Hello out there!
It's Thursday and here I am with another blog, just like I said I would!
Amazing, isn't it?


Anyway, as I'm between classes today, I don't have that much time to write any long, detailed reviews of intensive learning websites. So instead, I'm going to offer up a website that's geared more towards intermediate and advanced learners of Japanese, but can also be utilized by beginners just starting out who want more practice.


The site is Lang-8, an international blogging community. What makes it different from sites like Blogger, LiveJournal, or even Facebook and Myspace is that you write your journals/blogs in the language you are studying, and native speakers of that language will graciously correct any mistakes you have, and will usually provide feedback as to why they corrected why they did. As gratitude, you yourself find blogs written in your own native language and correct those. By doing so you not only improve your language skills by putting it into contextual use, you also assist others from around the world in learning your own language. Talk about give-and-receive!

There's also a variety of forum boards. These forum boards are in the form of groups, much like those on Facebook or Myspace. You join in a group for the language you're studying or something you have interest in, and there's a group discussion board where you can talk to others outside of the normal blogging corrections.
The site in general seems to really emphasize communication between native speakers and learners of each language.

If you create a profile, there's a widget-looking thing that matches you with other users who are either native speakers of the language you are studying, or students of your native language. This makes it easy to find blogs to correct without having to dig around the site very much. There's also a section that shows recently posted blogs in your native language that would like corrections made, which once again makes it so you don't have to dig around much.

A neat feature for the corrections is the implementation of "thanks points" and "nice correction points". "Thanks points" are points that the original writer of the blog gives to each correction suggestion made in the comments. If it's a good correction, the more "thanks points" (up to five) the writer may give. If the correction isn't helpful or is wrong, the writer doesn't have to give any points. "Nice correction points" are points other correction givers give out to other corrections they see. Read a blog and found a correction comment similar to the one you were going to give it? Hit the "thumbs up" button to show the blog writer that this correction is dittoed! Both points also have their own rankings, so you can see who gives out the most thanks and has the best corrections for what ever language you're studying. There's also a "native nod" point, which I guess is a point that native speakers can give you to as a sign that your grammar and word usage is native-level or getting there. Sadly, the help section doesn't have an explanation for that type of point.

Overall, I think this site is a great tool for those who want their writing to become more native-like. It won't help you very much with conversing face-to-face, but it'll help you get written grammar, which is almost always more formal, down pretty good. Beginners and advanced students alike can put this site to good use if they are truly motivated to learn the language.

It's free, so why not give it a shot?
I'm writing my first entry there as soon as I post this. You can find me here.

Look at this!
Last week I said I would write another blog on either Thursday or Friday, and here I am writing one! Wow! Maybe I'm back into the swing of things.
We'll see how long this lasts.


Hubby has been messing around with the computer a bit, and I recently got a good deal on a digital SLR, so I have yet to really mess around with more pictures to put on deviantArt other than some test shots from my new camera. I really need to go through pictures to put up there. Maybe this weekend. Maybe not.


Anyway, back to the point of this particular post. Let's get cracking on a new Japanese learning webpage!




Today, I'll be reviewing Study Japanese.org. First impressions upon opening the main page is: Hey, this looks nice!
The front page is set up quite nicely without being too cluttered or too empty. Big image links to a flashcard review section, a forum and online lessons, as well as a "New here? Start here!" link for first time visitors. There's also handy lists right up front about new articles and latest forum posts. Currently in the center of the page there is an image link to an article about Tanabata, the star festival, that occurs at the beginning of July. I'm guessing this image link changes with the months or season to introduce and explain various seasonally festivals and cultural events.
There are a few advertisements for various books and resources on the right side of the screen, but they aren't intrusive like other sites have been. Overall, a very nicely set up front page.

I also just noticed the dictionary and kanji dictionary lookups that are above the advertisements. That's always a good feature to have. And it seems they appear on all pages so you don't have to constantly search and hit back to find them.

Clicking on their newbie link, Quickstart, gets you sent to a page with links on how to register to use the forums, how to get Japanese text support on your computer, where to begin in lessons, and the flashcard trainer thing. It also looks like the flashcards will remember your results if you register, which is a pretty good thing if you can't download the Anki flashcard program, which I talked about back in April. There's also a small intro letter from one of the creators of the site, encouraging users to have fun while learning at their own pace, and it mentions that if you register, you can even add in your own flashcards. This site is looking better and better.

