Livemocha Reboot

Over a year ago, I found this awesome language site called Livemocha and signed up to take Italian and Japanese. Since then I've continued on and off (although more off than on) and have picked it up again this weekend.

I've now signed myself up for French and Swedish in addition to Italian and Japanese. Originally I thought French might be good to learn since I'd be able to practice with my friend Lan, who took it in college. However, after completing the first lesson I realize that it might just be too hard to do. I don't think my mouth and tongue can do what the French language is asking them to do. I mean, just how do you get those sounds to work at the back of your throat? I'll keep trying but at this point it's pretty hopeless.

I came upon Swedish kind of by accident. I was talking about Livemocha to a fellow JCCH volunteer yesterday and she said I should try a Germanic-based language like German, Swedish, Norwegian, etc. because this is what English is based on. I don't know if she's right or wrong about this, but I signed up for Swedish and am liking it so far. The sentence structure is similar to English (unlike Japanese). Plus the melodic way the words are pronounced sound kind of cool.

I don't know how much use I'll get out of learning Swedish as compared with something like French or Spanish (which I thought about taking as well). But I figure I'll probably get as much use out of Japanese as Swedish since both seem to be isolated to their own countries.

For now, I'll try to keep up with all four new languages and see how they go. At least I don't need to learn new alphabets for three out of the four of them. On the other hand, at least you pronounce all the sounds in Japanese. The other languages seem to use all these crazy diacritical marks that change the vowel sounds I'm familiar with into something totally different. Ack!

Enka Resurgence?

No matter what I do, I cannot reconcile this voice with this singer. It is completely mind blowing - in an extremely good way!



Jero, aka Jerome White Jr., is from Pittsburgh but is pretty much taking the enka world by storm. He was influenced by his late grandmother, a native Japanese who married an American serviceman during the war, and began singing enka at a very young age.



When you close your eyes, you're transported back to the '40s with this style of music. The fact that it's coming out of an African American man who is less than 30 years old is truly wonderful. It makes you realize that music and culture can definitely transgress time and space. I love that Jero remains true to his upbringing (in an urban American setting) through his clothing choices, yet he is still able to perform in the traditional manner for which Japan is famous.

JET Orientation

For weeks now I've been mumbling about this JET Programme thing and haven't really explained it much. Since I just went to this Q&A session tonight, I figured I might as well get into it now.

JET is basically a government-sponsored program that recruits English-speaking people to teach English in Japan. They connect applicants with schools, boards of education or prefectures that are looking to hire an assistant language teacher to help their English language teachers in the classroom. The contract is usually a year and you're able to renew up to about five years.

The application process is pretty extensive and used as a way to weed people out. After tonight's orientation, this fact has been confirmed. The essay portion is also an important part used to get through the masses. At the Q&A session, we had a brief intro to the program and watched a video with testimony as to how great the program and experience is.

We were also able to ask three former JETs about their experiences in Japan. Two were stationed in Okinawa and the other one was in Sendai. They didn't really enlighten me much as I've already done some initial research online. They were mostly positive about everything and encouraged us to apply. I guess you wouldn't really want anyone but cheerleaders talking to potential applicants though, right?

Some interesting facts I learned tonight: There were 81 complete applications from Hawaii to be an assistant langauge teacher (ALT). This position makes up over 90 percent of all applicants. There is another position called coordinator for international relations (CIR), but you really need to know your Japanese as you'll be working within the government. Of the 81 people, 48 were interviewed and 22 were selected to go to Japan. That's pretty stiff odds. About 60 percent of the total applicants got to the interview section and about 27 percent actually went.

At this point I'm neither encouraged nor discouraged to apply. I think I'll go ahead with it and see what happens. I really need to work on my essay since I haven't even started yet. I also need to update my resume so I can send it over to the people I have asked to write my letters of reference. You need two of those. I also need to research Japan a bit more and get a better feel of locations and where I'd like to be placed. The location request may or may not be given to you.

Children Full of Life

Most things you get via email are a bunch of crap, and that's not even counting all the spam. But, this email I received tonight is really worth passing on to others because I think we can all take a lesson from it and apply it to our daily lives.

The email contained links to a documentary called Children Full of Life. It followed the fourth grade class of Toshiro Kanamori at an elementary school in Kanazawa, Japan. It follows him throughout the year and highlights some tough life experiences that the kids face.

Unlike most teachers, Kanamori allows his students to dig deeper and encourages them to feel emotions from which most would shy away. He motivates his class to be compassionate and empathetic to one another but to also think independently. To do this, he has each child keep a notebook full of letters and each day students read from their notebook and share their thoughts with each other. The only rule is that the students write honestly and from their hearts.

