Alright folks (well, Scott in his various incarnations), here's an update. Just to prove the world is still turning.

Progress on Japanese ground to a halt at Easter, and was falteringly resuscitated yesterday so I could take the first pat of the end-of-year exam. That went just about OK, though the brain has largely turned to mulch. One of the topics I talked about in the speaking section was 'My future plans for studying Japanese'. Difficult to put a positive spin on that. Basically, once I finish this year, Goldsmiths will have no more to offer (unless I retake the year, which perhaps would be a good idea); work and distance will probably weigh against going anywhere else for classes. So I may fall back on myself. Hmm.

Other things? Via an audiobook of Bashou, I discovered LibriVox and began to volunteer. (What a great project that is, very worthwhile and totally addictive!). English to start with, then moving towards Chinese, with:-

China and the Chinese, by Herbert Allen Giles
and
Three Hundred Tang Poems, Volume 1 (in Chinese) - a collaborative project, with currently three of us contributing readings.

I think it's fair to say that I would not have rediscovered the interest in Chinese if I hadn't taken on Japanese. The joy of actually being able to communicate in Chinese, sound authoritative, read classical poetry in the original...

So, in an odd way, there is progress after all.

先生 introduced us to the plain form of verbs and adjectives last week, prompting a review of the adjective layouts I'd set up a while a go but had stopped using. I also set up a button next to the 'adjective type' field, which displays the appropriate layout (i-adjective or na-adjective).

Here's an example of each:-

i adj mazui
na adj junchou

After a question from Heather, I took another look at the Furigana field option in Filemaker.  I thought it might be a useful way of finding the pronunciation of text written in kanji.

I set up a 'kanji' field, and an associated 'furigana' field.  Copy text into the kanji field, hit enter, and the hiragana appears in the furigana field.

(For some reason, though, the font for the 'furigana' field is automatically set to Helvetica, and this is locked by default.  To change the font, go to Layout, select the field, then as you select the Japanese font, hold down Alt-Apple.  That overrides the format lock. Then it works like a charm).

I used it 'in anger' this evening.  I came across the website of a translation company, that has a few pages of Japanese proverbs with kanji, romaji and translations, but I thought one of the romaji versions wasn't quite right.   



'Shitage' for 従え didn't look right. But the company e-mailed back to say the translator had confirmed it was correct.

So, 'furigana' field to the rescue. Here's what it gave me:-



I need a definitive answer from someone. But at least I know my instinct wasn't completely wrong.

FilemakerPro can store images in 'container fields', allowing you to store and display an image as part of a database record - for example, you can put a picture in a VOLATS record to illustrate the word in context.

Using Google Images, you can search for the Japanese word you want to illustrate. The result? A page (or several pages) of thumbnail images that have your word in the caption.

I searched for 鼻紙, and got this.

Choose the picture and caption that work best, use Grab or similar to copy them into an image file, then copy that into the container field in your database entry for that word.

A word I found earlier today, and would expect to have difficulty remembering - only having come across it once and not knowing whether it is commonly used - is 励む (はげむ) meaning to strive, to endeavour, to make an effort at something. Google Image gave me a great picture and caption, 'having a go at making pizza', which is now part of my VOLATS entry:-



Isn't that neat?

And if that's not proof enough, how about this?


(With thanks and congratulations to the proud parents, whoever they may be....)

Here's a fascinating article on learning words in pairs, by Rob Waring of Notre Dame Sheishin University. (Follow the links at the bottom of his article for more vocabulary resources).

The article begins with the shortcomings of 'list learning', then moves on to the advantages of 'pair learning' (learning words as a pair only - a foreign word and your mother tongue equivalent, or some other prompt such as a picture), and how to do that well. He describes a box system similar to the original VOLATS, whereby each word card moves back through the box as the learner becomes more familiar with it. A 'relearning schedule' illustrates the need for re-testing at increasing intervals.

So much in tune with the thinking behind VOLATS, Archie would have been delighted.

I particularly like his point that vocabulary learning works best when done in regular, small doses; and that the more you learn, the easier it becomes. Both very encouraging!

