Bakemono

You see what happens when you let paperwork pile up?!

Been enjoying some things recently related to Japan's indigenous demons (I interchangably say yokai, bakemono, and so on). From the list at The Obakemono Project (highly recommended), I get the sense that Japanese people didn't trust anything if it got old enough way back when. Maybe that's why houses are built so shoddily (read: ready to be demolished after about 30 years and paper-thin) in the countryside to this day; let a house get old enough and it won't get haunted, but it will get animate and terrorize the good cucumber-farming peasants! My conjecture. I don't think I've run across a record of a house-demon (お化け家?）yet .

Lately, found this boys' manga, which despite the silly haircut, is pretty sold for a boys' manga. From it, I learned a new 4 character idiom: 魑魅魍魎 (chimimouryou) spirits of the rivers and mountains, or in other words, all the yokai of the land. These days, it is often used to describe the profane world with it's politics, money-hungry businesses, and bullying. One idiom often uttered in such situations is 魑魅魍魎が跳梁跋扈する (the demons are rampant). Or, to use another yokai-flavored idiom, I bet one could say 魑魅魍魎が百鬼夜行する (pretty much the same, though you could say it means the demons are plotting). Google says it's okay!
To learn more about 百鬼夜行, go here. BTW, Jeff, if you ever read this post, know now that you have the onus of explaining 跳梁跋扈; I'm not the guy with a yo-ji blog.

Finally, you might also like these old prints of Japanese creepies available online.

This is Not the Japanese I Signed on for

So I thought since the Daily Yomiuri offers feeds now I would try it out and try to read a newspaper article a day. But then I get to the headline.

Me: Oh geeze, what is that again, Rikaichan? Foreign product something or othe--
Rikaichan says: 商品先物取引 しょうひんさきものとりひき (n) commodity futures
Me: gawugljl [commence brain-melt]

Think I'll stick to novels and manga for now, as last I checked, the most complicated financial term I knew in either language was "mutual fund".
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BTW, I haven't had the confidence to invest at all this year. I asked the guy that set up my mutual funds at the bank about it, and he used a bunch of words I didn't know along with "strategy". Ergo my lack of financial planning this year. On the one hand, Americas' economy sucking makes what I already invested look dangerously pittanceful [neologism], but on the other, the more it sucks in America, the stronger my yen is here, at least for now. Maybe, if the American economy gets really bad, it will actually be a good time to invest and I can pull a grandpa Forbes. That's the ticket!
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Edit: I just finished reading a different article, and learned the word 拉致問題. Can you guess what recent story I was reading about? My brain is sleepy and limp now. I take fall down sleep time good.

Gaijin Can Understand Our Inscrutable Society?!

Found a mildly disappointing, yet not surprising, survey today as translated by Ken at What Japan Thinks. Take a look at this list of things foreigners can do to surprise Japanese people:

1 Writing difficult kanji
2 Bowing on the telephone
3 Using dialect
4 Speaking Japanese fluently
5 Using proverbs, idioms
6 Eating natto
7 Habitually using chopsticks
8 Getting drunk with tie tied around head
9 Using Japanese era dates, not Western calendar
10 Singing enka, folk songs
11 Passing through crowds with a “suimasen” and the one-handed chop
12 Sitting “seiza”
13 Slurping noodles
14 Dancing a bon dance
15 Using a toothpick
16 After a bath drinking fruity milk with one hand on hip
17 Sleeping on a futon on the floor
18 Taking off shoes before going indoors
19 Wearing a kimono, yukata
20 Queueing properly

Let's analyze. Numbers 1-5 I can kind of understand. After that a lot of them are either quaint or severely underestimating foreigners. We do our homework before we come, Japan. And I could swear America invented #8. #16 is not something I ever thought of as cultural. #15 makes no sense.
One of the things I liked about our new textbooks was the chapter with the foreigner complaining about being asked if she uses chopsticks all the time. I used that as a spring board for a lesson about what is rude in both countries and what isn't and the difference. It's hard to explain why the chopstick and language compliments are "rude" though.
Number 10 is one of my favorite activities.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Are the words of Thoreau I believe (I think we could do with one less simplify in there though). While I would love nothing more than to live in a wabisabi little house in the woods, I must bust my chops soon as I move to Saitama and become a student again. The TV is not going with me. And I think the wii must be sold off. I love it, but I don't use it enough to justify it's existence. I've had no motivation to do wii fit either.. I may still buy a wiimote to play emulated games with via Darwin. But it's gonna be hard to find someone willing to pay a fair price for all these games. Other things I may try giving up for as long as standable include internet and cell phones. Doubt I'll get far without those. I'll always find ways to blog though.
This video fits into this post better than the last one:

Prodigously Panoramific

I upload them so you don't have to! What? I dunno. This is my life in a wide angle.

