So I’m on the train toward the capital of Sweden, about to try out another lifestyle.
Stockholm is, apart from where I usually live, actually a city. I would call it a city, it’s not a big city, but a city non the less. It has a subway and like, at least some people.
I’m gonna be working there mostly so it’s gonna be a tryout of an actual lifestyle of living and working there. It’s gonna be fun to see if I can like the city and if I can like the work as something I could consider doing as a career.
I’ll be staying there until school starts around the start of September and I’ll be blogging as usual, so we’ll just have to see how it works out! :)
July 28th,2009
Category | tags:
stockholm |
3 Comments
With learning Japanese that is.
I always feel I achieve more when I have a very clear goal as to what I am supposed to achieve. So I set up a goal for myself, and it’s quite a simple one (simply expressed, not simply achieved).
Pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test or JLPT next year.
The JLPT is a standardized test to measure how skilled one is at Japanese. There are four levels to this test where level 4 is the easiest.
To pass level 4 you need to know about 100 kanji (or Japanese signs for those who don’t know the word) and you need a vocabulary of about 800 words. You also need to know enough grammar to match the knowledge of what is found in the books “Japanese For Busy People I”, some chapters of “Japanese For Busy People II” and one chapter from “Japanese For Busy People III”. And it just so happens that I own the first book, which is a good start!
According to Wikipedia you need to study this much:
| Level |
Kanji |
Vocabulary |
Listening |
Hours of Study |
Pass Mark |
| 4 |
~100 (103) |
~800 (728) |
Beginner |
150 (estimated) |
60% |
| 3 |
~300 (284) |
~1,500 (1409) |
Basic |
300 (estimated) |
| 2 |
~1000 (1023) |
~6,000 (5035) |
Intermediate |
600 (estimated) |
| 1 |
~2000 (1926) |
~10,000 (8009) |
Advanced |
900 (estimated) |
70 |
So if I study one hour a day that means it will take 150 days or approximately 5 months.
Now one hour a day is a lot of time and I don’t even begin to fool myself into thinking I can keep that up. But on the other hand, the tests are usually at the end of the year which means I should have at least a full year to study.
I can do nothing more than try to keep an hour a day up, if I fail to do so I will fail the test and I will have failed myself. I really hope I can do it.
July 27th,2009 Uncategorized | tags:
japanese,
thoughts |
2 Comments
So there was actually one thing that I missed from Sweden, and that thing was candy.
The Japanese had quite a lot of candy, it’s not really that. But almost all their candy tasted very unnatural, it was all chemical tastes and the chocolate wasn’t really to my taste either, and of course you can’t really find real liquorice (you can’t find that in most of the world).
But the one thing I missed the most about Swedish candy was this:
Buying candy by the weight is something I rarely see outside of Sweden, but I love this! You can choose to buy as many pieces as you want from as many different kinds as you want and you only pay for how much all of the candy weighs. This is something I’m having a hard time seeing Japan take on because of their “fear” of unpackaged things and need for sterile cleanliness. But it’s really awesome because you can customize what you buy and you don’t need to buy a whole lot of packages of different things.
So it has come to an end, we’re at the hotel packed and ready to leave early tomorrow morning. What can I say, it has been a crazy ride. One month has gone by and we’ve seen loads of stuff, done loads of stuff and shopped loads of stuff (me at least).
It’s been a wonderful time and it leaves me longing for more. It leaves me longing for a more permanent stage of being able to go out to restaurants without loosing all your money, being able to actually physically buy a figure, being able to look for information or just see some cool magazines in a bookstore.
There’s so much I can do here that I simply can’t at home. It’s not possible because it doesn’t exist. Then there’s all the stuff I can do here that I can’t at home because it’s so much more expensive at home. The only thing I can do at home that I can’t do here is buy candy (I’ll write a post on this later from home to explain).
Regardless of all I said before about wanting to know more of Japanese life before deciding on whether or not to actually live here, leaving now feels like leaving home, I’m leaving so much behind.
But not to leave on a sad note — it’s been wonderful and there are some things I’m looking forward to at home, things that will be coming in the next couple of months.
As I place my butt on the plane for another 20-something hours of travel to go home, I will think about all of the wonderful things here and all the wonderful time I’ve spent with Emma here.
Once I’m home, I’m going to start sorting out the best pictures from this trip to produce a picture book, I will also be blogging a bit about stuff that I’ve thought about during the trip but forgot or didn’t have time to write about (unless I forget them again, in which case maybe I’ll write about them next time I’m here :P).
Life is almost about to turn back to normal and I hope I can keep the feeling of Japan with me, and that I can have the discipline to read my theory books on Japanese and start learning this beautiful language.
日本、またね。
I’ve always known about japanese figures and I’ve seen them a bunch of times. But most (read almost all) have some quite significant sexual tendencies, that is — they’re always half-naked.
The thing is that I’ve always thought people bought them for their half-nakedness and the sexual thing about them. But after reading a lot of Danny Choos’ blog about Japan and a bit of how figures play into the Otaku culture I’ve changed my mind.
So it kind of hit me and I’ve really come around to liking figures a lot — maybe not as much as Danny Choo or some other nerds around Akihabara, but I certainly am a nerd and as such it felt very wrong to go home without a proper figure in my bag!
So I went out today to find something cool and I think I hit the jackpot, cool and cheap!
50% off! Its a really good-sized high detail figure, so I’m really happy :)
Some images when it’s assembled:
And a final image with its proper base (which I think is supposed to look like snow or something) and the other clothes I got with it, plus the book and CD that I really haven’t checked what it is yet.