In a conversation with my daughter today, I remarked that you very seldom see people studying in public. I do it all the time, as I always have a Volats test with me if I go out walking or use public transport, such that it no longer feels like an odd thing to do. I was at Gatwick airport the other evening, to meet her and her friends who'd been skiing in la Clusaz, and it seemed noteworthy that I was the only person who seemed to be using that spare half hour in the arrivals area. There are hundreds of students living near us in New Cross, attending Goldsmiths College, but you still don't often see people studying in public. I don't know whether it's my imagination or my memory playing tricks with me, but I have this vision of young people walking around with bags full of books, or sitting on steps and benches reading Moliere or some such. Did that ever happen?

Anyway, I was wondering whether anyone promotes studying in public as a good thing to do. Is there a www.study-in-public.com? In a way, I suppose those of us who contribute to sites like this are probably doing that in our own fields...

So there I was, googling 'study in public', when I came across the following online resource, which I might not subscribe to:

learning-at-home.co.uk has a Japanese language module, 30 quid for a 10-12 hour CD-rom course. These screen shots are from the on-line preview:-






And -



Oh boy.

In their defence, each of these example words has an audio clip giving the pronunciation. Even so... Way to teach Japanese!

Kotoba is a very neat Mac application that displays vocabulary items in a desktop window - kanji, then kana, then English - in random order, from lists you import or set up yourself.



You can import ready-made vocab lists uploaded to the Kotoba website by other users, import your own lists from databases if you use them, and create or edit lists within Kotoba itself. You can keep separate lists if that suits you, or one that you bring all words into from various sources.

To test the application, I created a list of vocab from Japanese For Busy People Book 1, by exporting those particular items from my Volats database into a tab-delimited text file. (There are four fields available: kanji, kana, English and notes). Imported into Kotoba, it works brilliantly.

You set the time delay between the display of the three fields of one vocab item, and from one vocab item to the next. You can even have the Kotoba window sit in front of the active window on your desktop, appearing transparent so it doesn't get in your way.

Kotoba only 'tests' from Japanese to English, as the fields always appear in that order. In fact, it doesn't really test at all, but reminds you of the vocab. You don't enter your answer, there's no marking of correct answers, and there's no systematic ordering of the items as they appear from the list. The strength of it, though, is that it keeps the words ticking over, appearing in front of your eyes perhaps when you're doing something else.

To drill home once again the different verb forms and review all verbs I've learnt to date, I've printed out a set of tables, each having one group of verbs, to review one group per day.

Note that these are 'my' verbs, so don't expect the lists to be extensive.

五段 (Group 1) verbs come first:-

Day 1 - 五段 verbs ending in the vowel sound -au (10 verbs in this list)
Examples - あう／会う to meet; ならう／習う to learn
Formed in the pattern -au, -aimasu, -atte, -awanai
godan_au_verbs

Day 2 - 五段 verbs ending in the vowel sound -aru (16 verbs in this list)
Examples - ある to be, to have; おわる／終わる to finish
Formed in the pattern -aru, -arimasu, -atte, -aranai
godan_aru_verbs

Day 3 - 五段 verbs ending in the vowel sound -u (5 verbs in this list)
Examples - いう／言う to say; おもう／思う to think
Formed in the pattern -u, -imasu, -tte, -wanai
godan_u_verbs

Day 4 - 五段 verbs ending in -ku and -gu (20 verbs in this list)
Examples - かく／書く to write; およぐ／泳ぐ to swim
Formed in the pattern -ku, -kimasu, -ite, -kanai
Or, for -gu verbs: -gu, -gimasu, -ide, -ganai

Note the irregular いく／行く and the derived とまりにいく
godan_ku_gu_verbs

Day 5 - 五段 verbs ending in -su (8 verbs in this list)
Examples - はなす／話す to speak; けす／消す to turn off
Formed in the pattern -su, -shimasu, -shite, -sanai
godan_su_verbs

