A well deserved break from work...

I finally managed to get away from work for a weekend and decided to drive up to see some of my friends that I haven't seen in about week, and we had a great time. We went and played laser tag, and not to sound too immature, but.... I won 2 times in a row! Shourisha しょうりしゃ！ Well I found another band that I like called "Southern All Stars" and I really like their music! This is my favorite song from them, enjoy! Noah

As promised, another new style post...finally!

Well as promised, here is a new topic for today! Lately I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Final Fantasy Advent Children to the US and it finally was released on Tuesday, so I was there bright and early to pickup my Pre-Ordered DVD! I know.... I am a video game otaku! For those of you who don’t know, Final Fantasy Advent Children is a CG movie based on events that happen after Final Fantasy VII, one of the best games in the Final Fantasy series in my opinion. I was not disappointed in my wait, the movie is great, the English dubbing is actually handled very well with some big names like Rachael Leigh Cook, however I chose to watch it in Japanese.

So for today, I will choose some words related to the movie, first word is what I would described the hero Cloud as, kakkoii かっこいい, it means cool. The word for the villian of the movie Sephiroth, is haraguroi はらぐろい、it means wicked or vicious. One thing I noticed in the movie was at one point Cloud returns home, to which one character says “Okearinasai” おかえりなさい and Cloud responds “Tadaima” ただいま, now what was the problem with this you ask? The English subtitles translated “Tadaima” to “Thank you” which it my opinion should have been “I’m home”, but that’s just my opinion I guess. By the way, okearinasai means “Welcome back” and the person this is said to will always respond “Tadaima”. For great lessons on words like these, please visit http://www.japancast.net/ and listen to the podcast, this is where I learned these types of words from, thanks to Hitomi :)

Well that’s all for today, hopefully the “Unusual stressful work situation” has passed, so my post will be more often! Thanks for reading, mata ashita! Noah

Yui singing a Michelle Branch song?

Hey everybody, I know I said in my last post that I would post another new topic, but as always work intervened. BUT tomorrow is my day off, so I am going to take the time to make a good post tomorrow, I think that any Final Fantasy fan will enjoy the post....that's the only hint I'm giving. I know that I have been getting behind on posting, but work has been even more demanding than usual lately, but bare with me please, I promise to start posting more regularly! To hold you over till tomorrow, here's a VERY cool video of Yui singing a Michelle Branch song, enjoy! Noah

Passport is here, trip is booked!!!!

    The big day has finally arrived, my passport is here (My name spelled correctly this time) and I just got finished booking my flight to Japan! I am sooo happy! Ureshii うれしい！！！ The dates are May 21 through the 27, I am very glad to finally have a solid date for my trip! Well I just wanted to tell everybody the good news, I will post another new topic tomorrow with some new words, see you tomorrow! Mata ashita! Noah

Back again!

I am sorry that it has taken me this long to make a new post, but I had a lot of things going on at work, hopefully this post will make up for the days I missed! Gomen nasai ごめんなさい！

I was watching the Japanese channel a few nights ago and a music award show came on, and one of the performers was a girl named Yui, and she was great! She performed an acoustic version of her song “Feel my soul” and not only was her singing great, but she can also play the guitar extremely well! So for today’s post I thought that I would put her video on here and choose some words from the song to translate. I got the translation from http://www.corichan.com/ , so please check out this site, they have a lot of J-pop lyric translations there.

Well the first word is a happy word, its egao えがお, it means “Smiling face”. Now on to a more depressing word, kizu きず, which means scar or wound. The next word is a good word to know, its yume ゆめ, it means dream. I thought that I would finish with a word you might hear or use a lot, its ima いま, it means right now or present. Well I hope these words were interesting or helpful, I will try not to be late again with my post, mata ashita! Noah

Another New Style Post

    Well for today’s post I thought that I would finish up on the Color words, so here we go! Today’s word is actually a pair of words, kuroji and akaji, くろじ　あかじ. Literally translated it means Black Letter and Red Letter, the English equivalent of these words would be “In the Black” and “In the Red”, so if a business had a deficit, they would say “Were in the Red”. I really hope that my money this month won’t be akaji あかじ！(^-^)  

    That’s all of the Color words I have, I will have to come up with a new interesting topic for the next new style post, I hope you are enjoying this new style! Mata ashita! Noah

iPod no more...

