A Bit About Japanese Geography, Regions, etc.

So as you may well know, i have recently started a course with BYU in which I can get a full high school credit for completing a "semester" of online Japanese. The best part is that I can finish the course as fast or slow as I want, which is sooo perfect because I already preferred to learn Japanese on my own time anyway. Here is what I've learned:

First off, if you already know at least Hiragana, GOOD, because it comes up fairly quickly and is tested in a way that would require someone who didn't know it to learn it/memorize it all. Therefore my knowing it made my fly through a section and feel like a BOSS. Once again, I highly recommend Let's Learn Hiragana by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura.

Either way, don't worry too much because there are no deadlines (at least in my case) and as long as you have already completed some Japanese-oriented-self-nerding-out on the internets you should do quite well. I honestly think it'd be kinda rough if you had no experience/exposure to Japanese previously.

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean the course is bad if you don't know any Japanese, it just means I'm more comfortable with the sentence structure at first sight than you, not to mention a few particles and some vocabulary. SO, obviously the solution is quite simple: do some Japanese-oriented-self-nerding-out on the internets ^v^ Since you are most likely here because you're not entirely sure what you're doing, I've tried to compile all the sites I found useful in my fetus exploration of Japanese.

Hello again!~ French no mas, online Japanese え！

There is very little to share I'm afraid. I just thought I would mention that I have been taking French for the past school semester and, as one might imagine, didn't like it a whole lot because A) it's public school language education, and B) Japanese is (clearly) my thing.

However! Very soon, as in within the next week, I will finally be able to drop that class and pick up an online Japanese course that is provided through BYU (the credits then transfer to my high school). So happy day, my Japanese language education shall now continue even during the school year. I'm quite excited and can only hope that the course is decent, because as long as it is, I think I will be able to quite enjoy myself.

In the meantime I have semi-recently acquired Let's Learn Katakana and Let's Learn Kanji, the first by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura and second by him and Joyce Mitamura (his daughter I believe?). I haven't completed either, but I have started on both, and Let's Learn Kanji is turning out to be quite informative thus far. It is also very fat.

The Secret Life of Arietty: Does Ghibli Still Have Their Stuff?

One of the first things most people heard about this movie was that it was unoriginal. It is based off of The Borrowers and therefore cannot be any kind of masterpiece like the captivating magic of My Neighbor Totoro, the powerful current of Princess Mononoke, or the refreshing beauty of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

So the question is, with time passing, movies being made after American novels, and collaborations between the master Miyazaki and his son disappointing,* does Ghibli still have their stuff? In essence, are they still capable of producing the world wide standard setting animated movies they once did?

Before I start off on my impressions of the film I will say in all honesty that I fear for Studio Ghibli: perhaps because I love their work so deeply, I fear that they will be like Disney. The magic of the movies created by the man himself will never die, it's ageless, much like everything Miyazaki touched. But when he's gone, what happens?

 At the very least I can hope that he will live a good deal longer than Disney who died of lung cancer at 65. True, Miyazaki does smoke. In fact when a Japanese anti-smoking health group ran a poll to see what celebrities people most wanted to see quit smoking, Ghibli's creator was number five. However, at seventy-two he is already seven years older than Disney when "his left lung was riddled with tumors the size of walnuts,"and I may not know what I'm talking about, but Japan's considerably healthier diet and lifestyle has got to help.

Now on to the movie!

I've got to admit that the first thing I noticed was the fact that all the voices are British. It threw me off quite a bit at first but in the end it added to it. So perhaps the characters in this movie weren't quite as intriguing as the crone that rules the bathhouse of Spirited Away, it's alright. This movie's characters consist of Arietty, Arietty's father and mother, and Sho.

Learning Japanese: There Are How Many Alphabets??

Hello! Today's post will focus on language. Now, if you're anything like me (which is doubtful, but just go with it), you have a hard time deciding which languages you would learn if you could and why. What's easier for an American English speaker to pronounce? To write?

As you may know, I've been studying Japanese for a little while now. I'm not a beginner, but I'm nowhere near fluent (when asked, I say I'm about 1% there). My vocabulary is probably over a hundred words, and I have a pretty good understanding of pronunciation, but my interest in the language has recently died out, partly thanks to school stuff. But! now that I'm less occupied with homework, I took the time to seek what I could focus on next to keep moving forward.

