6 week Challenge update : refusing to speak English

I am still playing catch up with the challenge and life tends to come in the way a bit at time. I can't possibly turn my life to 100 percent Japanese but at least they are some areas which can be worked with. 

One of them is limited interaction in English on social media, adopting the sorry-guys-but-I'll-talk-to-you-later-or-you-can-also-learn-Japanese attitude especially for other writers editing works, beta-reading novels, commenting on writing groups. It works more or less but I still like to preform some English reading especially with other bloggers from the Week-end Writing Warriors.

One other parts of my life I worked on this week were for official phone calls and hospital stuff. I "annoyed" people until I could actually understand what they were talking about.
For the phone call it was more or less some kind of "accident". I needed a new credit card as mine was expiring so I had my boyfriend calling, I mean that's important stuff, I lack confidence and well it needs to be well done. The problem here is that the people on the phone refused to talk to him, to let him translate what they would say to me and to let him translate what I would say to them. So far so good to make things easy for me. So I told them, 日本語で頑張ります technically I'll do my best in Japanese, the poor girl decided to finally give up and to send me someone who could speak English, but there was no one at that time so she asked me to call later and I refused. Fact is that was the second time calling and in between I had send them a form which hadn't been taken into account, I can't really survive without credit card, seeing that it pays for some of the bills. So she had no choice but to speak slowly and to let me give her the information in Japanese. Result: It worked. I have something to totally brag about and a new credit card. 

The same experience happened few hours later at the hospital. The nurses ended up discussing the best way to explain things to me as if I wasn't 50 centimeters away and actually refusing to let me come back with a friend to help (health stuff is that confidential) even if I was the one asking for it. I ended up explaining them what I understood from their conversation and it worked somehow. Results I know a lot of things about contraceptive pills that I ignored before but don't ask me to reexplain it in Japanese, the new vocabulary slipped out of my mind when I left the place. 

One other good thing is friends. I don't have anyone to talk to in Sendai but at least I have a lot of friends in Chofu and they organise events at the week-end. Ending up with me spending the day speaking Japanese. 私は英語分かない、フランス語も分かない(I don't understand English or French) That makes them laugh a bit but then I got the drift and talk to me in Japanese like there was nothing else to do anyway. Sorry guys I'll help you with your English after the challenge (when I'm fluent ;) ) Result:　リンダの日本語上手くなった。 I say epic win.

I also restarted to read ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 at the beginning (13 pages so far) and a friend stopped a bit to explain me some characters' readings. I can "get" the meaning but I can't get the sound of those kanjis yet. Everytime someone stopped near me to ask "You're reading in Japanese? Can you understand?" I was saying "hum, no." which is kind of true, I have a lot of trouble to define how much and which part I can understand but somehow I can follow the story. I had the same experience in other languages so I know I'm doing it the right way but if I can't explaining to myself I don't see how I can explain it to other. So they end up looking at me strangely like "that crazy girl is pretending to read a book but doesn't understand it and it's a really complicated one" and I just smile and say 日本語頑張ります。Why am I not reading 魔女の宅急便 or 星の王子さま which would be easier is another mystery.

I'm still 16 hours behind but that should become 11 by the end of the day at least, Japanese music is playing in my ears right now. 

 

6 week Challenge update : catching up

Last week I told you how I was running late on the 6 week Challenge compared to what I had planned. I wanted 5 hours a day but I didn't managed to get them at the very beginning of the month for various reasons.
Now this week due to a more efficient method I'm able to learn as many hours as planned and I even managed to catch up a bit on my schedule.
The trick is a different use of my tools.

Instead of swapping from my ipod to my laptop I just keep all the way with the ipod so I don't have holes and don't forget to put my earphone on anymore as I do it right away when going out of the house.
Another thing about this is that music helps me to concentrate on my work in the lab more efficiently as it covers the general noise of people going in and out of the office. All in all it's a win win.



The second thing is that I turn on Bleach as soon as I arrive home so I can watch not only while eating diner but also while cooking, cleaning and going about my usual task. This almost double my time of Japanese listening. I enjoy the story and I'm learning at the same time.

