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Had my Chinese lesson this morning. It was very good. I was really concentrating on putting myself in the mindset of communicating in Chinese, rather than just trying to put everything into my head the way it is organised in English.

Thought about the film Raising the Red Lantern (大红灯笼高高挂 Dà Hóng Dēnglóng Gāogāo Guà) during the lesson. And the way the guy gets them all to extinguish the lanterns with the command in Chinese, something like, "Feng deng!" (btw probably the most Chinese Chinese film I've ever seen, and really good. Highly recommended.) Chinese can be like that sometimes though; "Here's five yuan" can be literally translated into English as “give you five yuan” (给你五块钱）So I think the guy in the movie was saying something like "out lanterns!"

Word for today

だらだら One of the many onomatopoeic words in the Japanese language. This one can mean to run on/down - as in tears sweat down your face, or, more usefully for me I think, to drag on. Today there was a meeting at work that dragged on and on. I wrote about it on the Lang-8 website and I learnt this word from a contributor.
問題がなかったのにみんなが話し続けてしまいました。
becomes: 問題がないのにみんな（だらだらと）話し続けてしまいました。

Getting in the zone

There's definitely a mood that you have to get into for language studying. A sort of zone - like a sprinter I suppose, or an artist painting a picture - when you're in the zone it's all so easy: words come readily into your head, recognizing kanji is like reading the alphabet, communication is just plain simple.

I think there are probably a number of factors that contribute to whether or not you are in the zone, but the obvious one for me is confidence. I've noticed that after particularly successful lessons, or conversations, my ability to study and absorb the language is heightened. It seems obvious to say, but after a bad lesson, or an occasion where you found you couldn't even utter a sentence, the motivation to study just isn't there at all - for me anyway.

What I want to do is try and find a way to place myself in the zone without having to wait for some fortuitous circumstance to put me there. Maybe a I need to start boiling potions or something. Try to find the elusive elixir of second language acquisition. My goodness, I'd probably make a fortune.

Daily routine

At the moment I have about four or five different memorization / flashcard tasks that I set myself to complete every day. These things don't take much thinking about, or motivation to do. They're kind of like the chores that I have to complete of an evening - like the washing up, only more frustrating/rewarding/annoying/interesting etc. Beyond that, at the moment I have these two books that I said to myself I'm going to get through. These take up more time, and are therefore taking a little bit more motivation before they get picked up.

Spring has arrived, so I'm inside

Decided to also take a systematic approach to a Chinese grammar book that I own, 中国語会話。The great thing about this book for me is that it's aimed at Japanese people, but the Chinese is at a fairly basic level; therefore, I get to review some Japanese as I study the Chinese grammar. My decision to go through this book came about after my Chinese lesson on Friday. The pronunciation, as everyone says, is very difficult, and it's clear to me that it's going to take a lot of practice to get anywhere near comfortable with it. To that end, I've decided to bring my study indoors. I've always liked to study in a local coffee shop or library, but to make progress with the Chinese pronunciation it really is necessary to get your toungue around it, so for the sake of my own fragile confidence and the well-being of other coffee shop-goers I think I'll be working on this one from home.

Fortunately, spring has finally arrived in Tokyo, and my apartment lends itself well to warm weather (i.e. in the winter it is a small prison cell; in the spring / summer I can open the large windows and enjoy the fresh air).

Emperor project

This is a project I've had in mind for a while now. I'd like to make some sort of record of all the main Chinese emperors. Chinese history is very interesting, and I find the emperors themselves, and all the ceremony, myths, legends, and intrigue related to them, fascinating. Quite often they were just figureheads and the people with real control of the empire often lurked in the background, controlling the emperor as they liked (often this would be a eunuch or dowager empress who planted a young, inexperienced emperor on the throne in order to take control themselves). On the other hand, some emperors were absolute tyrants, who commanded vast armies, and undertook massive construction products at great cost of life. My first choice falls into this category: Emperor Yang of the Sui. From what I read he has a pretty bad rep among historians, but was also responsible for some pretty impressive construction projects including completion of the Grand Canal, which was so vital to China's trade and commerce over the coming centuries.

I'll be placing them on a separate page, which can be found on the links to the right.

Good days and bad days

Yesterday was great. I had a really good lesson in the morning - lots of chat, used some grammar structures I hadn't used before. It was so good I found that for the rest of the day Japanese was just rattling around my head. I couldn't stop learning and practicing in my mind so much so that picking up a book to study was just effortless.

Today was completely different. We had a different teacher, and I think she must have been pretty new because it was hard work for the other student and I to figure out what we were supposed to be doing. Anyway, I haven't really been interested in studying much today.

Youtube videos

Watching videos on youtube in the target language is a good way to improve your skills. I think it's important to find interesting ones. This is one I found recently that I particularly like.

Latest idea

So my latest brainwave for getting over this barrier which I seem to have hit in my Japanese study is to make my way systematically through the Japanese grammar dictionary (どんな時どう使う） A more advanced student than I recommended doing this about a year or so ago, but the size of the book put me off a bit - and I don't think I was really ready at that point for such a commitment. Anyway, the book is big, and the prospect of making my way through every grammar point is daunting. However, I think it's got to be done for those moments in a conversation when you know what you want to say, you know the vocabulary you need to say it, but the damn grammar structure just isn't there. So, I'm going to give it a go. (I'm skipping the level 4 ones as I think I've got them down by now.)

So, over the last couple of days I've looked at:

ないことはない：kind of works like かもしれない
ところだ：I've known this construction for a while, but never use it.
おりに：First time to see this one. Think it works like 際　but perhaps more like an opportunity to do something, have to check on this. Also not sure how common this one is.

My only concern is how deeply you have to study these things to get them to stick. In the past I was all for writing out my own examples, but I've come to the conclusion that this is a bit of a waste of time, so I'm just going to study them, then put them into my Anki flashcard deck (an example sentence of each) to review at intervals later.

How long will this take me? Well, if I do all the level 2 and 3 grammar points, I'm looking at something like six months I reckon. That would take me to the JLPT test next December, which could work out nicely.

New blog; new course

New blog. First entry. Hoping to keep a record of my progress learning Chinese and Japanese. I realise that learning both is a bit of a tall order, but I started learning Japanese about three years ago then became really interested in China and Chinese about a year ago and decided that I wanted to learn Chinese. Can't bring myself to give up Japanese yet-- as I've spent far too much time and money up until now. So going to plough on with both and see what happens.

On holiday for the next few days so decided to take a few extra Japanese lessons during the break. First one was this morning. Going was a bit slow, but all good practice I guess.