Welcome to my page!
I always want to do as many outstanding things as possible.
That can be about Traveling all around the world... about Creating amigurumis... about Learning new languages... about my work in Atomic Physics... and a lot of other stuff...
I'm sure you will find an interesting topic.
Please feel free to look at my articles and leave me your comments.
Welcome to my crazy world!
Here is the video cut from Vlog #59 with only the part about the imperial palace for those of you out there who are not that much into doll shopping or want to share the Tokyo's imperial palace with people who are not into dolls. I also edited out the music. I hope you'll like it.
Doll Hunt
(Lapis Lazuli Yuzuha limited ver.)
Here is the part of Vlog #59 that is all about doll. This video contains not only the doll part of Vlog #59 but also pictures taken at the azone store and pictures of Yuzuha Lapis Lazuli limited version's box opening.
I'm really glad that she was still at the store otherwise I would probably have given up on finding her any time soon. I just need to get her not limited counterpart now.
She is really pretty, even more in person from close up than at the store or on the official picture.
If I ever find the other Yuzuha that would be my second Sahra's a la mode complete series.
Disclaimer: If you want to watch the tour of the imperial palace only, I will be uploading a video with only that part of the day.
If you only want to look for the doll part, I will be uploading a video with only the doll hunt and extra pictures of the azone store.
As I was going on a trip yesterday, I took the opportunity to go on a doll hunt before taking my bus.
The plan for the day was to check out the Groove Lucky bag in Akihabara as it seemed that there were more couples of dolls than expected. When I arrived there and checked the bags, I noticed that there were about three dolls I didn't have but none of them were paired together and I didn't want to buy a doll I already have so I just gave up on that.
Though, I found a wig for my new bjd who should be coming home in the next few months.
Then I decided to go to my "secret" store to check on the Yuzuha Lapis Lazuli limited version from the Twinkle a la mode series. When I arrived, the floor where they normally have the dolls (azone and pullip) was closed so I decided to check out the other floors, just in case. Most of the floors had only figures. When I was about to give up however, I just turned my head to check the other side of the shelves and BAM, they were there, Azone dolls. So I asked the clerk and grabbed my Limited Yuzuha. Now I have 9 out of the 10 dolls in this series and I only need to find the Yuzuha not limited.
So I continued to mandarake where I checked the azone dolls, there were some that I liked but it bothered me a bit that a lot of them were missing shoes. They also had a nice amount of pullips. Still I couldn't find the last yuzuha.
I also went to amiami. They had nice clothes at a reduce price but then I already had a lot of clothes for this month so I didn't get anything. Still no Yuzuha but I guess she will show up eventually, they always do.
Then I walked to the Tokyo station and on the way I saw that the Imperial Palace was open to the public so I went there to show you guys what it looks like from the inside, though it was only the West side.
There is a small park near my house and this weekend, they are having a matsuri. That's a Japanese festival. This one is for the summer. They dress those small tower at the center with all the paper light attached. Someone plays the drum in the center and someone sing or sometimes it's just a recording of a song. People who prepared for the different dances dance in around the drummer on the first floor of the tower and the rest of the crowed dance around them on the ground. There are different song with different rhythm and different dance movement. Each of the song represent a different place there is the Tokyo song and the Fuchu song, etc...
People are also selling food and drinks and some of them are wearing the Japanese Summer Yukata. After they are done with the dancing and the music, they play a little bit of bingo before going home. It never finishes really late, generally before 10pm. The sun rises really early in Japan so the new day needs to start early too.
Today's post is a bit special, it's about the difference between living in France and living in Japan. I guess that's what I get when I ask people for a topic for the dreaded Saturday blog post and someone actually answer (you might even have these weird posting for several weeks, if I'm lucky).
The truth is I have been out of France for so long (almost 9 years), that I don't even remember what it is like to actually live there, especially that when I was there I was in Rennes and Nantes and Toulouse and Paris... (I guess that's about it). Then before going to Japan, I lived in Belfast, which was already something else but I disgress. Anyway back to our sheeps... (And happy Chinese New Year!)
