合気道 – Aikido
I’m happy to say started training again in Aikido at 合気会本部道場 (Aikikai Hombu Dojo) in Shinjuku in late 2008. I had stopped training in Melbourne after only 3 months, which I will always regret. I started training once a week, but now train 3 or 4 times when possible. My classes are completely in Japanese, which is another plus.

• February – Completed my first semester of Beginners Course in Aikido Gakkou and passed my first grading, to become ４級 (4th Kyuu).
• April – Attended the annual Aiki-Jinja Festival in Iwama, where O’Sensei lived for most of his later life.
• May – participated in the 47th All Japan Aikido Demonstration at Nippon Budokan with my classmates from Beginners Course. I’m sure no-one watched us, but it sure was fun!
• August – Completed my second semester of Beginners Course in Aikido Gakkou, and passed my grading for ３級 (3th Kyuu).
• October – Began my first semester of Intermediate Course in Aikido Gakkou.
• Trained in the regular (i.e. non-beginners) class for my first time on Christmas Day – the last day of training for the year.
• Saw in the New Year with 越年稽古 (New Years Eve Practice) at the dojo.

日本語 – Japanese
I’ve been learning for a number of years, but I’m still intermediate level. I felt like I improved quite a bit in 2009.

• Read my first manga series completely in Japanese – デスノート　(Death Note).
• July – Passed 日本語能力試験２級 (JLPT Level 2).
• Began watching Japanese tv shows with Japanese subtitles. Depending on the show I understand anywhere from 50-90%.
• Sometimes at aikido training I forget the teacher is speaking in Japanese.
• Finally started to feel like I can speak a little. It’s still frustrating a lot of the time, speaking is definitely harder than listening and reading.

色々 – misc

• Unfortunately not much traveling around Japan, but there’s plenty to see and do in and around Tokyo.
• Finally bought a digital SLR – a Nikon D90
• Hired a dog for a day.
• Ran 10km for the Run for the Cure.

Holiday in Bali
Spent just over a week relaxing in Bali. The weather was amazing, 32 degrees and sunny every day. Thanks to Bron for finding such fantastic places to stay!

Became an uncle
Congratulations to Penny and Ken, who had their first baby, my nephew Keiran, on 2nd November.

My nephew Keiran Fretwell

The most common method of teaching Kanji relies on rote-memorization – the same method used by the majority of Japanese children. If you’re going to be immersed in a Japanese environment for 15 years or more, then I guess you’re going to remember them eventually, no matter how poor the method.

My Japanese teacher in Australia took another approach – just don’t teach Kanji at all! Suffice it to say that didn’t help much. I would find myself starting to recognize some simple common Kanji, but when I tried to write them I would only have a rough idea of the shape. And there are many Kanji that are very similar, often differing by only one stroke, so it’s very easy to mistake one Kanji for another.

The 2000 (or so) Kanji needed to be generally literate just seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.

Then I found Remembering the Kanji Volume 1 (RTK).

RTK was written by Dr James W. Heisig, based on techniques he used to learn Kanji himself. It gives you a systematic approach to learning how to remember, and write, 2042 Kanji (the JOYO kanji + a few extra useful kanji).

RTK1 uses a few techniques to make learning Kanji easier:

1. component analysis to break up the kanji into smaller pieces (divide and conquer).
2. learning the kanji in the order they are easiest to learn, rather than their frequency of use.
3. imaginative memory – linking the components together in a scene you picture in your head. This is the real key to the method.
4. flashcards to help you remember what you’ve learned. I’ll be writing more about this soon!

RTK isn’t without controversy – see here, here and here for some other views. The biggest issue for me is that you don’t learn how to say the Kanji – but that was not the aim of volume 1, it is covered in RTK volume 2.

Using the RTK method takes time and effort, just like anything else, and it may not be the right method for you, but I can honestly say it works for me when nothing else I’ve tried has.

The first part of the book is available for download on the publishers site, so you can give it a go and find out for yourself.

頑張ってね！ (Stick with it!)

