I’m in love with a new blog. It’s CMstyle.tv. What a fantastic blog!

Basically it shows you all the different advertisements that are currently going on in Japan right now. As I said before, Japan uses famous peoples to advertise their goodies. So check out CMstyle.tv to see what the wacky famous peoples are advertising now. Is it ache cream? No, it’s probably insurance.

I’ve talked about advertising before, in that post I talked about KFC a little bit. Below is a video, found on CMstyle, a video of Ayase Haruka that I would have liked to include in that post.

Actually one advertisement that I have been wanting to talk about for a while is the new LOTTE Fit’s advertisement. You can check out the CMstyle’s post. It has Sasaki Nozomi and Sato Takeru in it! You can also check out the official website for behind the scenes movies.

Related posts

• Advertising in Japan
• Traditional Christmas in Japan
• SMAP x SMAP – Mei-chan no Shitsuji Guests
• SMAP in Pocari Sweat

In all my schools there are probably only two kids that I would consider problem children. Which means I’m pretty lucky. And the two of them aren’t really problems at all. They are both in the same class, a grade 7 class. One just sits there and does nothing. At first I thought he would be a real class disrupter, but really all he does is sit there – he doesn’t stand up, he doesn’t do any work, he doesn’t even get his books out. So, he isn’t really a disturbing force.

The other boy. Oh, the other boy. I wish I could enforce a bit more discipline in the class, but it’s not my job… Let me say something about the teacher. I think she is a lovely person but a lousy teacher. She doesn’t know how to control the class. I can’t say I’m any better, I haven’t really been tested. But her classes are always a bit rowdy. She teachers at another school with a friend of mine and she says that the teacher is the same there – not in control of her class.

Never the less, this student is really disruptive. His name is Bob – he told me that once when I asked what his name was and he regrets it now because that’s what I call him. Yesterday he was particularly charming. He asked me, “do you like….?” What followed was a word that I knew was a bad word in Japanese -what else could it be? It also had the “nyuu” in there, like from “gyuunyuu” – milk – and also in the word for “breast cancer” etc, so I knew it was something to do with the breast area. I was hoping milk, but I knew it wasn’t. Or maybe it was?…

I said, “I don’t know.”
He turned to his friends, and said in Japanese, “she doesn’t know what it means.”
So I said, “What is that?” Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but hey, at least he was talking English.
“It’s..” he said, and made a really weird gesture… He put his hands to his chest and wriggled his fingers, like his nipples had tentacles. I’m still not really sure what he/it means, so I just said,
“Oh, I see. Do you like it?”
“Yes I do.”

Ah, good times. Interaction. Better than most of the time when he just talks about some random crap, I’m convinced he’s just rambling random words, interrupting the class with outbursts, or laughing at me like a bit of a psycho. Charming child.

Today he put some toilet paper over one lens of his glasses. and was yelling out “It stinks!” Over and over again. I asked him after class, “Did you fart?” Of course he didn’t understand, so he just started his loud psycho laugh.

Grade 2 (8) is much better. There are a couple of boys in class that make it fun without really being disruptive.

First they had a short test, which involved writing the present,past and um… tenses of some words. Such as ride, rode, riding. I was “helping” one boy. He really didn’t know anything, so I said, “ing is easy” and so he wrote down all the words in ing. Then I was helping him with the Japanese translation. I thought he would know “read” as I’m sure my students in six grade know that word, and they definitely learn it in grade 7. So I pointed to it. He didn’t know. I quickly mimicked reading a book. He and a couple of other boys laughed loud and were like “Thank you Carlie! You are so kind.” Later, after the test was over, I looked and saw he wrote “open”. Because I opened a book. Oh dear.

Then they had a 5min check of the previous lesson’s work. One of the words was “storm” and they had to translate it into Japanese – arashi. They were saying, “What’s the third word? Is it tornado?”

I said, “No, it’s storm.”
“Is it hurricane?”
“No. It’s Matsumoto Jun.”
Then they asked the teacher if they would get it correct if they wrote that on the test.

