Learn Japanese @ Japancast.net

小鳥means “small bird” in Japanese. Yves Gelen, a motion graphics animator with Passion Pictures in Paris, created this animation for the Tokyo Mode Gakuen. Unfortunately it didn’t make it, but I still think it’s a clever animation with a unique look and sound.

As you can see, the entire animation was created with fabric and string.

Kotori

You can visit Yves Gelen’s website at: www.yvesgeleyn.com

As many of you know, I’m an animator. Mainly I do 3D animations, but occasionally I get to work on other projects like motion graphics for music videos. I found this video via a motion graphics website that I frequent.

The original Kokiriko Bushi is known as the oldest folk song in Japan. You can watch the original song being performed HERE.

I really like the 8-bit sound the artist has created in this video. It’s the Super Mario version of the song.

Warning: There are women in body suits in the video that make them appear to be naked – possibly NSFW!

Edit: The last one was taken offline – hopefully this version will stick around longer.

I know some of Creative’s webcams can do something like this – but this is the most realistic version I’ve ever seen.

Source: Anime Network – Anime News

Tags: anime

This week we’re taking on a subject that every beginner and traveler to Japan should know – TIME.

Japanese Lesson #65

See you in 2008! Thank you for all of your support.

Paul & Hitomi

Another Christmas season favorite of mine. Kimi no kiseki by Soulhead. Have a merry Christmas everyone! I hope ya’ll are ready to celebrate. Mitemasho, douzo:)

GkGcPTt-BcY

As I mentioned in my inaugural post, my goal with my contribution to this blog is to profile a year in Osaka and the surrounding Kansai area. To that end, I will wait until the new year to start talking about my travel and cultural experiences. But in the meantime, I’d like to talk about a few study aids that have helped me and that maybe can be helpful to you, too.

1.) 漢字そのまま楽引き辞典 (kanji sono mama rakubiki jiten)
The ability to quickly look up words is vital to the study of any language, but Japanese, with its thousands of characters, can be especially problematic. When I first started my year abroad in Chiba, I went to Yodobashi Camera and bought a Sharp electronic dictionary. Typing words in English was simple, as was looking up Japanese words in hiragana or katakana. But, what always gave me a headache was looking up unknown terms for which I had only the kanji to go by, for example: 辞書. Looking up the kanji usually involved two steps. The first was to count and enter the number of strokes in the radical. Determining the radical is a little difficult at first, but once you become more familiar with kanji, it’s fairly intuitive. In this case, the radical is the left half of the kanji, 舌, which has six strokes. Next, I had to enter the total number of strokes for the kanji which, here, is thirteen. After I put this information in, the dictionary displayed every kanji in its database with the radical in question and a stroke count of thirteen. If I was lucky, it would return only a few matching characters. If I was not so lucky, I had to go through more than a few screens before locating the correct one. Once I had finally found it, I would hit the enter button to be taken to that kanji’s page where I could see its various readings and other information. Unfortunately, the dictionary lacked the ability to input more than one kanji, so I had to rely on another button that displayed a list of common words featuring the kanji I had just looked up. Eventually, after scanning over a few, a dozen, or a few dozen words, I could usually find what I was looking for. If I then pressed the enter button the English definition would pop up. A lot of work, huh? And keep in mind this was all for one word! If I encountered several words I didn’t know in the same sentence, I could end up spending five minutes or longer just reading one sentence. And to make things worse, I would often forget the first word I’d looked up by the time I got to the end of the sentence. Needless to say, it was all a bit discouraging.

Then, last year, I discovered 漢字そのまま楽引き辞典. This program for the Nintendo DS has been without a doubt the most helpful tool to me personally in my study of Japanese. It employs the same Genius series of dictionaries that most electronic dictionaries use, but takes full advantage of the DS touch screen so that looking up kanji requires only a few seconds of your time. You simply write the kanji on the screen and the pages of the animated dictionary flip to the relevant entry. There are two side-by-side writing fields, and as soon as you write a new character, the other disappears to make room for you to enter yet another, should the word contain three or more characters. I can now breeze through sentences, taking minimal time away from my train of thought to find a definition. And if I do forget a word I just saw, I can hit the L and R buttons to cycle through recently displayed entries, which saves me the effort of re-writing it. I owe my recent surge in reading to this program, and it also has the added benefit of improving kanji retention, with all the writing practice you get inputting characters.

The only drawback to the majority of you is that this program is actually aimed at Japanese learners of English, rather than foreigners studying Japanese, and is sold only in Japan. So if you come to Japan, I highly recommend picking it up. But for those of you without immediate travel plans, the program is available through other channels. Since the dawn of the video game industry, there have been companies who thrive selling games exclusive to Japan. And since Nintendo DS games are universally compatible, anything purchased here will work on your machine. The program’s official site (http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/arjj/) is only in Japanese, but if you click on the first button (the one with the red arrow) you can see what the program looks like and even watch a demo video.

