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.

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！

Birth of a blog : 日本語だけでいってみよ～

Mes crazy expériences diversify. You already knew it as an English blog with French translation. Now it has a little brother :

日本語だけでいってみよ～

I can't translate Mes crazy expériences in Japanese as I'm not confident in writing that much in Japaneseyet and in my Japanese skills. So this new blog will have original content in Japanese only. It won't be as huge as Mes crazy expériences I hope you'll enjoy reading it with all my foreigner's mistakes. I'll do my best to post regularly and keep you entertained. 

Here is the first post :  私はあまり日本語できない

 

 

 

 

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.

Japan : 調布のよさこいお祭り

En français
Today I went to 調布のよさこいお祭り with my friends.　よさこいお祭り　is a dance festival. First there was a parade with several groups dancing then the event finished at the local Shrine with a dance competition.
Rules for the competition are :
1)Participants must use the 鳴子

2) The music must contain a part of Takemasa's original "Yosakoi Naruko Dancing" song, which contains three elements : "Yosakoi-bushi" the melodie, "Yocchore" a children's song, and "Jinma-mo" a folk song from Kōchi Prefecture.
3) The teams must contain less than 150 members.
Travel table of content

About learning : Screw the method

En français
I guess the title says it all, I got a little tired about learning languages. Not that I don't want to learn, just that I want to learn so bad that I just don't. I think I lost myself trying to apply other people's methods that seemed to work for them and possibly other people around but kind of flop for me. Not because they are bad methods, I think more because I was just doing things wrong because that didn't really match with my personality.
I think instead of trying so hard to get something their ways without actually getting the full grasp of it because I'm obviously just myself and not them, I should have got back a little bit and reread (my own crap) the first few posts of the "About learning" section of this blog.
I did learn 3 languages to fluency without having to read about any method before starting-even though two of them are probably starting to fail me due to lack of use but let's overestimate myself like every one else seem to do- so what the hell is wrong with me right now and why the hell don't I speak Japanese after almost one year here.
I can already here people saying that it's ok and that I'm just being too hard on myself. Sorry but screw that too.

I think I just want to speak so perfectly that I got scared and don't speak at all. Fact number 1.
I'm just too much thinking about how people are looking at me. That's a hard one to admit but Fact number 2.
I'm underestimated myself quite a bit, and it's hard to stop. Fact number 3.
But let's face it no matter how bad things turns out for some reasons I don't understand I still have some people calling me a genius at least once a week, no matter how wrong it sounds to me.

Now let's be back to my own shoes or should I say use my super powers and see how it goes.
There is no right method to learn a language because the method should be adapted to the language itself and to the culture behind it and to the person learning it. That's how I learned English mostly reading and watching Hollyoaks. I learned German taking classes in the morning and watching anime in the afternoon with the kids. I learned Italian just for the love of art as my teacher said.



So I just have to figure out what fits with Japanese and Chinese and I think that's not going to be too difficult. I just have to stop trying and let it flow. Let's get to work!

I finished RTK1

En français

So that's it. After doing it, 3 times because I stayed stuck twice around 1400 kanjis and had to start again from the beginning again. After struggling with my kanjis stories never remembering them, never having them vivid enough. After finally deciding that it was just 2042, like a drop in the ocean compare to the 50000 hanjis in the biggest Chinese dictionary I know of. After deciding that is was going to be fun and easy and that there was no way around it... (I keep on telling people that everything is easy and that drive them crazy)

Well that's it, yesterday I finished to learn my 2042 kanjis.