So when I first arrived in Japan, I discovered that unless you know some basic kanjis you won't get anywhere. I mean in France you can still read something. In Japan, you can't because... kanjis. Except I knew my kanji and managed to get to where I was going. But the kanjis are everywhere, especially in Tokyo seeing the number of signs and advertisements, so somehow, I think people must be trying very hard not to read them, seriously.
When you get to Japan, there are a lot of things that are allowed, or maybe I should say that are socially acceptable, while you would almost be lynched for them in France. Let's be serious a little, an adult in France doesn't watch "cartoon" (evolved people call that anime), doesn't put little teddy bears on his bag, doesn't eat with a spoon (except for soup), doesn't forget it's camera in the train (yes, in Japan you can and you'll get it back (still don't try, just in case it was repeated luck))...
Going to live in Japan made me feel 10 years younger than I was when I lived in France and that shows even on my face, people still believe I'm a student which I'm definitely not anymore! I was 26 when I arrived in Japan, 10 years younger made me 16 years old, so I guess by now I'm 11. It's the Benjamin Button syndrome on a geographical base.
Living in Japan makes a lot of things easier, you get more international friends than when you live in your own country as well and they all somehow speak English (which is terrible for you so stay away from international people). It's also very easy to make friends with Japanese people, if you can manage to say hi, they might be friend with you, really I'm not kidding, that's all it takes. I remember being so shy when I was in France that I was standing alone at a party and only Chinese students came to talk to me so that I happened to only have Chinese students as friends in the university accomodation in Paris. In Japan, I'm the less shy of the group so no matter what I do I look like an out-going bee, which is fun, I like being the bee.
I probably forgot a lot of things so I might write about it another day. For the moment thank you for reading and have fun whatever you do!
For the end of the challenge, as I still have 5 books to read and I also have a lot of writing to do, I decided to go back to my Cat's eyes series which I haven't finished reading yet. It's not easier to read manga as they are in Japanese, but it does decrease the time I spend reading a little. The problem is, I only brought 4 with me and I have 5 books left to read with one manga already read I'm two books short. Let's see in a few days what I'll come up with.
The six week challenge is finally over and so is my crazy schedule at work, I hope I won't have to do extra time for a while, this happened at a very bad timing. This 6 week challenge was a bit particular, it is actually one of the first time when I ended up having interaction with other participants and he didn't start too well. Language learning is a jungle.
First my stats and improvement.
I manage to learn Japanese for 216.05 hours (+3 hours Italian maintenance) which is more than I did in the previous challenge 134.50 hours. Which means I'm somewhere back to where I used to be in terms of hours (Previous challenges: 222 hours, 194 hours...) This is mainly due to my environment which I managed to maintain almost every day except for the week-end, day with meetings and presentation.
I'm very happy because I managed to go back to daily anki in the last 2 weeks of the challenge (7.29 hours). My love-hate relationship with anki seems to be over but I'm going to say that in a really low voice, just in case.
One of the point is that I forced myself not to get obsessed to "finish" anki every day which mean that I decided not to feel bad if the SRS didn't go back to zero at the end of the session. It was really hard and I might have lost some sleep over it but I fixed myself not to do more than 45mins if the only goal was to get it to zero, and I stuck to it most of the time.
Another good point, which is what got me in trouble with some other challenge participants, is that I managed to keep a mostly permanent Japanese listening environment which means I woke up in the morning, turned on the music, went to bed at night, turned off the music. The only time during the day when I wasn't listening was during shower and when I was watching anime, drama or movies in Japanese or Italian (guilty here but I love my Italian anime and I need to keep the fire going there too.)
I also managed to read a lot of ROD and I can pronounce (Boyfriend made me practice) things like 大英図書館特殊工作部 without thinking about the Chinese pronunciation.
So what got me in trouble with other participants?
Nothing as stupid as a Hashtag. I dared to label 6 hours of study a day under the Hashtag #music. So one other participant asked me "Don't you think you are inflating your score by putting 6 hours of music?"