There are however two downside on my schedule that I still need to fix. As I'm not taking the bus anymore, I find myself reading a lot less than I used to. I still didn't figure out how to go about it.
The second downside is that I can't manage to find inspiration matching my Japanese skill well enough to be able to write daily on 日本語だけでいってみよ ～.

I'm currently happy with my progress and ready to keep up with my efforts.

Demon and Fairy WeWriWar 1

    Today is my first participation to the Week-end Writing Warriors. I'm really excited about it and I hope that I will be able to keep up on time. I decided that my first project would be to contribute by giving excerpt of "Demon and Fairy". I have been working on this novel for months now. I was planing to release it in June last year but I wasn't totally satisfied so I didn't. Now I'm hoping to have it ready by the end of next month and I hope that the Week-end Writing Warriors project is going to help me with that.

Demon and fairy is the story of Seti, a demon of Chaos who can't touch anyone without disintegrated them and Kallisto, a princess fairy raised in the Human World who have to go back to the Fairy World to get married. She seems to be the only one able to take away his pain with her music as he is looking at her from a portal between the Human World and the Demon World.

Here are the 8 sentences introducing the novel. 

        Seti was flying to the beach, his head hurting like hell and the pain blurring his vision. 

He was holding his head with both hands making it difficult to keep balance and to fly straight. 

The voice of Chaos in his head was asking for more fights. 

He knew he shouldn’t have given into it in the first place but it was too late to think about it now. 

The Chaos was asking for more chaos, always, and it was getting worse every day, except, when she was there.

He had discovered her by accident. 

Who could have thought that such a passage existed? 

He had been fighting again. 

If you are interested, you can read more about Demon and Fairy here. 

Discover the excerpts of other participants through the Week-end Writing Warriors's blog here. 
Facebook Snippet Sunday group for more posts here. 

 

Week-end Writing Warriors and updates on writing

I decided to join the Week-end Writing Warriors.

Week-end Writing Warriors is a group of writers who post 8 sentences part of their current works on their blogs every Sunday. Tomorrow will be my first entry and I'm very excited about it. I was brainstorming all week trying to figure out what to post but I'm still not very sure. I guess I'll spend part of the evening looking at how other people do it and try to find something for myself.

Currently I am working on an update for Demon Soul correcting the typos found by my readers and the one they didn't find. I'm hoping to be done by tomorrow night if my perfectionism doesn't start kicking in to badly. Then I'll be working on Demon and Fairy which owed to be finished and out for you to read by the end of June (one year delay but I want it to be the best I can) and I need it as prices for "Mich's summer mystery" which will be introduce to you later this month. So there are a lot of things coming up to look forward to and I'll probably use Demon and Fairy for the Week-end Writing Warriors project.

I also started some editing project. This is fairly new to me to be working intensively on someone else's work but I enjoy it a lot. I can give ideas and point out at things without having to deal with the complexity of writing then and letting the writer decide for herself what is best for her story. It's creative and relaxing and I'm learning a lot. I think it also helps me to become a better writer. She rewrote her first chapter but I haven't read it yet. I'm a bit impatient to discover all the changes. I'll let you know how things goes as the story move forward.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow to discover my first excerpt. What are you working one at the moment?

6 week Challenge update : running late

The 6 week challenge started very badly. My plan was to get at least 5 hours of Japanese a day which by now would be 35 hours, I'm at 10.5 hours. 

First I was on a trip, computer-less two days after the start of the challenge. Then I hurt myself while sleeping and ended up in the hospital and the pain tended to decrease my motivation about about everything I intended to do during the long golden week week-end.

But seriously, I don't know what's going on I can't seem to find the time to get anything done in Japanese and I even forgot my musical environment for the entire first week. How the hell is that even possible? I'm not sure. I mean winamp is playing on my computer and I forget to put my earphones on. That sounds like I'm purposely sabotaging myself and this has to stop. I think the fact that I was thinking the Read More Or Die challenge will be up at the same time isn't helping, I can't even read in the bus anyway as I'm not taking the bus anymore. I need to find a new way to get things done in Japanese. 

So I build up a new battle plan with part including me becoming a better person (so that's technically aimed to fail) but having a plan even a shaky one is better than nothing. 

1) Reading at least 10 pages of novel a day if possible before going to work.

