{"id":546,"date":"2020-06-13T13:32:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T17:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=546"},"modified":"2020-06-13T13:53:58","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T17:53:58","slug":"update-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=546","title":{"rendered":"Update: Japanese"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am on day <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=355\">259 in the Duolingo app<\/a>; meaning I have used the app for 259 straight days to learn Japanese, but my progress isn&#8217;t very far&#8230; I&#8217;ve mostly been doing my 2 lessons a day, and for the most part, it&#8217;s been maintaining my progress&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"548\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?attachment_id=548\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?fit=1242%2C2208&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1242,2208\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Image from iOS\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?fit=474%2C843&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS-576x1024.png?resize=241%2C428\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-548\" width=\"241\" height=\"428\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?resize=576%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 576w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?resize=169%2C300&amp;ssl=1 169w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?resize=768%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?resize=864%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 864w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?resize=1152%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 1152w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?w=1242&amp;ssl=1 1242w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Image-from-iOS.png?w=948&amp;ssl=1 948w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 241px) 100vw, 241px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recently, they&#8217;ve added a &#8220;dark mode&#8221;, and about a month back, they expanded the Hiragana\/Katakana section.  I did make the leader board a few time while I finished those off! But now it&#8217;s taking effort to learn more\/improve.  And you&#8217;d think with self-isolation and the crap going on, I&#8217;d fine more time it&#8230; Just need to prioritize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I started my journey by listening to a podcast about learning Japanese prior to starting Duoling&#8230; It started with the basics, and led me to downloading apps to help learn Hiragana\/Katakana &#8212; that helped a lot!  I have downloaded one for Kanji, but haven&#8217;t been working on it as hard&#8230; After that, I realized the need to start a vocabulary spreadsheet (seen above)&#8230; I&#8217;ve spent a few hours here and there to curate the list, but haven&#8217;t created flashcards or spent hours of memorization on it yet&#8230; And I&#8217;ve avoided tackling verbs&#8230; something I know I just need to buckle down and do!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stepping back, I think I&#8217;ve got a lot of good resources, including the internet.  Between the quizzes and flashcards in the apps, the repetition, the spoken lessons, the spreadsheet, etc. some things are sinking in.  I catch myself picking up words spoken in some Anime&#8230; feel like I&#8217;ve gone from a 0.1 &#8211; 1% word recognition to about a 3 &#8211; 5% word recognition.  Sounding out words in Hiragana\/Katakana is still slow, and I still doubt myself, but some small improvement&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What still freaks me out, when I watch a really good art-detailed Anime, with lots of street signs, train\/bus time tables, or close-up views of things you&#8217;d use for navigation, I&#8217;m still like, WTH? Just watched a scene in <em>Love Hina<\/em> where two of the main characters buy a high-speed train ticket to Osaka &#8212; there was a few shots of the tickets used to find their seats&#8230; very quick scenes, but I&#8217;m wondering if (when we travel) will I be able to understand enough to find our car\/row\/seat to find our seats? We screwed this up once in France, figure need to make a better effort next time we travel anywhere by train&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the things I know I&#8217;m going to fail on is pronunciation&#8230; I should probably be repeating the spoken Japanese.  But a lot of times, I find myself parsing the spoken Japanese for context, and find myself tripping up on spoken contractions&#8230; I&#8217;ll catch the first few words, then something that doesn&#8217;t sound quite right, then ends with a verb&#8230; Just like English with contractions and spoken shortcuts, I&#8217;ve noticed that in the app with some of the spoken sentences&#8230; and slowing it down doesn&#8217;t all ways clear it up.  it&#8217;s taken a little more time to recognize the contractions, especially around how the particles flow from\/into the next word&#8230; something I think I&#8217;d pick up a little better with learning from an actual teacher.