Okay, this and the next one aren't panoramas, but are in fact my graduation messages for my graduating kids last go around. All funny-looking kanji were done by my own blighted hand. This is why I came to Japan, so I could do these two specific graduation messages.

One reason why I take bike rides.

So I says to him, I says, "that's some handsome hay."

From Nagasaki's artificial Holland. Expensive town; you have to pay just to walk around it. Two more:


Tara, the sea, and the mountains.

My personal idiom

If you had to choose on idiom to describe yourself, what would it be? I'm talking 四字熟語 here, but naturally I don't expect everybody, even Japanese people to know them. Anyways, mine is 神出鬼没. It kinda means appear like a god and disappear like a demon. And that kinda means just randomly pop in and out of places in a surprising way*.
I chose it because I have some sort of ethereal ability to sneak up on people. Interestingly, I don't think I always had this ability, but possibly got it from a movie. I can't remember what the movie was✝, but in it a cop was describing a tense showdown with a person that had a gun or something. He described pulling back his presence and trying not to exacerbate the situation. When he finally spoke, he startled the person who had somehow forgotten he was there. I thought it was a pretty cool scene at the time, and after that, as if I had somehow learned the technique, I mysteriously started surprising people. Usually people will freak out because they never hear me coming. I can't really turn it off, and I have no conscious control over it, so it's not that useful for situations where I want to be stealthy. Which brings us to the next part.
There is another aspect to the appearing, and so there is another part to my presence. That thing about coming in like a god. I am also very visible. Especially in classroom settings. Whether they liked me or (more rarely, thank goodness) hated me, teachers always took notice of me. People form strong impressions of me. I can't call it charisma, because it's not necessary positive. The problem is only worse in Japan, where I am very visible (yet I still sneak up on everybody here). Anyways, that's how I appropriate the god portion of the idiom. Then I disappear...
In daily life, I use my odd foreign part time teacher status to appear around the school, investigating how things work or being seen reading books. I also don't like attention that much and so do my exiting like a phantom quite often. I remember someone in college complaining that I thought I was Batman. Sorry commissioner, no time for small talk.
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*: Some other definitions--incidentally this is one of the first four character idioms I ever learned in Japan:

現れたり隠れたり所在が知れないことをいう。

Appearing in unexpected places and at unexpected moments; with phantom-like agility and elusiveness

✝: If anybody know that movie, let me know.

Update on the だ is な thing [Japanese]

More fun with copulas, which are interchangeable but not.
In a previous post I mused,

Then I came to feel a few minutes ago that だ becomes な／の in a slight prettying up of statements and explanations. Consider: 〜なの could be from (a hypothetical)〜だの and in actual reality we do know that だから changes to (な)ので. I don't know. Maybe this is a crazy theory. It only really helps for remembering anyways. If you remember things in a circuitous manner like me.

Two points on which I was wrong: だ does not become の under any circumstances, and だから is not conjugatively related to なので. But I am more than ever sure that だ becomes な and that they and the other copula are helper verbs. I just read in one of my books the following:「〜だ」は「の」の前では「〜な」にかわります。
Also something that a little Jeffy bird helped me to realize is that, unless they are strong as nouns, without a な or a だ the 形容動詞s are like half-living lingual things. The な／だ on the end is a little helper verb that gives them life. I spent a long time thinking things like ます and です and だ aren't verbs, but they really do fit most of the description. The only thing is the limits on their conjugation forms.
Anyways, it's just my Western brain's systematizing of it all, but still.
As for my other copula curiosity of late, I haven't found much on the である／だ＝なり front, but I did find this sentence tonight: 時は金なり. Time is money. I imagine なり shows up a lot in Shakespeare translated to Japanese.

Couple Vids and my NPR Thing

A couple vids I found interesting. The first one is from Sayonara Zestubou Sensei (Farewell, Mr. Despair), done for some reason in Mike Mignola's idiosyncratic Hellboy style. Do Japanese people even know what Hellboy is?

