less typing more reading.

While I'm settling in for winter, I want to spend more time learning stuff than vacuously pontificating.

Don't worry though, I'll be back and vacuous as every before long.

Also, I've not been paying very good attention to the news lately, but little girls are getting killed around japan. One of them by a gaijin!

(shock!)

you didn't even have to listen.

Lots of things in my head about my tokyo trip. Some quick thoughts on the JLPT.

It is pretty meaningless really. Even 1kyuu isnt a high enough level to be meaningful and doesn't test more than abitity to take a test. The focus on understanding is very reasonable, but every time that the test diverted from grasping meaning, it was strictly about amassed vocabulary (especially unusual kanji), and anal-retentive grammar.

There were a lot of asian faces in that test room. 150 or so people. 6 or so white folks, a few indian lookin people, and a middle-eastern-ish dude. I studied with the same books that most of the chinese people were using.

Some cocky white dude I overheard on his keitai outside the test missed a listening question. He was talking to someone about the listening test, and saying that "some were so obvious you didn't really have to listen". He then gave an example, and how he deduced the answer before even listening... he deduced wrong.

Learning is all about motivation. A lot of the chinese people picked up japanese as fast as possible... like in a year. I ran into a lawyer who has been working here for a while at least who took 2kyuu in 1992, and is taking 1kyuu for the first time 13 years later. There is a lot more to either of those stories, but it fits in with something I've been thinking and talking about lately.

"hunger". and the lower classes surplanting the upper classes while the middle imperceptably sinks.

one back, ripe for a pattin'

I'm back. I think I passed me test. I think I deserve a bath.

sumo, made (even) better

http://dbzsumo.ytmnd.com/

I should sleep. And study. and post real entries when I post.

shit.

64.2%

this is very bad.

the next few days are going to be unpleasant, as is the long wait for the test results.

For those not keeping track, I was hoping for/expecting an 80% on my practice test. Above is what I got.

who can do hip hop better than a frog can?

http://frenchrappers.ytmnd.com/

still not not blogging

my two favorite albums of the nineties so far:

yeah, I lied a little.

sometimes a break from studying and thinking is nice. I spent my break at wikipedia.

The following people (among many others) share my birthday:


One of the kinki kids was also born on the same day of the same year I was (as well as two other musicians and a protester who got run over by a tank in israel a few years back).

Also, I found how to make my pictures much bigger.

For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive
Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes, thanks for all the memories... all right, let's see your arms... you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

november morning

november morning
Originally uploaded by notnato.

I keep having the same discussion about how being "american" means something different from being japanese. You can "become american", but race is so tangled up in the idea of being japanese that "becoming japanese" isn't so simple.

I don't doubt that you can become un-japanese (like nomo?), but since it's not so strict a definintion, can you become not-american?

thisisaprettypicture.

ya ha! 73%

how's that for a post title?

I got 73% on the practice test! That is in the realm of passing, and I've still got a couple weeks left to lift it out of the girigiri level. I am stupidly happy right now.

As though there were someone that cared about the details, I got 86% on the grammar section, and improved my listening to a 76%. Kanji and vocabulary are still crap, but that's what the next two weeks are for.

g'night.

here go nothing, part three.

Just about to start my third practice test. Last time was a 64.75%... crazy as it sounds, I'm shooting for a 72% this time. I'd be happy to break the 70% line though.

also, it's snowing.... my ipod broke... I wore my new suit for the first time yesterday... and nhk caught up with me, and I'm 13400yen worse off for it.

asian eyes are the new black.

This is the front page of pitchfork right now, as they advertise tickets for their new years-ish party. It looks like a pretty happening show, and if I were chicagonian, I would be there, but what's with the design? Why is there an asian (maybe chinese?) woman's face cut into pieces? Mu won't be there, neither will deerhoof. As far as I can tell, the only asian women will be in the audience. Still, it's no different really than if it were a white woman, I guess, and I probably wouldn't make a blog entry about a white woman poster.
Lately america, at every social strata, thinks that asian (esp japanese) = cool. Whether it's anime, hentai anime, other japanese porn, green tea, modestly talented bands, sushi, j-girls/boys, fake japanese fashion (see gwen stefani), goofy internet clips, or lame tatoos, everyone wants in on the game.

How can I make money on this?

