I totally forgot about this, but last semester, a camera crew came to our Japanese class to film us for a promo for the East Asian Studies department at UAlbany. Here it finally is! My friends Letty and Spencer talk about learning Japanese and Chinese, and there are some clips from my class. Sadly, the only footage of me included is my hand writing down notes at about 1:05, but hey, I can say I was featured in a school video at least once in my life!

久しぶり、あまりウェブカムで写真を取らなかったね？これ、午前３時にモチベーションがない。明日ミッドタームがあり、まだ勉強していない。どうしようかな。。？ It’s been a while, I haven’t taken many webcam pics, eh? Here, it’s 3am and I’m lacking motivation. Tomorrow, I’ve got a midterm, yet I still haven’t studied. What should I do?
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久しぶり、あまりウェブカムで写真を取らなかったね？これ、午前３時にモチベーションがない。明日ミッドタームがあり、まだ勉強していない。どうしようかな。。？

It’s been a while, I haven’t taken many webcam pics, eh? Here, it’s 3am and I’m lacking motivation. Tomorrow, I’ve got a midterm, yet I still haven’t studied. What should I do?

Just finished my last reading assignment in my Japanese textbook…

Kinda bittersweet, I’m gonna miss these old Genki books. However, this one insanely long sentence just stood out to me… Why would something like this exist?!

文字だけは自分の気持ちが相手に分かってもらえないと思った時、「これは冗談ですよ、私がにこにこしながらこれを書いているのが分かりますか」と説明するのは大変ですが、顔文字を使えば、同じことがとても簡単に伝えられます。

In English, it kinda has to be broken up into multiple sentences to make sense grammatically, so I came up with:

If you thought your partner couldn’t understand the feelings you sent with only characters, it’s hard to explain, “This is a joke. I’m smiling while writing this, do you understand?” But, if you use face characters, the same thing can be conveyed much more easily.

My localization skills are still a little wonky. From our extra credit assignments on tests, in which we have to translate a short passage with a lot of kanji while using our dictionaries, I can usually understand what’s being said, but I have trouble conveying the actual message in properly spoken English. Something I need to work on. Anyway, just wanted to share this with people, and if anyone else has done this assignment in Genki, they can probably laugh at this as well. =)

I’m currently hiding in the bathroom from my mother like a three year old. Also, please note that while yes, I am sitting on the toilet, no, my pants are not down as I’m not actually using it. I do have standards. She’s going nuts right now on one of her usual cleaning rampages, as she prepares for our St. Patrick’s Day party on Saturday. It’s the first family party we’re throwing since moving into her boyfriend’s house. Current Vegas bets are at 10000:1 that at least one fight will break out Saturday. My mom hates to throw parties at our own house, because we’ve had bad luck every single time for as long as I’ve been alive: either a fight breaks out (New Year’s 1990? my father punched a hole through the wall), someone’s belligerently drunk (basically every party, but my grandmother at her 69th birthday party we threw her, in which she blacked out and puked; also, I was outed to everyone that day, whoo), or no one shows up (…every other party ever). My mother is one who definitely likes to keep up appearances, especially when it comes to the home. She can dress like a hot mess in ratty shirts and sweatpants every day, but her house must be OCD level spotless. So now that the house is relatively cleaned out from all the old shit that was here, and now we have all sorts of new fancy furniture, she’s going into overdrive trying to make everything clean and shiny. She likes to make problems out of nothing, so she’s certainly in her element right now. For example, we know that I don’t have a room in this house, right? I sleep on a futon in the living room; last night I actually had to sleep on the couch because the fucking dog was sleeping on the futon. Because I don’t have a room, I don’t have a place to put my shit, so I keep it in a corner of the living room, out of the way of shit. Of course, this isn’t good enough, because it’s in her way apparently, and she wants me to move it. Um..where? Ugh, so unnecessary. In light of my rage, I focused on getting some Japanese work done, and I was successful in that. Also, エバンさんと日本語でしゃべるのはもっと手伝っているの！ =)
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I’m currently hiding in the bathroom from my mother like a three year old. Also, please note that while yes, I am sitting on the toilet, no, my pants are not down as I’m not actually using it. I do have standards.

