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旅立ち/Катюша-Woodsei’s TAC 2014 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 57 of 162 17 April 2012 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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@SolfridChristin: I agree, but still a bummer that I didn't focus like that in the other
weeks. A lot happened, but I do hope to avoid these pitfalls in the future. Great to hear from you! How are languages treating you? @Takato: It'll be interesting to follow your Chinese studies. It's a fascinating language, and I hope I can get around to it as soon as I have good standing in Japanese. Will look out for your post! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 58 of 162 18 April 2012 at 11:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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04/18/2012: Log #8
おさしぶり！ I finally managed to post. Geez. I think I haven't posted in almost 7 weeks now, which is really embarrassing. I was hoping I'd come back with a bang and say I managed to do so and so with Japanese and Russian, but, truth is, apart from one out of the two Tadoku challenge weeks where I was able to read lots of manga and song lyrics, I didn't do anything at all. No reviews, no immersion, zilch. It's upsetting, to be honest. I haven't forgotten what I'd covered, but it's all in my passive subconscious, and I haven't advanced at all, apart from getting used to recognizing some kanji readings, Japanese wise. Russian came to a halt, too. But anyway, I'll just dive right into my thoughts and plans for the coming weeks. Japanese As of now, breaking down my language treck since the start of TAC, I have covered: January: Kanji RTK 1 February: Counted around 600 sentences covering multiple grammar structures in order to get a basic idea about Japanese syntax. I simply took them out of Assimil volume 1 and read them through once in Anki while listening a lot to the audio (it didn't matter whether these sentences came from a text or a grammar guide, I just wanted to get a feel for the language before jumping into native material). I didn't review them, although I initially intended to. I also had intended to go through Volume 2, but I realized after reading the first few dialogues that I was able to follow along with the grammar. It became less of an issue with syntax, and more about newer structures, which I was able to figure out on my own reading native materials. I love grammar, but the goal here was to just figure out how the system works in order to approach L-R with a good plan. When I gave L-R a test run with some German last year after I discovered it, it was very straightforward, but that wasn't the case with Japanese. I know I could've figured out grammar through it, but it seems that getting an idea of the grammar initially is more time and energy efficient. March: Absolutely nothing, not even random listening or TV :( The last week of March I covered lots of manga reading, as well as song lyrics, and those improved my recognition of kanji readings, as well as solidifying my grip on grammar somewhat. I wasn't that focused, however, and never went back to rereading the materials, so whatever vocabulary I learned incidentally evaporated. I wanted Tadoku as an opportunity for L-R, but a sudden illness in the family, compounded by other depressing emergencies, completely threw my plans out the window. April (first 2 weeks): Back again into nothingness. I was disoriented and asking myself all sorts of random questions, like if it was worth it working so hard on languages in the end. But I snapped out almost immediately. April (15-17): Lost my internet connection, got mad at myself, picked up RTK 3, and Heisig kanjied away like there's no tomorrow. I was able to do about 680 characters in one go over 4 hours through the night, and it was easy. I used to think doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70 kanji a day was pushing it, but I realized I was just wasting so much time online rather than focusing on the task. Of course, I'm no superhero. I had a Heisig deck I downloaded from the shared decks that had the top 2 stories. So I wasn't racking my brains thinking up of stories, and only modifying them if they didn't make sense or if a story popped in my head that made more sense, which were few. Now I question why I took so long (a month) doing RTK 1 and creating mnemonics when I could've just done that and spent more time with actual Japanese. Oh well. Showing up to learn new kanji at a snail's pace everyday was really just starting to irritate me, I wanted to finish that part and move on. Of course, I'll definitely encounter additional kanji throughout lots of reading, and when that happens, I'll add it to Anki, but for now, I just want to wrap up what I have and only review it so I could have more time to do other things. Judging from the above, I came up with this: 1. I should've finished RTK faster, because now I know I can. 2. Not spent a whole month reading 600 sentences for grammar, because that really improved after I started reading in the Tadoku challenge, and instead, doing it quickly and then picking up graded readers or easy texts and just starting to actually read and learn. 