2.) Perapera-kun
While an efficient dictionary is a great tool for reading books, it’s less useful when you want to read webpages in Japanese, especially if you have a laptop. After all, no one wants to prop a DS up on their keyboard. For a long while I, like many other students of Japanese, was using Jim Breen’s online Japanese dictionary page. A simple copy and paste of any Japanese into the translation field would yield a list of definitions for all the words contained therein. While the definitions were always very good, and even translated slang and other obscure terms, the page wasn’t always perfect. Sometimes it would combine two kanji from successive terms into a single word and give you that definition instead. Sometimes it would fail to recognize conjugations. Still, it was faster than looking up the words one at a time elsewhere. But I always wished there was a way that I could simply hover my mouse cursor over a word and get a definition, bypassing all the terms I already knew and without needing a separate webpage. Then, my wish came true. I recently learned from a fellow JET about a plug-in for Firefox called Perapera-kun. Perapera-kun is actually a modified version of another plug-in called Rikai-chan. While the former slightly extends the functionality of the latter, and thus is my preferred choice, they both essentially perform the same job. When you toggle the plug-in on and hover your mouse cursor over a Japanese word, a little window pops up over the word, giving you the definition. Probably the greatest feature of the plug-in is its ability to recognize where a word begins and ends. Since there are no spaces between Japanese words, it can sometimes be difficult for programs (not to mention us!) to distinguish one word from the next. But, with Perapera-kun, it’s not a problem. I can now read newspaper articles and blogs in Japanese a lot quicker.

If you use Firefox and want to give Perapera-kun a try, follow this link to download the plug-in: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3343 Because this is a modified version of Rikai-chan which relies on the same dictionary plug-in, you have to download that plug-in for Perapera-kun to function. There are instructions on how to do so on the Perapera-kun page.

3.) Kanji Box
Now I’ve covered two really helpful ways to more quickly read Japanese by getting quick definitions. But an even faster way to read Japanese is to not have to look up words in the first place. And to do that, you need to build a large vocabulary. While I lucked out with the dictionary program on the Nintendo DS, I have yet to come across a good flash card program. I’ve tried a few programs geared at younger Japanese, and they have been helpful, but what I really want is a simple, straightforward set of flash cards, generated randomly and automatically, that I can use to quiz myself. Everyone learns differently; I am a very visual learner, and the more I see something, the better I retain it. A quick Google search will turn up a few hits, but one of the best I’ve found is a Facebook application called Kanji Box, which I only mention because seemingly everyone is on Facebook these days. Once you add the application, you can adjust it to your level, which runs the gamut from beginner to JLPT Level 1. You can run through drills and quizzes on hiragana and katakana, kanji and vocabulary and even tweak how questions and answers are displayed. The only downside is that the drills and quizzes don’t end after a set number, so if you find Kanji Box as addictive as I do, you can end up going at it for far longer than you intended! Also, because the application is dependent on an internet connection, it’s not as convenient for study-on-the-go as it would be were it a DS program – but that’s a minor complaint. http://apps.facebook.com/kanjibox/

(As a side note, if you want to cheat at the Kanji Box, simply run Perapera-kun while doing the vocab quiz and you can hover over the choices and get the right answer every time! Though, this ultimately that defeats the purpose of the flash cards, it’s fun to try!)

I hope this helps some of you in your Japanese studies. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. それじゃ、またな！

From AWN:

Tags: anime

Sugoi!

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. on Friday unveiled a new version of its egg-shaped Pivo concept car that can drive sideways and has a small robot to assist with navigation or calm down angry drivers.

Like its predecessor, which was unveiled two years ago, the new Pivo has a cabin able to revolve 360 degrees, eliminating the need to reverse.

A round-eyed robot head sitting on the dashboard has cameras that can tell when a driver is getting sleepy.

“You look tired. There’s a coffee shop 500 metres ahead on the left,” it told a driver with drooping eyelids during a recent demonstration

It can also nod or shake its head, helping to improve the mood of irate or glum drivers.

The car has “by-wire” technologies that use electric signals in the steering and braking.

Unlike the first Pivo, it has no axles. Instead it has four separate electric motors, allowing the wheels to turn further than a conventional car.

The Pivo 2 will be exhibited at the Tokyo Motor Show near the capital from October 27.

The article at yahoo

Konnichiwa minnasan! How’s your Christmas shopping going? I’m almost done. Just a few more things to get. Still need to mail out cards though. In the meantime, here’s some Christmas cheer for you. I found the romaji lyrics online.

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Kikazatta machi wa mou gensou sa
Tanjun demo waruku wa nai ne
Kimi ga hoshigatteta puresento shinobase takanaru mune
Ah hayaku, nee hayaku seiya ni naranai kana?

Hurry xmas yozora wo ubatte kyandoru ni honoou wo tomoshi
Itoshii hitomi ni hoshi wo ukabete
Amaku hajikeru gurasu e to sosoidara so sweet
Saa party no hajimari sa
Can music!

Yuki ga furi tsumoreba iinoni kotoshi mo furisou ni naine
Ikashita doresu kita kimisae itanara nanimo iranaisa
Ah nante, kirameku machijuu ni sumachita yume
Sekaijuu wo nuritsubushite

Hurry xmas yozora wo ubatte kyandoru ni honoou wo tomoshi
Itoshii hitomi ni hoshi wo ukabete
Amaku hajikeru gurasu e to sosoidara so sweet
Saa party no hajimari sa
Wow!

Yozora wo ubatte kyandoru ni honoou wo tomoshi
Puresento wa mada kakushite oite
Kira kira riisu to candy cake kazaritateta tree
Ano ko yorokonde kureru kana?

Xmas time has come to town (xmas time has come to town)
Xmas time for you and me (xmas time has come to town)
Xmas time has come to town (xmas time has come to town)

Seinaru yoru ni kuchizuke wo
Thank you Jesus

~I got the lyrics online from this link. Thank you to this link.~