I managed to find a used copy of 「もっと脳を鍛える」, the popular sequel to 「脳を鍛える」 for the Nintendo DS for only 2500 yen. This game is probably one of the hottest selling games now and even variety shows have jumped on the bandwagon by doing quizzes and checking the brain age of celebrities. I picked it up without hesitation because I knew it would help train my Japanese in addition to my brain. (Plus, it was cheap)

The game measures your brain age or 「脳年齢」 and you can play little quizzes that are supposed to help train it to a younger age (younger is better). The questions for each type of quiz change the next day once you play them and you stamp a hanko on each day that you play. New types of quizzes are unlocked as you accumulate hanko stamps on the calendar.

There are all sorts of quizzes you can play, including 5 games that will test your Japanese as well: １）漢字書取、２）漢字合成、３）音読差分、４）四字熟語、and ５）英単書取. I’ll briefly talk about the two games I play most often to help train my Japanese.

漢字書取：The classic kanji quiz

You are given a small phrase with one kanji written in hiragana and you have to write the kanji. I aced the first quiz but it just seems to get harder and harder everyday and now this quiz totally kicks my ass mostly because I don’t even know the word much less the kanji. This quiz is great for learning new vocabulary and brushing up your kanji skills because you can re-test the ones you got wrong everyday until you get it right.

Here are some from the last time I played that totally kicked my ass. Can you get them right?

四字熟語：Do you know your 四字熟語?

I don’t. Well, I only know about 10 of the easiest 四字熟語 and so I get my ass handed to me on a platter on this game. I felt pretty good in the first quiz, getting the easy ones right like 「一石二鳥」 or 「以心伝心」 but now I’m lucky if I get just two right. Unlike the first kanji game, you don’t even get hiragana, just a blank spot where one of the characters is missing.

Of course, you don’t have to know all these 四字熟語 but it’s telling that native folks will know most of them even while they’re telling you that you probably won’t need to know them.

Can you fill in the blank kanji? I couldn’t but thanks to the game, I can now.

But should I buy it?

Sure, why not? It really is a fun game and perfect for the daily commute. Plus, if you go to a store with used games, you can probably get it for around 2000 yen like me. If you don’t have a Nintendo DS, with the new Nintendo DS Lite coming out, now is an ideal time to get one!

(Feel free to write the answers in the comments and no cheating!)

I briefly mentioned 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」, an interesting book I recently picked up while killing time at a bookstore. I’m very cheap so it’s very rare for me to spend 2,000 yen on a book and actually feel happy about my purchase but this is definitely one of those books.

「日本語教科書の落とし穴」 is very interesting because it describes common pitfalls that occur from teaching textbook Japanese. This book focuses on that delicate area of Japanese where something should be correct, but upon hearing it in real-life, one is left feeling that something just isn’t quite right.

The book explains it like this.

実際の言語運用においては、言語の構造以外にもいろいろなことに気を配らなければなりません。
（省略）
学習者は教室で教えられたとおりに文を作っているのに、その文が実際の発話としては不適切になる場合があるわけです。

これらの不適切性は、初級段階では不可避の面があるとはいえ、決して放置しておいてよいものではないでしょう。文脈や場面から切り離された抽象的な「文」が作れるだけではなく、特定の文脈・場面の中で具体的な「発話」を適切に行い、相手の意図もくみ取ることができて、初めて、その言語が取得できたと言えるはすです。

Each chapter starts with a short conversation between a teacher and student. In each conversation, the student says something that should be correct according to standard textbook material. However, because of either social or contextual subtleties not explained in textbooks, what the student says ends up being incorrect. I’ve already used one of these conversations in the previous post.

Each chapter starts with a conversation like the following.
L：先生、どうぞ座ってください。
T：どうもありがとう。でも、「どうぞお座りになってください」や「お座りください」と言う方が丁寧ですよ。
L：はい、わかりました。
（数日後）
L：先生、どうぞ推薦状を書いて、あ違った、お書きになってください。
T：？？
L：(あれ？丁寧に言ったのにな）先生、どうぞ推薦状をお書きください。
T：こういうときには、「書いていただけませんか」という言い方がいいですよ。
L：はい（う～ん、難しい）。
（数日後）
L：先生、疲れているようですから、どうぞ座っていただけませんか？
T：？？（う～ん、難しい・・・）。

The rest of the chapter provides explanation on where the problem lies and provides suggestions on what the teacher should do to help correct her students. It’s obvious from reading the explanations that the authors has given a great deal of thought on aspects of Japanese that native speakers usually never consciously think about and how it causes confusion for non-native speakers. If you’re interested in finding out where the problem lies in the conversation above, get the book!

