Archery off the horse: Yabusame

This is a pretty entertaining experiment: take a horse-archery expert off the horse and put him onto different things, like trucks and speedboats, to see how he does.

Part 2 shouldn't be hard for you too find if you want to see how the roller coaster goes ;)

A little more on Anki developments

First I gotta point out, I forgot to elucidate on the "=" marks in the cards last post, so I went back and added that in.
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Lately, I discovered that Anki has the option to add a field to type in your answers. I set the "reading" part of the card to be the one you have to punch in on my giant deck. You still have to rate your recall powers from 1-4.
As I really want to focus my studies, this replaces both Read the Kanji and iKnow for me for now. They both still have their merits, but I'm going to be focusing on Anki study for a while. The typing really helps give that extra edge for remembering (perhaps its the kinesthetic factor), much like circling the troublesome parts of a kanji help me to remember them. I also still say each answer out loud and type something for about everything to lock it all in.

Now if only I could find a way to speed up input. I am still averaging 80 to 100 new entries a day. Direct downloads from my brain would be nice...

Download: Anki Grammar Deck for 1kyu Study

Okay, after threatening to unleash a new anki Japanese grammar deck upon the world for a while, I have finally done it. I've learned a lot since the days when I wrote out those grammar lists that I put up on Google Docs. Every day we have quizzes at my language school and I take notes on usage and such. This deck is the culmination of that.

There are some things you need to know to understand how to use these cards though.

"f." stands for both "front" and "follows" For instance, "f.　あげく" means "what goes in front of あげく?"

"nu." stands for nuance. Questions where I wanted to remind myself of how a grammar is used. It sometimes gets paired with "essay."

"essay" means, how is this used in the reading section of the test. Often, words direct you to look forward or back.

"_＿" means "fill in the blank". For instance in "noun＿＿のに" the answer that anki is looking for is "な".

nouns and other parts of speech are sometime abbreviated (like "n"), and sometimes romajied from their Japanese words. Other times I wrote the Japanese linguistic terms, so you might want to already know what a 形容動詞 or a 修飾型 is.

Some of the questions are really simple things that I keep forgetting, sometimes the question and answer may be too mystifying. So feel free to delete cards you don't get or like.

if there are no special symbols or abbreviations in the question, you just need to give the meaning like a normal anki card.

Some cards ask you an actual question. ex: "Who do you usually talk about when you use ときたら?"

EDIT: I forgot about "=" signs. Those are looking for equivalent Japanese expressions, not English.

I'd like feedback on any mistakes in the cards, via comments to this post, where others using the deck can see them. This is not a perfect deck; I may upgrade it a bit in the future.
You may find a good grammar reference book handy while studying. I recommend this one:

It has English, Chinese, and Korean explanations for all levels of the test. And it's an ALC product, so you know it's pretty quality.

And here be the link to download the deck!

　
EDIT: Or if you are savvy enough to sync with a shared deck, the ID seems to be a74a8f213db81f5d

Karaoke Practice: Tribute to Kiyoshiro

The song known in the west as Sukiyaki is a good karaoke standby. The lyrics are pretty simple, and you can even find it in American karaoke machines (the romaji totally threw me off when I did it there though).
During one karaoke party here, I selected what I thought was the song, but got what I think was this version.
I did my best to compensate for the change of pace, and it was actually pretty fun. For those of you that want to master the basic version though, here you go:



But back to that first link for a second. I turned on the TV this morning to see that Imawano Kiyoshiro had passed on. Seems like I have heard him a bit, but I'm not too familiar. Luckily Fushou Note has a couple of posts with collections of his works.
Next time you are at the snack bar, or wherever you croon, raise you glass in tribute, and sing one of his songs. I also suggest that next time you are walking under a starry sky, look up an whistle the tune to this song.

Kyounshi (Hopping Vampire) Boom Classic Promo Vid

Had an interesting day today at the school. We held a barbecue and later I introduced the Chinese students to some videos of my favorite Kung-fu practitioner, Sammo Hung. This led into my favorite Kung-fu movie, Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind, which then led into discussion with a teacher of the Kyounshi Boom in the 80s.
So here is a video promo intended for Japanese people of some very odd Chinese flicks from that time and genre.


The Narrator's comments are pretty funny. "The Hong Kong Highlander!" "Can you read this character?" "They do ecchi too..." "A car comes at us!"

Now I must waste some time watching Mr. Vampire.

Forced off the Train, the Passengers Walk Home

Yokohama--Passengers were asked to hoof it when the train's breaks went wonky on the Yokosuka Line. [J source/bigger pic]
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As always, I do these posts to learn language, and there was some interesting wording in this one.
立ち往生 means come to a standstill, but the 往生 part means death/giving up.
Become unloose (緩まなくなり) confused me for a second, but I believe it means, considering the preceding words, that the breaks seized up.　
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One more interesting pic story; A burning snowman saying "あちちち" (hot hot hot hot!), but not a Japan story per say. Rather it is in Switzerland. Link.

Japan News Pic: Dragon Screen

Kyoto, Keinin Temple-- What we see in this pic is actually a digital print applied to a sliding door. It's a recreation of the real thing from around the year 1600, printed out on Japanese paper. The title translates as "dragon figure". [original Japanese w/bigger pic]

The Nerdiest Band Ever is Japanese

Glasses, side-parts, sensible shirts and slacks, electronic thingy in the background and new wave sounds all check. Yes, sirs, you have won your title. BTW, can anybody tell me what the nerdy appendage to the guitar head is?

The crowd gives their best nerdy performance too. さすがにっぽん！
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Still on break. Couldn't resist scheduling this.

Classic CM Collection 1

Within this video is a mashup of CMs from long ago in this video series. I'll be posting a few of them, in a digestible schedule.


Some observations (just opinion, I've no claims to know the facts):
It's not really interesting until 1:39; I'll program it to start there. I think that bear is drunk.
I wonder when the switch to Western clothes really happened. I have a feeling the people may just be formalizing their wear for the commercial.
I think the product about 6 minutes in is like that nori-jelly I tried.
The men back then sure liked their Hitler mustaches.
Around 7:30 may be one of the first commercials to capitalize on what would later become the love of cute things in this country.
The gum commercial is rare for being "drama-like," and it also made me wonder about eyebrows. It seems that maybe it was fashionable to have manicured eyebrows in that era, but something happened during the 80s that made girls go natural...
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Well, it's golden week now, so I'll be gone for a bit...

Karaoke Practice: Webster?!

Someday I will feature something more useful for karaoke enthusiasts, I promise, but I just found another foreigner singing in Japanese and I couldn't resist.

I don't know why this exists, or if you could ever find it in a karaoke machine. What I do know is Webster+Japan=Awesome. But at the same time, scarier than that time he talked with the Norman Batesesque doll. I did not make that up just now; I have vague childhood memories.

This was on the album City Connection, which sold over 300,000 records. If only Japan didn't seem to suck so much for finding old records (and they cost way too much when you do find them) I would go out and find these sorts of things and annoy my neighbors with them. Apparently the Japanese called him Emanieru-bouya (Emmanuel-kid) back then. I just call him Webster, rather insensitively, but yes, he is really Emmanuel Lewis.

Bonuses gets: A little CM for the record.
EDIT: Oh, here is a rather good live performance.

Gaming in Japan Followup: Buy the Book!

I would be remiss as a totally pro blogger if I didn't try to line my pockets with a link to buy the Record of Lodos War (mentioned last time) in it's original novel form.



Only one yen, usually.
There, now the gaming week is pretty much done.
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Oh but I kinda want to share the monster I made for yesterday's Saitama Session of D&D. You can math it for whatever level you need. As you can see, it's not a very standard monster. I love how 4e lets you do this.

Clinging Wraith, the spirit of someone that just couldn't let go. Ever.

Dwarf, light me on fire if you have to! Just get it offa me!

Cling (move, at will) The wraith may teleport 6 squares provided it ends in an opponent's square. When it enters the square, it makes an attack VS fortitude. If it fails, it is ejected to the nearest open square. If it wins, it partially shares the target's defending space (save ends and ejects the wraith as above). The wraith may not be marked while occupying. Any powers that attack and miss the wraith are automatically redirected to the occupied creature, and if it passes their defense it affects them instead. Any ongoing conditions of the wraith are also suffered by the occupied creature, and vise versa, but neither may save for passed on conditions.

Gripping Aura: Any creature that begins it's turn in the wraith's space takes 5 necrotic damage and is weakened.

Dig in (standard) If the wraith is occupying a creatures square, it may make an attack VS FORT to make the target immobilized (save ends).

Pull Strings (standard/special)(this move may be used as an interrupt any time the wraith would be able to make an opportunity attack) The wraith may force the occupied creature to make a melee attack using any weapons it has (including fists etc. as improvised weapons) and/or force the creature to move at its speed.

Like Every Bad Relationship: When the Clinging Wraith is reduced to 0hp, if it was occupying a creature's space, that creature becomes cursed and the wraith sticks to them, undetectably by mundane means, in a dormant state. Enjoy.

Roll-playing in Japan: RoLW

I honestly still don't know why I arbitrarily decided to announce in that video that we are doing roll-playing week, but this should be the last day I torture myself for it; I probably won't get to a computer this weekend.
Anyways, amidst the dark ages of nerdotainment, there was the shining beacon that was a few booklets filled with children's drawings. AKA D&D. It made it's way to Japan first via fan translations. Some innovative geeks recorded their game sessions and actually managed to sell the transcripts, called リプレイ (replay). Things snowballed, and the group became a company, creating novels, anime, and their own RPG systems.

Record ofLodos War is the name of their saga, and you can see it in the video below.

The group is full old school D&D archetypes and cliches. See if you can spot the blatant Tiamat/Dragonlance ripoff shot. And the animation, with bad dubbing, is totally goobery old-school anime.

I first saw this anime as a teen, when TBS broadcast the episodes backwards. Needless to say, it's a lot better in intended order, and you can catch a playlist of many episodes here. But I hold no grudge against TBS; it is, in a rather convoluted way, the reason why I am in Japan. Maybe someday I will tell that story. But then again, I think I have said the proceeding sentence before... Old uncle Clay's brains don't work so well since he got zapped by Mordenkinen's Bad Blogging Curse in 84...