Encouraging results

I’ve learned katakana in two hours while lying in bed, using digital flash cards freely downloaded in my PDA and the Harry Lorayne method of mnemonics. I encountered Lorayne back in college to help me memorize eng’g concepts. While it didn’t work out (memorizing eng’g concepts doesn’t mean you UNDERSTAND them), I developed a quick way of creating passwords. Farber’s glowing recommendation of Lorayne encouraged me to reemphasize his approach (unsurprisingly, I still remember it).

The program lists all 40+ katakana characters for me to memorize. I used associations. Afterwhich, quizzes were held to test my knowledge. My first try was 68/100. My second was 68/71. My third was 71/71.

The results are encouraging, especially since its my first time outside the roman alphabet. By the third test, I was naming the multiple choices and selected via processes of elimination.

I will now finish reading Farber and proceed with Hiragana. And I will try to find a kanji tutorial from the web.
Stay tuned.

———- 

5:25am

Holy Mother!

I’ve proceeded to kanji and I got 68/70 right the first time! I perfected it the second time. I can now  recognize the kanji for gold, ten, eye, and shellfish.
These are symbols without the phonetic version. I am on a roll here. And I don’t feel drained from using my brain, unlike with other taxing subjects.

———-

1:31pm

After proceeding to the second batch of kanji (I’m not even to the verbs and adjectives yet, hmmmm), I went back to the first lessons. My results dropped by 10%. Let’s see how I do with the sazme test after a week. 

The perils of terrorism

This whole British intelligence uncovering of a massive terrorist plot may put a damper in my own flight plans. All the extra security may prevent me from carrying onboard luggage and electronics.

Drat! I don’t even have the desire to declare an asymmetrical war on any nation!

Extended

The Japan Foundation has offered to set the return flight on a later date, the catch being I pay for my own expenses past the agreed-upon 6 days.

Whoopee! I’m counting on a friend of my friend to provide lodging for me over there, in exchange for menial labor. I got some ready disposable income courtesy of my Spoofs, Ltd. deal. I’m thinking 10 days overall would be sufficient to do everything I want to do there.

Language

I’ve started learning the japanese language in preparation for the trip. I’ve scheduled to remeet my first official japanese fan, Mariko, and her husband soon after she they return from her business in Gen. Santos City. I hope I can clear some final questions about the language then.

In the meantime, I’m downloading all sorts of tutorial to the language. There’s this pdf file called HOW T0 LEARN ANY LANGUAGE by Barry Farber that suggests a multiple-vector approach to learning. I’m already mastering the numbers [ichi, ni, san,…ju, sen] and days [nichiyobi, getsuyobi, kayobi…]. I’ve also downloaded digital flash cards to my palm “to make learning fun”.

After spending a week learning the basics, I plan to rewatch my collection of manga and Kurosawa vcds. Hopefully, I’ll recognize some of the words and pronunciation in context of actual conversation.

The payoff of all of this is how I make a monkey of myself in front of Tokyo residents come late October. Wish me luck!