Because the entire book is in Japanese and geared toward people teaching Japanese, I highly recommend this book for advanced Japanese speakers interested in teaching Japanese or simply in learning more about the intricacies of the language.

There are a lot of good topics contained in this book and I will be going over some that caught my eye in future posts so stay tuned!

I’ve been killing time this holiday enjoying some random videos on Google Video. I thought I’d share some interesting videos in Japanese in case anybody was looking for a fun way to study this holiday. Somebody was diligent enough to put English subtitles on the videos so you can enjoy them even if you don’t feel like studying Japanese.

Sushi Documentary

The first video is a “documentary” about sushi. And the word “documentary” is in quotes for a very good reason. It starts out like this.

寿司。日本の代表的スナック。それが寿司です。この寿司を食べるショップが寿司屋です。日本人のほとんどがこの店を毎日利用しています。

女性が男性に注ぎ、女性は自分で注ぎます。なるほど。侍の国ですね。

It’s quite amusing and represents, in my opinion, the image that some foreigners have regarding Japan. I remember, before I knew anything about Japan, that I used to think that Japanese was a country with very strict rules such as the appropriate angle for bowing.

The narrator speaks in a very clear, standard Japanese so people learning Japanese in a classroom should have no trouble with the style. Anyway, here are a few comments and corrections just in case.

1. Most of the Japanese population cannot afford to eat sushi everyday.
2. That’s way too much soy-sauce on the sushi. （Soy-sauce, by the way, is called 「醤油」（しょうゆ）. Sometimes, it’s written as 「正油」.）
3. The wet napkin given out in restaurants to wipe your hands is actually called 「おしぼり」 and not 「雑巾」（ぞうきん）, which is a cloth used to clean around the house. 「おしぼり」 comes from the verb 「絞る」（しぼる）, which means to squeeze. I presume it’s because the excess water is squeezed from the cloth.

地球戦隊 フレッシュメン

Here’s another funny video featuring Shingo Katori （香取慎吾） from Smap, a “talent” group you can’t avoid here in Japan (as much as I try). This video features quite a lot of slang so those of you who learned Japanese on the streets should have no trouble. Here’s how it starts.

高校ん時の親友は、俺にこう言った。「ちょうだい？これ。お前っていいやつだよな。」　だからってわけじゃないけど、俺だって、自分のことを悪いやつなんて思ってなかった。地球を滅ぼすほどの悪いやつだなんて。

I intend to cover some of the expressions in the video such as 「というか」 and 「じゃん」 so make sure to subscribe to the feed.

I hope you find the videos as amusing as I did!

Memorizing Japanese vocabulary is much more difficult than many other languages not only because they usually bear no resemblance to English but also because you have to memorize the Kanji, the reading, and the definition. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of words in the language, and you’ve got a hefty job on your hands. While you need to spend a lot of time on grammar in the first 1-2 years, after that, it’s all about memorizing one word after another after another. In fact, I’d say over 80% of the total study time required for fluency would probably be for vocabulary.

So to give you a helping hand in such a monumental task, here are my tips for effectively transferring vocab from the dictionary into your long-term memory bank.

Memorizing for tests is not productive
Because we are so used to studying for tests, we often fall into the trap of thinking that memorizing for tests is an effective way to learn vocabulary. It is not. It is a convenient method for teachers to gauge mastery, but that does not mean it’s a good method to learn vocabulary.

The most common method of memorizing vocabulary is to take a set number of words and memorize them, commonly in the form of lists or index cards. This is a great method to prepare for a test, not for learning vocabulary in general.

Remember, doing well on tests is a means to an end, and a poor one at that. If you don’t restrict yourself to a set number of words, there is a much faster method for learning a great deal of vocabulary with a lot less headaches.

Language is trained not reasoned
Now, I’m no expert in psychology, but one thing I’m sure about is that learning a language is not a cognitive process. Rather, mastering a language requires training much in the same way as learning how to ride a bike. Just think about how you use words in your native language when you read, write, listen, or speak. The words you have memorized come to mind almost instinctually as you need them. That is the level you want to ultimately attain.