While the children have only spent two years with Kanamori (3rd and 4th grade), they've confronted serious issues together, such as the death of family members and bullying. Kanamori's favorite word is bonding, and he hopes that by experiencing life together his students will be able to think of others before they think of themselves. He doesn't shelter them from life but helps them through difficult times without condescending to them. Sometimes it's hard to believe the kids are only 10 years old.

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Girl's Day aka Hina Matsuri

Today's Daily Dish blog was about the Japanese tradition of Girl's Day, which is celebrated on the third of March. In Japanese, it's called Hina Matsuri or Doll's Festival.

Cat put together a pretty good list of why she loves being a girl. I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring and make my own pro-girl list. And yes, some of my reasons will ring with anti-feminism, but I don't care. I'm enough of a feminist to admit when I'm being anti-feminist. Hahaha!

My Awesome List of the Perks of Being a Girl in 2009

• We'll always pull over to ask for directions because we're more verbal than visual. (Why waste time trying to figure out the map when someone can just as easily point you in the right direction?)
• The simple fact that we might like sports becomes a genuine plus in the dating game. If we actually do like sports, we become an instant winner.
• Guys are amazed when we can do simple things like drive a five-speed or change a tire. (It really doesn't take much to impress huh?)
• Most guys will hold a door open for us so we don't need to get germs on our hand. (Can you imagine how many people have touched that door handle before? Ick!)
• Most of the time we can get away with little to no heavy lifting of any kind.
• We don't sweat. We glisten. (LOL)
• No one will ever look at us weird when we baby talk to an infant or animal. (Except if we become a weird cat/dog lady who pushes her pet in a stroller. Now that is definitely weird.)
• Crying for no reason is acceptable behavior. So is yelling and screaming.
• No matter how much we advocate that women should go after what they want, we still love it when a guy tries to woo us.
• The gift of life (Ok, this is probably not for me but I'm sure it'd make other people's lists so I'm just putting it on here for the sake of putting it on here.)

Here's a vid - Mini Moni's "Hinamatsuri." Even this showcases one of the perks of being a girl. We can put out an idiotically cute vid like this and people will still walk away smiling.

Livemocha - The Java of Languages

I found a cool website called Livemocha that is half social networking and half language acquisition. Basically, it's a MySpace or Facebook for those trying to learn a foreign langauge.

Since my plan is to travel to Europe (Italy being highly favored) in 2010, I figured I'd try to learn some Italian. I'm sure I won't become an expert, but if I can get a couple of common phrases down I'm sure it'd help a great deal.

At the same time, I figured I might as well spruce up my Japanese as well. I mean, I took nihongo in high school and made it through Japanese 302 in college, but it's been a while since college and I haven't had to use any of it. At this point, I'd have to say that I've forgotten most of it.

So, the other day I signed up for beginning Italian and Japanese. The program is pretty interesting. And, the best part is that it's free. It's very interactive (other community members reply to your lessons) and there are parts of each lesson where you're asked to write or speak. I find this really helpful.

So far, so good. My suspicions about my deteriorating Japanese ability were confirmed. The worst part of all is that I can't read any of it. All the kanji look foreign. Also, since I've never taken any Latin-based languages, I'm learing Italian from scratch. It's a challenge but I'll keep at it and see if I can learn a thing or two.

Hola, Que Tal?

I've been meaning to learn another language for a long time, especially with all the resources you can find online these days. I took Japanese in high school and college and actually completed through Japanese 302 (quite a feat in my book), but not having used it since that last class and never having lived in Japan, all that I learned has slowly slipped away. Replacing that useful piece of linguistic knowledge are a bunch of pop culture do-dads that couldn't help me to save my life.

But, yesterday I was talking to a co-worker who speaks Spanish, English, French and Italian and I was inspired. So tonight I subscribed to Coffee Break Spanish on iTunes. The first podcast wasn't too bad, considering I've never studied any Latin languages before. We'll see how it goes though. I wanted to do Italian or French, but I thought Spanish might be a bit easier to start with. It seems to have the same rolling Rs that's in Japanese so I'll be able to pronouce at least that much. I also listened to one of the French podcasts but I think the rounded sounds will give me a problem before I even start, so I'd better save that for another time.

After just one podcast, I gotta say that the best part is that the instructor and the student both have Scottish accent. For some reason Scottish, Irish and British accents are just sexy (and I can totally understand them without learning a new language)!