To which I answered that it's only 50% of my daily listening a day even though that's not entirely true and he came back sarcastic. Oups.
The thing is, the answer was already in his question. He had already made up is mind of what I was counting and there was no need for me to try to explain myself (to waste my time explaining myself.) And then of course because I didn't "correct the way I score things", he went to talk about my way of counting my daily practice behind my back to others on their forum, I'm not even a member of that forum. And things were settled.
Did anyone came over directly asking me questions to a place I can see for sure as a user, like twitter which is required for the challenge and where I can answer without registering? Not once. I was directed to the forum (by someone not even participating to the discussion). But still I'm supposed to be the "cheater", "who claims" things, who doesn't have a "sport" attitude because I dared to say that it was their problem where everyone could read it? After 2 days, I stopped reading.
So yes, I reiterate, you have a problem with me but you prefer to talk about me with your friends, who will agree with you, behind my back, it's your problem, not mine, I'm not a part of the bullshit going on, I'm just minding my own business and learning a new language instead of discussing how others learn theirs.
Of course there were some nice guys over too who got the idea because they heard about AJATT and who defended me and I'm grateful to them. One of them sent me a link to this awesome log, so that maybe I'll be able to maintain my Japanese study and refresh my other languages, especially Swedish and German without having it collapse.
The thing is what you count during this challenge and what you don't count is entirely subjective. If I went to sleep for 2 hours in Japanese class a day and added 2 hours of classes to my daily count, nobody would have a problem with it even though while listening 2 hours of music during programming or blogging, I would have retain a lot more Japanese. Having a problem with a hashtag when you actually don't know what gets in is extremely puerile. My OS is in Japanese and I spend all day in front of my computer, I don't count that, my boyfriend texts me in Japanese, I don't count that, the people around talk to me in Japanese (store, sometimes lab, bus...) I don't count that either. And here is one advice from AJATT: If ever in immersion doubt, prioritize your ears. Anchor your ears in your L2. Where your ears go, your eyes will follow.
So for the one interested, here is what went into my 6 hours of daily Japanese (during the week, because I have a different rhythm during the week-end.)
Get up at 8:35, get the music on, go to bed between midnight and 2am turn off the music. So that's 15.5 to 17.5 hours of daily listening minus the shower and watching so I averaged it to 12 daily hours which taken at 50% (in the rules when you are not 100% focus, you don't count 100%) that's 6 hours.
During which I also studied lyrics, that's included in the music hashtag for about 30 mins a day to get the yomi on my kanjis. I have 45 minutes walking home with nothing else to do than listening, in the morning I take the bus so I can read but in the evening I prefer to walk back, I need my daily exercise. I also sing on the way (that's considered shadowing.) As I'm programming lately, while the code compile and run (5 to 9 minutes each time) depending on the task, I can also entirely focus, and check vocabulary.
So if someone come along and tell me that this doesn't deserve a grading of 6 hours, I'm sorry but I have the right to be deaf to their complains. (But they didn't come to ask.)
The reason why I use the 6 Week Challenge is to create a sustainable learning habits. (More on the positive effect of habits here.) I want to be able to find a method that I will use off challenge without recording my time but that will still maintain the higher possible time studying. During this challenge I managed to find a painless way to have constant Japanese playing in my ears, I also set my anki routine to avoid burn out. And I added more activities to be able to stay at the top of the challenge. Being at the top doesn't mean that I won over the others, for me it just means that I'm really doing all that is humanly possible to learn my language. The fact that people come from different countries, have different life style and background and culture and learn different languages means that you have a entire range of possibilities of humanly possible level to compare with. It helps a lot with setting goals for myself.
Sorry for all the ranting, here is a water buffalo.
The 6 week Challenge finished earlier than I expected. When I uploaded my hours for Saturday and Sunday on Sunday night, it was already over, so the last hours I needed to reach 150 hours were done but not added to the following graph.
You need to add 12 hours drama and 25 minutes anime and 5 hours reading to get to my total count which means I reached my goal probably one day too late but I still reached it! Yeah me!
Next time I'll be careful which day of the month the Challenge starts. I'm reading to start again on February 1st!
November is the month of NaNoWriMo but it's also the month of the 6 Week Challenge. So far it has been 19 days, so I am almost at the middle of the challenge.
For my 6 Week Challenge, my goal is to study Japanese for at least 150 hours in 6 weeks.
At the moment, I can't use earphone at work because I'm doing a lot of reading and working out math equation but it will soon change when I start programming, so my hour count didn't rise as quickly as usual. My hour count is mainly do to reading in the bus as I go and come back to work and watching anime.
I will try to do a little bit more of Anki during the next 3 weeks. I think the problem was that I got bored with my deck but I have a new one (RTK2) which seems interesting. My total anki time for the 3 last weeks is the half of my boyfriends daily use, that's kind of ridiculous but he does anki while walking around to places while I only do it on computer. I can feel the technology power here. On the other hand, I can read more books.
As I am not at 75 hours yet, I have about 35 hours to catch up. That should be doable.
I'm happy because I managed to finish R.O.D. 1 and I'm now half way through R.O.D. 2.
One of the thing when you arrive in a country where you don't understand (speak) the language is that you become illiterate. Of course you can still read your own language but you are illiterate in the language of the country. This is what happened to me when I first arrive in Japan. Despite training myself, even now when I arrive in the book shelves in a store I just look at the book blankly while in my country I could grasp interesting titles in one look. As I tend to read a lot, I have to say that this became really frustrating so I'm going to try a little bit more, a little bit harder (easier ;) ).
I'm currently undertaking the Read More Or Die challenge with a goal of 200 pages read in the month of October and few days ago I finished to read my first novel in Japanese!! Yeah, Me.
I will start the 6 week challenge again on November 1st.
I don't understand everything, far from it. To be honest, I don't even know what I understand because I read without translating. When my boyfriend makes me translate it goes ok but I feel like it's breaking my learning. So I'm just reading and going trough enormous amount of stuff that I only partially get but I can feel the progress.
Anyway, all that to introduce my new reading material. I was offered the all series of Read Or Die for white day last year. And what better than Read Or Die to learn to read. I wonder how great I will be at Japanese when I'm done reading all this. The more I read the more I feel really weird inside of my head a bit like nothing (everything) is making sense anymore. I know this mean progress as it's the same feeling I have when watching 20+ hours of drama in a row. It's the getting-fluent feeling, it's fun and I love it.
Read Or Die is the story of girls who use their sticky paper abilities to protect the world from geniuses back for the dead. No need to say, most of these girls read a lot. :)
En français
My boyfriend likes Monokuma from the video game Dangan Ronpa, it's a black and white bear with a very cute voice despite the fact that he is very cruel. So, I decided to give it a try and create my own bear pattern with a Monokuma like design and here is the result.
The particularity of this bear is that it has one nice side (white) and one evil side (black). The knitting was a little bit challenging as I needed to separate the black and white part equally on each turn of crochet.
That bear must really be evil because it broke two sewing needles.
My crazy Japanese practice hours, read pages counting madness is back... and I was late for it...
The beginning of August (August 1st) was a start of a new 6 weeks challenge period and Read More Or Die started on the 15th for 15 days only.
I registered only yesterday, better late than never and so from yesterday started the crazy counting again.
The plan is to read at least 100 pages of Japanese by the end of the month and with all the blog hop going on lately, I didn't define an hour count that I want to reach for the 6 (now 3) week challenge. I guess the main plan is just to improve my Japanese a little bit more over the next 3 weeks.
The Read More Or Die counter starts at 71 so I need to reach 171 at least by the 31st midnight.
Today is the last update on the 6 Week Challenge. Yes, it has been 6 weeks already since it started, times really flies.