Day 6 - 五段 verbs ending in -tsu (3 verbs in this list)
Examples - まつ／待つ to wait; たつ／立つ to stand
Formed in the pattern -tsu, -chimasu, -tte, -tanai
godan_tsu_verbs

Day 7 - 五段 verbs ending in -bu (4 verbs in this list)
Examples - よぶ／呼ぶ to call; あそぶ／遊ぶ to play
Formed in the pattern -bu, -bimasu, -nde, -banai
godan_bu_verbs

Day 8 - 五段 verbs ending in -mu (8 verbs in this list)
Examples - よむ／読む to read; やすむ／休む to rest
Formed in the pattern -mu, -mimasu, -nde, -manai
godan_mu_verbs

Day 9 - 五段 verbs ending in -ru (19 verbs in this list)
Examples - かえる／帰る to return; はしる／走る to run
Formed in the pattern -ru, -rimasu, -tte, -ranai
godan_ru_verbs

Day 10 - By way of light relief, 一段 (Group 2) verbs (35 verbs in this list)
Take off the -ru, and add -masu, -te, and -nai. Why can't all verbs be this easy?
ichidan_verbs

Boy, it's tough at times just to keep things going. This is where going to class is such a benefit, as it gives an external momentum to my study. After a few weeks of revision, we're now ploughing merrily into Japanese for Busy People book 2, hitting new verb forms and sentence structures at an alarming rate.

Once again, other commitments made me miss two weeks of class (my daughter starring in the school play one week, and a trip to Brussels the next) - but in fact, those two classes were taken up by the end-of-term progress tests. This is an innovation brought in by the college this year, no doubt dismayed at how rubbish we were at the end of Year 1. Thankfully, 先生 e-mailed me the written papers to do at home, so I've not missed out.

The vocab from the text book is again feeding my Volats, but I have badly fallen out of the routine of running daily tests. Terrible terrible.

In my defence, m'lud, I've done other things over the past few months. F'rexample, I've been watching the drama series 花より男子 (はなよりだんご), which is good for a laugh. No subtitles, either. To be honest, I can't follow much of the dialogue, but it's the trying that counts, n'est-ce pas?

... to rekindle the enthusiasm. Mine arrived today, with "Goldsmiths University of London" emblazoned across the top, saying I've been awarded the 'Certificate in Foreign Language Proficiency - Japanese'.

Naughtily, there's no mention of the fact that it was in effect a beginner's course. So, very impressive, I thought.

Meanwhile, the Year 2 course began some weeks ago, but has been in danger of folding, as there are only just enough students to make the course viable. I've missed the class two weeks in a row, due to work, and just hope it's still there when I turn up next week.

The 1,500th Volats entry went in today:-

読み上げる • よみあげる • to read aloud

You'd think that'd be something we'd come across in class, wouldn't you? But no: just browsing the dictionary, looking for something else that wasn't there.

When entering verbs, I always set up a verb sheet too, so I have the various forms to hand:-

yomiageru

Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto was a real treat last night, and worked despite the apparent mis-match between Sakamoto's melodic piano and Noto's bass pulses and clicks. Somehow you're able to take the two in, accept each for what it is, and allow them to fuse into a surprisingly effective whole. Sakamoto kept the timing of the two parts deliberately separate, a chord falling just off-beat against Noto's dominant beats. The second encore was a slowly unfolding version of Forbidden Colours. Wonderful.

Took the Eurostar to Brussels and back today, taking 4 days'-worth of Volats test sheets with me. Walking through the crowded concourse of Waterloo this evening, Volats sheet in one hand, half the brain concentrating on not bumping into people, the other half fishing for the word なるほど..... The brain seems to work well this way, and it's a fine use of what would otherwise be lost time.

In response to a post in Japanese! Japanese! on sharing word lists, Pawel pointed me to the EDICT dictionary project. EDICT uses a standard format for dictionary entries, which would be one option to look at if we do go ahead.

To see how the format works in practice, I downloaded the Akane dictionary program (available from the Monash ftp site - scroll down to the Mac software).