(also worth note, is that this design even without the face looks very au courrant japan)

retired pants, the fuzz

I'm really not into writing about japan right now... so I'm probably not going to write anything anyone will think is interesting for while. But in very uninteresting news... Tomorrow, I will retire my trusty dark blue, striped suit. My rough and ready wallet, and bike riding made a couple of holes in the butt, so I had to buy a new suit... or two.
From friday on, it's gray pinstriped winter wool, and/or brownish gray regular weight. If these two survive as much abuse as the last one, I'll be quite happy.

And the school I'm at this week is so bad. Cops were called in, though I couldn't really figure out why. No good high school age kids fucking with the junior high kids I think. Though there are so many fights there, and bullying to the point of injury (saw 1 kid get hurt, saw the aftermath of another). I read in this poll (via marxy) that only 17% of japanese women are concerned about education. I'm surprised, but it does fit in with my experience. I'm sort of disappointed in a lot of parents I've encountered, or parents whose kids I've had to deal with. I could elaborate, but it's really just a feeling. I've met a couple of parents I think are really great too (both at my work).

64.75%

That is a nice number. I got 64.75 on the practice test this time. Still need 70 to pass; still got a long way to go before I feel like I can pass, but it's a damned good start.

Listening didn't change a bit, but kanji went up five points after week (two days really) of kanji-focused study, and grammar went up 10 points for no good reason. The reading score was also better for no good reason. Those "no good reason"s are bothersome, because they mean that I am at the mercy of the test-makers' whims. I would rather know that my score was safe from 10 point swings based on the material (and lucky guessing).

But hey, if I can keep moving at 4.25 points a week, I should be close to 80% by the time the real thing hits. To bad it's hard to get hold of the kind of psychoactives it would take to make me believe that figure though.

60.5%

Well, well, well. How's that for an inconclusive result? I have to get 70% to pass, and just as I'm coming into big last push, I'm scoring 10% below it.

Actually, I'm pretty happy with it. And even more happy to have found where my weak points are. I did well on reading and on listening, but crap on kanji, and on grammar. But since I haven't cracked a kanji book in 6 months, or a grammar book in 2 months, those are the right ones to have shitty. They're also the most conducive to "cramming", which is the subtitle of my november.

If this score is piss, it's king piss.

facty, allzu facty.

11 months later, I realize that I haven't been putting anything into my head but fact after fact. Emphasizing the language, kanji and especially vocabulary, I gotten used to a shallow style of consumption based on result rather than pleasure. It's a bit more complicated than I care to write about, but I've plowed through 2 books in the last month without enjoying them, and I'm starting to treat music and even food the same way.

I'm gonna keep doing it until december 4th, and then I'm gonna grow an ulcer waiting for my test results.

Speaking of test results, I'm actually taking a break right now from a practice test. It's not going well. Not going well at all.

google, we're waiting

When ray charles died, google did a special logo for his birthday. Well, I hope they're cooking up Captain Jack's logo right now. Rest in peace, soldier.

I am a chinese austauschstudent!

I've been locked in my room all day studying kanji, and working on test-taking strategy and all of those terribly un-fun things (though I secretly enjoy them). It strikes me... I used to know some people who seemed to live like this every day. The Chinese students in the dorms in germany. The only difference is that I don't interrupt my study breaks by frying up huge pans of chicken hearts and sweet pickles in the communal kitchen (true story).

I'm sort of proud of myself for being able to buckle down like this, and doggedly work on a single facet of self-improvement. I'm glad to know that I can still function like I'm "hungry" instead of the sated, ironic, lazy american that I have been since I entered junior high.

Oh, I'm still sated, ironic, lazy and american, and I probably always will be, but in the past, I've been too bored with the world to lift a finger. I feel like everything I've failed to acheive, and the list in not short, I've failed out of boredom. Not even something so noble as laziness. I had the time and the energy to learn C++ and write my thesis on Adorno and learn to play guitar, but I had stupid things I would rather be doing. Most of the time it was video games, or mindless internet. If I go back to the states next year, and fall into another shitty job I can't stand, I will have reaped what I spent a decade or so sowing. If not, maybe I'll start eating chicken hearts.

warm biz

During the summer, there was a government coordinated fashion movement in Japan called "cool biz". The idea (and a clever one at that) was that by asking private corporations, and forcing government offices to slacken their dress codes (good by necktie!) for the summer, they could get away with turning the air conditioners down, thus saving a bit of energy and making a very long run-on sentence.
Now it's time for the real winner, "warm biz". Save energy by wearing cozy little vests under your suit jacket.

Word is that cool biz was a pretty big windfall for the men's clothing industry, and warm biz will be too.