I've finally started to get settled here. I've got my apartment, some furniture, a few dishes and my main appliances (refrigerator, washing machine, and microwave/oven/toaster). I've got running water and gas and electricity. Unfortunately I've yet to get internet, although that should be coming soon (I hope).
For a quick refresher, I'm studying computer science at Keio University's SFC campus; specifically media databases. I've always been very interested in Parallel and Distributed Computing, so any research topic I choose will have elements of that in it.
I am studying quite a bit of Japanese, although its all on my own right now. The Japanese classes at my campus are too low level, and I'd have to commute 90 minutes on my only free weekday to my school's Mita campus in order to get in a higher level class.
Right now I'm studying Japanese through a couple of different methods. I'm still working on memorizing transitive and intransitive verb pairs. I've started using a website called "Quizlet". I tried it out a while ago and thought it had potential, but in these last few months it feels like it's matured enough that I can use it on a frequent basis. It's essentially a free flash card website with some "social networking" built in. People can share their sets with others, as well as compete in games and so forth. The transitive/intransitive set that I've put together and am studying right now is JIM: Transitive - Intransitive. I'll continue to add vocabulary to it and create other sets as well. One annoying problem with using flash cards to memorize words is that some words have very similar or identical meanings. Sometimes there are small nuances in meaning which I can add to the flashcard to help differentiate, but its a very difficult process (especially since I may not know the nuances). For instance, one verb I'm trying to learn is "あらわす" (arawasu) which means "to show". In this case, the meaning is more like "to reveal" or "to express" according to the online dictionaries I've looked at. The problem is that I learned that "みせる" (miseru) means "to show" a long time ago. I keep inputting みせる and getting marked as incorrect on the website :/ (old habits die hard I guess)
Additionally, I'm reading an online Japanese newspaper (AsaGaku) while using the Perapera-kun Firefox plugin. There are probably better newspapers out there (this one seems related to teaching Japanese to Japanese children. I found it while trying to find a Japanese children's newspaper), but this newspaper has plenty of vocabulary for me to study. I have a large vocabulary that isn't linked to kanji in my mind, so I find that as I am trying to read the newspaper by mousing over each word using the Perapera-kun plugin, I find vocabulary which I know in hiragana but not through kanji. I've already started recognizing words in everyday life on signs and posters whose kanji I've learned through the aforementioned online newspaper reading method.
If anyone can point me towards some easier online reading material written in Japanese (maybe some that has been written with children in mind) that would be much appreciated :)
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
First week in Japan
On September 16th I finally arrived in Japan. I flew on Northwest Airlines direct from Seattle to the Tokyo-Narita Airport (10.75 hours). It was the first time I've ever been on an airplane that had a power plug under my seat (for which I was very grateful). The fare was very reasonable as well, only costing about $700 for the one-way ticket.
My plan was to take a taxi from the airport to Keio's SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus), however my sense of scale based on looking at maps was way off. I had completely underestimated the distances involved. I ended up taking a bus to the Fujisawa station, and then taking a taxi from there to the SFC. The bus ride lasted about 2 hours, and the taxi was another 20 minutes. It cost about 4000 yen for the bus ride and another 3000 yen for the taxi drive. I touched down at about 2pm in Japan, and finally made it to the campus around 5:30pm.
I arrived at the campus and finally met with the two people with whom I'd been communicating the most. One was a woman who worked in the school's administration office, and the other was the secretary of my research lab. After getting my luggage situated in the campus's Guest House where I would be staying until finding an apartment of my own (for $35/night), I went to the research lab that I'd be spending a lot of my time in (and am currently writing this entry now). None of the students or professors were there because of a conference, so it was just the two of us at that point.
From then we began discussing apartments, and we made several calls to go see them on Friday. We ended up seeing four apartments together on Friday, and then my professor and I looked at a fifth one. Three of them were very conveniently located, but extremely old (20+ years). One of them was pretty nice, but less convenient. They ranged from about 45,000 yen to 65,000 yen a month. Each one had different amounts of initial payments, insurance, and furniture rental costs. None of them offered a bed/futon in the rental packages, so that's another hurdle I'll have to overcome down the road.
I'm trying to find a place to live near Shonandai Station. There are many buses that go from there to the SFC, and back again. There is another station called Tsujido Station near which there was another apartment we looked at. That station also has buses that travel to and from SFC. Unfortunately it took about 40 minutes to travel to that apartment (25 of which was spent on bus), which is just too long of a commute for me (The commute to Shonandai Station takes 10-15 minutes).
My plan was to take a taxi from the airport to Keio's SFC (Shonan Fujisawa Campus), however my sense of scale based on looking at maps was way off. I had completely underestimated the distances involved. I ended up taking a bus to the Fujisawa station, and then taking a taxi from there to the SFC. The bus ride lasted about 2 hours, and the taxi was another 20 minutes. It cost about 4000 yen for the bus ride and another 3000 yen for the taxi drive. I touched down at about 2pm in Japan, and finally made it to the campus around 5:30pm.
I arrived at the campus and finally met with the two people with whom I'd been communicating the most. One was a woman who worked in the school's administration office, and the other was the secretary of my research lab. After getting my luggage situated in the campus's Guest House where I would be staying until finding an apartment of my own (for $35/night), I went to the research lab that I'd be spending a lot of my time in (and am currently writing this entry now). None of the students or professors were there because of a conference, so it was just the two of us at that point.
From then we began discussing apartments, and we made several calls to go see them on Friday. We ended up seeing four apartments together on Friday, and then my professor and I looked at a fifth one. Three of them were very conveniently located, but extremely old (20+ years). One of them was pretty nice, but less convenient. They ranged from about 45,000 yen to 65,000 yen a month. Each one had different amounts of initial payments, insurance, and furniture rental costs. None of them offered a bed/futon in the rental packages, so that's another hurdle I'll have to overcome down the road.
I'm trying to find a place to live near Shonandai Station. There are many buses that go from there to the SFC, and back again. There is another station called Tsujido Station near which there was another apartment we looked at. That station also has buses that travel to and from SFC. Unfortunately it took about 40 minutes to travel to that apartment (25 of which was spent on bus), which is just too long of a commute for me (The commute to Shonandai Station takes 10-15 minutes).
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