Next is a somehow touching 思い出億千万 short. The original song is from Megaman. He is a bit of a meme in Japan.

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I will probably be interviewed by NPR soon. Come to think of it, this will earn me major cool points with myself. I will totally be my hero for a day. Anyways, it's about Japanese game shows. What shows do you watch? I've gotta compile a list of what I think is the most popular and impacting...

A few funny Japan/Asian pics

This picture is so perfectly melodramatic! "I can use it this much for free you say?! A moving English study site" I try to make jokes with this flavor all the time, but whooosh! Over their heads.

Someone, I beg you, tell me where in Japan this restaurant is.

I get the impression that everybody else considers her hat to be funny. Gotta zoom this one.

I know this is in Japan somewhere as well, but even I can't imagine the road being built so incompitently.

Degree of look-a-likeness: 100%. My 1st graders call me Mr. Satan instead of Mr. B. Or Mr. X or H.

I threatened the making of Japanese LOL cats a while ago, but these are all I got through.

I couldn't be bothered to find the originals or give credit.

And the child-speech I choose as a LOL-speak equivalent hurts my brain.

I was stolen my chocolate suitcase! [Japanese]

を

This is the particle that, along with に, separates the passives from the people that get passive done to them. What? Sorry, that's the way it works in Japanese. To explain the misnomered "suffering passive," I'm going to make a few sentences that have probably never been made in Japanese before, -- inspired by both Ray Romano and Jay Rubin (see refs at the bottom of the post)-- yet I am pretty confident I can demonstrate their meaning to you and show you why を is important. Consider:

チョコ鞄を盗んだ [sub.] stole the chocolate suitcase
チョコ鞄が盗まれた the chocolate suitcase was stolen
チョコ鞄を盗まれた [sub. underwent the experience of] the chocolate suitcase was stolen [by agent ～]
Continue this post...
If we take out the bracketed words, we see that 2 and 3 look very similar. The difference is を (the difference between 1 and 3 is the passive conjugation). を always marks an object. If there is an object being discussed, that means we are not talking about the object (chocolate suitcase), because if we were talking about the object, we would be using が (or maybe は), which is traditionally called the subject marker (and thus the object would not be called an object any more). The "subject marker" terminology is up to debate, but が's function is to say, "hey, lets talk about this word I am attached to!" Where as を is like, "somebody is using this word, but it's not the subject nor the agent. Also, I like oranges." And then everybody is like, "Japanese is strange, what is this orange business? There is nothing about oranges anywhere I can see!" And I'm like, "I just threw that in to be funny." And then everybody is like, "stop being cute, you are only making a confusing thing more confusing." And I'm like, "Well, excuuuuuse me, princess."　Anyways, if を shows up around the passive conjugation, you've got the suffering passive on your hands.

Let's talk about に too; it's pretty important, and in sentences where we don't have an object, it can be our only clue. に in these sentences is going to be like the English "by". 建物を彼に建たれた。(the building was built by him [and hey, it's blocking my view! etc...]). によって is another form of the same particle, used to indicate that such and such was done by so-and-so, and can show up in either the suffering or not suffering passives. So if you remember を="not subject but object" and that に="by", it helps to keep things straight. Sometimes even Japanese people screw this up and put a が in the place of に or something. That's life. My grammar be unperfect toos. から is another alternate に, but I am honestly not sure it meshes with the suffering passive; I saw no examples. I had a mnemonic "鬼 ("をに") make me suffer" for this grammar, but it didn't help until I really pounded down what kind of words the particles attach to, as well as what order those words are supposed to be in (not 〜を〜に, but I'll cover that in the rules section).

So as usual, it's the English terminology that's to blame for most of our confusion on this construction. Usually, this "agentにobjectをverbられる" thing is called the "suffering passive" and why not? After all, it uses the passive conjugation and usually we suffer from people messin' with our stuff. Well, suffer may not always mean something bad is happening to you; there seems to be some archaic neutralness that we English speakers don't usually think of any more. So that's why not. Basically think suffer="experience/undergo/feel the influence of", and it may clear things up for you. We could all try calling it the experiential-passive, but seeing as this is a small blog, I don't expect the term to catch on any time soon. I've seen one or two people use terms like "affected passive". The terminology doesn't seem to have too much convention about it in Japanese. I saw 間接受け身 (see references below) and some others, but it's a safe bet that Japanese people will have no idea what you are talking about no matter what grammatical term you bust out. In any case, it is really easy to screw up, but I do recommend learning how to recognize it.

The Rules

According to one of my books, there are are two basic types of passive suffering sentences:
Type 1: Agent influences the subject "unexpectedly" and uses intransitive verbs to do it.を is missing, because it doesn't like working with intransitive verbs I guess.
Pattern 1: "subjectは agentに verb-passive"
例文：私は妹に泣かれて、嫌だった。
例文：旅行中、ずっと雪に降られました。
Rule: The sentence pattern cannot change order from the set pattern "subjectは agentに verb-passive", though I'm sure we can leave things out as in normal Japanese if everyone knows what is being talked about. This set order thing is different from normal, fluid Japanese, and I suspect that it's because it's both a grammar and an idiom.

Type 2: Agent influences the subject's body parts or belongings.
Pattern 2: "subjectは agentに objectを verb-passive" (give or take understood parties)
例文：(私は、)電車の中で、誰かに足を踏まれました。
Rule: Don't の the subject's body parts or belongings! It sounds odd. The following is wrong:
誤用例：　バスの中で、私の腕は、女性に噛まれた。

Other rules:
An object is not normally used as the subject in passive sentences, suffering or otherwise.
誤用例：書類は山下から山口に渡されました。

If you become an agent, the sentence shouldn't be passive.
誤用例：ボッブは私に蹴られた。

Examples, and grains of salt to take them with

As is par for the course, subjects and agents get dropped all the time in Japanese. I didn't use a single one in those example sentences about suitcase of delicious, delicious chocolate, and yet we can still make pretty good guesses about who is involved. It's all about context, baby. Plus, the subject is almost always the speaker; this is mostly a 表現 to complain after all. Here are some sentences with subjects and/or agents sprinkled in. Drag your mouse over the blank spaces to see my hidden translations/notes (you may be surprised by what you thought you just read! Keep in mind that what is passive in Japanese may not be so in English). Comment if you disagree; I only nailed this form down recently, and yes, that means I am long overdue; it is the ones where "I" am not the subject that I feel the shakiest about.

私は一晩中子供に泣かれて、困った。I had to endure the child crying throughout the night; what a pain! [pattern/type 1 here. theは, に and passive form are the important clues, as is the 困った. Such 迷惑 type words often accompany the form. Maybe the unsaid object could be tears or wails, or maybe it just doesn't exist ever in pattern 1, I'm not sure.]

私はボッブサップに足を折られてしまった。 I had my leg broken by Bob Sapp. [Notice we further conjugated the end of our passive conjugation to the gerund (て) conjugation to attach しまう. I read that しまう is used for its own passive conjugation, but only in the English sense of the word so far as I know, and it doesn't matter here.]

私がボッブサップに足を折られてしまった。 I had my leg broken by Bob Sapp. [Just more emphasis on me, me, me.]

誰かに犬を食べられた。My dog was eaten by someone. [Well that is a rare situation, but I can see how it would affect the master. The dog is the object, so it is the thing eaten, poor thing. If we want someone to suffer us feeding the dog, we are gonna need some food to give it...]

犬は誰かにチョコを食べさせられた。The dog was fed chocolate by someone. [The dog is the subject. This passive conjugation of a causative conjugation is pretty rare and seems to make Nipponese people tilt their heads in confusion; use with care. I waffled a lot about whether the dog could be the subject; I'm pretty sure it is, because that's what the particles are telling me. There is one other thing about this sentence that will make it risky: We have a hard time knowing that a dog was troubled (unless we are dog whisperers), but I think the chocolate makes this a safe sentence, since the dog will die.]

僕は子供に鼻をほじられて、キモかった。　The kid picked [my?] nose! That was grooss! [I really wanted to say, "The child picked it's nose before me; it was gross. " but the rules prevent me from saying that edit:a nihonjin got the idea anyways in the comments. Anyways, 僕は子供が自分の鼻をほじることに見られた。seems to get at what I want, it's just a little more complicated with "the kid's nose picking" acting as an agent. Very spurious.]

学校のパソコンを壊されたのだ？僕は首だ！ The school computer has been broken? I'm gonna be fired! [This one may break the rules! :/ We may be able to get away with the school のing it (is it possessive, or part of the object's name?), but I am going to have to check with some Nihonjin on that point. I think it may be alright, because "I" am the one who is gonna get fired over it. Or it may just mean that this is not a suffering passive, but otherwise valid. edit: confirmed okay.]
あたしはClaytonian様にキスをチューとされた。I was kissed by Mr. Claytonian. [see, it's not always about suffering, she is probably just hinting that she fell deeply in love, alas.]

