School vocabulary always seemed rather limited to survival words.  I have tried to create a list around a general theme each week to study to keep building on the words I know.  I will be posting my vocabulary lists regularly, though they are a little behind my regular study.

たべもの　          food                         食べ物　：
におい　　　       smell                        匂い
あじ　　　　　      taste / flavor   　　  　味
すっぱい　　      sour
にがい　　　       bitter                         苦い
からい　　　　     spicy                        辛い
しょっぱい　       salty
おいしい　　      tasty / yummy　      美味しい
まずい　　　　    disgusting              不味い
にく　　　　　      meat                         肉
うし　　　　　       beef                          牛
ぶた　　             pork                          豚
にわとり　　　    chicken                    鶏
さかな　　　       fish　　　　 　　　    　魚
たまご　　　　    eggs                        卵
ぎゅうにゅう　    milk                          牛乳
やさい　　 　　   vegetables              野菜
くだもの　　　    fruit                           果物
まめ　　　　　    beans                       豆
こめ　　　　　    rice                            米
しお　　　　       salt                            塩
しょうゆ　　　    soy sauce
さとう　　　　     sugar                       砂糖
キャベシ　　     cabbage
ブター　　　      butter

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Today I checked out the Namaste India Festival in Yoyogi and took along my ipod recorder. I bumped into my friend Ady who took the pictures in this post. I’ll be posting some of my own pictures up soon. Here are some pictures and thoughts on what happened today.The food was amazing, the smells intoxicating, the dancing amazing and the music more jolly than a herd of elephants dressed in saris crashing through a Bollywood set. It was great to get my India fix and as an Englishman, I need my curry, it has become the national dish or after pub grub in the UK now.

I mentioned during the podcats that there were 100,000 people which I think was an exaggeration. Probably more like 20,000, oops. Suffice it to say it was packed out with people queuing for food, chatting and slowly

getting drunk by the food stalls.

I also claimed in the podcast that Indian restaurants in London give you free papadoms and condiments whereas the ones in Japan don’t. Ady corrected me on this saying that you can get free appetizers but it probably helps if you are Indian.

I’ve noticed that Indian culture has become gradually more popular in Japan in recent years. The numbers of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have been increasing. When I first came to Japan more than 12 years ago there weren’t as many Indian restaurants as there are now. Now there are not only small run family restaurants but big chains such as Samrat. Japan just became that little bit more delicious.

Ady taught us a little Hindi and how the grammar is similar to Japanese. Perhaps that is why many of the Indian people I have met here don’t seem to struggle with picking up the Japanese language quickly. I won’t tell you the Hindi my mates from London taught me from my school days. It wasn’t something your grandmother wouldn’t want to hear.

All in all it was a great festival and even better for bumping into Ady and my friends.

It’s still going on tomorrow (26th September 2009) so if you have a chance check it out. Lola Kutty would be proud.

Here is a video of Chadha, an Enka singing Indian who has been in Japan for 30 years. Ady told me he was popular about 20 years ago but has now had a bit of a come back. Who’d have thought…

NOTE: At 14:05 you will hear a woman shouting “Alex!”. This is Lola Kutty, an MTV VJ and very funny woman from southern India. You can check her out here.

Ore sanjou! I have arrived!

Hello everyone!

I go by the name of Zombiehead, though some call me Chris, and Alex has given me a bit of blog space to help you learn Japanese, as best I can anyway. Personally, I’ve only take a bit of actual classes on the language, meaning one year college course really, which I had to drop for reasons I won’t get into. I have however continued my self teaching and it is from this self teaching method I shall assist you, the intrepid learner and possibly myself. So in a way, we are learning together.

Learning Japanese here in Alaska, where I am currently, is quite difficult because, except for the university classes, the only exposure I get to it is through Anime, Manga, and J-Drama and the occasional tourist who stops by the store I work in. But I shall try my best.

Predominantly the way I learn is through vocabulary lists, not really themed or anything, but ones I find immediately useful, and then I try figuring out how to use them in a sentence and such. Any other study tricks or anything shall come up as they occur to me.

Now some of the things I use for self study are as follows

The Genki Series of Textbooks (http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/index.en.html) These books are the ones my japanese teacher had us use and frankly they are fantasticly handy and useful.

Tuttle’s A Guide to Learning Hiragana and Katakana: (http://www.jbox.com/PRODUCT/TUTTLE007) To be honest, this is mainly just for practicng the Hiragana nd Katakana writing systems. Which is important. While kanji is going to be the primary obstacle (though don’t think of it that way, be positive now) it is important to be sure to remain sharp with the basics.

Ichinichi 15 Fun no kanji Renshu (Jou) ~ Fifteen Minutes a Day Kanji Practice (http://www.jbox.com/PRODUCT/ALK002) And this is for studying the kanji part.

The iPhone (or in my case the iPod Touch) has all kinds of nifty apps you can utilize. I recommend

Kotoba (Which is a fabulous dictionary program)

iKanji and iKana (great for practice with the writing)

I believe links for these have been posted already, so I won’t waste any time.

We have just started a new members’ articles section. Thanks to the contributions of Isacksen, Leviathon and Nik, we are off to a great start with three new great articles. A huge thank you to you guys for that. I bow in your general direction.

The reason I started the members section was to try a new experiment in member participation. I’m hoping that we can start a community here, get some comments and new conversations going. Let’s see what happens.

If you would like to write about your Japan and Japanese learning experiences on Learn Japanese Pod, please send an email with a username to info(at)learnjapanesepod(dot)com

Don’t forget you can also post your views, comments, ideas and questions in the Forums.