I feel kind of relieved in a way. That's it. I know them. I just have to let anki decide when I need to review them to be sure not to forget them ever again.
I'm also hyper excited. I never wanted to learn properly hiragana (review them) and katakana so badly.
I want to learn how to say the kanjis out loud.
I want to put hundreds of sentences in my SRS just cause I can.
And I want more kanjis. I know that's sound crazy. People are always afraid of kanjis but I think that's because they learn it a such a painful way. Me, I have fun all the way. Even when I failed at it, it was really fun anyway and I just want more, and more and more. I also really like complicated ones. I like when people look at my kanjis papers -I have plenty everywhere in my room and in my office- and tell me this one is too complicated, I don't use this one, you don't need this one. I don't care a kanji is a kanji, I'll probably meet it somewhere crazy and then I will go : "See I needed it". I'm pretty much addicted to kanji learning. It's hard to think I won't add more to my SRS tonight.

Anyway it's no time to rest. It's time to hurry and get some Japanese.

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.

Japan : Sakura trees are Japan soul

En français
Yesterday evening I went to the 野川 (Nogawa) river to see the Sakura trees enlighten. That was really magical. The blooming trees were pinkish and white on the dark night sky. I wouldn't have been surprised to see little fairies. My friend told me that the Sakura trees are Japan soul and he asked me what the France soul is, if that's the Eiffel Tower. I didn't really know what to answer. I never thought about it before. Maybe Japan is going to teach me new feelings. Looking at the trees probably did, that's difficult to explain.
 Travel table of content

April's challenges

En français
So the month of April is coming and it's going to be really really busy. I intend to participate to two contests that I will describe in this post and I also intend to continue writing my third novel "Demon and fairy".
So what are those new challenges I'm giving to myself and what are they all about ?
The first one is Script Frenzy and the second is the International L2 Reading Contest.

Script Frenzy

For Script Frenzy I will write 100 pages movie script. I already prepare my story, meaning by that I know the beginning in the end. It will be a love ghost story. We will find some of the characters present in "Demon Soul" and "Attic mirror" as some part of the story will be taking place in the usual house where the previous characters and the new one live.
I'm not planing on giving you the script in pieces. Script seems to be a lot different to write than a novel as they need a lot of formatting. I'm not really sure I will be able to cut it into scenes and to finish the story in just 100 pages. So I will probably write it all and edit it before giving you a chance to read it. How ever I will tell you how things are going regularly and if i managed to write my weekly 25 pages, something like that as well as little summary of the story.

International L2 Reading Contest

For the International L2 Reading Contest I will read as much pages in Japanese as possible. You can read in any foreign language as you want but as I'm currently living in Japan and learning Japanese, I think it's a great opportunity to improve. I don't think I will make it in the first 5 to win however as my knowledge of the Japanese writing system is not yet optimum. If everything goes as planed I should be able to finish Heisig RTK in 12 days, also I forgot all the kana I already learned and will need to go back to it. But I still can hope, I'm a polyphasic after all so it's at time like that that it can make things turn out to my advantage.

What do I intend to read ?

Harry Potter in Japanese

I have it as a printed book so that will help when I get tired for reading on screen. Also I'm way slower at reading on screen. Another advantage is that the Kanjis have furigana the first time they appear which will help me get through learning their pronunciation.

花ざかりの君たちへ (Hana Kimi)
Reading manga with a lot of picture is going to help me increasing the number of pages faster (I still need to read 10 pages of manga to have it counted as 1 page of normal text)
Also that will help me relax a little from page of text where I won't seem to be understanding anything at first.

あのときの王子くん
I will read the little prince as an audio book (audio books list). The text is written for children and then full of hiragana which worries me a little. But having the audio as well will help be go through it and learn the kanas more easily, or so I hope.


ジーキル博士とハイド氏の怪事件
I'm not too sure about that one I think I need a book with more kanji to be able to read by meaning more than by sound. It also comes from the same audio books list. So I think this one is going to be good for that, however I can still find something different in the list. Another good point about it is that I already read it in English so that will help a bit.

Japan : My first (part 2)

En français

Here is the second part of my first times of doing something in Japan. Part 1 can be find here.

My first time skating in Japan.