The Japanese character support page is actually very helpful, giving instructions and links out to Japanese text support sites for just about every operating system, including a few different flavors of Linux. Usually, you're lucky if you get links to anything other than Windows.

Now, getting into the bowels of the site, let's take a gander at their first lesson, Greetings.
I must say, I really like how they have these lesson pages set up, especially if they are all set up like this. Right at the top you get a list of key topics, i.e. the goals of what you should be able to do/say when you've finished reading the lesson. They even split it into "content" and "grammar" so you know exactly what you'll be learning.
Next, they bring in a small sample dialogue that follows a brief introduction to the topic. I like the set up for this dialogue because it offers it in hiragana first, then romaji for pronunciation if you can't read the hiragana, then English translation. All three of those are then followed by a sound file of the dialogue being read out, which is great for both listening practice and trying to get your pronunciations down fluently. Even the vocabulary list under than has a sound file that reads out each word in the list at both native speed and slowed down so learners can practice saying them aloud and matching the pronunciation and intonations. There's also some brief usage notes for several of the vocab words, which are concise but easy to understand.
If all the dialogues in this particular lesson are set up like this, I don't think I will have a single complaint unless I find something blatantly wrong!


Continuing down the page, the second dialogue is set up in the same way, and give several explanations to translation issues and grammar usage in a very personal manner. Seriously, the word usage in the English explanations make it very comfortable to read. Nothing feels like it's dumbed down; nothing feels like the writers are trying to discourage you by talking over your head. It's like having a friend who knows you well explain it in a manner they think you'll understand. I like that.

Lastly, there is a small exercise on the bottom of the page to practice the grammar and vocab learned in the lesson. Very simple multiple-choice questions, but my one complaint is that the answers are right there. They don't even try to hide them further down the page, so it's very easy to sneak and peek and cheat if you're not completely motivated.
Before the lesson completely wraps up, there are some brief, but very important cultural notes about the handling of business cards. I completely recommend this small little second for anyone who will ever do any sort of business transaction with a Japanese company. Business cards are serious business in Japan. Seriously. Business cards are more serious business than the Internet could ever be. You should see the stack of business cards my job gave to me. Sadly, I don't go anywhere except for class and the office, so I never meet anyone to give them to. Mostly, my students want them.

I forgot to mention that after every dialogue there is a link to the corresponding flashcard drill, which if you ask me is absolutely awesome. I don't think I've ever seen a site yet that has had that. This site must have several major servers running to be able to offer flashcard drills for each dialogue/lesson, and customizable ones.

Lesson two, regarding the particle は "wa", is kind of disappointing, mainly for the fact that they do not include any of the sound files as they did with the first lesson. Still, it's a very well set-up lesson. I was at first hesitant as they translate は as "is" in the big image banner on top, but they explain it much better further down on the page, and introduce many grammar structures that build off of the simple "[topic]は[noun/adjective]です" grammar pattern.
However, they once again put the answers to the exercises directly under the questions. As a teacher, I find this to basically negate the reason for having the exercises in the first place. At least have them in white text or something so the learn has to actually use their brain for a while before they check to see what the answers are!
A neat thing this particular lesson offers is a downloadable crossword puzzle for the vocabulary learned in the first two lessons, with the answers in a separate file! There are also plenty of links to on-site references for those who need a bit more in-depth explanation of the grammar presented in the lesson.

Overall, after skimming a few more lessons, the site is put together very well and very professionally. While it does seem they pull some of their example dialogues straight from textbooks, they usually include an image of what textbook it came from so learners can reference that book if they would so like.


Skimming over the flashcard section, which how they have it set up is still a neat thing to me, I noticed that they have free flashcards for many of the most often used Japanese textbooks! That is actually really useful, because it means this site is an excellent resource for those learning Japanese at school and need extra study materials at home. They can use the flashcard program to supplement their own learning, which is always helpful. The flashcards on kanji radicals is also a neat thing to have, and I don't believe I've ever seen kanji radical flashcards anywhere. Most flashcard sites that offer kanji cards usually don't offer cards to learn the different radicals. Learning radicals is probably one of the most useful things you can pick up once you get further into the language *HINT HINT HINT* and these flashcards are awesome for it as they even tell you the pronunciation of the radical itself. I've had a hard time learning what the individual radicals themselves are called, so this is definitely going in my bookmark list back home.