She’s going nuts right now on one of her usual cleaning rampages, as she prepares for our St. Patrick’s Day party on Saturday. It’s the first family party we’re throwing since moving into her boyfriend’s house. Current Vegas bets are at 10000:1 that at least one fight will break out Saturday. My mom hates to throw parties at our own house, because we’ve had bad luck every single time for as long as I’ve been alive: either a fight breaks out (New Year’s 1990? my father punched a hole through the wall), someone’s belligerently drunk (basically every party, but my grandmother at her 69th birthday party we threw her, in which she blacked out and puked; also, I was outed to everyone that day, whoo), or no one shows up (…every other party ever).

My mother is one who definitely likes to keep up appearances, especially when it comes to the home. She can dress like a hot mess in ratty shirts and sweatpants every day, but her house must be OCD level spotless. So now that the house is relatively cleaned out from all the old shit that was here, and now we have all sorts of new fancy furniture, she’s going into overdrive trying to make everything clean and shiny. She likes to make problems out of nothing, so she’s certainly in her element right now.

For example, we know that I don’t have a room in this house, right? I sleep on a futon in the living room; last night I actually had to sleep on the couch because the fucking dog was sleeping on the futon. Because I don’t have a room, I don’t have a place to put my shit, so I keep it in a corner of the living room, out of the way of shit. Of course, this isn’t good enough, because it’s in her way apparently, and she wants me to move it. Um..where? Ugh, so unnecessary.

In light of my rage, I focused on getting some Japanese work done, and I was successful in that. Also, エバンさんと日本語でしゃべるのはもっと手伝っているの！ =)

Doing the first assignment for my Japanese Research and Bibliographic Methods class…

You know, that class that’s being taught by the hot gay guy that I tried to flirt with last semester? Yeah, that one.

Anyway, this assignment is basically like a tour de force of little typing examples in English and Japanese, having us type different things in both languages in all sorts of ways. First thing on the list of things to do: an example of Japanese text with some English text mixed in. 

Me, being a smart ass, typed this:

“これは an example of 日本語と英語 mixed together.”

I mean, I couldn’t think of anything else. -_-

Just as I’m going crazy downloading all sorts of Japanese things to practice reading before the semester starts, Kaya-sensei finally comes through and sends out a list of sites she wants us to read.

Hey, only two weeks before classes start, it’s not like she told us she’d do this over a month ago. -_-

And now I’ve gone through the sites, I think my brain’s going to explode.　したくない〜

So, I’m listening to my mom’s boyfriend’s daughter speaking Turkish on her computer…

At first, I wanted to strangle her, because the language sounds gross. But now I’m kinda jealous… I assumed she was just talking to friends from Turkey that she met when she was studying abroad over Skype, but she told me she’s actually on ChatRoulette, using it to practice her speaking ability with random people. 

THAT’S FUCKING GENIUS!

Really thinking about doing that with Japanese now, because god knows I can always use the practice, though clearly her level of spoken Turkish is way above my spoken Japanese. -_-

So I finish my Japanese final…

Finished it second out of everyone, whoo, whatever. Hand in my extra credit translation to Kaya-sensei, and before I can say さようなら, she’s all, 「カストロさん、ちょっと待って。。。」and motions for me to follow her outside. I’m like, whaaat, did I fuck up that bad already?! She takes me outside to basically asks me if my Japanese is my major (I feel like she should know this by now after being my instructor for three, going onto a fourth semester now -_-), then proceeds to tell me that I need to study and read more Japanese over the break to prepare for next semester. Pretty sure she said something along the lines of 「読み方ができない」which means YOU CAN’T READ. Ugh, way harsh. I know I’m pretty shitty at these ridiculous extra credit translation reading things, but I haven’t gotten the sense that anyone’s really knocking them out of the park. But hey, whatever, she said she’d be posting links online for stuff to read over the break, so if it gives me something to do and helps me 上手になる my 日本語’s, I’m all for it.

Now, excuse me while I go sleep.

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