Konban wa mina-san, o-genki desu ka? Watashi wa totemo genki desu yo!
こんばんはみなさん、おげんきですか？わたしはとてもげんきですよ！

Well today was a pretty average day, I had to go to work, but we were not that busy today, so everything was going good until I got into my car and tried to listen to my iPod, and it wouldn’t turn on! I am not sure what happened to it, I left it in the car, but it wasn’t in direct sunlight or anything, so I am very confused. But for some good news, I bought a Japanese CD from ebay and it arrived today! Its a song from an old Japanese drama, the song is kind of a sad song, but Morita Douji has such a beautiful voice! The name of the song I like is "Bokutachi no Shippai", the translation to it can be found here.

Well I promise to make another one of my “New Style Posts” tomorrow, but right now I have to get some sleep, totemo nemui とてもねむい, mata ashita! Noah

New and Improved Style of Post!!!

    Well first of all, I am sorry for not posting anything for a few days, unfortunately I’ve had to work the afternoon shift for the past few days, which has prevented me from posting, BUT... I have a pretty good post for today! I decided on trying a new style of post, because I have noticed that I am unable to write everything that I want to say in Japanese, so I decided to switch to a different style until my skills are good enough to do more Japanese sentences. The new version will have me writing about whatever I studied that day, very similar to the color post that I did, this way I can write more Japanese words, even though they are not in sentences. Whew! With all that out of the way, here’s today’s post!

    Words with color in them! Here’s some words that I have found from yesjapan! that contain color in them, first word is Akanotanin あかのたにん it means “Complete Stranger” and the color word is aka あか which is Red. Next word is Aozameru あおざめる it means to become pale, and the color word is ao あお which is Blue. The interesting thing about the last one is in Japanese to be scared is to turn Blue, but in English to turn Blue means you can’t breathe, where as to turn White is to be scared. Omoshiroi　おもしろい！Well here’s a really simple one, because the color in this word is actually Color いろ, the word is Iroppoi いろっぽい, it means Sexy.

    Well what did you think of the new style of post? I hope that you found it more interesting than the previous way I have been posting, and hopefully you learned a lot of new words! This way takes a little more research for each post, but I think it’s worth it! Well please leave any feedback you have in the comments sections, I am very interested to hear what you think! Next post I will give some more Color words, and then move on to another topic, that’s all for today, everybody have a Happy Easter, mata ashita! Noah

Shopping day...

I had another day off today, and instead of spending it just lounging around the house, I decided to do some shopping. The first place I went to was the World Market store, where I bought some Asian food, they don’t have a huge selection of things from Japan, but I did manage to get some good things! After that I decided to go by Office Depot and buy a much needed printer, and I found a HP that I liked, so I decided to get it, I just hope it doesn’t run out of ink every other week like my last one!

Once I got home from shopping, I needed some time to be lazy, so of course I had to watch some TV! But it wasn’t a complete waste of time, because I watched the Japanese channel, so technically I could call that studying (^-^). Also, I watched a show that I hadn’t seen before, called “Gokusen”, and it was hilarious! Okashii おかしい！It had a lot of slapstick comedy that was easy to find humorous, whether you can understand the language or not. Speaking of which, I still find myself knowing more and more words from Japanese TV, although I still can’t put the words together enough to understand full sentences. Well that’s all for today, mata ashita! Noah

Kyou shoppingu shimashita. きょうショッピングしました。

Whew! What a day...