Searching for ざっし, here's what I got:-



You can search by English word as well as Japanese.

If you search by a single kanji, it returns entries that include the same pronunciation as that kanji, whether or not they include the kanji itself. Search by a kanji compound, and it seems to work fine - perhaps depending on whether there are homophones of the compound.

Anyway, I like it. As you can see from the screen-shot, the related words would be useful as a way of expanding your vocabulary. 漫画雑誌 as a little bonus there.

Heather and I have been working on some materials that we could use in phone study sessions - us both being in need of practice, but not using the same course books. I've just posted draft versions of a couple of papers on my 'Files' page, one on describing people, the other on dates and days of the week. The idea is to make each paper fairly self-contained, so you can learn or refresh some vocabulary and so some exercises or play a game by way of practice.

Of course I've aimed them at my level - a beginner with a few months of study under his belt, but not above going back to basics.

These haven't been tested in battle yet, but Heather and I are both keen to do weekly skype sessions and will use them then.

All comments gratefully received.

What is it with me and databases? Probably a distraction to keep me away from actually learning Japanese....

Anyway, after musing on japanese!japanese! about the expanding spider's web of compounds, that grows with the addition of each new character, surprise surprise, off goes Barnes with his Lego-Meccano-StickleBricks database-making toy. Half an hour later, the wondrous kanji/compounds database. Probably a complete waste of time, but good for a laugh. And who knows...

You enter each character as a 'record' on one page. On a separate page, you enter compounds made from characters you've already entered.

Then, as if by magic, on the 'kanji' page there appear two lists that include the compounds that kanji features in - one where the kanji comes in the first position, one where it comes in the second.

One thing it's good for is making sense of the different pronunciations of the same character.

It remains to be seen whether the benefits outweigh the time needed to keep the thing updated.

Here's an example page:-




The number at the right of each compound (16 for each of those above) is the JLPT level of each of the two kanji multiplied together. So each of the compounds above comprises two 'level 4' kanji.

There's lots of thinking going on around how to share vocab lists, so that we could make lists available to other users of kenkyuukai.com (which is currently migrating to japanesejapanese.com), adding to or exchanging lists for particular activities or contexts.

We're exploring a couple of avenues:-

-- A common file format that people using different applications could both export to and import from (tab delineated files, for example - though we may need to agree the fields to use). I've put a test file on the 'Files' page for anyone to download and see if they can make use of. Please let me know by e-mail or comment whether you have any success.

-- An online database that we could all contribute to building. This could be a Filemaker file, hosted on a friendly server. The idea of people being able to upload or add to lists, for all to then use, is quite appealing. Technically, it's beyond me, but there are better brains than mine out there.

(15/10/05 - I've removed the 'word list' pages, convinced that HTML tables are not the way).

Until now, I've been able to ignore the implications of not knowing some items of vocab as thoroughly as I should. Now, though, the first words I put into Volats are coming to the end of monthly testing and moving into yearly testing; so if I'm not certain that I'll remember them, it's a bit risky to let them through this final barrier. With the old shoe-box system, you could take a dodgy word and bring it back to any random place in the box so that it would be tested more times before moving forward. (In fact, I remember sneakily doing that when I'd let too many days pass without testing myself and couldn't clear the backlog). With the database, you can easily do the same, by manually reducing the number of 'passes' for the item, thereby increasing the number of tests and the frequency of testing. But that feels a bit haphazard.

So I've developed three new buttons, and used one of them in anger on this very forgettable word:-



"70% happy" reduces the number of passes to 70% of the number you've actually recorded. This would return a monthly item to weekly testing, for example. "You work in the butcher's don't you? Give me a clue. Is it Harold?"

"30% happy" reduces the number of passes to 30%. This would return a monthly item to daily. "Ah yes, I'd have remembered you if you'd brought your sister along again."

"0% happy" returns the item to the very beginning of testing. "Look, I've seen you a few times, but wouldn't know you from Adam. Let's start over."

It's a while since I looked at Rosetta Stone Online, and it was a surprise to find my licence hasn't expired. Must put some serious time into this while I still can.

