kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1681 of 1702 02 October 2015 at 11:49pm | IP Logged |
I don't think that I'd be burning the bridges completely but if I came back I'd lose some benefits I have for
being here so long and I would probably take a pay cut. Worth it and I still want to go. I have nothing tying me
down to Tucson - no family or even a girlfriend.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4657 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 1682 of 1702 04 October 2015 at 9:12pm | IP Logged |
kraemder wrote:
I found a pretty good KiC (Kanji in Context) spreadsheet which may work out well. I am a little torn
between doing it this way and just reading the book. Typing it in was driving me insane and was clearly a
big time sink and I don't know how much benefit there was. Inputting vocabulary doesn't seem to help me
retain all that much. The spreadsheet I got is missing about half the sentences from each chapter I've gone
through so far. It's a big spreadsheet though and seems to draw upon all the chapters in both workbooks.
Anyway. I have decided to input 新完全マスター文法N2 into anki. Although it does kind of drive me crazy
to input it also - it feels like I'm learning the grammar somewhat in the process so it's not a waste. And I
can make some really really good flashcards. Here's an example of the example sentences:
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Do you remember where you got hold of the KIC spreadsheet? I have both that (the new edition) and KZM-N2 grammar,
so I'd like to get hold of the sample sentences and exercises in electronic form. Otherwise I may just have to
resort to typing ...
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1683 of 1702 08 October 2015 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
Well it's more or less official now. I gave my last day, I set the last day for my lease, and I bought plane tickets
and have made arrangements for a place to stay. Renting a room at a share house is very reasonable. I'll
have cheaper rent than I do now and my plan to get my sabbatical will go into effect. I'm going to just study
Japanese and do nothing else for up to six months. Woot! I'm applying for jet and so if I get that then I might
just live cheaply as possible and study until it starts if I get it. If not then I'll just apply to whatever teaching
position will take me. I'm deciding between self study of doing a classroom deal like I did with Genki Jacs. It
can get lonely studying by yourself but in a shatehouse I don't think it will be as much of a problem.
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cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6117 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish
| Message 1684 of 1702 08 October 2015 at 7:07am | IP Logged |
Oh wow, yeah, sounds like quite an adventure you have coming up.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4657 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 1685 of 1702 08 October 2015 at 10:26pm | IP Logged |
kraemder wrote:
Well it's more or less official now. I gave my last day, I set the last day for my lease, and I bought
plane tickets and have made arrangements for a place to stay. |
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Wow! There are no flies on you!
Good luck with the change. I'm sure you'll have a fantastic time.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1686 of 1702 09 October 2015 at 2:12am | IP Logged |
Ah flies? I think you're right - I'll like the change. And if I don't I can come back to the US (with a lot more
knowledge of Japanese)
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1687 of 1702 31 October 2015 at 8:12pm | IP Logged |
How unusual for me - I haven't updated in a while. I am sort of getting ready for the move. Last weekend I had a
long weekend because I used some vacation time and I spent a -lot- of time scanning books into my computer. I
was dismayed today when I found that all but a couple were missing. I'm not very hopeful about getting them back.
I have a huge heavy paper cutter and a nice scanner that scans piles of papers pretty quickly so it's not like I'm
using a flatbed scanner to painfully scan stuff super slowly. But it did take me most of the weekend I think I did 40
books I really don't know. Probably more. I scanned a lot of manga. I can only guess as to the cause of the failure -
I think Epson Scan was putting PDF's into the documents folder for a different user on my computer that wasn't
being used and my computer deleted said account.. it's very strange. I posted for help on the Apple community
user forums and I may get a good guess as to what happened but i suspect I will never see the books. I went out to
the recycling dumpster in the parking lot and it's empty so I can't do the old dumpster diving to rescan everything
again. I still have a few copies of the materials I share with my tutors - so that means Kanji in Context revised and 新
完全マスター文法N2. And I still had Dictionary of Japanese Grammar Intermediate and Advanced in the apartment
because I was thinking of rescanning them at higher resolution since I really like the books. /sigh. I had -just-
bought 新完全マスター文法N3for review and now it's gone. There's surprisingly a lot of grammar in there that I can
stand reviewing and even a few I hadn't studied. I hadn't realized there was N3 grammar I hadn't studied.
Not the end of the world. Just a little depressing and I'm miffed at Apple for this happening.
As for studying.. I never thought I would go back to Core6k/10k but I did. I made it a sentence deck and I'm testing
myself for eating and more importantly, as a listening comprehension deck. The big reason I didn't like it before was
the lack of N2/N1 grammar and while that's still true, it actually does a very good job of using non intuitive (for
English speakers) collocations. Getting used to these collocations I think is key to bringing my Japanese to the next
level. I like that the deck is full of native audio and I can make it a listening deck. While reading Japanese is really
difficult due to the kanji involved, on the other hand, because kanji have meanings inherent in them and you can
guess a meaning based on the kanji's use in other words or RTK, it kind of becomes a crutch so that you may not
truly learn the sound of the word and only be able to understand it when it's presented with its kanji equivalent. The
audio only part of the deck is great for getting around that i think and the audio quality is top notch. I could go with
text to speech too I think and it would be ok too but nothing beats native speaker audio.
