こんいちは、みんなさん。If you're a fan of J-pop, do you like trying to sing along? I try to – try –but there is always the problem of lyrics. Lyrics sites always post lyrics in ローマジ, which I now dislike using, and かんじ, which we can't understand. So, why not write out the lyrics in ひらがな using ローマジ as a guide and かんじ as a test for accuracy?
Here is my first attempt, with the song "Kings" by angela. It's the opening song for the anime "K". If you catch mistakes, let me know! And if you have any requests, comment below!
みんなさん、みってください！Now that we known かたかな, we can read airport signs!
On another note, isn't it funny that the sign says ステション rather than えき？ Is it because the rest of the phrase is foreign, or because えき only refers to train stations. わかりません。
わたしのともだちよくうちにいきました。キチンでクッキーをつくりました（baked, in the sense of "made"; the other option was やけました、but I was under the impression that this was a passive construction.）
いま、にほんごをべんきょうしますか。しゅくだいをしますか。Are you stressed out by all of those particles and prepositional phrases? （たいへんですね！） じゃあ, you're in luck! YouTubeにリラクシングピアノジブリコレクションのヴィデオがあります。
（すみません、for some reason the video wouldn't let me share it directly to Blogger – perhaps a copyright issue, or something to do with the original poster's settings? So here's a link instead.)
This is one of my new favorite songs, Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", performed by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Band. The flute player is amazing! すごいですね！And just think, someday we will be able to understand the announcement at the end. :)
Music, Japanese…the whole thing is just too wonderful.
ほたるのはかのえいがはとてもかなしい(sad)ですね！I liked it a lot, though. I love how みやざきさん succeeds in interspersing joy with utter sorry. The happy moments make the tragic ones even more moving. It's beautiful moviemaking. Of course the soundtrack is amazing as well.
There was some question about whether the movie really ends with Seita looking out over Kobe (according to Wikipedia), or whether the last scene is actually a reprise of the first. Frankly, I would have preferred it if the end were like the beginning – it would have tied in so well – but I also would have started bawling. Perhaps it was for the better that the movie ended on a more hopeful note.
Really, though, if you haven't seen the movie, you should watch it. It's a bit quiet and slow in places, but just relax and go for the ride. It's worth it.
こんにちは！I did a little hunting this morning on the Blogger help website, and found an article about threading comments: https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/1725597?hl=en. It sounds like this is what we need to start getting notifications on all blog comments, including replies to previous comments.
However, the majority of the article proved to be irrelevant. My blog was already set to the recommended settings (Site Feed: full; Comments: embedded) and the people who commented on my posts were still not being notified of my replies to their comments.
The last part of the article is the most useful. Here is a screenshot:
So why don't we all give this a shot? When you comment on a post, look for a little check box in the lower right hand corner that says "Notify Me", and if everything works as planned, you should start receiving notifications of any updates to the conversation/comment thread. いいですか。
If you're interested in digital flashcard sets of katakana and some of the new vocab from our Nakama 1 textbook, I've created an account on Quizlet and made sets on verbs and relative time expressions and such. You can find them through my username, "Reitetsu". I will be making more sets, too, as more vocab lists come to haunt us.
One of the many wonderful things about Japan is the mini marts. It's true! When we stayed in Kyoto, there was a 7-Eleven type establishment near our hotel, and it had all sorts of marvelous foodstuffs. Sushi of various forms, hunks of real salmon, soy sauce-soaked boiled eggs, little packets of freeze-dried seaweed, matcha powder, and best of all:
Dango. You have no idea how long I had been searching for this. Perhaps I was corrupted by anime, because I was under the impression there'd be a dango shop around every corner. Alas, no. But there it suddenly was, in a refrigerated bin in the middle of a mini mart! I don't know if this having so much food in a convenience store is common in Japan or whether it's just a Kyoto thing, but I thought it was awesome. (The dango was pretty good, too.)
In retrospect, perhaps I went a little overboard in my dictionary-shopping spree. Amazon Prime is a dangerous thing.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife…and that finding words in a dictionary is nigh impossible if you don't understand how the words are alphabetized.
I was most excited to get the Kodansha's furigana Japanese-English Dictionary. There was just one minor detail: "Japanese-English". They said it, and they mean it. You will find no English-Japanese section anywhere in this book. Naturally, this "Japanese to English" aspect means everything is organized according to a foreign alphabetization system.
As far as I can gather from the world wide web, which we all know to be a highly trustworthy source, the Japanese alphabetization system essentially works by sound order – a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko, etc. Is this right? The furigana dictionaryagrees, but does this system of alphabetizing work with kanji as well? Fascinating, indeed.
I have a question in to a せんせい, so we'll see what she has to say.
My name is Emily. エミリ, I suppose. The journey to my admitted infatuation with everything Japanese began two years ago when a friend invited me to watch anime with him. Sad to say, I knew nothing about anime – oh, those dreary, colorless days of ignorance. He started me on "Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu", which I have to say is the funniest filler season ever. Since then I have been a dedicated anime watcher, and if you want my opinion on subs versus dubs, definitely subs. I mean, come on. Anime is from Japan, so you should at least hear it in its original language, as it was meant to be. Not to say that there aren't good dubs, but nothing captures the spirit of anime like the Japanese language.
My mom and I went on a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto last spring. It was the most amazing trip ever. I bought a ton of CDs at Tower Records in Shibuya. I downed many half-liters of Kirin milk tea. Again, most amazing trip ever. I can't wait to go back, and hopefully when I return, I will actually be able to read the menus and not end up with a cheese pizza instead of an omelette! (Hey, the little pictures in the menu werealmost identical.)
To close, here is a YouTube video of one of my favorite J-pop artists, angela. The anime isn't too bad, either, but typical to form, I didn't like the protagonist as much as an *ahem* certain secondary character.
We'll leave it at that – and just so you know, it's not who you think it is. But perhaps, through little hints, one day you may learn the secret.
