Since I went to the doctor today I thought I would post some Japanese words that are relatively new to me. Some I learned today and some I had learned before but they all relate to illness or infirmity. Forgive the somewhat advanced and somewhat gross nature of some of the words but I hope they could be useful to someone looking to go to the Japanese Doctor.

One of the things that makes Japanese hard is the writing system. Written Japanese consists of essentially four alphabets, Kanji (borrowed chinese characters (1,000 needed for literacy, 2000 base characters, about 5,000, give or take a thousand, in active use)), Hiragana (Used for Japanese words (46 characters)), Katakana (Used for foreign words (46 characters)), and Roman characters (foreign words, English (26 lowercase, 26 uppercase)).

The number of alphabets confuses things a bit but you get used to it fairly quickly. The hardest issues tend to arise in learning and using kanji. There are literally thousands characters. Each character can have multiple ways of reading it in different contexts sometimes seemingly arbitrary, especially in names of products and people. Reading names in a general sense is nearly impossible for foreigners and Japanese alike. In fact whenever you have to write your name (like on forms and business cards), you usually need to indicate how it is read. 大 is not used much but is a notoriously hard to read first name because of the sheer number of readings. You can work around names somewhat easily since they are usually already known, i.e. a friend, relative, aquaintance, or indicated for you, i.e. written above the name on a business card.

But names are not really what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about choosing the kanji when writing Japanese words that have different kanji but the same reading. Yes, that's right. Not only are there lots of ways of reading each kanji, but there are many words that are read the same but have diffent kanji. Actually these can be broken up into two types as well, Those words that are read the same way but have different meanings, and those that are read the same way that have similar meanings. I want to talk about the simply the second category.

Words such as ある (aru). This word means essentially "to be" but is written with different kanji based on the context. 有る means to be, to have, to exist. 時計が有る = "A clock is there" or "I have a clock". But 或る is used for specifying a specific thing. 或る日 = "That day" or "This one day". For people or animals you use 居る for "to be", so when someone says 或る人 you might get confused but it's perfectly valid.

The worst examples are ones like おさまる which has about 4 different ways to write it (収まる、納まる、治まる、修まる) and just as many meanings. To insert, To pay, To calm down, to aquire (e.g. a skill) etc. However, these meanings and the kanji seem to overlap. My excellent "Intermediate Kanji Book" lists them as follows:

• 収まる = To calm down
• 納まる = To be paid, To be inserted, To be put away, To be taken care of
• 治まる = To be goverened
• 修まる = To be aquired (e.g. skills)

But fire up the dictionary and you get example sentences like the following:

私の頭痛が治まった。
My headache settled down.

その辞書は棚に収まる
That dictionary goes on the shelf.

Shouln't the first one be 収まった? Shouldn't the second one be 納まる? There may be a specific "right way" to use these kanji but when the dictionary and textbooks don't agree how is one supposed to figure this out?

Here are some new Japanese words I just stuck into Anki.

Vocab in tab separated values for importing into Anki: vocab1.tsv

A bit late but... Happy New Year!

Reiko and I celebrated a long X-mas weekend with a party at her parents house on Saturday, opening gifts at my place on Sunday, and going to the Christmas Eve service at her church and eating dinner with her family on Monday. The party on the Saturday the 22nd was fun. Reiko's aunt and uncle, cousin's family, and brother's family complimented Reiko, her parents and I. Her cousin Keigo had big news. We found out that her cousin passed the policeman's exam and will become a police officer. Also, he and his girlfriend have decided to get married. She has two sons from a previous marriage so she and her sons came as well and we got the chance to meet them.

Sunday Reiko came over to my place and we had a stereotypical Japanese X-mas dinner. Fried chicken and various side dishes like potato salad. KFC is very popular for X-mas, much to my bewilderment. After dinner we opened gifts. I got Reiko a calendar, a bag, a DS game, and a wireless mouse. She got me a scheduler, a DS game, some picture frames, and a clock.