There is one boy who I like a lot because he is always saying “Carlie is so nice, right sensei?” He he. I give him A+

We did some new words in the text book but the boys were skipping ahead to the next page’s words such as “Garbage” and “Waste”.
One boy was saying “people are garbage” in Japanese, I turned to him and said in English, “You are garbage.” The class laughed (or were like, what did she say?) and the boy turned around to cry. He was only joking, of course. And the boy next to him was saying “You are waste.” While I guess “you are waste” is correct, I taught him “you are a waste” because that sounds a bit more natural to me. Ah, very educational. I thought perhaps I had gone too far, but the teacher turns around and said to me that I did a good job. Ha. Oh dear.

And thus, my adventures of entertaining myself in the classroom. I am a tape recorder at middle school, and my attempts thus far to get out of that status have not been successful. I find the boys very entertaining in class and the girls are fun out of class.

Related posts

• Traditional Christmas in Japan
• Spew Shoku!
• Soon To Be Invading Mie-ken
• I Miss My Grade 3ers!!
• A week or so in Japan

Yesterday was the graduation of the grade three students at middle school (9th year of schooling). And I didn’t get to be there Yes, I’m sad about that because I got to know my grade 3 students the best out of all of them – especially the girls who were a lot of fun.

Last week they had a fun goodbye party where the whole school played games. One of the competitions was for each group to draw a picture of the two home room teachers. The (badly taken picture – I know I don’t always have stunning photography here, but all the pictures were taken by a teacher and they are all bad ) photo below shows two of the better ones.

Another game was playing 2 seconds or so of a song, and the first team to say who sang it or the name gets a point. Every time something from Arashi played my Arashi partner in crime would run out to answer the question. It was great (May have to share more stories about my Arashi partner in crime. There is a hole in my world now that she is gone )

I didn’t get to go to the graduation ceremony, as I had to go to an elementary school. Today I was back at the middle school and it felt oddly (or, perhaps unoddly?) empty. I usually eat lunch with the third graders, and of course the table was empty. Instead I listened and half understood (I think) about when one of the teachers went to school (as a student) he took a huge bento box that was full of rice, other that was full of the rest of the food, and a smaller one for fruit. Man.

Today was also strange because the sun was shinning but we had three sun showers (which featured a bit of snow in there… and it wasn’t even that cold). Strange day.

So, I’m not sure how teachers do it every year. Thinking back, I was too excited to be moving on in school years to be caring much about what the teachers thought. I’m not sure I’m ready to be a mother because that calls for a greater amount of separation…

In other news, I’ve been sooo tired lately from bad sleep. Only starting to catch up this week, though I’m still tossing and turning a bit early morning. Is it because it is finally starting to warm up? Change in temp is the only thing I can think of. Hopefully I can write some better posts soon. For now, check out Eye on East Asia, a great blog because it linked to my Books for 10 Year Olds post and so it obviously has good taste.

Related posts

• Traditional Christmas in Japan
• Tales from Middle School in Japan
• Spew Shoku!
• Soon To Be Invading Mie-ken
• A week or so in Japan

Previously I’ve posted about Japanese children’s stories and also websites intended for Japanese children. At the time I was experimenting with children’s books but the experience ultimately left me a bit frustrated. The vocabulary (both content and the fact it was mostly hiragana) was difficult and the content was a bit juvenile (while stories about shrinking and flying on the back of a bug through a forest may sound interesting, for me I want to read more in depth stories where I get to know characters). And of course the fact that these stories are for five to seven year olds is a bit disheartening – they can read it but I can’t?? type feelings.

But don’t worry. There is something better out there! And easier. Yes, easier. Even though the books are intended for older children, I have found stories aimed at around 10 year olds (guessing from the age of the main characters being around 9 to 13 years old) are actually easier.

Why are they easier?

• More kanji, less hiragana. While you may not know many kanji, it is still ten times easier to read a book with kanji than without. The good thing is that all kanji in books for 10 year olds have furigana – the only kanji I’ve seen without furigana are numbers, and if you don’t know your numbers you probably can’t read the book anyway.
• Longer and more complex stories. How is this easier for you? Well, they take more time developing the characters and setting the scene. This is good because if you can only understand the book at a surface level it is easier to follow the story along. I found my books for younger children dove right into the “action”, things happened, and then it was over. Where are books for older children, you get more of an idea of setting, there is more dialogue (which I find easier than prose having been exposed to a lot of dramas) and the story is more enticing.
• More enjoyable. This goes with longer and more complex stories. I have never been one to enjoy short stories, with few exceptions, and I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that the same is true for Japanese stories.