The students had decided to go skating during the week-end. We took the train together for Yokahama to go to the outdoor skating ring that was open there. In Yokahama you have a sort of lake, or is it the sea, I'm not too sure, with a bridge that we crossed from the train station to the skating ring. On both side of that bridge there are Sakura tree so I would like to go back when they are blooming, that must be beautiful.
The skating rink was really crowded but we still managed to get it an have fun. I'm really happy because I didn't skate for years and I didn't fall.
We went to eat something before going back to the skating ring and I also had my first ice cream in Japan that day.


My first time at a Japanese Buddhist temple.

After my seminar, the group decided that we should go for lunch somewhere. We wanted to eat sushi but the sushi place was closed so we decided to go to the temple further away and to eat there as they have a lot of restaurants for noodles. We took the bus to get there. That wasn't my first time in a bus, just my first time in a city bus. I still don't know really how to use it, I gave the money and the driver didn't bother giving me a ticket.
There was a festival at the temple to celebrate the monk who brought Buddhism to Japan. They were selling Daruma dolls as a good luck charm.

My first time in Izakaya

My friend came from Osaka and took me for diner in Izakaya. That's a restaurant where the clients are separated in different rooms and where you can find all kind of food and drinks. That was pretty cool. I really like Japanese food. Basically since I'm here I never tried something I don't like.

Travel table of content

Japan : My first (part 1)

En français
So since I'm in Japan and that everything is pretty new for me I have a lot of first time. That's why I'm calling this post "My first" and you are going to see a lot of my first.

My first Japanese party

On the first week-end of I was pretty tired and so even if I really meant to go out on Saturday I stay sleeping all day due to jetlag.
But the evening was much more exciting.
The lend lady of the residence (I'm staying in student accommodation called the "international house" with lots of international students) told me to come to the party and introduced me to the others. I was really dead and didn't know much what to say but everybody was nice to me and there was delicious food.
Since I had two more parties. In three weeks that's a pretty cool number of party I guess. And they are also becoming better and better, probably because I know more people now and can get more involved.

My first time in a Japanese train

So my supervisor wanted me to have a good week-end and told me about places to go. I didn't go on Saturday but I went on Sunday. I walked to the train station and took the train to Shinjuku.
I didn't know how the machine for the tickets work, they just have number that you have to choose. But he already told me that it was 230 for Shinjuku, so I had no problem.
The train are really clean compared to what I have seen in the subway in Europe. It was really cool to go that far, Tokyo is a pretty big city, Chofu is not that far from Shinjuku and there is a lot more to discover.

Later the next week-end I when out with the people from the residence and I learned that the map above the machine actually show you the price of each destination. So now I can go everywhere.

My first Japanese restaurant

The Monday following I went to the restaurant with my supervisor and the other postdoc I'm sharing my office with.
That was a traditional Japanese restaurant. We had to remove our shoes at the entrance and to lock them in a little box we then went to a room just for us and we sat on the floor with our legs in a hole bellow the table. That was really cool. In Japanese restaurant they first give you some tea and a glass of water. That is really cool.
I love to go to restaurant here, I went to several, all different for the moment, in the style and in the food. I can't really tell you what I eat in detail. The first time was Sashimi after I had soba noodles, tempura, ramen and organic food.
All I know is that there is always side dishes and that I love all of it.

My first たこ焼き

When I get back to the dormitory that day, there were people looking for me. They had decided to make たこ焼き and wanted me to participate. That was really cool, we were talking and cooking the たこ焼き. Someone was making the paste and someone cutting the たこ and I was helping with turning it in the machine with chopsticks.
I really like たこ焼き, probably more than I normally would because they had organized this little party just for me.
 
Travel table of content

I'm in Japan

En français
I took the plane from Belfast to London then from London to Roma then from Roma to Tokyo and I arrived yesterday in Japan.
It was a pretty long trip and a bit tiring as well.
When I arrived I discovered my office, my new flat and the area around the university. My flat is so close to my office, that's really amazing, I've never been anywhere where I was so close. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to fine anything that close when Sebastien is going to join me. It's way too small for the two of us. It's also really close to a shopping centre and to the bus/train station.

