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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4629 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 193 of 203 08 April 2015 at 3:33pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks everybody! And I'm crossing my fingers for you then VonPeterhof!
Well, it's official, I've finished and handed in my thesis yesterday so I'm now on holidays for a bit less than 2 months. So I've got a few things to take care of before I move to Japan:
The first 2 ones shouldn't be too much of a hassle (Although finding a rather cheap flat, not to far from work and bigger than 14 square meters could be..) but improving my Japanese will need some work. - First I've got 4 books left that I want to read before I leave. That's a total of almost 1500 pages. If I read about 30 pages per day, that'll go fine since I know I can do so, but I need to stay consistent (plus I'd like to finish the Korean book I started a long time ago). I'll try to make about 100 minutes every day for that (I guess that'll allow me to compensate for my March challenge totally failed). - Second, I'd like to improve my news knowledge as well. So I'll listen everyday to at least one 15 minutes news report from NHK and read at least 2 or 3 news articles (especially in the area I'll be working on in my job: biotechnology and Sports) - Third, I'll also try to do proper study, like some Kanjis and grammar study. I'll certainly go back to a book I bought a while back but I don't know which one for now. - Fourth (Bonus): I'll try to write by hand some stuff in order to get back into it. I guess I won't be needing to much that over there but, hey, better be prepared than sorrry right? On a separate note, it's this time of year again: the beginning of Ainu lessons on STV, so this year I'll try not giving up after a few weeks! I've done lesson 1 today which was rather different from last year and already had words I had never seen. I'll write some notes on a notebook I have for Ainu. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4629 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 194 of 203 10 May 2015 at 12:56pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, it's already been a month? I guess time really does fly heh.
To be honest, I haven't been doing much study. Preparing for the move to Japan is taking me more time than expected. Since it is the first time I am going abroad for a long time and considering that now that I am not a student anymore, I might not even come back to live in France for a number of years. (The goal being to work for 4-5 years in Japan and go to Korea afterwards or just stay in Japan maybe.) So I have been meeting friends in different places in France and all around Paris. I am a bit worried regarding how it'll go and am more and more concerned with my Japanese level, business-wise. I have looked for how to put a Japanese sim in a foreign phone (used to not be possible but it seems that now it is), apartments (is there anyone who has heard of Urban Renaissance? seems nice but I'm looking for an opinion), potential banks (any advice? I was thinking Shinsei but if there's better, I'm in ^^). Cleaning my room, I have found some vocabulary list I made 3 or 4 years ago so I'll go through it to see whether there's anything I still don't know. I have also learnt that I can bring up to 70kg directly with me so instead of limiting the amount of books, I am taking a bit more study material (especially concerning Korean and Mandarin) and one of the Japanese books I had planned on reading before leaving. In my last post I had mentioned that I wanted to read 4 books before leaving but turns out that one seems rather boring and long and I am bringing another one. So that's 2 books left. Since I have read pretty much nothing since my last post I've got about 500 pages left to read but If I actually get to it, it should be done easily... Listening wise, I have been following the animes I've been watching for a while and almost finished the asadora I was watching. I have also been listening to the news in Japanese almost every two days also but I need to read more news to be able to finally understand more I think. Concerning Ainu, I am at lesson 3 and will catch up on the others today or tomorrow. Luckily lesson 4 is about the writing system and lesson 5 accent so there's not much I haven't done yet in the past years. Lesson 6 will be the real start then. For Korean, I really haven't done anything but listening to music and exchange a few messages here and there. An old friend from my first trip in Korea who's now living in Qatar might come see me before I leave so I'm looking forward to that :) For Mandarin... I have just downloaded some episode of the last season of 中国好声音 that I haven't seen. I guess I won't be doing much before I settle in properly and get used to living in Tokyo again which means around mid-July I suppose. I'll do my April-May Challenge in a few days, certainly in Japanese. On another note, I think I will get back to the website I created about a year ago when I get to Tokyo. First, it will allow me to have a stable place to keep what I do (since we never know when HTLAL will go down) and also I've always wanted to take care of a language-related website and give tips or what not on peculiar things in Asia. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4865 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 195 of 203 11 May 2015 at 10:52am | IP Logged |
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Totally understandable that you're not finding much time for study with your big move ahead. I hardly got anything done for two months while moving most of my stuff. Except for reading on the train, which is a constant. And I only moved form one part of the city to another :)
It all sounds very exciting! I do hope you keep your log going as well - couldn't you post on both? Or just post the links? ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4794 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 196 of 203 11 May 2015 at 5:52pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, it's late, but, congrats on the job, yuhakko! It all sounds very exciting, and I
certainly hope it's a smooth transition for you. Moving isn't always the easiest, and you find yourself going back and forth between excitement for the move, but missing friends and family all the same. Having a website would be a great idea (I love reading blogs), but I second druckfehler on this: I certainly do hope you keep your log going :) Edited by Woodsei on 11 May 2015 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4629 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 197 of 203 27 May 2015 at 4:56pm | IP Logged |
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Sorry for the late reply! And I apologize also for being unclear: I'll certainly get back to my website (will say here when I do), but I definitely won't stop coming