Another great point is the start seems exceptionally easy because it deals with introductions. While the stories for younger children went right into the action, longer stories seem to start of with a self introduction of the main character, and then early on the character meets new characters which means more introductions. I don’t know about you, but self introductions was one of the first things I learnt in Japanese, and now I’m a pro at it. A self introduction scene in a drama is a scene I understand. Same with books. It is very encouraging opening up a book and understanding it at the start. It is better for your moral for something to start easy, giving you confidence to tackle the harder stuff.

Reading improved my English. I am a big reader and I know that I have a better grasp of grammar and punctuation than most (those who don’t read) even if I leave little evidence of that on my blog! I think that lots of reading will improve my Japanese. It’s harder to get into than dramas because with drams you have so much visual guide to help you. However, the advantages over books is you can go slower, look up unknown words and thus actually understand more than you do of the quick spoken dialogues in dramas. I am excited to finally be able to read REAL Japanese and hopefully soon I’ll be able to move up the age groups and into books without furigana, eventually onto books for adults.

Look out on my blog soon for tips and techniques to get into reading real novels so you can get into it faster than what I have. Learn from my mistakes (or at least, be able to evaluate what I went through and get some ideas on how you can adapt them for yourself!)

If you are interested in my other reading adventures, check out my manga reading adventures, and more specifically reading Hana Kimi

Related posts

• Reading Manga For Japanese Language Learning
• Learning Japanese Through Hana Kimi
• Going Gung-ho – November 2009
• Goals of 2010
• Books for Japanese Children

Two weeks ago I said I was working on my fitness. Well, how has the last two weeks been? Well… There has been improvement and there hasn’t been.

For starters I think I was getting really good with my food intake, but I’ve let it slip a little this week which is disappointing. All well, this week isn’t over… Let’s look at this first picture of my week of Feb the 8th.

I use Lose It, and ipod/phone app to record my progress.

You know, I’m pretty proud of this. See how my eating, even though it was over the line, it was fairly consistent and I know I was making smarter choices. I cut out eating a pack of chips after dinner, a bad habit I had gotten into, and also stopped drinking soft drinks with dinner. I know that I was making smarter choices.

The Saturday I was in Kobe and I did a poo load of walking, but also had the luxurious Kobe steak. Even though my calories were high that day (and I enjoyed an alcoholic beverage), I did underestimate the exercise, over estimated the food, and well, with a treat like Kobe steak, I don’t care at all.

Exercise was also pretty good that week. Apart from the walking I did on the Saturday, I also went ice skating, and did too cardio workouts at home.

On to the next week…

As you can see my eating was actually pretty good. One thing I don’t like is that school lunches are such a high calorie content, and I think eating such a big meal in the day has an effect on my mood levels and my energy levels, especially around 2-3pm. If I don’t have a class, I’m pretty tired, which is a shame because when I don’t have a class there is usually a lot of stuff that I want to get done.

I only did one aerobic activity that week, but I also did a lot of walking.

Forwards and Upwards…

The weather has gotten so much nicer these past two days. I want to start jogging again. I miss it (heh, me, saying that, who would have thought!) It hasn’t happened yet this week and I don’t know if it will (maybe the weekend will see it happen??) but next week is a new month, and, although I’ve felt myself slipping this past week, there is nothing like a new month to re-evaluate and get back to it, stronger than ever.

• So, let’s put some goals out there! During March I would like to get jogging/exercising three days a week (and I mean more than walking, like I have been, actual heart pumping stuff!) and bring that up to four days a week by the end.
• Continue to watch what I eat during March, continuing to bring in more healthy snacks and meals. I want to quit school lunches for new new school year in April, so let’s practise making healthy lunches!

You may be wondering what this has to do with my usual content – Japan and all that stuff. Well, in the future I hope to bring you some posts about losing weight in Japan, trying to eat healthy in Japan, and all about the myth that Japan is a healthy country with small serving sizes. Wrong Wrong Wrong!

As for some inspiration, however, I do have some. To be honest I like my white girl curves and don’t really aspire to have an Asian shaped body. That doesn’t mean I can’t admire Japanese girl’s beauty and long for pretty, girly, spring clothes! Fashion mags are my inspiration at the moment, I want to look good in time for summer so I can wear great clothes and feel good about myself. He’s a quick shot from Cam Cam – hopefully soon I’ll be showing some more pages from my favourite magazines so you too can see what the latest fashion is like in Japan!

