Having fun with Japanese...

Another fresh posting up on THE SISTER BLOG today of the cafe and art gallery etw.

Checking google analytics the other day, I discovered that a lot of people were coming to this blog via the obscenely popular TOEIC BLITZ BLOG written by my old friend and colleague Masaya "The Messiah" Kanzaki. Masaya was kind enough to write a post about my blog, and recommend it as "interesting" and "probably good reading practice". Which was jolly nice of him. So I thought I'd do a bit of reading practice of my own and read his. Most of the entries (when he is not linking to English articles) are in Japanese, but they are mercifully short and not so difficult for someone of my reading ability. Anyway, in this piece 英語を楽しむ　or "Enjoy English", Masaya advises his readers to find something they can enjoy doing in English. For a lot of people this will be reading books or magazines of personal interest, or watching movies, or listening to and learning English songs (Masaya closes his post with a nice bit of The Specials). Whatever floats your boat basically, (yes Jules, even Adult Videos - so long as they have lots of dialogue). All very good advice because you remember more when you're having fun and are actively interested, than you do when you are thinking: "God, I hate this! How much longer will it take me to remember this stupid grammar? My brain hurts... etc". So I was thinking, I don't really study Japanese much any more, but what enjoyable things do I do that involve learning?

Well, I sit in my regular, sipping beer and chatting in Japanese to the other regulars and through those conversations I do learn a lot... But that could get expensive if I did it every night (まさか!)... Well, another thing I do is I read... Nothing too heavy or overwhelming, but something light and of interest. For instance, recently I've been working my way through the very excellent 京都:音楽空間 a guide to all the best music spots of Kyoto, whether they be bars (my regular is in there), or cafes, or live music venues, or record shops etc. It's great, because there's enough new vocabulary there for me to be challenged, and plenty of old vocabulary I need to review, but mostly because I want to read it so I do. Through reading this book I can find all kinds of interesting places and meet all kinds of new people that I would never encounter otherwise, which is basically the primary reason to learn a language really (though we sometimes tend to forget it). And of course, it's proving to be invaluable source material for my Deep Kyoto project too. Life's too short to be spending your free time suffering after all (that's what work is for) so have a bit of fun. Enjoy yourself.

It's getting late now, so I'll sign off but tomorrow I'll be doing something else I find an enjoyable method of study: translating the latest meditation at Hozouji Temple. Unless any of you want to have a crack at it first: