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Japanese Rewrite 東亜 TAC 2015 | ||
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5528 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 33 of 47 24 January 2015 at 3:30pm | IP Logged |
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I completely agree that several aspects of Jpop still seem to be lacking compared to those of its Korean equivalent. I too have noticed that AKB48's choreography is quite "plain" compared to most
Kpop groups and the songs are much more homogeneous. Both of these are likely due to having to ensure that each song can be performed by any combination of members from the 3 teams or even by their sister groups. The songs for the various subgroups are a bit more distinct since they have set member lists. What I really need to track down (but keep forgetting to do so) are J.Min's Japanese releases. So far I've thoroughly enjoyed every song she has released in Korean and when I looked up her discography, I discovered that she had debuted in Japan long before she did in Korea (similar to what CNBLUE did). Her music style is much closer to what I used to enjoy most in English. In fact, her music reminds me a lot of the music Michelle Branch released when she debuted. (I haven't been following English music for years, so I'm not sure if Michelle Branch is even still releasing music. I recall hearing that she had switched to country music at one point, but that was after I was already thoroughly immersed in the Korean music world.) Another group I need to check out is Perfume. CZ has frequently mentioned that group, but I've never taken the time to check them out yet. I'm also still fairly new to the Japanese music world as most of my dabbling in the past has been with Japanese releases by Kpop groups (in particular, Kara's Japanese releases), so I'm sure once I dig deeper I'll find those groups which I truly enjoy, just like I did with Korean. Edited by Warp3 on 24 January 2015 at 3:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4790 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 34 of 47 31 January 2015 at 9:03am | IP Logged |
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It's been some time since I've posted an update. My exam date is getting closer, and I'm having those horrible pretest jitters. I don't usually
respond like that to exams, usually I'm just a little nervous, but this one is scaring me. I'm sleep-deprived and I end up staying up until the wee hours of the morning, only managing to clock in a few hours worth of sleep before I go to work. The reason is that works sucks up so much time, and I really need to cover ground in my studies for the exam, so I don't know what else to do, and I wind up staying up late. Like now. Recently, I've been wasting a lot of time doing unrelated things just because I'm so stressed, and that ends up making me feel even worse, because I could have used that time constructively for studying. I guess it's because I feel that so much depends on getting a very good score. I keep telling myself not to look at the end result, and just do my best working for it, but it's not easy. Anyway, here's what I've been doing with Japanese. I originally set a goal of extensively reading 2000 pages by the end of the month, and intensively reading song lyrics of 30 songs, but I didn't meet them. Under different circumstances, I might have, not sure. That said, I did manage to work on 10 songs, and read around 567 pages of Japanese. I haven't updated my twitter count yet, because I don't want to keep posting updates and annoying everyone on my list that isn't participating in Tadoku, so I just post the total number all at once at the end of the month. The page count isn't even half of my initial goal, but it's nothing to sneeze at. I'm actually proud of myself for having read that much while juggling other time-consuming projects. I also managed to watch an entire series (it was during that exam-prep-stressed-so-waste-more-time period), which I'll get to shortly. So here's a quick review of the few things I've been doing. Songs: 1. Hello Sleepwalkers: 午夜の待ち合わせ 天地創造 猿は木から何処へ落ちる I love this band. The music is so invigorating, and their lyrics are moving. Shuntaro (シュンタロウ) and Narumi (ナルミ) have surreal voices, and the rest of the band just rocks it with great music. Incredibly powerful. I can't get enough of them. 2. One Ok Rock: Jibun Rock/じぶんロック C.h.a.o.s.m.y.t.h. 完全感覚 Dreamer Ketsuraku Automation Answer Is Near Keep It Real They should change their name to One Awesome Rock. I can't get over how beautiful Taka's voice is. They have many other amazing songs but the English eats up a huge chunk of the lyrics, so I tried to stick to the ones that were mostly Japanese. That's not to say that I don't listen to the others. I do, just not on repeat. Sometimes :) The last song on the list is one of their older ones, and boy, they looked so young! I was also surprised to see Toru (guitars) sing. They also had an additional member that was apparently asked to leave for some charges that I don't care to mention. Their style was a bit different back then, but it was just as good. I don't usually listen all that much to rap/R'n'B, but they did it well in this song (I think), and I liked the beat. Not to mention rap songs are good, I have to admit, for shadowing, and processing a long string of unstoppable speech at high speeds. . B'z: Uchouten. It's a new one for the new drama, Gakkou no Kaidan/学校のカイダン。B'z's a classic favorite. They're a very famous and older band of two members, and I'm a big fan of their work. I first found them when I was watching Detective Conan a few years ago, and one of the opening songs was sung by B'z. Apparently Uchouten is a new one and they hadn't released a single in years, so I'm glad to be on top of things with their releases. They're a classic band, and a must for any rock lovers out there. Drama/TV Kazoku Game: I can't really describe the theme of the drama except like this: spooky as hell. It was a perfectly produced and written drama series, in my honest opinion, and one of the best I've seen in a long time. It stars Sakurai Sho 櫻井翔 of Arashi (Jpop boy band) and Kamiki Ryunosuke 神木 隆之介, among others. It focuses on an abnormally disjointed family, and the tutor, played by Sho, who comes to tutor the kids. Sho- chan's performance, was brilliant. His character can be described as someone with a painful memory who hides it with a creepy smile and persona, and has a hidden craziness underneath. Some of the "methods" he employs when tutoring the children are unorthodox, and to the sane person, controversial and plain wrong. I was shocked repeatedly at the actions of the character, but Sho-chan played him brilliantly. I also enjoyed Kamiki's performance a lot. It's been some time since I've seen an actor play a conflicted role so well, and Kamiki was really amazing. He also stars in the currently airing drama, Gakkou no Kaidan, about a school and the theme is bullying, and his role there is also very unique and played perfectly by him. I actually watched the first episode of Gakkou no Kaidan, was really taken by him, and searched for more of his work, and that's how I found Kazoku Game. When I first heard his voice, I thought, "He'd make a great seiyuu (voice actor)!," before I found out that he actually is, too, on top of being a live action actor. He's rapidly becoming one of my favorites. Sakurai Sho has always been such a fun actor to watch. Actually the whole band of Arashi have some really great works, like Hana Yori Dango/Bambino (Matsumoto Jun/松本潤) and Maou (Ohno Satoshi/大野智). I may not like pop songs all that much, but the guys are so down to earth and have some really good dramas under their belts. And their variety shows are fun to watch, too. Back to Kazoku Game. I don't want to say more and spoil the story for you, but it's definitely worth watching. It's that good. There are some shocking and pretty emotionally intense scenes, which make it very credible. I believe I read that the drama was adapted off a manga by the same name, and I think a film was made off the manga some years ago. Also, it was really funny to see a Jpop singer (Sho) in one of the episodes respond to a cheesy line spoken by one of the characters by saying something along the lines of "What is this? This isn't Jpop" :D I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Taika Hen and Rurouni Kenshin: Densetsu no Saigo Hen, have theme songs by One Ok Rock (Mighty Long Fall), and Kamiki-san plays Seta Soujiro. Uwaaa! Satoh Takeru too. All my favorites in one place. I've only watched the trailers, but I'll wait until my exams are over and reward myself with a Kenshin movie night of all 3 films. Books なぜ？どうして？ 1-3 年。This is the science series, and the books are broken up into mini-topics that are easily digestible, like the body, animals, etc. Because they discuss things we already know, they make for a good source of comprehensible input, and as such I can easily learn words from them. They're graded well, obviously, and introduce only the kanji the Japanese school children in the respective grades should be able to identify. They're books aimed at native elementary students in Japan, but I found them very helpful, imho. And very enjoyable too. Twitter: I follow a number of Japanese tweets, and one that I think is particularly helpful is this Ghibli bot. It tweets lines from Studio Ghibli's works in Japanese, as well as the English translation for those who need it. I originally found out about it at Japanese Level Up, and I'm so glad I did. It's a goldmine of Anki-ready sentences and their translations, and introduces lots of very useful speech patterns, styles, and phrases. I'm a big fan of Ghibli films like Howl's Moving Castle, so I expect to be spending time on twitter following Ghibli and others. I'm also doing intensive reading of various short articles randomly online, but haven't done much of those. So, stats. Reading pages: 567 Lyrics/Tweets/Sentences: 327 Drama/Movie Minutes/Hours: Each episode was roughly 46 minutes, so every two episodes count as 90 minutes, or one film by SC standards. Judging that there are 11 episodes of Kazoku Game, that adds up to 5.5 movies. Not bad. Plans I want to increase my use of Anki more. Yes, I still have a very complicated relationship with it, but as the exam date approaches, the only way I can gauge for sure my progress without jumping randomly from one thing to the other, would be through using Anki. At least I'll know that I'll have to stick to the default settings of 20 a day, or get it down to 10 to avoid the backlog of reviews that may result, and it'll be easier to measure and keep track of. I'll just need to get down to doing it and making it a habit. Then, after the exams are over, I'll decide whether it's worth continuing with Anki in addition to immersion, or just going back to immersion without Anki. Time will tell. I wanted to do RTK but haven't done so yet. So that's another goal. Just start with the reviews, or maybe just review them in the context of Anki sentences/passages. I'll also try to update more frequently. It helps to get my thoughts out, makes me feel that I'm making progress, and motivates my to go back to my board studies. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5642 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 35 of 47 01 February 2015 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
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It seems like people either love or hate One OK Rock. I'm part of the latter, though I
know many friends online that like their music. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4790 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 36 of 47 01 February 2015 at 1:17am | IP Logged |
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@TheRealCZ: I think it maybe because of the heavy use of English, which may not sound so
natural at times. I mean, the Japanese sounds so much better anyway, so why bother? I guess to them English is as interesting as Japanese is to me. That's why I actually mostly just listen to their Japanese-heavy songs. Then again, it all boils down to music preferences, so I don't think you hating OOR is that big of a deal :D What styles of music and/or bands/singers do you like, Japanese or other? I get that you enjoy Kpop a lot. Edited by Woodsei on 01 February 2015 at 2:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5642 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 37 of 47 01 February 2015 at 2:06am | IP Logged |
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When it comes to Japanese music, I listen to rock, electronica and hiphop. I usually
either listen to alternative/indie rock or the heavier, non-metal rock. For hiphop, I mainly listen to the stuff from the late 90s and early ti mid 2000s. I listen to some electronic music, such as capsule. A list of some of my favorite Japanese bands/groups/artists: m-flo BoA (just counting her Japanese releases) Amuro Namie capsule Home Made Kazoku FLOW RIP Slyme Rhymester school food punishment High and Mighty Color L'Arc~en~Ciel UVERworld Asian Kung Fu Generation Bump of Chicken Orange Range ICONIQ (she only had one album in Japan) Tamaki Roy Shing02 Nujabes LiL DJ Okawari Mademoiselle Yulia Perfume DJ Deckstream Tha Blue Herb Kreva Saori@destiny 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4790 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 38 of 47 01 February 2015 at 2:52am | IP Logged |
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L'Arc~en~Ciel, Asian Kung Fu Generation, FLOW, m-flo, BoA (I'm especially attached to
Masayume Chasing), Amuro Namie, and Orange Range (Ikenai Taiyo was pretty good) are all artists I like a lot, too, and follow. Especially BoA, though I know she's Korean. I haven't listened to her Korean songs, yet, but hopefully will do so once more time is freed up so I can start Korean. I haven't heard much for the others, so thanks a lot for posting that list, as that will give me more artists to check out. I also like SiD very, very much. Stereopony, Aqua Timez, Garnet Crow, and The Sketchbook too. Come to think of it, most of the artists I've been listening to I have come across for the first time watching a drama or an anime, or something. Edited by Woodsei on 01 February 2015 at 2:55am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5642 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 39 of 47 01 February 2015 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
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Yeah, I found a lot of groups through anime and dramas as well. Now that physical sales
are way down for 95% of the groups, more of them do tie-ins with dramas and anime now, making it easier to find new groups to like despite it being harder to find the actual music compared to 10 years ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4625 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 40 of 47 04 February 2015 at 11:00pm | IP Logged |
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As you've been discussing music tastes for Japanese, I thought I'd take part:)
The Real CZ, it's quite nice to see names such as Nujabes, Shing02 or Dj okawari. IMO those are not the "typical" Japanese artists and as such are often forgotten. I love those. In the past, I used to like J-rock, but not anymore (god knows why, I just don't). Now, I've gotten more in pop/rap, I just love japanese sang fast and when it's rap, it just makes me wanna sing so much. I have no idea in which style I'd put this song, but here's my latest favorite (learnt by heart just by listening to it so much ^^) : おまえに 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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