Here, everything is new to me and I'm struggling a bit to get anything I need.
Hopefully that won't last too long and I'll soon be in a daily routine to be able to get back to normal activities.
I am extremely grateful to Heisig and anki for giving me the knowledge of about 1000 kanjis so far that have proven itself extremely useful.
When I got down from the bus I got a bit lost. I was sleeping all the way, and not really awake when I got down. Hopefully someone told me to take some escalators and there I found some map putting me on my way, all in Japanese of course.
I started to read Harry Potter in Japanese last night. I think I'm going to know all the katakana and review all my hiragana that way in no time. Some kanjis are also writen with furigana so I'll also learn the pronunciation that way. I feel like it's way easier for me to communicate if I write some kanjis than if I speak.
Then I slept all day. I'm a lot jet lagged and feel a bit like an owl. I haven't seen anything by day time yet.
I really need to be able to communicate at least for daily use as soon as possible.
I went to the shop and I couldn't read most of the things written on the products. That's really frustrating. I still managed to go around find and to get what I needed. But then I couldn't understand what people were telling me when I needed to pay. I was probably looking like an idiot.
Hopefully tomorrow someone is going to help me with administrative stuffs so that will soon get better.
When I got myself a camera, I'm thinking about starting a new blog about my life in Japan.

So annoyed by busy people

En français
The first thing I should maybe explain is what I mean by "busy".
I mean people who says so often that they are "busy" or "don't have time to do such an such" when in fact if they really wanted to they could probably find the time to do much more.
Maybe it's gonna be better with examples :
" I would really like to speak an other language but I really don't have time at the moment I need to go shopping for food" (For the third time in a week)
"I want my kids to be smart but I can't look at their homeworks cause I'm so busy working"
"I really want to go to /the cinema with you/your party/do some sport/.../ but I need to do that work"
... You see what I mean.

At first I felt guilty (yes yes, seriously) how comes I'm never busy... NEVER...
I want to go somewhere, do something... I just do it, seems pretty simple.
According to the logic of the "busy" people : I'm not supposed to BECAUSE I should be busy too.
AND I should be busy working !!!! Not having fun !!!
If you're busy reading "Angel Sanctuary" during your holidays it doesn't count, if someone ask for something you have to do it cause he is not on holiday, he is busy he doesn't have as much time as you so, just help OK.
Who can pretend reading is a serious activity anyway.
No one will ever dare say to his boss, I'm sorry I didn't to this part of the work cause I was so busy watching Buffy killing vampires... Be realistic a bit !!!
But why not, that would be pretty cool indeed to let the business on fun stuff be as important as the business on serious stuff.
That is where things get very complicated...
I'm NEVER "busy", I tried, seriously, I tried !! It's very very difficult to be that busy !!!
I mean if I got a plan to go hiking for example and a lots of work to do, I'm just gonna manege to have the work done in advance or to delay it to a better time and I even plane the case when I can find something fun to do by accident. If I'm busy, and something unexpected come up, I stop and go back later to my "business".

Then I decided to think a bit more and find out that I got nothing to be guilty about. People are finally never as busy as they pretend to be.
There is just three reasons why people are "busier" than me :

The first one is that they are using the "busy" thing to get rid of something they don't want to do.
Example : I don't want to go to the cinema with you because the movie you choose is totally bad and I hate the main actor anyway. But instead of telling you no I don't want to, I'm going to pretend I'm busy, stay longer at work even if that mean procrastinating and finally really believe that I'm busy, so you're not gonna be disappointed.
Yeah yeah there is a lots of people like that we all know at least one....

The second one is that they want to do it but are afraid to
Example : I want to do that but I'm afraid that people are gonna laugh at me if I fail or something... so I'm pretending to be busy at something else not to do it.
Most of the time they do that unconsciously, I think, I least I hope... that join a bit the cause of procrastination problem I discussed in an other post.