On Monday we went to the X-mas Eve service at Reiko's church. That was good because we got to see her older brother Akira who wasn't able to come to the party on the previous Saturday. After the service we went to the same local Chinese restaraunt we went to last year. It's become sort of a tradition I guess.

New Years break started the following Friday (Dec. 28) and ended this past Sunday (Jan. 7). I spent the first day or two at home, and then headed over to Reiko's house on Monday the 31st. At midnight we went to the local shrine like we did last year. But this year we went a bit later so it wasn't as crowded and we got to ring the big bell.

I stayed at Reiko's house for the next couple of days and we had a new years party. Reiko's uncle made some Tai curry and plum wine, of both of which I am a big fan so he brought those by. After the new years party I stayed around and helped Reiko finish her paper for her Child Psychology class. She has problems sometimes with proper grammer and such when writing papers. But she did really well and I'm really proud of her.

After that I spend the rest of the vacation at home. Reiko came by on Friday and we watched a couple of movies and had dinner before she headed back to her house. So far the new years is starting out well. I have a couple friends coming to Tokyo the first month, so I can visit with them. I have potential prospects for a new job, and though nothing's concretely planned yet, I'm currently planning to make a trip back to the 'States around golden week so I'm looking forward to that.

This year I hope to find time, motivation, and energy to work more on open source software and improve my Japanese even further. I also feel some pressure to improve my skill set and advance my career so I hope to make advances in that area this year.

Hope everyone is having as good a beginning to the year as I am! Happy New Year!

So it's official, I'm taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Level 2) on the second of December. This is the third time I've taken the test (I took Level 3 and 4 previously). However, this time I'm taking it in Japan. I just got my test voucher in the mail.

For those of you that don't know, the JLPT is the most popular test to measure Japanese language profiency. It is basically broken into three parts. Writing/Vocabulary, Listening, and Reading/Grammar. It has 4 levels. Four being the easiest, one being the hardest. Level 4 is very easy and proves basically that you can read hiragana and maybe read a few chinese characters. Level 3 is also easy and proves that you can understand Japanese on what would be considered a basic level to foreigners. Level 2 requires that you can read about 1000 chinese characters and proves that you can at least read and listen at what would be considered a basic level by natives. 1000 chinese characters is the minimum number to be considered literate in Japan. Level 1 requires about 2000 chinese characters and proves you can at least listen and read at a level that will enable you to live and work in Japan.

I say "proves" but in reality you can pass with a good deal less knowledge than is "required" and even without very much ability to speak Japanese at all (this is also true of other language standardized tests. TOEIC, I'm looking at you ). The requirements are probably the minimum to get a 100% score, while a 60% passes. So, though it's a bit risky, essentially you could technically pass level 2, knowing about 600-700 chinese characters. Also, it has a "writing" section but really the test is entirely multiple choice. So the closest you come to having to write chinese characters is sometimes having to choose which of 4 characters is written incorrectly.

There is also nothing anwhere close to a speaking portion. This is probably a big failing of almost every language standardized test. The inability to test speaking ability in a meaningful way. Testers cannot spend the time talking to each and every test taker because it would require 1 on 1 interviews. And even if they did do that, they have no objective way of measuring how well the person can converse. I don't blame the test makers, but it means that a lot of people can pass the test without even the slightest ability to speak or hold a conversation. This is even more pronounced in Japan where many people can pass TOEIC with a rather high score but would die of embarrasment if they had to actually hold a conversation in English.

So basically I have no real love or respect for sandardized tests especially language standardized tests. I don't like the idea of being considered on equal ground with a person who could pass JLPT2 without knowing how to speak at all, or with someone who obviously can converse better than me but simply doesn't know enough of the finer grammar rules to pass JLPT1. The test only gives a very rough basis with which to judge a person and their skill. Perhaps as part of a whole presentation on yourself it could hold some weight but without some other supporting info to lean on using it by itself is worthless.

However, As someone studying it as a second language I realize that people would like to see it, and that it may help focus my studies. I just wish that after studying hard and passing it the result could actually mean something to me.