Here are my weapons. ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖

                                   R.O.D

                                   星の王子さま

                                   魔女の宅急便 

 

2) Listening music at work (at the moment it's Angel heat playing in my ears)

3) Watching Bleach while eating diner at least (I can watch Dark Angel after I'm done with the challenge).

4) SRS repetitions during lunch break.

5) And of course the daily blog post on 日本語だけでいってみよ～ (which was forgotten yesterday so I might add more than one sometimes)

This should give me  few hours a day, I'm not sure I will be able to fully catch up the 25 hours I'm missing but I'll try not to miss more.

 Anyway, 頑張ります！！

6 Week Challenge starts again.

Yesterday was the end of April and with it, the end of the A-to-Z Challenge and of Camp NaNoWriMo. But today is the start of May and it also means that it's the start of the 6 Week Challenge once again. So for the next 6 weeks I will be highly involved into immersing myself as much as I can in Japanese and in avoiding English as much as possible. To register it's really easy, all you need to do is have a twitter account and to use the appropriate tags as described in the 6 Week Challenge page here. 

In this challenge, I decided to keep on with the reading which this time will be a lot about reading novels instead of mangas, keep on watching drama and animation, especially finish the Bleach series and I will add a daily blog post in Japanese on my Japanese blog, 日本語だけでいってみよ～. My main problem with the 6 Week Challenge is that it lasts 6 weeks, so there is no rest for me or resetting to something else at the end of the month. Last time I noticed that I ended up slacking of quit a bit toward the end. This time I want to keep my motivation as high as possible through all of it so I will have to invent tricks to help myself. I'll let you know how it goes. Last time, I managed 194h39 of Japanese in total. That's an average of about 4.6 hours a day. This time I want to try to reach 210 hours. That's not a lot more so it should be doable. 頑張ります！

End of 6 Week Challenge, Start of Read More Or Die

Yesterday was the 15th of March. For me, it's the end of the 6 Week Challenge and the start of Read More Or Die round 1.5.

The 6 Week Challenge is a contest for learning a foreign language. Basically you record everything you do in that language, reading, writing, grammar, watching drama, listening to music, anything. Here explanation on how to register is provided on the 6 Week Challenge page. This round of the challenge started on first of February. I started a little bit late but I finished third. with almost 195 hours of learning Japanese. I can feel the progresses due to intensive learning. The next round starts on first of May, please join me, you can decide to learn any foreign language.

Yesterday was also the start of Read More Or Die round 1.5.

I already participated to the first round in January. This round is a bit smaller as it holds only for 15 day, from the 15th or March  to the 1st of April.

So far I haven't scored anything, because I decided to register for Japanese only. Last time I had registered for English and German as well. Join me and improve your reading in your target language. 

Read more or die : Reading contest.

Last night was the end of my reading Marathon. In January I participated to a contest call "Read more or die". This contest is organized several times a year by someone who realized that you can improve your foreign language skills dramatically just by reading more, reading something, anything, by participating to another contest of the kind himself.

The rules of this contest is to read as much as possible in up to three different foreign languages from the first of January until the 31th of January at midnight. To participate you just need a twitter account (that makes it easier) and to follow the rules.

I registered Japanese, German and English. I only read papers in English for most part or edited "Demon and fairy" (more on that coming soon), I didn't read anything in German (my german books were hiding in my boxes) but I read a lot of mangas (I finished 花よ男子, and started 花ざかりの君たちへ。）

I found out about this contest only on the 9th of January so I started already with an handicap but there is nothing to win in that contest except of course new awesome language skill. I decided to aim for being in the top 10% (that's a bit of a fullish goal though but I didn't know how much I could read) At the moment I register 10% meant to be at least 26th. At the end of the month it meant being 29th but I decided to still aim for the 26th position. I reached it last night but midnight coming in Japan faster than in any other country, I become 27th soon after.That's not too bad for a first time.

Here are my reading progresses.

Next time (in April) I intent to read at least 1000 pages (which is 5000 pages for mangas according to the rules) and only in Japanese. Normally that's more than achievable especially that I have 2 more months or insane reading to train.