In conclusion, you may want to limit your use of this form since the rules are so restrictive.
So next time I may try to wrap my head around the causative-passive construction some more. What does it mean for mankind's future? And how does polite-passiveness work?* Will Diana get married? Who was James shot by, which I suffered from? Stay tuned.
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References:
Ray Romano claimed the sentence "let go of my chocolate suitcase" was a sentence that, while possible, had never been uttered.

Jay Rubin wrote Making Sense of Japanese, which I should take and use for a holiday around a set date where I review it once a year. Same goes with Tae Kim's guide.

Speaking of which, Tae wrote this article on the subject. He is never wrong.

I also found this, this, this, this and this.

From this page we get a good description, in Japanese, of the grammar:

間接受身は「子供が私のパソコンをこわす」から「私は子供にパソコンをこわされる」が表現できるように、主語（私）が誰か（子供）によって、直接的な動作・行為を受けたのではないが、パソコンをこわされることによって、間接的に何らかの影響（多くの場合被害）を受けることを表す受身です。

Thanks to the Lang-8 people that made me realize that I tend to mix my sounds up and conjugate things into the causative at times! And I wouldn't have realized I needed to finally figure this grammar out if they hadn't been diligently beating me down every time I used the particles incorrectly.

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*It gives me a headache, that's how it works.

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Nobody is allowed to quibble with me on whether the things followed by は and が in any of this were "subjects" or not; that distinction is too expansive to consider in this post.

10 things I would do if I were Conan Edogawa

10 things I would do if I were Conan Edogawa (even nerdier than the D&D post):

1. Suggest a bath with Ran*
2. Use my genius intellect to make an antidote for my condition, or have the professor do it
3. Test out of elementary school
4. Carry a gun and use it whenever I saw the men in black
5. Have the professor build a rocket-pack for me
6. Become world famous for my 10-year-old genius intellect
7. Never go out, because each time I do, somebody dies
8. Internet in the glasses
9. Enjoy the extra youth I've been given (but hey, hasn't it been ten years already?)
10. Drug Ran's dad all the time and make him say funny things

*Don't actually know if a 10 year old kid can get away with this, but they are like family

Enter the Fat Dragon

Sammo Hung is one of my heroes. This playlist is one of his innovative kung-fu comedies. It's always interesting when I recognize a word or kanji somehow due to it's adoption into Japanese.　If you want to use a Chinese word that will be understood and get you erai points with a Japanese person, I suggest 無問題 which is pronounced moumontai and means "no problem". I love it! People know it because it was a title of a rare (in the sense of collaborations) Hong Kong/Japanese comedy movie that just so happened to have a Sammo Hung cameo.

Keep an eye out for the crazy foreigners acting like Chinese villains and vice-versa in Enter the Fat Dragon.

Best Business Idea Ever

It doesn't matter what kind of small business you have, if you want more customers, just put a puppy in the window display as if you were a pet store. Officially, the puppy is a mascot, but unofficially, it is an evil scheme to get customers with the cute.
If the puppy starts getting older (i.e. not so cute), give it away (or sell it for tons as if you were a pet store) and pick up a new one for free with a consultation to the wanted pages.
Oh yeah, you're welcome.

Can't Speak English

Recent problems in the classroom.

Me: Are they a boy or a girl?
Teacher: You can't say that to the students. It's not correct.
Me: But that's what we say. They have to learn how people speak.
Teacher: ...
Me: *sigh* okay...
The singular they is, as far as I can tell, legitimate English.

Teacher: Can you explain the difference between anybody and anyone?
Me: *long explanation with examples* No... wait, but you could use anyone there too... I don't know!
Teacher: One is colloquial.
Me: Huh. *Proceed to forget which one as soon as I look it up, but I do remember it comes from the 1500s, so I would think it's a bit more standard by now*

Spellcheck: No.
Me: What? "Themself." That is so a word.
Spellcheck: No, it isn't.
Me: Okay... Theirself.
Spellcheck: Nope, total shibboleth, impostor. Try again?
Me: Why is everything I say wrong?