Which reminds me. I recently started using the website
https://rhinospike.com/. It's kind of fun and lets you request native speakers
read and record audio for you for free. I've submitted a few chapters from 新完全マスター文法N2 and I've gotten
some audio back. It's not as good as the Core deck audio but it's a real native speaker. I've only been using the site
a few days but I'm guessing that for some reason there's just one guy in Japan who uses the site and does the
Japanese audio.. wow. A Korean girl said so and so usually does the Japanese audio (I was exchanging emails with
her after I read a poem she submitted) and sure enough he's read 3 of my requests for me so far and nobody else. I
haven't listened to the latest response.. he dutifully read the example sentences of me and I'm thankful but his heart
wasn't in it like the Core deck. I listened to him recording someone else's submission which was an excerpt from a
book or movie and had characters and acting and he was clearly more engaged in that reading. I totally get that
and especially if he's doing lots of audio for people I'm happy to have anything. Just if you're thinking of doing the
same thing have an idea of what to expect. Also, you have to type out your request into the site... or copy and
paste text. As mentioned above I have PDF scans of book images and I was hoping to just do a few screen shots to
submit but that's not a possibility. Well... I guess I could post a dropbox link. Typing everything out is a hassle but
more than that if you make typos then it's that much worse haha. He corrected my 1st submission's typos and I
don't think I had any in the other submissions. (anyone who takes the time to actually do corrections AND read it
gets hats off in my book, I was grateful).
It's a bit time consuming but kind of fun doing the audio submissions. I spent money to get a good microphone and
people are really happy and thank me for the high quality audio. I am debating bringing the mic with me to Japan
it's kind of big and all of my devices have built in mics which are totally good enough just not quite as good.
I was making a new grammar deck in Anki using 新完全マスター文法N2. Before it was a big hassle because I was
typing everything into anki. I got the idea of just cutting and pasting screen shots (well not full screen shots the one
where you select the portion of the screen) into Anki instead. Anki is wonderful for adding images to it directly like
that. It makes creating the deck a bit faster and cuts way back on careless mistakes. The only mistake I made was
when I was doing the practice exercises I copied the wrong answer from the answer key. I'm thinking of just
skipping those and doing the deck from the grammar explanations only. When doing the reviews, the exercises are
easier I think but they're a pain to make. I don't know.
I recently installed Windows Bootcamp on my mac. I just bought a new mac for going to Japan. I had been using
the 13'' macbook pro I got over the summer but when I went to Japan I saw nobody else had the 13'' version just the
much more expensive 15'' version. And I got to thinking that's totally because when you're working that 15'' screen
is a lot nicer. Anyway, I broke down and got the 15'' a couple weeks ago and now I'm going to sell the 13'' on eBay at
a loss but I'm happy with the 15''. I would just get jealous every time I saw someone with a 15'' I think. The 15'' has
the benefit of being a lot more powerful too although I haven't installed a game yet /shrug. More power is always
welcome.
So I installed windows and downloaded subs2srs. I haven't used this program in years but I am looking forward to
giving it another whirl. I loved it but hated it because the level of Japanese was so hard for me at the time but the
professional anime voice acting is just so awesome. A big drawback to mac is that they don't have a real mac
version. I'm sure there's going to be other Windows programs I'll want to use too. I have a legitimate copy of
Windows 7 but Apple stopped supporting Windows 7 in the Bootcamp for the laptops this year. You have to use
Windows 8+. There's currently a free upgrade to Windows 10 for people with Windows 7 or 8, but, as I found out,
you can't just install and upgrade Windows on a compatible system, get the new Windows 10 ISO, install it on your
new 2015 mac, and use the Windows 7 key to register it. You can only register Windows 10 with your Windows 7
key using that -same- computer you did the upgrade on. I'm gonna try contacting Microsoft Support to see if they
will make an exception for me - I've heard online that they sometimes do if you're convincing and they can remotely
push through the registration if they so desire. Otherwise, currently Windows 10 is working fine unregistered on my
Macbook Pro and it doesn't say anything about there being a time limit like 30 days as it did on Windows 7. But my
guess is that after the 'free' upgrade period of 1 year for Windows 7/8 users, they will cut me off and I wouldn't want
to get cut off haha. You can purchase a key on the Windows App store for 110 bucks or so. But I'm hoping they
register the computer of for me when I ask nicely.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1688 of 1702 31 October 2015 at 8:30pm | IP Logged |
Here's a link to one of the Rhinospike recordings (I'm very happy with this recording I think the speaker did a great
job.)
新完全マスター文法N24課
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