The product: reading and writing.
Now,  I've known for a while that Japan has more than one alphabet, knowledge that deterred me from learning it; I told myself I'd just learn to speak it first. But as I progressed I realized that most of the best teaching materials are in Japanese writing, not to mention the understanding that would naturally come with knowing how the words are composed. On top of all this, a well recommended book to teach one of the main Japanese alphabets was already in my possession, so at this point it was a "why not?"

The Part With the Information
So! First off, Japanese writing consists of three "alphabets," so to speak: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana and Katakana (both referred to simply as Kana symbols), are more like the English alphabet in that they represent phonetics and pronunciation. Meanwhile, Kanji characters are based on Mandarin (Chinese) characters that have been integrated into Japanese to express ideas or concepts. Scary already right?
(Note: most of this is a paraphrasing of "Let's Learn Hiragana," by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura, p.9.)

Spirited Away: the review

So first of all, Spirited Away has been around for quite a while, so long in fact that I don't feel like googling when it came out. But, let's just say that if you know Studio Ghibli, you know the movie Spirited Away. It's a landmark in movies, basically a world famous combination of standard setting animation and the director Hayao Miyazaki's imagination. The kind of movie that can't really be summarized, the best you'll get out of someone who's just watched it would be:

@n@ that was awesome...

The hero of the film is young Chihiro, a whiny 10 year old girl who is in the process of moving to an entirely new world. New school, new house, new town. However, on the drive to said new world, her father decides he can take a shortcut, and that fatherly confidence quickly plunges Chihiro into a world of magic and mystery where her hidden strength has the opportunity to shine through.

Haku: "Go! I'll distract them!

First she meets Haku, a boy who looks her age that helps her in her panic at the spirits looming about her. Her guides her as close to safety as he can before he sets her free with a few instructions that must be followed lest she be discovered and kicked out without the opportunity to rescue her parents. Fear and responsibility are quickly shoved on her shoulders with no option to back down, so forward the girl goes. She shows herself to be stubborn and smart, knowing to not back down, and finding that she has what it takes to keep going.

Korean Pop Idol Beauty: The good, the bad, and the ugly

SNSD aka Girls Generation

Hero Jaejoong of JYJ

Dae Guk Nam Ah aka The Boys of Super Space

The Korean Pop Music Industry (aka kpop) is not just know for the talent of its singers, amount of work put into performances, or revolutionary music videos, no. By far the most notable trait of the kpop industry is the perfection in appearance. One of the most famous girl groups of all time is SNSD or Girls Generation. Two of their nine members are pictured here: Yoona and Seohyun.        

SNSD embodies the beauty standards of Korea and other parts of asia which, very unlike America, is ONE face, and ONE set of features that are considered beautiful and desirable. These features include: an oval shaped face (as opposed to a square/angular jawline), large eyes with double eyelids, pale flawless skin, and, of course, a tiny tiny body. This however is mostly for girls, for guys the exact specifications are less existent, and tanner skin is more acceptable because it can be "sexy."

5 Things You May Not Know About Anime

Depending on their first exposure to anime, many people may have futuristic, dark, cheesy, or risqué pictures flash into their minds when they hear the word "anime." However, I am here to tell you about just what it is and isn't, and hopefully give a well rounded impression of what it represents to countless people. Sure, we spend lots of time watching it, but that's because anime hits on themes not reached for in America like personal freedom, shy romance, ultimate control, and the beauty of nakama (Japanese term that means friends/crew. A term that identifies friends to be as close as family, like homies, but better).

1) It is a style, not a genre

In fact, it simply means animation. It's technically just the abbreviated version of how "animation" is pronounced in Japanese. In Japan, the word "anime" refers to all types of animation, but in America and many other countries around the world, anime refers to the style of animation that was developed in Japan.

2) Within the style, there are several genres!

Anime fans have several levels and types of anime to chose from. They range from the innocent Kamisama Hajimemashita, a supernatural story of a girl who accidentally becomes an earth goddess and falls for her annoyed fox-demon assistant, to Bleach, an uber popular and loooong anime about Ichigo, a teenager who becomes a soul reaper of sorts (in a good way) and learns to be a part of Soul Society with all its dangers. Despite these odd sounding themes, many sweet and endearing movies are made using the animation style as well.

Kamisama Hajimemashita

Ichigo from Bleach (would you believe his name means strawberry?)

My Neighbor Totoro by Studio Ghibli
(most adorable movie ever, just sayin')