Related posts

• Working On My Fitness
• Wendy’s Closes in Japan – Wont Be Missed
• Traditional Christmas in Japan
• Spew Shoku!
• Pungent Hamburgers at the Kansai Airport

Yesterday my grade 9 students were going through the photos on my phone and came across this one. “What’s this?” They asked. I replied, “I love Ikuta Toma!” This got them very very excited indeed. Which in turn got me very excited.

One of my students has already seen Ningen Shikkaku, or “No Longer Human” which is Toma’s latest (well, first) film. It has only just been released. I can’t wait to see it, even if I don’t understand a thing.

The movie is based on a novel by Dazai Osamu and is about someone who is troubled and feels like he can’t reveal his true self to others. He puts on a playful facade, while slowly travelling down a road of self destruction. It is said to be almost autobiographical of Dazai’s life.

To be honest it isn’t the type of story I am normally interested in, but I’m glad Ikuta is getting “serious” roles. I am looking forward to seeing this movie, hopefully next week!

As for this photo, it is of Ikuta Toma on the cover of all Dazai’s books. I actually want to buy the photo book for the movie but my book store (named “Happy Books”) didn’t have it I might order it off Amazon.

Here’s the 2 minute trailer:

Related posts

• Why books for 10 year olds are easier than books for 5 year olds
• Welcome to the Quiet Room – Movie Review and Caps
• Waterboys – Movie Review
• Want Cheap Japanese Books? Go to a Bookfest!
• Voice – Episode Two – Review and Caps

After a brief love affair with smart.fm (who look like they have actually improved a lot since I last used them – good to know for if/when I go back!), I’ve been back with anki a little while now.

One thing I haven’t done in a gazillion years is reviewing sentences. I think perhaps reviewing sentences has its merits but it has never worked for me. I am too focused on trying to remember unfamiliar vocabulary than the really pay attention to how the sentence is put together. In other words, I may remember the vocab and know how to read the sentence, but it doesn’t help me much with remembering/noticing what particle was used, for instance, or how to put the sentence together as a whole.

What it does do is take a lot of time.

OK, so it has never been promised that reviewing sentences in Anki passively would help with actively producing sentences (where I would need to know what particle goes there etc). However, reading and understanding sentences – I can do that by reading books. I can do that by reading manga. I can do that by reading websites, etc. I can even do that by reading textbooks. In other words, where was the source of the sentence? That’s where I can read it…

What is stopping me from reading it there? For me it is a lack of vocabulary. So, I need to work on vocab. Therefore, I review single words.

What are the advantages from reviewing sentences? Is it to check that you can understand a whole sentence, with each individual word in context? Sure. But… you can check that while you are reading the original source. If you don’t understand a sentence… why? Is it vocab? Is it grammar? Is it something else? That something is what you need to study, not all the extra information as well.

Simple Is Easy

Supermemo’s guide to formulating knowledge in learning is a great resource to look over when you are building your SRS deck. One point is that simple is easy. You learn faster with simple things because you only have to focus on one thing.

Another thing to think about is why Remembering the Kanji is such a popular method. It’s because it breaks learning the kanji down into baby steps. You learn how to write the kanji (with a simple idea of meaning) and nothing else. You then learn how to read and pronounce the kanji using other methods. By breaking down the process into small steps it is easier to climb the big mountain that is Japanese.

This is why I review vocab in my SRS.

Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Related posts

• How Should You Structure Your Flash Card Deck?
• Carlie’s Japanese Progress – March 2008
• Slogging Through The Kanji
• Reviving Remembering The Kanji
• New Season “Summer” 2008! Yay!

It’s the last week of winter! Yayayayyaayyay!

That is all.

Related posts

• Only two months!
• Japan Bloggers Conference – Bet you wish you were there
• Home Tour – My Japanese Apartment
• Gallery – Osaka 2008
• Almost Finished Uni…

There is a big difference in advertising in Japan vs. Australia.

In Australia the majority of advertisement is by (unknown) actors acting as “everyday” people. For instance, an advertisement for KFC in Australia will perhaps feature a family enjoying their meal, or to make the unhealthy content somehow appealing by calling it “fresh”.