Picked a lesson at random, and found a new verb usage: ところです／でした after the dictionary form, meaning 'is/was about to'.

Here's a screen-shot:-



The other sentences about the horse would be:-

馬は飛び越えています and

馬は飛び越えました.

You listen to the sentence read at full speed, and can choose whether to to have the text in romaji, hiragana or kanji/hiragana. Your task is to pick the right picture to match the sentence, and you need your wits about you to get it right. I'm convinced this helps tune the ear in, and gets you picking up the grammatical subtleties. Very worthwhile.

Took a look at the Hiragana Times website yesterday, and signed up for their daily e-mail 'Hiragana Times Easy'. The first arrived this morning, a paragraph in hiragana, with a vocab list and links back to the site for a full English translation and a 'standard Japanese' (kanji and kana) version. It's a bit of a stretch for me, but a good source of vocabulary and not too much to digest in one day. I would have thought that anyone working at this level would have mastered some kanji, and found myself going to the standard version to look for verb roots. Having the English and standard versions available is a boon.

All in all, a good find.

Following a recommendation from Heather, I've taken a look at the wikibooks Japanese course. The kanji lists are good, in that they are structured around the levels defined in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. As with Wikipedia, the content is provided by ordinary bods like us, so there are gaps and no doubt the possibility of errors. If we all threw our best efforts at this, it would no doubt be very worthwhile - both for the result, and for the benefit we would gain from putting the effort in. So I had a go at adding examples to some of the kanji sheets, and picked up some new compounds in the process.

My favourite online resource for 漢字 is zhongwen.com, an online 'genealogy and dictionary' of Chinese characters. The content is vast, and you can click on any character within any of the compounds or genealogical tables, to go to the page for that character. I don't know if anything similar exists for Japanese.

I wouldn't expect to find language learning tips in a science fiction novel, but Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow has this, in a conversation between a whizz-bang linguist and the 'vulture' who has been tasked with replicating his approach:-

"Sometimes I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, songs of love for the present."

"I do the same thing. Have you noticed that lullabies nearly always use a lot of command form?"

So, thanks to Alice from Sarah's book club for that little nugget.

After which, I came across a site of Japanese songs specifically for people learning the language. They're graded by language level, and each song has the lyrics in either romaji or kanji/kana, a vocabulary list, an MP3 file and even a karaoke version in midi format. I looked at 春が来た, and liked the repetitiveness and stickiness of it.

Today was enrolment day at Goldsmiths, so I went in to sign up for Japanese 2.

Full of confidence, fair bouncing into the building, the memory of my solid exam result last year still fresh. Then in came Junko-san, the year 2 teacher, and hit me with the Japanese end of a conversation. Bam! She may as well have been Jonah Lomu flooring me head-on. I couldn't even give a coherent reply to お元気ですか.

Well, I suppose that's at least reminded me just how important these classes are for me. Vocab lists and films are all well and good, but they've not stopped the speaking bits of my brain from atrophying.

As I told Junko-san, I need classes!

... but it won't stop me leaping on a train to the NFT for their season of films by Masumura Yasuzo. What a feast of delights this looks to be.

... in London, with such a wealth of culture on our doorstep. My Events page looks pretty full, and I'm amazed at how new Japan-related events keep coming up. Last night I went to Sokurov's 'The Sun'. Issey Ogata's portrayal of Emperor Hirohito was spellbinding. And on Monday I'll be at RADA for a Noh-style version of Ibsen's The Doll's House. Not quite sure what to expect, but hey.


That seems pretty trivial and self-indulgent in the light of what others are going through. Not to get too mushy, but I was relieved to hear from the great Dr Gary Ramdeen, formerly of the Beijing Languages Institute and the China Medical University, now living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that he and his family are all fine.

Here he is in Beijing in 1982, with a taxi.

Working through the online annotated script for Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, I came across 止める pronounced やめる, meaning to stop or give up; the dictionary then gave another やめる, with the kanji 辞める, meaning to resign.