The third one in a question of priority :
My priority is the FUN !!!!
Wait a minute, I do every work on time, every boring daily(what ever) duty on time no problem !!
I just do it so that I can have as much fun as possible, that the thing I end up doing the most is having fun !!!
I can hear some people here : " Yeah, good for you, (but I'm not that organized, euh not that one), but I have important things to do, serious things to do, I'm working and I'm busy..."

Just the point here is I'm annoyed about people always tell me with a smile that I'm so great cause I do things that they can't do, like spending several hours on hobbies, because they are busy.
It's not me who have a problem with time, it's them, I don't have to feel guilty about not wasting my time with pretending to be busy when I'm not. They are just not honest with themselves.

I love hiraganas

En français
I know, I know I still don't know all my Kanji and I didn't finish Heisig yet... I know I'm supposed to learn the Kanji first... Am I acting like a bad girl ? Maybe yes but maybe I got really good reason for that !!!

So what happened with my learning of the Japanese writing system is that I started to get confused.
I felt very confused about being able to say things I can't write and understand written things I can't say.
Basically in front of a Japanese text I could understand the kanji (At least the ones I know so far) but couldn't read it aloud, and I'm also able to make complete sentences without being able to actually write them.
That's probably due to the fact that I'm still taking classes (without kanji).
I know that's not good at all, boring most of the time especially the first 1 hour 30 out of 2, very very slow and not real Japanese. The problem is that the teacher is happy to see me when I got there, cause lots of people gave up and I really care about the happiness of the people around. And eventually I would like to have the certificate that you get only if you go there... I'm a bit stuck here.

Anyway, what so great about knowing the hiraganas ?
First you can write everything, it's not real Japanese but Japanese kids start by learning that anyway.
And it's really easy... even after learning only about one third of my kanji what is 46 characters to learn compare to that. When I really started and stopped playing around it took me three days.
I used the Heisig method Remembering the Kana. It was even faster than the method said.
It allows me write every words we learn in class, and also to read the Karaoke of Dragonball Z songs when I watch the anime. Seriously it's great, when I see a Japanese text I can read a bit and have some sound as well.
Of course I still learn the kanji, can't do without kanji !!!

The first picure is a bit blurred but I couldn't resist putting it there as chibis are so cute. Click on it to see it clearly !!!

Procrastination, fear of failure, fear of success

En français
For a long time I have been procrastinating on things that really matter to me, that is : learning Korean, learning the kanjis and writing my thesis (some programming projects as well), playing violin...
Of course we are in December and my thesis is due for September so no real problem here, no emergency. The main problem is I wanted to start writing for months and I felt really awful for not doing it and always say : "I will write it, tomorrow, next week, before Christmas, later..."
I spend lots of time telling myself that I was so lazy, that learning the kanjis with Heisig is so easy, that doing my exercises in Korean and read is so fun. What the hell is wrong with me ? Why can't I just sit down and do it ?
I am so lazy and so bad and ....
And that's the main problem... what I'm telling to myself is the problem.
To solve it I had to understand where that was coming from and the reason why I was procrastinating.

The main answer is that I have a mixture between fear of failure and fear of success...
All my life, people have been expecting me to be smart, and bright and do every thing without any difficulties.
When I was doing something, if I wasn't good at it, I always get bad answer... "Why did you do that ? Why didn't you try harder ? You're so lazy... You can't do anything right..."
If I was doing something very well, it was never good enough...
When I was coming back from school proud of myself for having the best mark, the only answer I get was : "You still made a mistake to question 5, how comes you didn't know the answer"
Once I was performing for an exam and passed it well, I can still hear my mum say to me how good the other girl was compared to me.
Even now, I was scared of starting writing my thesis cause my supervisor told me that I'm not good at writing and that it's gonna be hard.
People are always expecting things from me, like some of my chinese friends who expect me to be able to write/read in Chinese.