Recently I've been thinking about how stressful I have been, and trying to come up with some reasons. One might expect that living in a foreign country, that the stress would come from adjusting to another countries language and culture. But the real source is exactly the opposite, I have been really stressed out recently because my chances to immerse myself in Japan, speaking Japanese have become less and less, rather than more and more.

First, at work the office is filled with foreigners, who while they can speak Japanese, speak better English by far and so they use English whenever possible, much to my distain. The other programmers that I work with most closely are foreigners and don't even speak Japanese. My boss, while Japanese, seems more interested in filling the office with more foreigners than Japanese people and possibly trying to run an English speaking office (there seems to be too many times when there isn't even one Japanese person in the office, like today). He speaks to me in very broken English any time he can (though my Japanese is perfectly fine in that situation and I would understand him perfectly well or better if he spoke in Japanese) thinking it's better for me if he talks in my native language even though WE ARE IN JAPAN!! and he knows I'm learning Japanese.

Second, my girlfriend, while also Japanese, speaks English, having spent many years in the 'States. While it was necessary for the relationship to get off the ground I've found it really messes me up speaking in English all the time. I have a hard time switching between the languages. I tend to warm up to Japanese. As I speak more and more during an event or during the day, the Japanese words and phrases come to me easier and easier. Basically, speaking and working in only Japanese would do a lot towards helping me to learn quicker. Having to switch gears and talk in English, throws my Japanese off the tracks and I generally have to start over. So if we go to a restaraunt or anywhere, having spent the day talking to each other in English, and I need to talk to someone in Japanese, my Japanese needs to be thaughed out and is too slow for my impatient native girlfriend who instantly takes over pushing me out of the conversation (the Japanese person on the receiving end usually resists me talking in Japanese as well). So even the small opportunity I had to speak in Japanese is lost.

Third, I have very little time to study Japanese in my own time because I don't have it to begin with. Work lasts until 7p.m. and generally I work at least 30min over which puts me home at about 8:15 or 8:30 on a good day. Then I need to make dinner, since I live alone, which takes about 1 and a half hours to make and clean up (that is if I have any energy to make it). Which leaves me at 10:30 or 11:00 with about an hour or so to do anything else I need to do for the next day, finish laundry, put away clothes, clean etc. and study/use the computer to work on programming projects. Milage varies of course but generally I have very little time or energy after working 8,9, or 10 hours.

Fourth, The weekend is always filled with either spending time with my girlfriend or preparing to spend time with my girlfriend. i.e. Cleaning my apartment, doing laundry, preparing for Monday, shopping. So studying or doing some other activity or looking for an activity to do is usually out. I also work one Saturday a month which cuts into any time I might have on the weekend.

So basically, while I know a good amount of Japanese it's not near where it could or should be and I feel frustrated because I know that immersion and using Japanese all the time every day is the best way to learn, but I don't know how to get there. I'm in a catch 22 situation where I don't feel confident I could get another job that requires me to use Japanese because I can't advance my Japanese in my current situation. Changing my girlfriend is not an option and I'm already using what little time I have during lunch time or on the train to try to study.

So basically though I live in Japan I don't really use that much Japanese on a daily basis. I feel like I need to change something but I can't really think of anything I can reasonably change. Anyway, this will probably dominate my thinking during summer vacation this week.

One thing that is a bit annoying about Japan is that it has it's own system for counting years. Many observers note that the Christian year is widely used in Japan but this is a bit short-sighted. Most Japanese don't internalize Christian years but rather convert Japanese years into Christian years when necessary. A bit like how you would translate a word into a foreign language if you weren't terribly fluent. Also, most systems that aren't developed by western companies or people, use Japanese dates. Filling out my birthday on a form to apply for a commuter pass for the train is an example.

The system includes separating time into eras which represent an Emperer's reign. They start at the first year that a new Emperor comes to the throne, and ends with the year that he dies. The year that he dies, is also consequently, the first year of the next Emperor's reign so there is 1 year of overlap.

For example, this year is the year Heisei 19. It is the 19th year of the Emperor Akihito's reign. The previous Emperor Hirohito's (we should all know who he is), era was called Showa. The Showa era lasted from 1926–1989. 1989 was the year that Hirohito died, and Akihito became Emperor. Thus 1989 is the year Showa 64 but also Heisei 1.