This then gives a 'family' of four related 'stop' words:-
とまる／止まる = to stop (intransitive)
とめる／止める = to stop (transitive)
やめる／止める = to stop or give up
やめる／辞める = to resign

Within the group there is one pair where the pronunciation determines whether the verb is transitive or intransitive; one pair with the same kanji but where pronunciation determines the meaning; and one pair with related meaning and the same pronunciation, but the kanji determines the meaning.

Many thanks to Heather for the pointer to Genius, a learning database that uses your performance to determine the frequency of testing of each word, and allows you to determine the speed at which new words are added. Genius is free, and there's a ready-made hiragana file here for starters.

While both Genius and VOLATS allow you to build your own database content in line with your own learning, Genius has the advantage of allowing the exchange of lists via tab-delineated files. I would like to be able to download lists into VOLATS, say for the next chapter of a text-book or another source. No doubt that would be doable in VOLATS, if I developed a standard format for the intermediary file - and if anyone else ever used VOLATS, of course. Not much point otherwise.

One downside of Genius is that the software itself determines whether your answer is correct. I like to enter phrases as well as single words, and often there are alternative answers which are equally valid. Also, you can only run a Genius test on a computer. With VOLATS, I print a daily test that I can take anywhere and use how I like; the test routine makes an assumption that I have got each answer right, and updates each item accordingly. You can over-ride that, for example by bringing a 'monthly' word back to 'weekly' if it's a bit shaky, or right back to the beginning again if you've completely forgotten it.

Another thing I like about VOLATS is that you can custom-design it as you go along, so it has far greater use than a simple flash-card system. It becomes your dictionary, for example.

Anyway, while browsing around Genius and its related links, I came across something called Supermemo. This is a Windows application that allows you to import chunks of text, such as articles from the internet, and to set question/answer pairs using key words or facts within the article. As with Genius and VOLATS, a key element is the interval between tests for each item. You build your own knowledge library and input new material at your own pace. This looks very smart indeed, and I particularly like the idea of the internet as a source of structured learning. We're too used to 'browsing' and 'surfing', and information seems to pass across our screens without sticking. But my home computer is an Apple, so Supermemo is not for me.

Over the past few days, I've been revisiting Japanese for Busy People I, making sure I've not missed out any vocab. Shockingly, there were lessons I'd only glanced at, and words I know would have helped me in the end-of-year exam if I'd been more thorough. They're now all in my VOLATS.

The Oxford Japanese Grammar & Verbs proved surprisingly interesting too. I've only ever browsed through it before, but it all makes a lot more sense now.

I've added some memo fields to my VOLATS, and have used in to mark verb pairs (e.g. 止める and 止まる) and 五段 verbs that look like 一段. I've put lists of these in the files section of the site, and will update them over time.

Mike Smeen got me thinking on the question of how to prioritise our study to get the most benefit, taking account of what we already know. That's such a huge question, which goes right to the heart of things. I can't stop thinking about it.

Is there a way of visually or mentally representing what we know and what we need to know, our skills and our weak areas? A map, or a set of gauges, or a matrix of some kind, that we can fill in for ourselves as we study, and that will help determine where to make the next push? There probably is, and anyone who has studied the psychology of education must be laughing their socks off right now. People who write textbooks and compile courses must surely think along these lines.

But our education is not in the hands of a faculty committee somewhere. Our brains are not theirs to mold like a standard glob of putty. We each have strengths and weaknesses, or create them as we make choices about how to use our time. So, how do we, as humble students, know what to do next and how to do it?

A couple of simple answers spring to mind:
-- Just do a bit of everything and you'll be OK;
-- Stop wasting time thinking about this nonsense, and just get on with it.

Both good answers, but somehow not satisfying.

This from Michael Cook's 'A Brief History of the Human Race', (p. 192 - Chinese Culture beyond the Imperial Frontiers):-

"There is no denying that Chinese influence went very deep - so deep that the basic Japanese number system today is made up of Chinese loan words."

For 'is made up of', substitute 'includes'. Which rather dilutes the point, doesn't it?