here as well! I would have most certainly given up many times or gone in dead ends if it weren't for HTLAL ;) I have my departure date ! I'll be leaving straight after my training on Thursday 4th next week! I've got 2 luggages authorized and one is already full, I just started today my 2nd one. I've got my guesthouse ready and have already found flats to visit asap. It's incredible the difference between the prices for flats on websites where English is available and where it isn't. for the same rent, I've seen flats around 13-18m² and 30-35m² ! Truth be told, I am less worried about moving to Tokyo for the work than for the language. Although I can speak Japanese without any trouble (I spoke Japanese for almost 3hours in a row last week), by living there I'm sure to run into some. Food is also going to be a problem as I don't know how to cook many Japanese dishes and I'm at lost in front of food written in Japanese (let's not even talk about sauces!) Language wise: - A Korean friend came to see me before I move to Japan (she lives closer to Europe than Asia now) so I spent 2 days speaking mostly Korean. While my "rather" Korean accent's gone (she told me so), I can still handle conversations... but I feel like my active vocabulary's disappeared altogether. I'll have to meet with my Korean friends in Tokyo a lot I guess ;) - I've also hung out with some friends including some Japanese people (as mentionned above) last week where I had the opportunity to get back into speaking more. - I've also read 77 pages of a book about service in the hospitality sector written by the director of the Ritz Carlton in Japan. I bought it while back without even knowing what it was about, just because I liked the name : "絆が生まれる瞬間". It's rather easy to read and I hope I'll finish this one before leaving! - I've also listening to 2 Ainu lessons (I have 2 other to catch up), and it's finally time to get back in proper grammar and such. The last lesson I listened to was about accentuation and was very interesting as I had never heard those rules and it makes it much easier now to pronounce. - Unfortunately, Mandarin-wise I haven't done anything but write a few words and sentences here and there with some friends. I think I'll try to update my SC status tomorrow as I haven't done so in over 4 months! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5790 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi | Message 198 of 203 27 May 2015 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
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Congrats on the job and good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuhakko Tetraglot Senior Member FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4629 days ago 414 posts - 582 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishB2, EnglishC2, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Korean, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 199 of 203 18 June 2015 at 1:31am | IP Logged |
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@Anna: Thanks!
Well, I've arrived in Japan 12 days ago now. I'll try to do a proper update about everything sometime this weekend but here are a few things that have marked me in those 12 days. - First, if you can travel with JAL, do it! It's relatively cheap for its comfort. The windows have no "curtains" but you can adjust how dark they are; meaning that you can block the sun but still look outside. Pretty nice. The choice of movies is quite good and you can find many movies with different languages' subtitles (one could have Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, and a few others). One of the best trips I've done so far, if not the best. - Thanks to my timing, I've arrived at the start of 梅雨, meaning the rain season. My first day was horrible as I got lost and it rained like hell. Now, it can just rain anytime but it seems I've been rather lucky now because it mostly rained while I was inside. - Finding an apartment here is the worst. There are so many fees to pay to enter, as "initial cost" and all this together is going to make me pay around 5000€ the first month just to actually get the flat. Luckily, I'm getting the flat of the person I'm replacing so I can buy him back some stuff with a discout ! - Metros finish horribly early! I've already had to walk for 30min because I couldn't change and take the second line I had to, even though I had left where I was around midnight! - Work... It's horribly busy and I have no time to rest, but I guess that's what I get for arriving at that time of the year. I have to read/translate a lot of articles from Japanese in French, which is awesome but really hard depending on the topic (my work ranges from health, biotech to cosmetics, fashion, tourism, interior design or even sports and the Olympics). Still, it's very interesting and I love that part because I can improve my Japanese even at work! - Talking about improving my Japanese, all my colleagues speak French so I don't actually get to speak so much Japanese but it does happen. I'm not forcing anything as I want to get back to being more at easy before really talking to my boss or colleagues in Japanese. - It also appears that I can have Japanese classes! The 2 other French with my contract have classes but one has private classes and the other one has JLPT-specific classes with other people. It seems to depend on when you ask for it, but I'd rather have private classes if possible! - On my third day, I went to a fair with my colleague to help some French companies there and while one company's interpret left to eat I ended up being a translator for them... problem was... I had no idea to say "linen" (亜麻布?) and all their produts were made of it..! Was fun but intense! (Two Koreans came and I tried as well in Korean, but failed so hard we switched back to English... I felt so bad...) - On a more pleasant note, I've seen a lot of friends from 3 years ago and it felt great! We just had fun like old times at some izakayas and what not. This weekend I'll finally see my ex-flatmate after 2 years too, looking forward! - Language related but not Japanese though, I haven't done anything. I've listened to some music in Korean but that's it. I have found a new Korean song (came out yesterday) that I love so it's motivated me a bit more! I'll try to get around doing some! I've heard some Mandarin here and there but that's pretty much it. Aaaaand again, I'm late for the Ainu lessons! I'll try to catch that up asap. Anyway, I'll try to do more specific/regular posts from here on out but we'll see if Japan allows me to! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4865 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 200 of 203 17 July 2015 at 1:45pm | IP Logged |
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How's life going in Japan?
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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