The key here is to simulate that process as closely as possible in Japanese by training yourself to think in the same fashion. In order to do this, you need some sort of online dictionary to look up words as quickly as possible. For when you can’t use a computer, an electronic dictionary will also work almost as well. Once you’ve got the necessary tool, read as much as possible and look up each word you don’t know. You are essentially simulating how your mind would have worked if you had known all the words with a couple seconds lag for each word lookup. Finally, read the sentence again with all the words in your short-term memory to reinforce the process you want to attain.

For instance, let’s say you are reading 「今は忙しいから・・・」 and you don’t know what 「忙しい」 means. Quickly look up the word in an online dictionary or a tool like rikaichan then continue reading the sentence. Continue with this process until you finish reading the sentence, then read over the sentence again and make sure you get the meaning of the sentence as a whole. Rinse and repeat.

The idea is that you want to take input in and throw it out as quickly as possible to test your memory again and again. I guarantee you that staring at an index card for 2 minutes trying with all your might to recall the definition will not help you remember it later. The key here is wearing down those neural paths with repetition, just like how we train our bodies to do physical activities.

The beauty of this method is that the most common and useful words naturally get retained quicker because you run into them more often. It is the most effective method of training yourself to understand the most amount of Japanese as quickly as possible. Plus, by comprehending the material, you get a much richer context that will help with recollection a great deal more than flimsy examples sentences on index cards.

Instant gratification is good!
We human beings tend to get bored very easily and boring is painful so you want to give yourself an advantage by making studying fun. The best way to do this is to pick material that is interesting in itself (hopefully with some recommendations from other people). Also, an electronic tool is key because having to tediously look up word after word in a paper dictionary is excruciatingly boring (especially if you need to look up the kanji first) and a complete waste of time. You want to mentally reward yourself as quickly as possible with the answer so that you don’t bore yourself to death, which ultimately results in the “I’m too lazy to study” syndrome that is all too common among students.

But what about my test?
If you apply this method early enough (don’t forget to use your vacations too), you should be so far ahead that you’ll likely already know a great majority of the words that’ll show up in your tests. The only thing left is to study the one or two words you have missed in the more conventional fashion. This worked for me and saved my college grades because I could focus on my other classes while hardly studying for my Japanese class! :-)

The 英辞郎 dictionary powered by SPACE ALC is a godsend for Japanese learners everywhere. At first, I was floored by the edict dictionary presented by Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC and its superiority to any printed Japanese/English dictionaries you can find in American bookstores. But, I have to admit, 英辞郎 is even more amazing mostly because the WWWJDIC does not have a English to Japanese dictionary. 英辞郎 is the only dictionary I know of that can give you a clue on how to take something you want to say in English and translate it to Japanese. You can enter English phrases and have a good chance at getting some suggestions for the Japanese. Unless you have a bilingual speaker around you can ask, this is the only tool I know of that can do this.

For instance, lets say you wanted to say, “They crowded into the train,” but were not sure how to say “crowded into” in Japanese. You know 「込んでいる」 means something is crowded but you’re not sure how to use that for crowding into something. If you search on 英辞郎 for “crowded into”, you get these following helpful suggestions.

# crowded into a room
《be ～》部屋に溢｛あふ｝れる
# crowded into a small area
狭い場所｛ばしょ｝になだれ込む
# crowded into a small room
《be ～》（大勢｛おおぜい｝の人が）狭い部屋｛へや｝に押し込められる

Now you can use these suggestions and google around to see which one most closely matches what you want to say.

Yet another example. I was wondering how to say my ears popped as I was riding an elevator. I tried a couple combinations like “ears pop” and hit pay dirt when I searched for “ear popped”. I got the following:

My ear popped.
気圧で耳がへんだ。

I don’t know why 「へん」 is in hiragana but I’m guessing it’s 「変」. Now, I can deduce that in Japanese, you can say your ears feel strange for changing altitudes and that there probably is no exact equivalent for the English “ear popping” phrase. Without 英辞郎, there’s really no way to look up this type of information without having a bilingual speaker handy. (Which I think is rare for most people.)

Even something as simple as trying to find out how to say “Big Dipper” in Japanese can be a major headache without this dictionary. The WWWJDIC returns no search results because it only searches the definitions of Japanese words (and poorly, I might add). With 英辞郎, you just pop in “big dipper” and there you go.

Big Dipper
【名】 《米》北斗七星

I’m surprised that this site is supposed to be for Japanese people because I think it’s far more useful to English-speaking people learning Japanese.