いち、に、さん etc. are borrowed from Chinese, but ひとつ、ふたつ、みっつ etc. are Japanese and are very much alive and kicking today. If I were Japanese, I'd resent the implication that we wouldn't even have numbers if it weren't for Chinese words.

My copy of 'Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text' arrived today, and it is everything the Amazon blurb promised.

The first section, Level One, has four stories from Souseki's 'Ten Nights of Dreams'; Level Two has Ryuunosuke's 'In a Grove' and 'The Nose'; Level Three has Ryuunosuke's 'Rashomon'. Each double-page spread has the Japanese text top-left, the English version top-right, and the 'zero omission dictionary' in the bottom half of the page. This includes all kanji and the 'more difficult' hiragana words in the text, in the order they appear in.

There are mini-biographies of the authors, and a preface to each story. On the website there is an mp3 file of each story to download.

For me, this is absolutely perfect. I've read a lot of Souseki in English, and can now plough my way through the original. What a great incentive to keep studying!

Another incentive arrived today - the result of my end-of-year exam, which was very satisfying. (Me? Smug??)

... knowing who to ask. And who should come to the rescue, but Kate from Kenkyuukai.

Here's what she has to say:-

"I think it sounds great! If it's got the dictionaries and sound files, what more could you ask for? I'd say that nothing is out of your league as such - I started reading japanese fiction (no notes to help, the real thing!) in my first year of studying. And it was horrible. I had to look up every third word, and even then I wasn't sure if they were right in the context. BUUUUUT, now, in my second year of studying I can read only checking my dictionary a couple of times a page, and its seems to have helped my spoken fluency as well - it seems to reinforce things I've heard but wasn't sure about reading. So yes! Definitely go for it!"

That's all the encouragement I need!

The psychic god that is Amazon.co.uk threw me an interesting recommendation today: Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text. My beginner's level Japanese wouldn't be up to the task, but I was sorely tempted. What's interesting is all the extra features for learners: vocabulary lists on each page, including all kanji words, and free download of audio files from the net.

This seems like a great resource. I'd like to hear from anyone who's used it.

For me, one of the rewards of learning Japanese is the thrill I get when I come across a word or phrase I recognise, whether it be in a film, in printed text somewhere, or a snippet of conversation. At this early stage in my learning, any new grammar and vocabulary is likely to be something that's in common use, so the rewards are pretty immediate. The idea of being able to read literature in the original language is really exciting, but it seems a long way off.

... just gets in the way, and all these good words about daily vocab tests just come to nothing.

On Friday evening on the way to pay a flying visit to some old classmates, one of whom is returning to Japan with his family, my car conked out on the M4. I had to walk to the nearest emergency phone to pinpoint exactly where I was, and as I walked past the crash barrier my trouser leg caught on a sharp edge and ripped right open. Picture me, sat on the grass verge beside the motorway, trousers flapping open, looking very much the loser. Not a good evening.

Although I didn't think this at the time, if I'd had that experience in Japan, it would have been a brilliant learning opportunity. I could have practiced some great swear words. Learnt how to get a long with the blokes who drive emergency recovery vehicles. Negotiated with the insurance company over where they would take the car to. Found a garage the next day.

As it was, I had to do all this in stupid old English. I didn't learn a darn thing. Except perhaps that tearing your trousers open in public is not a good idea.

A Chinese friend of mine said recently (I'm paraphrasing here): "What's so hard about learning Japanese? I could read a Japanese newspaper" - meaning that, with so many kanji to give us clues, well, it's a doddle to us Chinese speakers.

Well, up to a point.

I found a site today where you can test yourself on the kanji that are used most frequently in newspapers. Brilliant resource:- Japanese Newspaper Word Frequency List. The questions are multiple-choice, where you see the kanji and choose the meaning from 4 alternatives. For curious, I took the first test. The trouble is, I read the kanji aloud in my head, with Chinese pronunciation. So I know that 首相 means Prime Minister, but I pronounce it 'shouxiang' and have no idea what the Japanese pronunciation should be.