On every single lesson page there is a link to the site's grammar reference page. The thing I love the best about this is it has everything grouped together in a way that one can easily go from one topic to another very smoothly. You don't have to jump around the page looking for related topics. Also, everyone should look at their word order page just for the top image. This is EXACTLY how my college Japanese teacher would explain word order. Then again, she was a 60+ year old, tiny Japanese lady with a life-size Yoda poster on the back of her office door. She also once taught a class explaining the connections Star Wars has with Japanese culture. Sadly, she taught that before I entered into the school, and despite petitions from practically every student in the Japanese department, I don't believe she ever taught the class again before she retired last year. But you could really get her to take up class time sometimes if you told her you didn't think Star Wars was at all related to Japanese culture.

The article page is a collection of links to other resources that don't really fit anywhere else, such as Japanese holidays, games, idioms, and slang. While not as useful as the rest of the site, there are some interesting things on there that may catch your fancy. I best most of you would be interested in the 200 slang expressions, though most are not what I would consider "slang", but rather "casual" Japanese. There's also a page with kanji for tattoos, but I would strongly suggest not getting a kanji tattoo until you at least pass the third or second level of the Japanese Language proficiency test just so you know the tattoo artist isn't screwing up the characters. There's also a useful article on 4-character idioms, which Japan has tons of. I actually need to study up on these, because they are a popular subject on the quiz shows I watch on TV. There are also links to suggested textbooks and dictionaries, including a downloadable kanji dictionary that actually would be pretty useful for intermediate and advanced learners who run into kanji every other word.

Overall, I think this is a WONDERFUL site. I will definitely have to register and try out the forums and chat to see if there's anything useful in there, since you can't even preview them without logging in.

If I had to give this a score out of 10, I'd say a 8, possibly a 9 depending on what the forums and chat turn out to be. The only thing bringing the score down are the few English typographical mistakes I've found. They fix those, and this might be the first page to get a 10!



As much as I'd like to write more, I must leave you all for class. I'll try to get in a post either Tuesday or Thursday next week, but no guarantees. It's a pretty busy week!

Greetings and salutations, to those of you who are still faithful enough to follow this blog.
As soon as I got into the habit of updating this almost weekly, I left you all high and dry without an update for almost a month.
I could once again blame it on life but...

You know? I will blame it on life. Life tends to get in the way of things we want to do, doesn't?

I'm not going to give any excuses or anything, but I will say that hopefully this month I can get at least three updates in. The first of which, being this one, is yet another photo blog! [cue unenthusiastic fanfare here]

But this isn't just any photo blog, this is a photo blog that can only happen once in seven years. This is a photo blog about Zenkouji Temple's Gokaicho festival.

Zenkouji's main branch is in Nagano City in Nagano Prefecture. I had the privilege of living within the temple "city" for three months while I was an exchange student in high school. My third host family through the Rotary Youth Exchange Program was a monk's family who owns a shukubo (visitor/pilgrim lodge), named Ryoushouin, directly west of the Niomon Gate. They're the fifth picture down on the left side of that page, and if you look at the map, they are the bottom-most one in the blue square.

The quick story behind Zenkouji is a man named Yoshimitsu Honda (本田善光) had a statue of a Buddhist triad jump onto his back from out of a river. The statue in question is supposedly the first ever Buddhist image to come to Japan, and was tossed into the river following a feud between two clans. The kanji for Yoshimitsu's first name can also be read as "Zenkou", which is why the temple is now named "Zenkouji".
As Zenkouji was built before Buddhism in Japan had split into different factions and sects, so the temple is presided over by both the Tendai and Jodo Shu sects of Buddhism. It is one of the last remaining pilgrimage sites in Japan, and historically is one of the few temples to have allowed female worshippers and pilgrims. There is also a story about how a non-believing old lady followed an ox, who had gotten some of her laundry stuck on his horns, to the temple and turned into a believer. If you walk around the temple gardens, you can see a statue of the ox.
The main temple in Nagano also has a kaidanmeguri (戒壇巡り) : a pitch black tunnel under the building where everyone is equal in the darkness, searching for the "key to enlightenment/paradise". Those who find this "key" are said to have their sins washed away and are guaranteed a place in nirvana.