And I'm happy to announce that I did it, I broke my previous hours count on time passed learning Japanese and I still have until midnight to fill up the hour count. I reached 212 hours so far which is 2 more hours than the plan. I'm glad to have reach that already and I'm ready to do even better for the next 6 week challenges which will start on August first. Learn how to register to take the challenge with me next time here.
During this challenge, most of my time was spend learning with music and anime (Bleach) and I learn some pretty crazy Japanese stuff like 霊圧 or 魂魄、but also more normal stuff like 瞼 or 自動販売機 (自販) or 七色の橋.
It really was a lot of fun and I intend to continue of challenge. I have to admit that the hours spend each day curve looks totally crazy.
I'm also a bit disappointed with the writing on my Japanese blog which seem to have been abandoned. I think I need to think about a better strategy about it.
On the down side I'm also not really making any progresses with the reading challenge. Since I'm not taking the bus anymore which was the place where I was reading the most daily, I haven't found space to put the reading in my schedule so I'm really really out of track and I'm sure I won't make it to the number of pages I decided to try on but I'll still continue trying to see how far I can go.
I finally caught up with my late hours and even have so time "in advance" on my schedule. Not that this time "in advance" is going to make me slow down, at the contrary. The more you do something, the more you get used to it and the easier it gets. I'm getting used to create my Japanese environment every morning and it helps a lot with getting all those hours of study done with. One things that I found makes it very easy to study is for me to watch anime without subtitles. I just need to have them play on my computer and watch and that can be very addictive. I have been watching about 130 episodes of Bleach and I can recognize the different character voices and particular expression. It's very interesting to discover that you can grasp some subtlety like that without necessarily understand every words. Another good thing with anime is the repetition of the songs at the end and at the beginning. Repetition is really the key to memorize words and I find those song very helpful.
On the other hand I feel a bit bad for not taking more care of my Japanese blog. I think I might find a way to be more active over there later but for the moment learning Japanese is more of a priority so I want to concentrate on what works. Blogging might work at another learning stage, who knows. For the moment, I seem to be addicted to Bleach and it's really helpful. I can feel that my Japanese is improving everyday and that's what counts.
I'm also participating in the Read More Or Die challenge this month and it seems that I have overestimated my pages goal a bit. I had based it on my previous page goal of reading mangas but this time I'm reading novels without much of furigana and it is a lot more difficult and I'm slower. However I don't want to give up just yet because I'm really enjoying myself even with more than partial understanding only.
I'm only 6 hours behind on my schedule, I have two more weeks to catch up and I can feel that it's totally possible. I'm really happy with all the catch up I have been doing.
Except for watching anime Bleach and drama ヘブンズ・フラワー The legend of Arcana. I have been mainly learning with music. I'm listening only to aqua timez and I play my playlist about 4 times a day.
I'm starting to pick up a lot more sentences in the music I'm listening. I mean some of the songs I still have no clue what they are about but for others I have those "Ah!" moments when I have a complete set of words starting to make sense. This is something that I find myself only able to have with a very large amount of repetitions. I tried to break that pattern and accelerate the rate of learning by looking at the lyrics with meanings to them but the problem with that is that I can't reproduce and remember sentences well enough to use them. If I listen to it many times and it comes naturally to be remembered, I can sing the song. Of course I might repeat the song many times with the lyrics next to me as well. It might accelerate the learning efficiency a bit but it's a lot more troublesome than to just let the music play with only partial attention to it and it would take a longer time than just playing the song while working. So all in all I'm happy with my learning which doesn't require much efforts but only to have something in my ears playing all day and not to forget to charge my ipod.
I didn't have much conversation in Japanese this week. But as I'm singing all those songs all the time, my boyfriend started to correct me and to help me with the lyrics so it also help a lot with my progresses and we ended up watching "Brave story" because it has a song from aqua timez.
I'm making progresses daily. I can't wait to add the Read More or Die contest to this in 3 days. I set my page goal to 1500 that's rather a lot and I might set it down a little later. I'll be happy with anything above 1200 pages as my best was a bit lower than that. I wonder how this will fit with JuNoWriMo starting at the same time and Mich's summer mystery at the end of the month.