So yes, it's an unfair advantage compared to my class-mates, but still presents a problem. Doubly so, because I don't want to unlearn Chinese while learning Japanese. (Yeah, I know, you'd swap this problem for yours).

Still, I suppose it all adds to the joy and the challenge.

On the underground today, I saw a poster with the word 'bikeathon', and wondered what an ancient Greek would make of it. He'd probably struggle with our concept of marathon, and would need a bit of time with a bicycle before you'd even think of saying "Hey Xenophon, we've got this new Greek word you'll really love!"

I'm beginning to think that Katakana loan words work a bit like that, taking on a life of their own in Japanese and no longer really being English/German etc. Though I hesitate to say it (we're so darn PC here) but セハ is a good example. What English speaker would recognise that without help?

That title reminds me of a gaffe I made in my first days as a student in Beijing in 1981, when I walked into the campus bank and confidently announced I wanted to open a window - the word for 'window' (窗户 - chuanghu) being confusingly close to 'account' (帐户 zhanghu), at least to my young foreign brain. "Oh yes?" said the teller with a tired half-grin. Some time later, I went to the clinic with a fever: "I want to see some clothes", I said - 'clothes' (衣服 yifu) sounding like the love-child of two words for 'doctor' - 医生 (yisheng) and 大夫 (daifu).

I suppose the knack when learning a language is to ignore the risk of making this type of mistake, and just (in the words of Radio 4) 'go for it'.

Stuck here in London, sans Japanese family or environment, that's quite difficult to achieve. My 'all angles' strategy is perhaps partly a con. I think that by going to a concert of Japanese music, something will permeate into my brain, something of the lilt of Japanese even if not words. Or perhaps it's more of an encouragement and reward. I would almost certainly not have gone to the concert last night in LSO St Luke's (keep up, folks, it's been on my events page for like days already) if I'd not been looking for something Japanese to do - and I'd have missed a great event.

The koto player Etsuko Takezawa played a wonderful and varied set. I've never seen the koto played live before, and was entranced. The opening piece, Midare by Kengyo Yatsuhashi (1614-1685) was everything I could possibly hope for.

There was an interesting comparison with the Chinese 'guqin' (古琴), which I'd seen in the previous night's performance. The guqin has no bridge; notes are changed by pressing the string against the sound-board. Although the two instruments must have a common ancestry, the subtleties and flexibility of the koto seem greater.

Anyhow, that's where windows came from: that learning a language opens you to all kinds of experience, a different understanding of how things are. Even if we make fools of ourselves along the way.

I've just had a browse through the 'study aids' pages of www.jbox.com, which is a great way to stimulate ideas. I've bought a few things from there over the months:-

-- A couple of issues of Nihongo Journal (日本語ジャーナル), the sadly discontinued magazine for learners of Japanese. The content ranges from beginner to advanced level, with articles, tips, exercises and a CD. Back-copies are available from jbox.com and from the publisher's own site:- www.alc.co.jp.

-- A book called Catchy Japanese Phrases. If I wanted to know how to say: "I have a hangover", here's where I'd look. The book is divided into subject areas, such as Eating and Drinking, Greeting & Weather. Each phrase is printed in English (plus Chinese and Korean) on one side of the page, and Japanese (kana/kanji and romaji) on the back of the page. Thew pages are lined off into 3 sections. If you remove the pages from the book and cut them into 3, you have flash-cards. There's even a printed circle where you can punch a hole to keep the cards on a book ring. Sheer genius.

-- 'Pass the Test' headband (Zettai Goukaku Hachimaki) - Indispensable.

To friends whose ears I've bent over the past few months, enthusing about the joy of going back to the classroom to learn Japanese, I often seem to use the phrase: "attacking it from lots of angles". What I mean by that, is that the best approach to learning is one that is varied, using different sources, different contexts, a range of both the routine and the surprising.

I suppose what I'm trying to achieve with this site is to create for myself another angle, another way of structuring or codifying my studies, and an incentive to keep working at it. Who is to say whether there'll be anything of benefit to anyone else.