Now, the weird thing about Zenkouji is the actual Buddhist statue that Yoshimitsu found is a "hidden Buddha". Literally, it must be kept out of sight from everyone, including the head priest and priestess. Supposedly it is locked up in a vault in the bowels of the Nara Museum. Every six or seven years they bring out a replica for worshippers and pilgrims to gaze upon for about two months. Then that replica is hidden away from view until the next festival, the Gokaicho.


Zenkouji has since spread around Japan, and there are well over 100 different branches. Many of the branches were started by warlords in the Sengoku Period, and the ones in Gifu were started by Oda Nobunaga, while the ones in Aichi were started by Tokugawa Ieyasu. We have a branch here in Gifu City by the large Inaba Shrine near the castle, and there is one in the nearby city of Seki.



The last Gokaicho was held in April and May of 2003, the year after I had been an exchange student. This year's Gokaicho had me really excited, as I was finally in the country for it, but due to time/money/flu panic, I was unable to head to Nagano's Zenkouji to witness the festivities. However, for the first time in Zenkouji's history, six temples across the nation held Gokaicho at the very same time, two of which were Gifu Zenkouji and Seki Zenkouji!

Gifu's Zenkouji is pretty small, only one building, so I decided that Seki's Zenkouji was were I wanted to be for this thing. Sadly, I didn't get any time to go until the last day of the festival, May 31st.

But man, did I pick a good day to go!

The weather was beautiful, and I got one of the last parking spots that was less than a 10 minute walk away. Considering the temple in Seki is much, much smaller than that of Nagano, there weren't nearly as many people as I had expected.
Seki's Zenkouji is relatively old, supposedly older than the current 300-year-old main hall in Nagano. There are five buildings: one that houses a Buddha sitting on what looks like a pineapple but is really a bunch of tiny Buddha images, two that house smaller Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, one that house a quite large statue of the Buddhist Triad, and the main hall. The main hall and the Buddhist Triad building are connected by a wooden corridor that houses a Binzuru statue (a physician that followed the Buddha and supposedly heals ailments if you touch where you hurt), and a series of statues that I guess are either the Gods of Fortune, or the Gods of Hell. I'm not sure which and no one would explain it to me. There is also a bell tower up on the mountain behind the two smaller buildings, where one may ring the bell for a donation of 100yen. The bell makes a lovely ring.

My husband and I were lucky to get there about and hour before the closing ceremony started, so we checked out their replica of the Buddhist Triad (which was tiny and hard to see), listened to a priest tell the story behind Gokaicho, and did Seki's kaidanmeguri. Seki Zenkouji is one of the few, if not the only, temples that has a kaidanmeguri tunnel in the shape of a manji, 卍. It has some really abrupt turns in the dark, and while most of the time you end up fumbling through the dark on your own, only to run your nose into the wall, they tied up a rope for people to follow, and had a small blue LED light over the "key" to make it easier. I thought it was a cop out, but then again I've done the kaidanmeguri there twice before, and at least five times in Nagano. I can tell you the differences between the two, but I won't go into that much detail. I already type too much as it is.

After getting out of the kaidanmeguri and grabbing a few pictures of the crowd and buildings, we headed up the hiking path past the bell, just to see what was up top. Not much, but it was a good hike. When we got down to the bottom again, it was time for the ending ceremony, a mochinage. I believed I talked about mochinage with the Tagata Shrine festival, but for those who missed it, a mochinage is where they pelt a crowd with lucky mochi rice cakes. Not wanting to get bulldozed by several scores of grannies and grandpas who'd rip the dentures out of their best friend over a lucky mochi cake, my husband and I took refuge on the staircase up to the bell tower. A family who was helping set up for the mochinage noticed me taking photos of the crowd, posed for a picture, and even sent their kindergarten-aged son over with a mochi cake just for us before the official mochinage started. Then the fun ensued.

I'll let the photos below speak for themselves.