<\/p>\n<div class=\"twttr_buttons\"><div class=\"twttr_twitter\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?text=Update%3A+Japanese\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-via=\"\" data-hashtags=\"\"  data-size=\"default\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=546\"  data-related=\"\" target=\"_blank\">Tweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am on day 259 in the Duolingo app; meaning I have used the app for 259 straight days to learn Japanese, but my progress isn&#8217;t very far&#8230; I&#8217;ve mostly been doing my 2 lessons a day, and for the most part, it&#8217;s been maintaining my progress&#8230; Recently, they&#8217;ve added a &#8220;dark mode&#8221;, and about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=546\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Update: Japanese<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[37,3],"tags":[74,40],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal","category-travel","tag-denwa","tag-japanese"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-13-at-12.51.46-PM.png?fit=2298%2C1776&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6YMpv-8O","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":355,"url":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=355","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":0},"title":"\u79c1\u306f\u30de\u30a4\u30b1\u30eb\u3067\u3059\u3002","author":"mhuffman","date":"December 11, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"So my Japanese studies continue with Duolingo. I feel a little bit better about hiragana and katakana; I'm just a little slow at reading it. And using the app, I'm picking up some kanji. I need to go back learn more kanji, but right now, I'm working on sentence construction\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Personal","link":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?cat=37"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":326,"url":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=326","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":1},"title":"\u72ac\u3092\u98fc\u3063\u3066\u3044\u307e\u3059","author":"mhuffman","date":"August 31, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"So earlier this year, my wife showed me that tickets to Hong Kong were less than $1,000\/person round trip. This got me thinking that I wanted us to take a trip to Asia within the next few years... And with both of us being Disney fans, we talked about maybe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anime&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anime","link":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?cat=8"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/japan-travel-kyushu-oita-airport.jpg?fit=996%2C719&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/japan-travel-kyushu-oita-airport.jpg?fit=996%2C719&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/japan-travel-kyushu-oita-airport.jpg?fit=996%2C719&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/japan-travel-kyushu-oita-airport.jpg?fit=996%2C719&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":344,"url":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=344","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":2},"title":"Japanese Progress","author":"mhuffman","date":"September 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I've completed learning hiragana and katakana, but I'm finding some kana in katakana to be a little similar and confusing. Kanas like \u30b7 (shi) and \u30c4 (tsu), or \u30bd (so) and \u30f3 (n) have very subtle differences -- the brush strokes are different, but depending on the font type (or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Otaku&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Otaku","link":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?cat=39"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Learning-Japanese-for-Beginners-Katakana-Chart-e1515768982391-1024x763.jpg?fit=1024%2C763&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Learning-Japanese-for-Beginners-Katakana-Chart-e1515768982391-1024x763.jpg?fit=1024%2C763&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Learning-Japanese-for-Beginners-Katakana-Chart-e1515768982391-1024x763.jpg?fit=1024%2C763&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Learning-Japanese-for-Beginners-Katakana-Chart-e1515768982391-1024x763.jpg?fit=1024%2C763&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=71","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":3},"title":"No Game No Life","author":"mhuffman","date":"August 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Finished another anime called No Game No Life. \u00a0I like it because it's smartly written and there's many layers to the story.\u00a0 For instance, \"__\" or\u00a0Blank is the names of urban legend characters in the video gaming world -- they are undefeated. The two main characters in the story, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anime&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anime","link":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?cat=8"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/no-game-no-life.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/no-game-no-life.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/no-game-no-life.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/no-game-no-life.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/no-game-no-life.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":515,"url":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=515","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":4},"title":"My Journey into Otaku","author":"mhuffman","date":"June 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For the past few years, I've been immersing myself in Japanese anime, trying to understand the shifts in geek culture -- what use to be just sci-fi\/comic books and sci-fi tv shows\/movies, has exploded to incorporate video games, Japanese manga\/anime, and cos-play. \u00a0Even at a local level, the explosion includes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anime&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anime","link":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?cat=8"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/unnamed.jpg?fit=640%2C360&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/unnamed.jpg?fit=640%2C360&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mouse-network.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/unnamed.jpg?fit=640%2C360&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":538,"url":"https:\/\/www.mouse-network.com\/?p=538","url_meta":{"origin":546,"position":5},"title":"An Asgard Romance!","author":"mhuffman","date":"June 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Sci-fi Plot: 10 Word Sci-fi Plot: Boy-meets-girl in mining camp on Callisto. An Asgard romance! I started uploading some of the old plots I came up with, that I posted on other blog sites to here. 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