Linkstew

Oh, most excellent: Castlevania: White Night Concerto has been announced as coming out for the Game Boy Advance on June 6 in Japan, which means it'll probably follow here in the states within about 2-4 months.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was one of the first games I enjoyed on the Game Boy Advance when I got it, and the prospect of a follow-up is really exciting. If they just make the graphics a little brighter than CotM's while maintaining the Catlevania ambiance, they can't really go wrong with a new story built on the same basic engine.

Wow, this short but to the point article about the release of a Super Monkey Ball music single in Japan really left me in stitches. Notably, the subheadline (part of which I hijacked for the title of this post) and the final line of the article. Sheesh. Ei Ei Puh!

When most people (in California) visualize going from California to Japan or China, etc, they probably imagine going straight across the Pacific, thanks to confusion caused by the inaccuracies of projecting a sphere onto a flat map. I know better, though, and know that the quickest route from here to Japan winds up going up north through Alaska and the like. Take a piece of string and a globe and measure it if you don't believe me. And yet, when I envision traveling to Australia, I visualize getting there via Europe. I likely make this mistake because in my head, Australia is associated with Europe and not Asia based on the people that (I assume) live there. In reality, though, there are a fair number of Asians in Australia (as I recall from studying Australia in Geography last semester), Australia deals a lot with the local Asian countries economically, and it would be really, really stupid to go to Australia via Europe. For reference, apparently it's standard to get to Australia via New Zealand.

You have no idea how long I could talk about mental maps... It's a very fascinating topic. I'll dig up some links after I play a quick game of Mario Party 2, in anticipation of the impending release of Mario Party 3.

later: Wow, I actually won a game of Mario Party!

Anyway, this about.com article is a good a place as any to start reading about mental maps, and it has a few good links. Basically, Mental Maps are how the world is represented inside of the head of a person. Familiar places are perceived as closer, while unfamiliar places are perceived as more distant. People frequently put their home at the center of their mental map of the world, which might be a cause of confusion when traveling abroad. Sometimes orientations vary, sometimes things get grouped based on broad boundaries, and frequently, they're very distorted and wrong. Thinking about how people think is so entertaining!

I enrolled in Japanese 1A with the intention of actually learning a language, as opposed to the ability to parrot a language I practiced during my three years of high school spanish. I actually have an interest in Japanese on several counts, so of all the languages I had the freedom to choose from here at Berkeley, I picked one that interested me.

For the first six weeks or so, I was going a really good job. And then, suddenly, I found the workload buckling my resolve, and I soon switched my grading option to pass/no pass. You see, the class is a five unit class, which apparently means that it gets to monopolize my time. Between having the class every single day of the week, having a vocabulary quiz every monday, homework due every monday and wednesday, and a test of one of three forms every Friday, the class was non-stop. I wish it would have been a four unit course instead of a five unit course, because then it would have been a reasonable workload, instead of a ridiculous workload.

If I'd only been in 13 units instead of 17, the course would have probably been fulfilling, and I would have had a reasonable amount of time to devote to the class. Well, that and not having a job would have helped, but I like my job, so that'd never happen. So, thanks to a lack of time, I didn't give the class as much time as I should have, which meant for the whole second half of the semester, I was playing catch-up each week. And I wasn't even doing a very good job of playing catch-up. It was a good class with good content. I was the weak link in the learning process, not the class.

I'm not going to take Japanese 1B. Thanks to this class, I'm never, ever going to take a 5 unit class again if I can possibly avoid it. It was too much work for my lazy self. Instead, I'm going to use this class as a foundation for continued study of the language in my free time. The class gave taught me the two alphabets and the basic grammar, and gave me a place to start with Kanji.So from here, I'll grab myself a couple of simple manga and start hacking away with a dictionary in my spare time.

Partner wa nihon e ikimashta! Itchigatsu wa imashita. Argh!!!

That is to say, "My oral interview was very difficult! My partner has been to Japan! He spent a month there! Argh!!!" Of course, I was able to produce the above pretty easilly, but during the interview, when asked something or another, I had the hardest time actually producing. There was only one question I was totally unable to understand, though, so that's not bad, and overall, I'm not too worried about it, because it's over.

The problem was that, while I was expecting the sensei to grill me, instead, we were grilled in pairs. Which was bad for me, because while the girl I was studying in the hall with was about as good as me, and I wouldn't have looked so bad next to her, the guy I ended up being paired with had spent a month in japan, and I looked pretty bad next to him. Wargh!

But that's over, and all that's left now is the significantly easier written test on Thursday and Friday. Now I just have to learn a couple of hundred Kanji before Friday and I'm all set. No problem, right?

"I intend to study," that says. Really, I do. My Palm says that tomorrow at 11:40 I am to be at "254 Dwinelle, Japanese Hell." To translate, I've got my Japanese Oral Interview, and I really should be studying like crazy for it. But I'm not. I'm sitting here tinkering with my web page. "My oral interview is more than 12 hours away!" I tell myself, absolutely believing that the time I have is more than I'll need to do as good as I want to do. So I probably won't start studying for awhile yet. In the mean time, I'll probably play with the web a bit, have some dinner, relax, and maybe even play some of Pokemon Silver.

Remember, Procrastination manifests itself many forms.

I have Japanese tests every other friday, so I get my tests back every other monday. Last friday, I knew I did pretty bad on the test, and I would have been happy to do better than 30/50. That grade would have been fine by me, considering that I had just changed my grading option to Pass/No Pass instead of graded. So when I got my test back today with a 33.5/50 on it, I was pretty happy. Until I noticed the part that said "Come to office hours to discuss this test," at which point I got somewhat irritated with the situation.

In place of the Asian Studies course, I've decided to teach myself Japanese this semester. I picked up a couple of books, and Japanese Online has a decent looking lesson, and so hopefully I'll be semi-capable by the end of the semester. So much for taking a class later.

And finally, I've decided to teach myself Japanese. Why? I met a guy on an appointment a couple of days ago who taught himself Japanese.. He explained some of the basics to me, and it seems simple enough to do, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. I found a couple of good websites to help out, too. And since I'm actually motivated to learn Japanese, I might actually do it.

Unlike Spanglish... I mean Spanish.