3. Not wasted 6 weeks doing nothing because I was discouraged, and simply just doing something, anything, rather than wallow. That was in part because I was structuring my day to do so and so at a certain hour during a certain period of the day. This made me understand that: 4. Less of planning my day, and more of planning my materials, my environment, and moving on. 5. One spends time learning how to learn first before actually learning :) I hope that made sense! Ok, so I changed my plans completely. I'm not abandoning anything in particular, just reallocating my steps accordingly. Like I said, I am able to feel (predict?) the syntax, and I'm not intimidated by that anymore. I can comprehend the gist of a sentence much better than before. I can also understand around 10% of anything I hear, which isn't much, but definitely better than the odd word here and there. Like more complete sentences, but I still fall out on compound sentences. I feel that at this point, my problem is vocab, reading, and following along long speeches and dialogue. Of course any new grammar encountered will be referenced, but it's now more about single points rather than a whole sea of them all at once. So I decided to start L-R properly, alongside vocabulary study. I know studying words in isolation isn't really a good thing, since words have multiple meanings, in addition to idiomatic meanings. But I don't know. I think if I study vocabulary, and instead maximize exposure to mass input through reading and listening, I'm filling in the gaps left by isolated vocab study. My plan is that, while I'm L- Ring, and reading online or in a text file, watching TV/listening to podcasts is to use Rikaisama, a Japanese dictionary plugin for Firefox, which has options for direct saving to Anki, voicing the word you mouse over using JDICT audio, and additional EPWING and Sanseido (monolingual) modes over the existing JDICT English definition. Awesome. While offline, there's an Anki plug-in I discovered called Yomichan, created by one of those great guys over at the Koohi forum, that acts like Rikaisama/chan/kun, but offline. Now I don't have any excuse. I'll just save words as I go, and only revisit them in Anki maybe at the end of the day, or next day, or whenever. The idea here is drill them after being exposed to them incidentally through reading and listening, so they can move from my repertoire of passive input to a more active one, and so maximize the benefits of listening and reading(more rapid comprehension). I realized that doing this would have two great merits: 1. Less time on Anki, breezing through reviews, rather than have it eat a large chunk of the day, which I think is what SRS was intended for, anyway. Quick reviews so you could move on to more materials. And stress-free. 2. If I know lots of word, I will be reducing the overhead, and picking grammar a lot easier, and faster, than having to look at a sentence and guess where the grammar structure is, and what the words before and after it means. It's doing too many things at the same time which is very stressful and slows me down. I realized by letting go of one thing and focusing on the other, I'll be maximizing benefit and saving time. So that's what I'll basically be doing in the following weeks. I might put in very short 2-3 word example sentences for words I feel are vague, just to give them some context. Short sentences on the answer side of a card to only look at if I'm stumped; the idea here is a quick review. Another reason for using Rikaisama is because I want to transition to monolingual (Japanese-Japanese) definitions as soon as possible. Being in an only-Japanese mode actually helps my comprehension. So looking at the English definition in Rikaisama, then switching to Sanseido, would give me an idea about how Japanese dictionaries define the words. I'll definitely be attempting that step soon. Intimidating, but I'm sure rewarding. Now in retrospect, I don't regret doing that whole bunch of sentences before vocab. I would still do that if I had to do it all over again. Words like "koto" こと and "no" の would've never been fully grasped had they gone the vocab route. And I know comparison words like "yori" より and "ho" ほ , which come in their specific places in a sentence rather than being standalone words. Just to name a few. So yeah, for a language like Japanese, I'm glad I familiarized myself with the grammar first. I have no doubt I would've picked it through LRing, but I have a feeling it would've been slower. Maybe, I don't know, that's just me. And speaking of grammar, I have my trusty grammar dictionaries out as references. I'll just spend time listening and reading, referencing them when needed. As my comprehension gets better, I will start reading them more actively, and looking up examples for them through the texts/subs/listening I use, as well as googling them, and using Yahoo Japan dictionary, ALC, Goo, Sanseido, Tangorin, among others. I also have a set of Kanzen Master grammar books, but I don't know, maybe I'll look at them down the road, as I hear they're really good books. I'll then throw everything at Anki, cloze- deleted all or some, I don't know, depending on how I feel, and drilling them through regular Anki reviews. I remember now why I love Anki :) So, cycles of massive vocab and exposure with cycles of grammar practice through sentences and passages into Anki. And of course, the music I love so much. I'm hoping with vocab and LR, my comprehension skyrockets so I can start shadowing, and then later oral and written production. Plus that tantalizing goldmine of native material without recourse to dictionaries, or efforts gone into translating into your own head. Russian In my previous posts, I mentioned I was going through Assimil. Depending on my observations above of Japanese, I decided to read quickly through the basic grammar of the language, and bootstrap myself with words until I start LR, hopefully in July. So I put that book to the side. It's a great course, as was the Japanese one, but I'm just not that textbook person. They bore me to tears. Well, the Japanese one was fun, hilarious, great, and not at all boring, and I'll probably revisit it down the road and skim through it all to alleviate the guilt I'm feeling of totally abandoning it:) but I just want to read real Russian and Japanese, and waste more time on them. So my Russian strategy hold like the Japanese one. I'm hoping to do some 20-30 words a day, with 20 being more likely. And if less or more, no problem, it's just an average. The idea is to do something, so that when I give more time to Russian, it's not as painful. Since I'm only dong that, there'll be very straightforward future posts with Russian up to July. Then we'll see how to take things from there. By the way, is there something like Rikaisama/chan or an offline pop-up dictionary for Russian? I'm dying to find one. It will make reading Russian sooner possible. Of course, as with everything, plans change, and they may change yet again for Japanese and Russian, but for now, these are my current study methods, and I feel happy, relieved, and excited. It's always great to pause and look back and reassess. Oops, I'm digressing here :) The Super Challenge Christina, thank you :) Just when I was planning lots of reading, media watching and listening, and maximum exposure, Christina comes forward with this super idea called the Super Challenge. The idea is, starting May 1st 2012 and ending December 31st, 2013, to read 100 books and watch 100 movies or their equivalents in hours/minutes in one language, in order to master it. I was on the fence over either Japanese or Russian, but I opted for Japanese due to the wider availability to me of books and media than with Russian, and I also wanted to train my reading of the Japanese script, which is more difficult. I found out about just when I was ordering a bunch of novels and manga off Amazon Japan, so it comes in perfect sync with my above plan, and such perfect timing! I couldn't be happier. I also have a massive reservoir of books, manga, movies and TV shows that I was collecting over the months. There was this one store that was selling them for really good prices ($1-$2 books!), and it was also the only store in the area. Unfortunately it shut down. But I'm relieved that I was able to collect such a huge amount prior to that happening. So armed with texts, TV/movies, Youtube Japan ( set your location from Worldwide if you're in the U.S.. or wherever you are to 日本). The amount of up-to-date, full- lengths shows on their is staggering. I think Youtube will be my saving grace if I ever run out of accessible native material. I hope. And of course, last but definitely not least, Keyhole TV. I love that thing, even though the resolution isn't exactly great. I jsut love it. There's a channel which shows you Japanese dubs of American/foreign shows. Very useful, especially if you've watched and are a big fan of the shows, but I don't know. It's weird listening to native Japanese voices coming out of non-Japanese people! :) I keep expecting to hear English everytime they open their mouths, and out comes native Japanese! Not to mention the body-language and mannerisms which are entirely un-Japanese:) It's cool, but I prefer watching authentic Japanese shows with real 日本人, and all the cool cultural references, nuances, puns (I love their play on words!), body-language and mimetic expressions. :) Speaking of Amazon Japan, forgive me, but I have to rant to someone, and all you sympathetic Japanese learners are aware of their ridiculous shipping expenses. I mean, RIDICULOUS. I would've ordered off Yesasia or Kinokuniya, but, seeming as erratic as my schedule is, and lots of moving about, I can't guarantee I'll get my orders while I'm around. Plus Amazon had all the titles I wanted, which were missing in Kinokuniya. I guess I shouldn't complain, it's all for Japanese, but I feel I could've spent that much money buying a whole bunch of other books. Oh well. I'm just super-excited about getting my new treasures :) I'm not going to let shipping prices spoil that. 12 books and 8 manga volumes. Yippee!!! I can't wait for them to arrive! The Bakemonogatari series, Toshokan series, 1Q84 trilogy, and Oresama Teacher (俺様ティーチャー) manga, which is just plain awesome. I'm abusing that word :) The manga is beyond hilarious, with it's touching moments. It's classified as a shoujo manga, but the art, while beautiful, doesn't look like your stereotypical romantic shoujo, and there is a lot of fighting involved, minus the gore. The romance, in fact, is very subtle and spread out, some may call it lacking. I actually love the art, not too in-your-face-sweet, but definitely gorgeous. I read the first 4 chapters in English, fell in love, stopped, and ordered the original 日本語 version. Now I just have to resist the temptation to cheat and take a peak at the rest ;) At least until my books arrive. Links So I'll post links to some useful sites I came across, as well as some links to Koohi where a lot of really nifty and addicting tools have been created for learners like us by the generous Koohi forum members. The person who created subs2SRS and Rikaichan/sama made some really useful Anki plugins, like Morph Man, which orders the sentences you input in Anki in degrees of ascending difficulty depending on what you know in Japanese, in order to create an easy and ideal learning i+1 environment. Well, I don't really focus on the i+1 aspect, but I agree that generally grading difficulty is useful, and many people do that. I did that when I decided to pick apart syntax before LR. Tools 1. Tools The person I think who made subs2SRS. Has a number of cool tools to aid in the language learning process. 2. The Enescapeable Case for Extensive Reading Cool article, nothing no one here doesn't know, but pretty informative. 3. Yomichan Great tool for offline reading of Japanese text files. The plug-in is in the Anki shared plugins. Women's/Men's/Lifestyle Online Magazines 4. FRAU 5. Nikkei Woman 6. Magazine World 7. Magazine World Women's News 8. FNN News Great, has transcripts that are identical or almost identical to the podcasts. 9. Yomiuri Online 10. Nikkei Podcasts Twitcasting Twitcasting TV Fun site! People post their videos for others to comment. You don't have to upload anything, you can just simply follow the videos. Has English, Japanese, and I think Spanish, but I posted the Japanese one. I thought it would be great listening practice to native spoken casual Japanese, and good reading practice too, since people leave comments. The comments update rapidly, so it's also good to train speed while reading. I haven't extensively watched anything, but I thought I'd share. So, that's about it for now. Now I'm off to more Kanji crunching, and downloading subs for Jdoramas, movies, and anime from the sites I've mentioned in my previous posts. All for the Super Challenge! It's unique because, because while with other challenges you set your own goals, for this one, the stakes are high! We'll see if I'll be able to read and watch that much. I'm hopeful. 20 months is a long time :) またね！ Edited by Woodsei on 19 April 2012 at 5:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 59 of 162 18 April 2012 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I have no idea why my entire post was bolded :S
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| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5046 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 60 of 162 18 April 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Because you forgot to put a slash in front of the "B" in the squary brackets immediately after "Log #8". I read your novel. （⌒▽⌒）
Great! If you're not a person who watches her favorite movies/reads her favorite manga 20 times, then really, just don't do it. They didn't evaporate, it's just that they haven't been remembered fully yet. When I was one certain anime with English subtitles, I never did a review of the newly appearing words. I didn't even write them to a dictionary notebook (I hope you know what I mean by "dictionary notebook" :S). Why write it? I give "expect" as an example: this word appeared in a sub as "expected". I looked up "expect" in my En-HU dictionary on my phone (I always looked up words on my phone, because that was the most convenient way for me), and continued with the anime. The next time it showed up, I looked up again, and noticed that I've most likely seen it already. Then the next time I encountered it I knew that I looked up it before, maybe because of the "ex-" and "c" part of it. And then I needed to look it up one more time later, and knew it passively for some weeks or so. Of course it's just an approximate description of what happened, but I hope understand now better why I don't review words: I like looking up words better than reviewing them, because when I review them, I almost feel like wasting time, because it needs so much time to have it remembered, and I won't even know if I'll remember it for a long time. At the first time I needed 1 hour or so to watch a 24 minutes long episode this way. （＾ｖ＾） If you like reviewing, then do review, indeed. I just wanted to make you stop reviewing for some days, or at least for one day, immerse yourself with one topic during that time (like doing nothing but reading about Japanese festivals in Japanese), and notice if you understand more (e. g. read 祭, and see if reading gets easier by the end of the article, just by using Rikaichan, or whatever you like).
Why do you want to reduce the time spent with Anki and have more time for other things? Isn't the time spent with Anki satisfyingly worth?
Why even plan your day? If you spend it with Japanese, it probably won't be spent in a bad way...
I don't know if you can learn how to learn. Not every people are the same, so most likely than not it's better to just experiment with learning many different ways. Of course if you mean that you wanna learn about more ways of learning, then it makes more sense to me.
Great to hear that you're not stubborn.
I only know one meaning for "bottle" - a longish object which contains liquid - but I'm fine with it. The language books used in my school didn't teach me more than 3 definitions for any words, so I think you misjudged the reason of learning words. According to this, it means dead soldier, too, but why should I know it? One who aims for JLTP level 2 shouldn't worry about it.
Could you give me links to the podcasts? I hope you got some new information while reading my post. You've learned Japanese for so much that you might know everything better than me. Edited by Takato on 18 April 2012 at 3:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 61 of 162 18 April 2012 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The bold made it look like you were giving yourself quite the telling off, at least to start with. Try not to worry about what you have or haven't done. Part of the challenge is learning how to learn and I think actually different methods become more or less appropriate according to your current level anyway.
I see that Anki figures as a big part of your proposed programme. It is a useful tool however I would suggest that you try not to let it become the focus of your studies. I find too much Anki is not only boring but also steals valuable time from other useful activities. Glad to see you're giving the Super Challenge a go too. I can't wait to get started! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 62 of 162 19 April 2012 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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@Takato: That seemed like you were analyzing an academic paper :) Thanks for all the
useful comments! Concerning planning, I felt at first that I had to plan time around school, because of all the classes, papers, etc. But I eventually figured out that I don't necessarily have to do that, and just put in Japanese whenever I can, and make use of dead time. It's better for me anyway, because I was never a person who stuck to rigid schedules for so long :) As for Anki and vocabulary, I definitely see your point. I don't think I was being very clear however. I definitely don't need to keep reviewing things for them to stick, but as I progress, when I read something again, I notice something that I missed the first time round, and make connections to whatever else came after reading that particular book/article/etc. I don't misunderstand the idea of learning words, rather, I know that words are beneficial if they're part of continuous exposure, and not simply studied on their own for an hour or so, and then back to my English-infused life. Also I didn't attempt to study languages on my own before, so I'm kind of trying out different things. You pointed out that I should continue using Anki if it's useful, but then you say that reviewing is unnecessary if I continue reading! But I do get your point. I always internalize best from lots of reading, and things stick better, than forcing them through memorization and such. The thing is, I enjoy using SRS because it allows me to zero in on the small details that I might otherwise miss. Then again, I hate spending lots of time adding cards when I could be reading and listening to more Japanese. I think what I was trying to convey is that I enjoy using Anki just as a final polish to whatever I come across in my readings. I guess what I meant when I said "learning" is that I was trying out different things I saw that worked for other people and see how that would turn out for me, until I eventually was able to figure out how I am as a person and what I like to do when approaching languages. Right now I feel that I can't remember anything I've read, but when I hear it, something clicks, and I get it. So yeah, I know you're right when you say things you know never leave you and are lying there in store for when the time comes. Anyway, thank you for your very detailed and useful comments! It does make me reflect on things when other people chime in and offer their views in my progress. I certainly do hope that I know as much Japanese as you make it out in your comment! @g-bod: The bold was a mistake on my part when I was posting, and I was able to fix it. I wasn't giving myself a telling off, haha, not really, but I hate it when I fall into procrastination mode, and I've been doing a lot of that lately! Anki doesn't figure as a huge part of my routine by any means. I started off just reviewing on it for 15 minutes or so, but I was increasing spending more and more time on without realizing it, and that took the enjoyment I had out of language study. Especially since I just like to read and listen more than anything. Anki has it's uses,it certainly does, and I don't think I would've been able to go trough RTK so fast without it, or gloss over useful phrases that I now am able to comprehend and produce. It acts like a storage for things I encounter in the wild that I find beautiful and useful, and want to look at again later. But I just don't want it to eat away at my time. That's why I said I wanted to scale that down in favor of more natural exposure, which is how I learn better anyway. Yes, I'm really looking forward to the Super Challenge! It'll be very interesting where one will be in their target language after attempting to go through 100 books and a 100 movies. I can only imagine :) I love reading, and I can finish a book in one sitting in my native language if it holds my attention, and I definitely had times that felt like movie and reading marathons! But I never counted, and I seriously doubt they got to 100 :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 63 of 162 19 April 2012 at 5:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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@Takato: I forgot, I'll post some links for you when I get to my main computer which has
everything. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 64 of 162 20 April 2012 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Wow and tripple WOW. If what I have seen in the previous 6WC is your idea of procrastinating, I'd almost be scared to see what you can do when you are being effecient!
It looks like you are doing absolutely amazing in both Japanese and Russian. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 20 April 2012 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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