Reading Challenge

I love books, when I was living in Belfast there was a shop where you could get second hands books for very cheap and it's the same in Japan so I collected a lot of books that I didn't really have time to properly read.
Several times while reading on internet I came across this idea (don't ask me from who it is) it says if you want to read many books get a empty shelve and make a pile with your books near it, then you are allowed to tidy the books by putting them on the shelve only when you are done reading them. I thought the idea was funny and he did turn a bit in my mind but the last time I saw it, I decided that I needed to give it a try. First because it is clearly bugging me to have all those unread books.
Second because you can never know if something will work before you try it for yourself (No it wouldn't work for me bullshit here).
Thirdly because it does make my room look kinda cool this way.
I emptied my closet (and I wonder how the books could fit in in the first place). I empty the shelve of the unread books and here we go.













































The books include, English classic, American classic, Homere and Virgil, scientific book (Mathematic, Physics, Chemistry, Paleontology... ), Japanese Manga, Harry Potter 3 in Japanese, one novel in German...

I have books from my "special collection" which will need to be read later as they involve the fact that I'm not fluent in their language and sometimes even don't have the basics.

Some more books will be added soon as I'm waiting for two package from Amazon, one containing American classical science fiction novels and one being "The Fault in Our Start" (more about it later).

I don't know how long it's going to take me to read all this, if I was still in middle school I would say two months but with my actual life, I have no idea. Stay tuned for the updates.

I won AugNoWriMo : Demon and fairy part 8

I won AugNoWriMo, well I passed the 40000 word line I still need to be officially verified.
That time it was really hard, not that much about the story more about a strange brain pattern. Let me explain because if that happens to me I know that it's happening to others as well and knowing about it will help fight it.

I was late on my word count,with the move to America I couldn't write for few days. Looking at the late words now, that wasn't too much. But the thing was I possible couldn't catch up all at once for sure. So what did I do? I felt bad and I didn't write, so the late words started to add up even more because I couldn't make it all at once was feeling like if I couldn't make it at all. And that was the main problem. Just I didn't need to make it all at once I needed to split it, into pieces, like I did at the beginning of the challenge, 40000/31 = 1291 (above integer).

So I split it and I get back at writing every day. Most of the time I didn't even reached the new word count but I was writing every day I was getting closer and that's the main point, because you can't do it all right now doesn't mean that you can't take a little step in the right direction and that little step was just what I needed to get back to my writing motion.
Of course when the week-end arrived I had just four days left to get my last 15200 and I had the feeling that I wasn't going to make it. But I split it, 5000 Saturday, 5000 Sunday so that I just had about 2500 for the two last days. I wrote 5200 on Saturday, 4500 on Sunday but on Monday I wrote 4100 words so that on the last day I just had to write 1200 words and they came to me really easily. On the two last days I was also splitting the writing time, writing each time I had a moment.
I think that one of the most important thing is the desire to get what I said I would and I made it.

The novel is not yet finished with 2 contests won and a total of 94138 words so you can expect to have more to read in the close future. It is going to be my longest novel so far.
All Novels Draft 

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I won JulNoWriMo, New challenge : AugNoWriMo, "Demon and fairy"

En français

So yesterday was the 31st of July and I won JulNoWriMo. I had about 4000 words to write on the last day. That's the first time that I have been so much behind on a writing challenge (except script frenzy). That's probably due to outdoors activities for sure but also to the fact that this story is getting crazy. I'm amazing myself at the things happening in it. Of course I had planed it. Of course I know the end already, but there always are things that are being created while writing. When I start writing I know most of the main events but linking them can be very creative and spontaneous.
I hope you will like the way things are going now.

Also today is the first of August and I'm starting a new challenge. The new writing contest is called AugNoWriMo. You are able to be choose your words goal and to you can work on an already started project. I decided to work on "Demon and fairy" and I'm hoping to finish it with 40000 words more.

Here is the last part of "Demon and Fairy" counting for JulNoWriMo.
All Novels Draft 




New ticker for AugNoWriMo

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New Challenge JulNoWriMo

En français

On the first on July I decide to participate to a new writing challenge. My previous success for NaNoWriMo and other competition really motivated me to write more. Especially that today I successfully order the free proof copy of Demon Soul that NaNoWriMo allowed me to get as a winner.
The project I will be working on is "Demon and fairy" I already started few months ago but didn't go too far, by lack of time, concentration or wish, I don't know. But know I think it's time to give Seti a proper story. So here is the first part of the story that will count for Julnowrimo.