Have you confused the vulgar for the vulgate recently? Like questioning the foundations of everything you say? Join me in no grammar land. Teach for the Jet Programme. Bad spellers welcome.
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Lets share an anecdote of studying Japanese. I often think in weird accents for the sake of mnemonics. For instance じしゃく (magnet) is a French guy saying, "zi shaku of ze maginet, it is cause by ze electricity." Or how about たいせい which takes the accent of Mickey Blue Eyes, imitating a gangster badly... "The TAItans SEIt-up the system before the gods smaIked em down". Very circuitous process I have here. "Get the heill outta heah."

もののあわれ

Props to Jeff for not only reminding me that it was firefly season, but also learnin' me a bit about some fancy nippongo words.
So let me summarize: From Jeff, I learned the word 諸行無常, which is a Buddhist concept of the inevitable impermanence of things. Which reminds one of もののあわれ, the appreciation of the impermanence of things, as illustrated by short-lived fireflies and sakura blossoms (life is short, therefore beautiful--Jeff seemed to contend that this is a depressive thing, but as the Hopeless Romantic, I am inclined to put my sad-is-beautiful spin on it).　もののあわれ finds it's origins in The Tale of Genji, whereas 諸行無常 finds it's genesis in the tale of Heike--which is about the Heike and Genji clans' war (they used to have different names, but this is the convention now). By the way, Mr. Heike and Mr. Genji sit in that image on the title bar of this very blog these days.
Now oddly enough, when I went up into the mountains to view fireflies, I met an old lady associate of mine. She informed me then that fireflies, the reminders of もののあわれ, are split into two types: Heike and Genji. Is this a coincidence, or did the bug naming guys have the two tales, concepts, and clans in mind, due to relationships of impermanent sayings? Who knows. Anyways, I thought it was neat.
I was informed that there was going to be a firefly festival in the same spot the next night, so I returned. There was a band and food and everyone eying me as usual--at one point I was forced to dance for the crowd with my old lady friend, this is the wages of easy wages in a foreign land, so no real surprise there.
I mentioned もののあわれ to a guy that was buddying* me, and he seemed impressed, saying Japanese people these days don't know about that. Judging on how people acted that night, I am inclined to agree. During the music and lottery portions of the evening, everyone stayed off to the side of the riverbank, in the lights where one can hardly see fireflies. Some of the children played in the river, but came up for the raffle when it was dark. When the event ended, almost everyone just left. No actual going down to the river to look at the reason why we were there. I was astounded; here we have these little wonders of nature, and nobody cares.
And far be it for me to think I am doing the Japanese thing better than the Japanese do (though sometimes I wonder if that is how the impremanence of this culture is going to manifest: in the hands of a few foreigners). I was just confused why people don't stop to enjoy the sights. After all, our time on this world is fleeting, and therefore beautiful.
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Incidentally, I ran into a barbecue while wandering about the rivers that night, and not only ate strips of, but was given a huge chunk of boar meat. I made boar meat chili with it. Yum. Oddly un-porky.
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*buddying: The process of giving unwanted food, drinks, and 30 years-unused-English-skills to a foreigner who is just trying to enjoy the quiet majesty of nature. Also known as gawk-blocking.

More Kitty Curls!

Did you enjoy the kitty curling? Cause I'm bringing it again! こりやああああっ!

... Actually I'm not bringing it for a while; I totally strained my back. Not while lifting cats, I promise. I fell into "I can do anything physical now" syndrome whilst drunk on my small strength boost that I got recently. Strong* arms ≠ strong lower back. Oy.

*: missing scare-quotes, methinks.

Sento-kun waits

As Deas reported, Sento-kun has been replaced by something much cuter.


But Sento-kun waits. (I drew this)(click to zoom to full creepy glory). Sento is patient and happy, and he can wait a long time.
You may enjoy my vid of the Nara deer, while we're touching on that place. Also a Deas link, cometathinkofit.

Speaking of creepy-cute hulks check out kitty-curling (a small preview doesn't do this one justice). At the suggestion of an IM friend it was made. The wii fit boxing actually does seem to have made me stronger; I've gained a couple kilos of muscle and can lift my dumbells cats with much more ease.

2kyu Japanese Grammar

Since I have a few guests, and a file of words that was laying forgotten and unpublished on my desktop, I thought you guys might like to know that I have collected all the 2kyu Japanese grammar terms I translated (not a complete list of 2kyu grammar terms, but still a lot) and put them in one Google document here.