JackiJinx

I was planning on making this a daily writing thing, but decided against it considering I don’t think everyone wants to see me babble every day continuously.

Had to return Rosetta Stone to the library, and I barely used it. Kinda sad, but not much I can do about that.

I’ve been keeping up with my studies day to day, no matter how little or large detail I go into. Consistency is how developing a habit happens, and once a habit of studying happens, there’s hardly any stopping it.

Three tools I highly recommend right now:

Before You Know It: a tool that someone else recommended on here quite awhile back (I did some back tracking). Although I have yet to try the full feature, the study lists given for free are decent enough for beginners like myself, but presented in a way where memorizing becomes knowing rather easily.

Japanese Pod 101: Even if you don’t subscribe to any of the subscriptions, there are hundreds of lessons to back track to that anyone can use. I have yet to check out the forum (which is free also), but based upon the friendly and easy to understand podcast, I’m inclined to think the forum’s the same or similar. Why of all podcasts am I suggesting this one? Unlike most podcasts, this one slows down conversations after initially presenting them down to the basic syllables. It’s hard to find something like that without having to pay for it.

Rikaichan: This is a Firefox tool that translates every character you hover your mouse over. Here’s a video on how to get the most out of it. If that link does not work properly, click here and then select video

There’s only a few things I’m sure of at life, and this is one of them. I want to work at Gamespot. However, I feel that it’s best to get an internship first in order to familiar myself more so with the way things are done.

Current open internship is for a media capture assistant, something I have no problem doing once I understand digital media better.

Qualifications:

The first three I need some work on:

• Experience with professional-quality VTR DV equipment for video capture
• Familiarity with all modern digital video formats
• Familiarity with HD video formats preferred

These, are a given:

• Patience and a good eye for detail
• Familiarity with and love of playing video games on all platforms.

Two out of five qualifications. I’m on my way!

I didn’t end up using Rosetta Stone last night as planned because my boyfriend came over for an unexpected visit. Hadn’t seen him in a number of days, so I feel that’s a fair excuse.

Today my internet was out for the first half of the day, so I went and used Rosetta Stone. I’ve only been going over the same lesson, mostly just the audio and reading in both the hiragana/katakana and kanji versions. I’m actually starting to learn kanji now! SQUEE! xD

I also ended up checking up on my podcasts that I just recently subscribed to. Fairly helpful stuff so far, but I need to backtrack on the early entries.

This podcast had an interesting tidbit about Japanese social networks. The Japanese equivalent to MySpace is Mixi. Sounds rather promising in the way this specific podcast describes it, but the one catch is that an invite is necessary. I’m looking into finding someone who’s willing to send them, but most likely someone on the Beb and Alex forum will be willing to supply one.

When my internet decided to function, I found this beautiful site dedicated to videos that enhance learning. However, the videos on Japanese are limited to a few colors and a lady folding a shirt. If you’re interested, here are the links to the videos. They’re actually quite good:

Gray, White, and Black

Yellow

Red

Green

Purple

How to Fold a Shirt

I was influenced by these to put some stickies on objects in my room in order to memorize what color they are xD

Other than that, I got news that my brother is applying to teach in Japan for a year. The best part about that is that he doesn’t know a bit of the language, but at least he’s an expert at English. That would be fun if he managed to get it.

Hope everyone else is doing well in their studies = )