So far 4102 words :D
All Novels Draft

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Update on April's challenges

En français
So as I explained earlier I am participating to two contests for the month of April.
Now we are the 12 of April, already almost in the middle of the month so I think it's time to take a look at what I have actually been doing for those challenges. I probably should have written something about it a bit earlier, anyway, it's here now.

Script Frenzy

For Script Frenzy I am a bit behind at the moment. I was supposed to write 3.33 pages a day. Actually I went out a lot since the first of April and ended up with being 16 pages behind in the writing. However, I'm not the kind to let things get worse and worse and I manage to write 17 pages yesterday. So now I have a total of 33 pages. I'll surely reach 40 pages tonight to be right on tracks again.

As I promised in the announcement of this challenge, here is a little summary of the story so far : Vienna's Ghost

Arman has the particular ability to be able to travel in people's dreams. Some people like it as he can help them dream about what they want and some people don't. But Arman sleep really few at night and never dream himself.
Yurei is the family ghost. She is scaring people unwillingly until Arman finally manage to talk to her. What Arman doesn't know is that Yurei is secretly in love with her and that she is the girl who appeared in his very first dream the day before and that he is desperately trying to fine.

As I always slide some links to my next story in the one I'm writing, I hide a little wink to "Demon and fairy" in this one. I didn't write much on the novel.

International L2 Reading Contest

Here is the International L2 Reading Contest. I have seen some of the read pages number of some people and I was really impressed. I surely over estimated my abilities when I joined this contest. But the good point about it, even if I am sure that I will never make it to the top 5, is that it allows me to test my reading in Japanese and also to read different kind of material. I really intend to push the effort until the end of the month (never left anything half done.) and I'm also intending to continue reading as much as I can after the contest.


花ざかりの君たちへ (Hana Kimi)

 I read 20 pages of the manga. I don't really know how to count them though. Normally 10 pages read count for 1 page in the contest. But I read all pages three times (so maybe 6 pages).
The first time I just go with the knowledge of Japanese I have. That kind of give me a flavor. I'm almost done with Heisig's remembering the Kanji.

But if I can write the characters fine when I have the meaning and if I can recognize a kanji that I know, getting the meaning of it coming to my mind is not that easy.
So here is where the second reading of the page comes into place, I look up all the kanjis for which the meaning didn't strike me and sometimes write them down.
The third reading allows me to actually fix things with the hiragana and katakana and to make sure that I understand what I read.
That may seem a slow process and it's actually slow but that's also a lot of fun and that also showed me that I can understand more than I thought I was.

あのときの王子くん
I read two chapters of the little prince with the audio (audio books list). That's about 7 pages. These I read several times too, that depends of the sentences really. I like to have the audio with me because the hiragana tend to really really kill me. It's way more difficult to understand than with the kanjis.

I also read the equivalent of five pages on wikipedia about different topics. Basically, when I'm looking for something I will check the Japanese pages as well. I find it very convenient as I spend a lot of time on the computer. So each time I need a small break I will end up there.

And I read 6 pages of pure kana for the Japanese test for registration and placement into Japanese classes. I was already laughing when the girl put the paper in front of me. I had learned the hiragana the night before and I had told her so. I asked for something written in Japanese but she told me that that was the test I was supposed to take. I failed at it 7/58. Hopefully my supervisor wasn't really happy with the time table and decided that I will take the classes in fall instead. I can't tell how happy I am. I live with people who actually took this class at beginner level last semester and my Japanese is not worse that theirs so I really think that 10.5 hours in this class would really be a waste of time for me. I know kanjis, I'll know kana better in no time and I'm listening to Japanese all the time, I don't think a class would do more than to force me to say something my brain refuse to say at the moment. I already noticed that I'm able to say some complicated things when something apparently simple is totally alien to me. People ask me how I can know something complicated when I don't know something easy. Or also how I can know kanjis if I don't know kana. I don't know that's just the way it is at the moment.