up to you to figure out where the setup is. Ha. Also didn’t explain how to get to the “draw some kanji/kana on the screen”. (There is a small icon you need to click) Perhaps some day I’ll write a proper manual with screen shots for the thing and stick it online.

Anyway was just playing with it to see how it worked. Of course the first thing I did was enter “fuck” into the English-to-Japanese dictionary. It does auto-complete. Wow. A lot of results:

1. fuck
2. fuckable
3. fuck-all
4. fucked-
5. fucked-up
6. fucker
7. fuckface
8. fuckhead
9. fucking
10. fucking A
11. fucking hell
12. fuck-in-law (even I don’t know what this one means)
13. fuck me
14. fuckoff
15. fuckpig (this wins the ‘Total Completeness Award’ — don’t think I’ve heard this term since university)
16. fuck-up
17. fuckwit

Anyway, I’ve only had the thing for a few hours, and don’t have much more to say about it yet.

Next week I will be working in Tokyo. Stealing some fun out of it, so on Friday night Ling, Luke and I fly up and then will fly back the following Sunday night. I’ll have to work during the week, but at least it will be a break. It’ll be an exercise in schedule flexibility for Luke, too, something we haven’t tinkered with much.

I’ve always been disgusted with myself for being mono-lingual. It’s especially noticeable in Singapore where nearly everyone speaks a second (or third) language to some degree. It’s especially frustrating when I’m in Japan, because I could get more out of my trips if I could communicate better at restaurants, stores, and on the street.

I have new responsibilities in my job that justify frequent trips to Tokyo.

These factors precipitated in me deciding to learn Japanese. It sounds plausible. I have the motivation to learn it as well as the means. Now the trick is to avoid mistakes of my past.

Spanish in high school. Well, this was simple, I didn’t have any motivation to learn it, except to meet absolute minimum foreign language requirements for university admittance. No loss anyway, I had no interest in Latin America and I am sure the quality of the instruction was lamentable.

Russian in university. I took a year’s Russian in university and by the end of the second semester had lost interest in it. It became increasingly clear I wasn’t going to Russia, the hot young teacher from the first semester was replaced with an old hag in the second, and the classes were quite rote, from a textbook. Most of the class was written.

Chinese with tutor and language programs. This soon went nowhere. My wooden ear and iron tongue do very poorly with the tones. I did have a (flaky) tutor but it wasn’t a very engaging education. Boring repetitive dialogues from old textbooks. I also tried some of these expensive Pimsleur-style cassette-based programs. They’re even more useless — boring as hell and with no one giving any feedback to what you’re saying.

Remembering these lessons, my approach to learning Japanese is:

• Hetergenuous study material. Not sticking with a single course, book, or program, otherwise it gets stale and frustrating.
• Speaking practice. Speaking practice seems essential to internalizing this
• Daily practice. Need to do something every day.
• Observable progress. I need to be able to see results.

So my current training regime is:

1. Signed up for the popular Singapore Japanese Cultural Society beginner Japanese program. I took the ‘intensive’ course, which is two hours twice a week and finishes in six months rather than one year. It will prepare me to take the Japanese Language Proficiency level four exam (the lowest level. Levels 2 and 1 reflect good fluency in Japanese).
2. Bootstrapping myself in learning the kana (hiragana, katakana) characters so that I can read the texts. I originally thought I could get away without bothering to learn how to read and write Japanese, but I soon realized that was folly. Anyway, learning the characters does give a nice feeling of progress. In just a week or so I’ve learned all the hiragana (あいえおう　。。。　らりろるれ）　so that has been a rewarding program
3. Bought a couple different textbooks with audio practice to mix up the normally boring introductory lessons. I bought the AJALT “Japanese For Busy People” program, as I saw that the Singapore Japanese Association uses that as their textbook.
4. Bought some unusual books for when I’m tired of the standard texts, including “Japanese in MangaLand” which is a pratical guide for people trying to learn Japanese to read Manga comics. I’m not especially interested in Manga, but the material comes in from a different angle and mixes things up a bit. It’s also got some practical elements the other books are missing.
5. Subscribed to JapanesePod101.com. RogerWarez pointed me to this site. It’s absolutely phenomenal. They have dozens of short 8-15minute long mp3 podcasts I can listen to on my PC or iPod that give short lessons in beginner Japanese. Lots of good word practice. Their program is marvelous because the material and examples they use are actually alive, contemporary, and interesting. The site is free, but I bought a subscription to have access to their ‘Learning Center’ which has supplementary texts and support information, as well as some flash-based flashcard systems. I used that extensively in learning the hiragana.
6. Then of course, I go to Tokyo as frequently as possible.