Well my day started off normal enough, with me driving to Mandeville for my manager training class, but things took a turn for the worst as I was heading home and had a tire blow out on the interstate! Luckily I managed to keep control of the car and pull off the road, and then proceeded with changing the tire. The good news is that my rim didn’t get messed up and I was back on the road again in about 30 minutes, with no harm done, well except some scraped knuckles from jacking up the car! Itai! いたい! Ouch! I had to put on the little spare tire that comes with the car, but my car has after market rims on all the other tires, so now it looks really funny with one small tire! Okashii おかしい。Here’s a picture of the aftermath...



Before....

















After with the “Little” tire...



















Hope my luck is better tomorrow, mata ashita! Noah

Another weekend gone...

    How was everybody’s weekend? Mine was pretty good, I got a day off on a Saturday, which is always nice, and today work wasn’t too busy, so I had a great weekend! Also, I noticed that I will be working the morning shift during most of this week, so that means I will have my afternoons free, which I like a lot better than getting off at 9pm.

    I have rescheduled my trip to Japan, because of “Golden Week”, so my new departure date is going to be around May 7. I am currently waiting for my passport, but I have been assured that it will be here well before May 7, so I hope so! One of the reasons I have been studying so much lately, is because being in Japan for a week will be a great opportunity to practice my Japanese. I want to speak in Japanese as much as I can for that week, because even though I get to practice my reading and writing all the time, I never get a chance to actually speak Japanese. So I hope that I can have many conversations in Japan!

    Well here’s a simple sentence involving the subject I have been studying for the past few days, colors! Iro! いろ！　Watashi no kuruma wa aka no Mustang desu.　わたしのくるまはあかのMustangです。My car is a red Mustang.

    Well that’s all for today, please correct any mistakes that you see, mata ashita! Noah


    

Nice Saturday...

    Konban wa minasan! Genki desu ka? こんばんはみなさん！げんきですか？

　Good evening everyone, how are you? Well I hope everybody is having a nice weekend, so far mine is going pretty well, no work today, so that’s always a good thing! Zettai! ぜったい！I have made some more improvements to the blog, now you can subscribe to the blog through either feedburner or through email, so if you like, please do so!

    Well today I am studying Japanese colors, like あか、あお、くろ、しろ、and so forth. Also, I am practicing my Hiragana day by day, and thanks to Hitomi’s lessons my skills have improved a lot, I can’t wait until I have them all memorized.

    Well I will get back to my studying now, thanks for reading, please leave any comments that you have, I love to read them! Here’s today’s cool video, its Hikaru Utada live singing “Passion”, enjoy! Noah  

Relaxing Day....

Well today was a nice day off in which I spent most of my time doing absolutely nothing, apart from relaxing. Ok well that’s not entirely true, I did spend sometime today studying Japanese and also messing around with this page trying to add some cool features to it. I managed to get a hit counter installed, to see how many people visit here, and also I got a search bar from Technorati which lets you search for words that appear on my blog.

I thought that I would update the status about my trip to Japan, earlier I posted about my passport and how they misspelled my name, well it turns out that might have been for the best because the week I planned on going was “Golden Week” which means I would have paid a lot more money for airfare and hotel. So my new plan is to go on May 7, however my passport needs to arrive before then, so keep your fingers crossed!

Here’s a funny video I found of Morning Musume, enjoy!

I bought a new book today

I went to the bookstore today and found a Japanese book that I hadn't seen before, its called 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese, and it seems like a really good book. Its not really a instructional book, its more of a collection of things to help you start thinking in Japanese, like jokes and some manga stories. It gives a lot of example sentences and tips to increase fluency, so I think it will be a good thing to study in addition to my instructional learn Japanese books.

Also I heard a word today that I thought was the coolest sounding Japanese word yet, but I was disappointed to find out that the meaning of the word was not something you would want to use in a normal conversation. Its not a bad word, just not something you would use often. So are you wondering what the word is? Ok, I'll tell you, its Gokiburi, ゴキブリ. Now I know it means "Cockroach" and I know that cockroaches are disgusting, but its just such a cool sounding word I think.

Well I think I am going to read a chapter of my new book and go to sleep, I will try to post again tomorrow, mata ashita! Noah