カナダじんです。

Today is my last day before my school starts up full time. Its always a balancing act to keep up with school work while still enjoying my hobbies, this is what is so awesome about summer break, I can work on my projects as much as I want. Most of what I worked on this year, like my fallout 3 mods and smrsimple, have already been mentioned here. Those were only my earlier projects though and during the later half of summer I got quite a bit done as well.

In websites I got two more done, Cameroncreekmining.ca and Japanesesimple.com. Cameroncreekmining is my father’s hobby company’s website and was a fun project. Not only did I get to impress my father but I also got to try out a new CMS, Concrete5, all while getting him away from his old website which had been built using some shovelware website builder. The neat thing about concrete5 is that it uses a in browser editor so that he can now edit the site anywhere he is without touching any html. Hopefully this will acutally get him to do so every so often. Japanesesimple.com is my personal project, I’m learning japanese and finding interesting things along the way so I thought I might as well share with others. In truth though I just really wanted to make another website and do so in a field I am interested in.My thought is to keep the subject matter simple and basic, allowing me an actual finish date.

Another area I have spent some time playing in is adwords, since my father has products to sell it would be silly for him not to advertise them. Another excellent excuse to do something fun and interesting.

First off I should mention that I red and am reviewing the 1984 edition of this book. No I didn’t find this at some used book store. Instead this book is a bit more of an heirloom. You see I am not the first one in my family to learn Japanese, both my Grandmother and Grandfather on my mother’s side learned a bit of it. This book was given to my grandfather for his birthday by one Mr. Suzuki, a retired engineer who for a period of time moved to my mother’s hometown in rural Alberta and taught Japanese as well as becoming friends with my grandfather.
At first I was a bit optimistic and expected something akin to Dr. Heisig’s work Remember the Kanji(RTK). While Len Walsh gets close his primary focus is on the character’s origin and how it was simplified from that, this is in contrast to RTK where primitive elements are the focus. Also unlike RTK, Read Japanese Today includes the readings. Since I have no intention to learn readings piece-meal I for the most part ignored them, had I not I see no way that someone would be able, as the book’s back claims, learn or even get through the book in “just a few hours” if they were to attempt to memorize ~500 random readings. Read Japanese Today appears to be trying to cover a bit of everything, including surnames. Quite a few surnames are included along with other words in a word list that comes ever so often after a new Kanji has been introduced.

One thing I did enjoy was the history provided, for instance Mr. Walsh mentions how some Kanji are undergoing a change at the time of printing, for instance ward(区) used to use the Kanji for goods(品) were as the modern version has a cross inside. In general he also gives other interesting facts such as why so many Japanese female names need in ko(子) or why ocean(洋) has a sheep in it.

I would actually not recommend this book to anyone seriously studying Japanese since there are so much better ways to learn what is covered in this book, ergo RTK+Sentences. With that said the student of Japanese is not really the target for this book, this piece of marketing reviles the truth well enough: “Make your stay in Japan more than just a superficial tour—READ JAPANESE TODAY!”(Source: Back of Read Japanese Today). With that in mind this book does what it was meant to, give the average tourist some basic knowledge of Japanese, an admirable goal. It may also find use as a tool to inform say a family member who is taking issue with your study or who just would like to know a bit more. One friend of our family has a son who is also planing to study Japanese and took note of this book after seeing it, the trivia aspect of it was her primary interest.

A very important part of having an effective Japanese environment is audio. If you have set it up right you should not be able to hide from it, ever. If you live in a small apartment this is not really a problem since you can simply use your computer’s speakers and you should be able to hear it throughout the house. But I ask you, is this really good enough? You like doing stuff with your computer right? I mean that is why you bought it correct? I hope that the "stuff" you are doing would be to the forwarding of your Japanese, even if it isn’t you will find yourself turning that music or audio off, by this I mean T.M. Revolution is great and all but it just does not mix that well with, say a Japanese Drama. Now here is the problem, your human, yes that is a really big issue and worst of all there is no cure, this means that you will forget to turn that audio back on. Of course you might remember some of the time, but why should you? We both already know your memory is not infallible; otherwise you would be able to look at a Japanese grammar book and then a Japanese vocabulary book and be done with Japanese since you would be a Japanese master, right?

Well we both know that it does not work like that and so you should not plan as if it did, don’t let risk become a factor in your success where it doesn’t have to, a proper Japanese environment is foolproof, so let’s see how we can make your audio exposure impossible to mess up.

Audio source
Unfortunately nothing is quite as versatile as a computer so you might have to make a bit of sacrifice in regards to audio variety. If your audio source was mp3s or CDs then you’re in luck since at most you might have to put up with a subset of your full library. If you were using streamed internet radio you will have to put up a fair bit of pocket change to get something stand alone that will do this. Streamed video is perhaps the hardest yet most rewarding due to thigns like keyhole TV and Livestation, don’t despair though, there is an, option covered later in this post.

Coverage
Chances are only one sound source will just not do it, if this is the case don’t worry you do not have to double your investment, just add an abstraction level.

Say you had an mp3 player plugged into something for constant charging and you had it playing music 24/7 through a set of speakers. An easy way to double the number of sound sources, speakers, would be to us a FM radio transmitter. You now would have an mp3 player plugged into something for constant charging with it playing music 24/7 and the audio jack going to a FM transmitter which is also plugged into for a power source, then you have a radio in your bedroom set to your radio station as well as one in your computer room . Done, I mean you have two sound sources now right, shouldn’t this be enough? Well, Ha! Enough is never enough, let’s see what it would take to add a third radio, Step one, turn on radio, Step two, tune to station, Step three, there is no step three.

Here lies one of the greatest parts of using a FM transmitter, not only is setup easy but your costs are silly low. Take a quick stock of your house, how many radios do you have? Chances are you have plenty, but if you don’t all you need to do is go down to your favorite big box retailer and buy the cheapest one they have. You don’t need any features other than FM reception and some speakers, no need for an audio in jack or CD player or iPod docking station.

Tools
I would expect that the average person would be able to create a single stand alone sound source, such as a CD player with a burned CD set to repeat, with things they already have. For the more complex systems you will likely have to invest in something, be that a FM transmitter, streaming internet radio or a mp3 capable of playing while charging (A feature sadly lacking on most if not all big name mp3 players, yet common on the cheap Chinese models). I suggest you look online for anything you need especially if you are getting an FM transmitter since this is one of those things stores love to make big money on.

The, option
Oh what would be a good metaphor for this, how about, kill an ant with a shotgun. Oh I see, you have no clue what I am talking about, well I expect as much seeing as how I have not mentioned, the, option yet. Ok so you see there is this option, it is a very, good, option and would allow you all the power of a computer and still be stand alone. This option the overkill option is, a computer, well not just any computer, a second computer. If you are a geek, chances are you have thought about making a home server a number of times, if you are not a geek this option might not be for you. If you do not have a second spare computer you can see about finding a cheap one from your local computer recycler, I would expect to pay around $80 to $150, a very reasonable price. Make sure whatever you get is actually capable of using the software you want, beyond that you can skip getting a monitor provided you are comfortable using remote desktop software such as VNC. If you are going to go this route there is quite a bit about it already written about home servers throughout the internet, a simple Google search will reveal what you need to know.

Inconclusion
No matter what option you go with the important thing is that you do use something. If you are not ready to go all the way start with the simplest thing, remember the goal is that Japanese always be present in your environment, there are no penalties for having multiple audio sources playing at once.