But some very rare people don't, some are encouraging me, like my friend from Taiwan who is so impressed cause I can write my name in Chinese and my friends in Korea and Japan who encourage me each time I'm writing something in Japanese or Korean and some more... they know who they are anyway :)
Each time I was answering ; "That's nothing, everybody can do that, I should know more than that, I'm not working enough, I'm so bad".

But now I realized that that's not true, not everybody can do that, what I know today is great... I want to know more and I will (not I should already know more).
To them I want to say thank you !!!
Thank you for never expecting me to be perfect and thank you for liking me exactly the way I am (even when I'm really weird and stupid) Thank you for getting worried when I'm not doing fine instead of telling me that there is no need to worry about anything because I'm just too smart to fail and have never problem with anything. I have problems with thing and I need to work hard to fix it like everybody else. So thanks you guys for really being my friend and not the friend of "the girl you think I should be" and being disappointed when I'm not.

So why exactly do I procrastinate ?
Because I'm afraid of doing something wrong. Because I'm afraid of not finishing what I start. Because if I delay the things to do I can always say that I didn't have enough time to do it properly. Because I'm afraid to be judge on my best work as if it was a judgment on myself.
Basically to protect myself.

So now I know all that, I know why and where it comes from. And I don't want to procrastinate anymore... I want to do my best, and no matter what people will say it will be OK. I found in me other ways to protect myself by being nicer to me instead of being my worst judge.

I started to write two days ago, last Wednesday. I'm not afraid of what me supervisor will say when I'm gonna give him my first draft, because I'm gonna give it to him long before the dead line so after his comment I will have plenty of time to make it better.
I start learning the hiragana again, and if I'm not able to write and read them as fast as French and English it doesn't matter because it took me year to do that in French and English... why should it be different for other languages ?
I'm just human.

Now that I know all that... no matter what I do I'm gonna do just fine...
And you too are gonna do just fine :)
So just start, one small step at a time and keep on starting, the finish will take care of itself.

If you also have some problems you can try that book : The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play
and read Khatzumoto's post.

The Japanese project : Snails

En français
After the ants syndrome, it occurs to me that I've got an other animal like decease, let's call it the Snails syndrome.
The thing is : I want to speak Korean, I want to speak Japanese, I want to be the best atomic physicist ever, I want to play violin like Yehudi Menuhin, I want to skate like Surya Bonaly (she is the best ever)....
And I want it now... (man some of those are not even realistic ...) I already can hear people say : What crazy thing is she again going to invent ?

The question is if you throw balls after balls after balls to a basket, or throw arrows after arrows after arrows to a target, how much are you gonna score ?
That can work if you are Michael Jordan or Robin Wood, alright... but what if you are just yourself ?
You throw 60 you score 1, they throw 60 they score 58, (ok, everybody can make mistake)
The thing is I want it now, so I do it really really quickly.
Read the heisig book in two weeks and ask yourself how much you can remember...
Those guys concentrate, they don't throw the balls or the arrows, they concentrate for each single one of them...
That's why I say I got the Snails syndrome, because I'm doing it so fast that at the end I need to do it again and again and again because I wasn't doing it properly, so I'm as "fast" as a snail. Just because I'm always so impatient. Of course you need repetitions to learn something, a lot of repetitions, but you need to do them intelligently.
I think this decease is going to be more difficult to cure than the ants syndrome. And I think that the only way to cure myself forever is to learn all those kanjis properly because that's the most obvious goal.
There are a fix amount of them (you can always can fine more, but let's say that we can chose a fix amount at the beginning) so the end, the target is really obvious, when I'll know them all, I will know it.
And the only way to know them all is to take it slowly to be able to memorize and remember.
So I'm going to take a big test to figure out how much I already know learning as a snail and then learn whose I don't slowly, to make sure I will be faster than a snail.
By the way I got nothing against snails, they are really kind of cute !!!