In fact the majority of ads (mostly from America but then dubbed in Australian accents) are about your everyday person wowing over how great a product is, with the minority with a famous person recommending something.

In Japan, however, famous (Japanese people, but also Hollywood stars) people are everywhere advertising for everything. You can check out my SMAP in Pocari Sweat post as an example.

I want to do more posts on who is advertising what. Even in my small city/large town I see famous people everywhere – advertising glasses to chocolate. Here is Ayase Haruka, who was in Mr. Brain and Jin, advertising for KFC.

Sorry about the flash. I was quickly making my escape from a bad eating decision and wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. Hopefully I’ll have some nicer snap shots on my blog one day!

Oh, and while we are talking about advertisements, let me just say that I quite like the “Fog Bar” ones, and not for any kind of entertainment value or anything, just because they are pretty to look at…. (more fog bar to come!) Featuring the hotest boys in Japan, how can anyone look away?!?

Related posts

• Japanese Commercials
• Traditional Christmas in Japan
• SMAP in Pocari Sweat

Valentines day is different in Japan than it is in Australia. The main thing here is that on Vday girls give chocolate (if it’s hand made all the better) to a special someone. They also have a custom of giving it to male co-workers and the like, but to be honest I’m not all that clued up on the why and how of things. Where as in Australia I think Vday is a thing more for new couples or couples who are trying to bring back that spark, and often involves a card plus chocolate or teddy bears or flowers or necklaces (if there is lots that needs to be repaired in the relationship), and usually the giving is given by the man.

Never the less, what it usually doesn’t involve is a tree.

My JET friends, however, haven’t taken down their Christmas tree, so they decided to decorate it with stuff from the 100 yen store to make it into a valentines day tree!

Apparently the land lady saw the tree and talked to another Japanese person about how Americans celebrate V day by putting up a tree. That’s part of our job – to spread international understanding etc.

At my mountain school just before Vday I was doing a lesson on Shapes, and my JTE, who has great ideas but not very good English, came up with the idea of doing some origami. We made hearts and then she got the kids to write messages to me on them!

The thing is, when I was explaining about how the V day works in Australia, she misunderstood (actually, I think she had preconceived ideas about the day and just ran with it) and started talking about how you give cards etc to people who you want to say “thanks” to, by the sounds of it you can give V day things to anyone and everything. I just ran with it, it was easier.

But the message to me on a heart card was the sweetest idea ever and now I have about 15 hearts from my favourite school. I put up some on my wall – I put up the ones with the neatest handwriting and ones that just didn’t say the predictable “thanks for teaching me English”.

They are next to my mirror so I can feel the love as I brush my teeth. If you are interested in what my apartment looks like you can check out my home tour post.

カーリー先生へ
いつも、えいごをおしえて
くれありがとうごさい
ます
ANより

OK, a standard response, but the hearts were so sweet. This is from a grade 3 girl -there are actually only two grade three students and they share a class with the grade 2 students. This girl is so cute *heart* her!

カーリー先生へ
オーストラリヤはとおいのに、きてくれて
ありがとう。　またいっしょうにあそぼう
ね、いつまでも先生でいてくだ
さい。
まい
チョコ

Isn’t that just the cutest! And i’m fairly certain she misspelled Australia – オーストラリア　－ with a ヤ at the end. So cute! But true – the correct way to say my country of origin is “au-stray-li-ya”.

Dear Carlie
えいごをおしえてくれて
アリガトウ
ごさいます！
From Sora

This one is from a fourth grade student. Nice use of katakana there.

Sorry I took these in bad lighting… This one is also from a fourth grader.

Dear Carlie
これからも　べんきょうをおしえたくだ
さい！
From Maya

I like this one a lot!

Dear Carlie
サンキューべりマッチ
From Kayo

I like the use of English and the creative tale of the “y”. I like it beri macchi!

Speaking of valentines trees, it turns out they actually exist. This is what I saw in Kobe!

It seems you write your wish on a ribbon and tie it to the tree.

Does this by chance say the “backstreet boys”??!

And some Korean.

Well, there you have it, my vday post for this year…

If you like this post, please soc it at JapanSoc, a social bookmarking website for everything Japan related!

Related posts

• My Mountain School