アンドリュー
Before I went to Japan, I had always used “アンドリュー” for my name in Japanese. This is “andoryuu”, the closes pronounciation of “Andrew” in Japanese, written in katakana. This is a common practice, and something you will typically learn if you do a beginners course in Japanese.

Choosing a Kanji equivalent
When I got to Japan, my host mother explained that it might be possible to chose a Kanji equivalent, even for a western name. This is done by finding kanji that have readings that match the sounds of your name. For my name, that meant finding kanji for the sounds あん(an), ど(do), and りゅう(ryuu).

This is quite a difficult process. Each kanji has a core meaning, and one or more readings (typically one or two syllables). You will generally have a choice of kanji for each of the sounds in your name, although sounds common in western names may not have any kanji. There can even be more than one Kanji with the same meaning and sound. Some readings of a kanji may not be suitable for use in names, so it’s definitely best to get the help of a Japanese person for this! Take a look at Hanzi Smatter for some examples of people getting tattoos of Japanese/Chinese characters when they obviously have no idea what they mean!

In the end, if you’re lucky, you end up with a kanji name that has a “meaning” (really more of a connotation) that appeals to you.

家族が教えてくれた名前は
(The name my family taught me)

うれしい！素敵名前と思う。お母さん、ゆかちゃん、ありがとうございます！
(I’m happy! I think it’s a great name. Thankyou to Mum and Yuka!).

安努竜。
Andrew.

PS: A friend tells me that 安努竜 doesn’t make sense in Chinese (the last two kanji don’t mean anything). It’s better than it meaning something completely different!
Perhaps the other Kanji for dragon (龍) has the same meaning in Chinese?

PPS: As m1k3y noted, if you don’t have Japanese fonts installed all you see is a bunch of ???s. Here’s a picture of the name:

Total : 309/400 (77%)
When I signed up to take the exam I really thought I had no chance of even passing (60%), I just applied to provide a little more incentive to study. And even after my trip to Japan I only scored about 70% on a practise exam a few days before the actual exam (that last minute cramming paid off!).
So I’m very happy with the results

The break-down for the different parts of the exam:

Kanji and vocabulary : 65/100
I definitely expected this to be the hardest for me, learning new words is very hard (I seem to forget them as soon as I’ve heard them!) and Kanji is an absolute killer to learn (I keep putting it off). I’m quite happy this was actually over the pass-mark on it’s own!

Listening : 78/100
About the level I expected after taking the exam, my listening improved a huge amount from the 5 weeks I spent in Japan in Sep/Oct last year, so I thought this would be the easiest part. I think I could have actually done better at this, but I missed a couple of the questions because I tuned out a bit during the exam! With only one chance to hear each question you’ve really got to keep focused for this part of the exam.

Grammar : 166/200 (84%)
I’m pleasently surprised by this result. We do a lot of grammar in my Japanese class, so I thought I should do okay, but since we won’t finish all the Level 3 grammar until at least the end of this year I expected to have a bit more trouble!

Maybe my JLPT Level 3 Exam Preparation wasn’t as bad as I thought after all!

It looks like it has a number of things of interest to students of the Japanese language:

Beginners Lessons
12 lessons for complete beginners (currently only the first 4 are done).
Looks like you need to spend a bit of time getting confortable with hiragana and katakana first, which is intimidating but I think is definitely a good idea.

Dictionaries
General Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionaries, as well as dictionaries for kanji, names, particles, and even onomatopoeia.
These are (of course) based off the work of Jim Breen, who provides the excellent wwwjdic that I currently use.

Jouyou kanji lists
The 1945 standard kanji that Japanese are supposed to learn by the time they finish high school. The lists are broken into levels 1-6, plus general use, and the site allows you to customise the amount of information shown about each kanji (currently only level 1 allows customisation).

But the highlight of the site (at least for me)…

Grammar Book
An amazing Introduction to Japanese Syntax, Grammar and Language that’s 285 pages long, and must have taken a huge amount of effort to produce.
Based on the author’s study of Japanese at University, it looks like a very useful reference, especially for intermediate or advanced students. I’ll be using this to try to check and re-enforce my understanding of some of the tricky areas of the language (most of it really!). If only I knew enough English grammar to understand all the terms he uses!

You can download a pdf copy from the “books” section of the site, or read it online.

Well worth a look…

As always, がんばってね！

updated May 2007: as Pomax (the author of the site) notes, the onomatopoeia dictionary is his own work. I’ve also updated the online link to the grammar book.

The first step is to apply for the test (which is run only once a year in early December).
Applications must be made roughly between July and September, and are available from the host organisation in your country (see the link above for a list of host organisations). In Australia it’s Japan Seminar House.

The test is offered in 4 Levels, with Level 1 being the hardest and Level 4 being the easiest. You need choose the level when you apply for the test. The test guide (available with the application form) explains the expectations for each level, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The next step is plenty of study! But where to start?
Luckily, the requirements for the test are well-defined. In fact, you can even download lists of the required vocabulary and Kanji for free!
One excellent site for the JLPT resources (as well as general Japanese language resources) is the Meguro Language Center free downloads.

You can also get study guides specifically for the JLPT.

I highly recommend sitting a practice exam as the exam approaches.
The format of the exam is the same each year, and knowing what to expect makes the experience a whole lot less nerve-wracking.
For example, the Level 3 test is multiple choice, and consists of three parts, with the following weightings.

1. Kanji and vocabulary (25%)
2. Listening (25%)
3. Grammar (50%)

A practice exam can also help you identify areas that you may have missed in your study, particularly for the grammar section.

Previous exams, including the audio and the correct answers, should be available from a book store specialising in languages or Japanese.

Another option available for study is to attend a specialised JLPT preparation course.
So far I haven’t done this, but I imagine it would help a lot more for Level 1 or Level 2.

Finally after all the hard work, you get to sit the exam!
Oh, and you get to wait for the results – they don’t come out till some time in February!

がんばってね！

rikai.com is a great alternative that uses javascript to augment a site, displaying the readings and meanings of Kanji (including compounds, and some katakana words) when you mouse over the page. Just enter the URL into the box near the top of the page, and hit Go.

For example, given the following text:

the augmented version of this page will look like

Notes

• You can also enter Japanese text directly into the box for a translation.
• If you enter a URL, make sure it is the only thing in the box, otherwise it will be interpreted as text (see above point).
  This includes empty lines (i.e. don’t put in the link and press <Enter>)
• The augmented page has some advertising at the top
• It doesn’t seem to work when the URL contains japanese.
  For example, my blog entry こんにちは！ doesn’t work.

2年前から日本語をべんきょうしています。
私の日本語はまだ下手ですががんばています！
[For the last 2 years I've been studying Japanese.
My Japanese is still poor, but I'm sticking with it!]

Learning Japanese is great fun, but it’s definitely a challenge.

Superficially, everything is “backwards”. For example, the phrase “there is a cat on the desk” is translated as ”つくえ の 上 に 猫 が います”, which is literally “desk’s on cat there is”. It’s difficult to construct a sentence in this way, but after only a little practice understanding such a sentence isn’t hard. It’s quite amazing how the human brain can adapt to these patterns. Ironically, one of the things I enjoy about learning Japanese is that I also get to learn more about English grammar (perhaps it says something about the quality of the NZ & Australian education systems?). However, I think the biggest thing I’ve learnt is that I have absolutely no idea how I construct sentences in English!

Of course, I’m still at quite a basic level in my study of Japanese. I passed JLPT level 4 (the easiest level) last November, JLPT level 3 is probably a couple of years away. No doubt it’ll get a lot harder!

Then there’s the biggest hurdle to “learning” Japanese – the writing system. Kanji is enough to scare any sane person into giving up Japanese. For a bit of a a discussion of the background (and power?) of Kanji, Jonathon’s article is interesting.
Perhaps more on learning Kanji later.

PS: If my Japanese above is incorrect, please let me know!

PPS: I’ve got to say, one of the nice things about having a mac is the ease of entering Japanese. Like everything else on the mac, it “just works”, while at the same time being incredibly powerful