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

I have been studying Japanese for over 2 years through formal classes at a non-profit language school in San Francisco, California. I became frustrated with the school’s program at their upper intermediate level and have decided to see how I do on a self-study program.

I am not doing this completely alone. San Francisco has a fairly sizeable Japanese population and one friend Taka and my girlfriend Kana are both native speakers. I have been fortunate to have these people to turn to for questions that come up.

Vocabulary has been a big focus in the beginning of this self-study program. Weekly vocabulary lists hand-written onto flashcards are helping me focus on things I want to be able to talk about.

Writing was a big focus at the school I attended. I am going to be keeping up with that practice by hand writing and later posting something along the lines of essays.

Conversation is practiced with both Kana and Taka, both coaching me through unfamiliar words I need to get a story across. Recently I struggled through a description of the storyline of the movie District 9.

I plan to post my vocabulary lists, essays after a friend has corrected them, any grammar tidbits I pickup, and how particular approaches to study turn out.

Thanks for reading and I hope my contributions prove to be useful to people.

Hello. Alex has kindly given me a bit of blog space on the learnjapanesepod.com site so I shall endeavor to use it to write about all things Japan and Japanese. For the usual bit of background, I will say that I’m an English teacher in Japan. I arrived March 2009 and live and work in and around Chiba. I used to work in IT, and will probably go back to that eventually, maybe in Japan. I’ve been studying Japanese for about 5 years (evening classes – this is my first time in Japan and it shows) and will take the JLPT level 2 test (again) this December. I also studied a Masters at SOAS, London, majoring in Japanese history. My dissertation was on Second World War Japanese propaganda.

That’s my background.

Useful sites I use for studying Japanese are these.

http://smart.fm/home
Great site for studying vocab. Has a lot of lists already created by people however you can create your own.

http://lang-8.com/
Write a diary and have native speakers correct it and give you notes. You do the same to theirs.

http://www.thinkmac.co.uk/ikanji/
I use the iKanji touch person on my iPhone. Great tool for studying Kanji on the train.

I also go to free lessons.

http://www.mcic.or.jp/e_index.htm
Free one to one lessons from volunteers. Most of my teachers friends who live around Chiba do this. As long as you are clear about how you want to study, it’s good. They are usually not trained teachers so chatting is what I get out of it, with correction.

I also go to the Tsudanuma Kouminkan for a group lesson. More structured and a better teacher. You can hear a podcast mentioning this kind of class and giving more information. I think it’s a fun friday podcast.

That’s about it. I usually write a diary 3/4 times a week, based around a theme (with themed vocab) or a set of grammar points I want to practise (don’t just write things – you’ll normally write what you can already do pretty well). I also take vocab from lessons, diary corrections, reading Manga (currently reading Inu Yasha – it’s a bit too hard), JLPT books and emails with friends and use that in SmartFM, taking the Kanji from that vocab and putting it into iKanji. It kinda of all melds together nicely. Listening to Anime or TV helps, although I prefer the former as you can rewind and dictate for better practice. And Japanese TV is bizarrely bad.

Anyway. More to come. よろしくお願いします。

Blogging is fun.

The hard part is actually doing anything with any regularity that you can turn into wry observational humourous comments that speak to people of  shared experiences and the human condition.

I’m hoping that my reports of an Australian living in Australia trying to replicate the experiences gained from a short holiday in Japan will do the trick.

maybe it would add to the excitement if I wrote posts in different styles?

Wonder how that will go down…

I think I’ll start in TABLOID style, where SWEEPING, UNQUALIFIED statements are supported my punchy and DRAMATIC use of bold and CAPITALS.

Since returning from JAPAN last year (almost a year ago), I have been looking to replicate some of the experiences I think are quintessentially JAPANESE. These include: ramen, ofuro/sento, ramune, hyaku yen shops, mochi, weird bossa nova cover versions of classic songs in clothing and coffee shops, an pan, and Japanese food cooked by Japanese people. Some of these replications have resulted in EPIC failures.

I know this last entry on the list may seem a bit weird, but many Japanese restaurants in Sydney are Korean owned and run, and often replicate a westernised menu – very heavy on the donburi and teriyaki, bit of kimchee thrown in, no tsukemono etc. It just doesn’t remind me of Japan. Also, I like to keep my Japanese skills up as much as possible (in preparation for my imminent return), and you feel a little deflated when you use an “onegai shimasu” or an “arigato”, only to be met with a blank stare.

The other night I went into my local sushi place, up the end of my street. I thought I’d give them another try as I was hungry, but also lazy and didn’t want to have to go to a different suburb for dinner.

I say “give another try” because I once went in to order some lunch when we first moved in to the area, and I sat for over half an hour while they sent out everyone else’s order, telling me repeatedly “just five more minutes“. One order sat on the counter for ages, and then when I was about to walk out they offered it to me (it had been there for at least twenty minutes) only to realise they’d given mine out long ago to someone else.

After three months of me walking by giving them icy icy death stares (which they were totally oblivious to), I went back in.  I tried to place my order, but the waitress was bent over hysterically laughing at something the chef had said (in Korean). Pissing herself. Then looking at me and cracking her head on the bench as she laughed some more, and the chef made some more top jokes – which I now was assuming was at my expense. Kimchee and paranoia, anyone?!?!?

The sushi was ok, but I won’t be going back.

Am I starting to subconsciously absorb a Japanese perspective on Koreans?!?!? What’s next?