Saturday, April 20, 2013

New Room

New room, same sharehouse. The Before...
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And After...




I'm especially fond of the posters I found. Avril Lavigne rocks so much, and I've never seen a Ghibli poster in French before. Apparently my tastes have not changed significantly since college, as this still looks like a dorm room. Not a bad thing, though.

The major perks to this room: a door and a bed!!! (A certain person is very happy about this as well.)The wall is supposedly a bit thin upstairs, but I haven't had any trouble. There's a gap in the wall between rooms, though, from the days before this house had divided rooms upstairs. Solved the problem by buying a bunch of dust rags and jamming them into the gap.

Of all the rooms in the house, I think this one suits me the best. Oddly enough, it was the only other one vacant at the time I decided to switch rooms.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

Kanji




There's a mathematical precision to kanji that's a lot of fun. In math, if I try to understand exactly how an equation works right from the start, I just end up confused. However, after I become familiar with the process, the underlying logic slowly becomes clear.

For example, I memorized the multiplication tables long before I realized why the 9s table looks so funny. I guess knowing the answer gave me the chance to think about how I got the answer.

In math, there's a lot of techniques that you can combine like building blocks to solve a problem. An equation might seem long and complicated at first, but each step is actually simple once it becomes familiar.

However, the downside in both math and kanji is that you have to get every step right, or the whole thing turns out wrong. I'm still struggling with getting stuck in the middle of a seven stroke or thirteen stroke kanji, wondering what comes next, if I have to make a closed box or open box and so on.

Now complicated kanji don't look like just a mess of lines to me, even if it's a symbol I've never seen before. I see little chunks from other kanji and katakana I already know.

There's a picture of the character for "love" or "affection" above, just because it's cute. Actually, I've never written it, but from looking at it I can guess the stroke order.

--backslash like beginning katakana chi 
--katakana tsu
--short line for the left side of the roof
--left to right, make the top and remaining side
--underneath is a slightly squished version of "kokoro" or "heart"
--katakana ku
--slash left to right

People who are good with numbers must see the world in an interesting way. I wish I could do this with math.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

New Job



I can't take a picture of my new company, so here's a picture of Sakura. I don't know what this is. It looks like a Sakura willow tree to me.

So....This week I started a new job! Lol. I didn't blog about the job search because everything was up in the air for a long time. I really wanted to stay at Berlitz, but it was just getting too stressful. If I've learned anything, small companies are often run by crazy people and don't like paying you, while older companies will pay you but they have THEIR way of doing things and if you don't fit the company standards you'll get spat out.

Now I'm working at a start up company called ES Corporation. It does a lot of things. It sells English textbooks. It also creates a manga, sells scooters, and sells meat. I really have no idea. My responsibilities are mostly doing free talk classes online. A lot of bored housewives who want someone to chat with in English.

Everyone works in a big office room, which is very wide and has big windows. We're on the 14th floor, so there's an awesome view of Hiroshima. I miss being outside, but it's a nice place to work. Best of all, the I work in the Crystal Plaza Building, which is only 5 minutes from my sharehouse! Win! I start at 9:00, but I don't have to get up until 8:10 every morning.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

That moment when...

Your student spontaneously starts making a chart to teach you Japanese words and you think, "I have taught you well, my young padawan."