This is particularly hard when calculating years in software. Since most software uses western dates you have to convert these somehow. Also, whenever an Emperor dies you have to change the software to reflect the change in era. Software will, of course, continue to work in spite of the Emperor's death, but it will not reflect Japanese dates accurately until it is updated.

Things also get complicated when you are born in the year of an Emperor's death, as technically, the new Emperor's era starts after he ascends to the throne. So if you were born in 1989 but before the Akihito ascended to the throne, technically you were born in Showa 64 and not Heisei 1. So you would need to know the exact date of ascention and not just the year to accurately reflect a particular date, however most software doesn't go that far to accurately present Japenese dates.

I recently started using Anki to keep track of and study Japanese vocabulary.　I didn't like it much before because it wasn't easy to edit your deck of cards and it didn't give very much control over your deck(s). But I've recently given it another try and have grown to like it. It's simple and shows some nice graphs and statistics now in an unobtrusive side panel.

A few things bother me though. Like how it's written using python-qt. Not that I don't like QT but none of the applications that I use have a QT interface so I had to install like 40 packages. And then on top of that Anki requires that you have python-qt 4.2 (4.1 will not work) and Ubuntu doesn't have a package for that yet so I had to install python-qt and sip from source.

That by itself isn't so bad but even after installing all that Japanese input doesn't work. It seems that ubuntu has problems with QT and SCIM and with python-qt in particular. Even after trying some steps that z0r from #nihongo on freenode wrote up I still couldn't get it to work.

I eventually got Japanese input working in Anki. This is what I did:
* im-switch -s scim_xim
* added "/SupportedUnicodeLocales =
en_US.UTF-8,en_GB.UTF-8,en_AU.UTF-8" to ~/.scim/global
* Disabled "Embed Preedit String into client window" in scim-setup
* Changed QT var to: XIMInputStyle=Over The Spot

I still have scim-qtimm installed, but I guess it's not being used.
$QT_IM_MODULE=xim by default.

As a bonus, it seems to work in emacs now too. But I mustn't have my
fonts configured correctly for it, because I get boxes instead of
Japanese text. Additionally, my tilde key works again! Some GTK apps
don't seem to work as well with the new settings, but I'll keep testing
it.

I still wonder whether there could be improvements made to Anki, given
that Kedit worked with pretty much every configuration. In particular,
Anki required Over the Spot and no preedit string while kedit is happy
with either. I wonder if that was the only thing I needed to change? If
I continue to have trouble with GTK apps I test scim again (instead of
scim_xim).

Even if I did get it to work it would reduce ALL applications to using a floating window to display the pre-edit string for Japanese input which is ugly. I hope that the issue gets resolved soon but since ubuntu only releases new (non-security-related) updates on new upgrades of the whole distribution, it's not likely to be fixed for a few months at least.

Just spent the 4th with my friends from the Japanese Meetup Group. We went to Lake Fairfax to see the fireworks and picnic outside. I went early at 10am to grab a table but by that time they were already all taken.

The weather was good in the morning and I got a bit of sun which I don't necessarily concider a bad thing though I wouldn't want to do it too often. But after noon it turned sour and poured down rain for probably a good hour. I didn't really pay attention to how long it was. I was busy trying to salvage stuff.

Though we had to suffer through the rain, everything turned out all right in the end. After the rain it wasn't so crowded and we managed to get a table with a good view for the fireworks to round out the day.

Today Reiko and I are going into DC to go to Washington DC Japanese Meetup. Reiko seems excited about it so I'm looking forward to it. She seems to like meeting new people and making new friends. She seems to get along really well with my friends from the Northern Virginia Japanese Meetup group.

The last couple days Reiko seems to be happier than she was last week so I'm feeling up as well. She said the reason is that she feels like she knows me better now. We have talked a lot about just various things recently so I guess I can understand

Anyway, I hope to get the pics of Sunday's trip to DC with Wes and Kelly up on the website sometime tonight or tomorrow.