JapanesePod101.com Blog

To help your Kanji studies, we came up with a fun game using Twitter!

Kanji Scrabble, a JapanesePod101.com original game. (Learn How to Play Here)

The Kanji for this week are as follows: (Remember, each compound must use the Kanji in the brackets [ ].)

Kanji Scrabble #02 [中]　日、二、本、一、国、人、十、中、三、時 (Learn How to Play Here)

To start, all you need is a Twitter account and to follow our Twitter account @japanesepod101

(What’s Twitter you ask? Read our guide here.)
We’re waiting for your tweets and blog comments!

@Hint: (deleted)

Kanji Scrabble #2 Answers

Thanks for playing and for all the great feedback on our first-ever Kanji Scrabble game!

30+ people played Kanji Scrabble #01 by putting their answers on Twitter.
Several more visited the blog and offered feedback and advice.

When we created the game, we had no idea how it would go.  You took a chance on us by playing, so we want to say “Thank You!” for help making the game a success.

So what do you win?

Everyone who answered on Twitter or commented on the blog entry gets a 1-month Basic Subscription ($8). Our way of saying thank you!

What do you do if you’ve won?

If you played, you won.

Simply e-mail us contactus@japanesepod101.com with your JapanesePod101 username and Twitter username. (You’ll need to be a member for us to upgrade you.  so If you’re not already a member, sign up and then email us.)

*Moving forward, we will be offering prizes. So stay tuned for more!

What is Kanji Scrabble?

In short, it’s a fun and interactive way to learn Kanji on Twitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

First off, there’s some housekeeping to attend to; I promised that today I would provide answers to the most recent contest and make the winners famous. The top three contestants did a great job. They also happened to be the only contestants! Congratulations to the following people:

Devon Bartlett
Naveh Mazenko
Alberto Sanz (again!)

You’ll find answers and explanations at the link.

Famous Sayings: Answers and Explanations …

These three people deserve credit not only for terrific research but also for feeling motivated enough to do extra work for no material gains. That is, they acted in the following way:

積極的 (sekkyokuteki: assertive, positive, active, willing)
     to accumulate + to go to extremes + adjectival suffix

And being motivated is the opposite of this:

消極的 (shōkyokuteki: negative, half-hearted, passive,
unmotivated)     negative + to go to extremes + adjectival suffix

I’m so impressed that I feel like doing this:
Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you to all the Kanji Scrabble Twitter users and Bloggers!

どうもありがとうございました!

I think this is a really fun use of Twitter and am personally looking forward to each new game!

We’ll also post an update via blog post with detailed answers including the meaning and both Kana and Romaji readings to help you learn new vocabulary.  There were a few compounds that weren’t noticed so this should be great for all levels of learners.

Kanji Scrabble #1 Answers

To help you break the monotony of Kanji study, we came up with a fun game using Twitter!

To start, all you need is a Twitter account and to follow our Twitter account @japanesepod101
(What’s Twitter you ask? Read our guide here.)

How to Play Japanese Kanji Scrabble

On the day we play in the morning (Japan time), we’ll select 10 Kanji: 1 Key Kanji and 9 other possible suffix and/or prefix Kanji.
Example Tweet:

Kanji Scrabble #01 [日]　二、本、一、国、人、十、中、三、時 (Learn How to Play http://ow.ly/3xU3)

Here is what you do:

1. Using the Key Kanji (the one in brackets): Make as many compound words using the Key Kanji and Kanji in the list

*Remember each compound you create must included the Key Kanji*

2. Write those compounds in a reply to our tweet or come to Kanji Scrabble blog entry and enter your kanji compound creations in a comment! Others will be commenting.

3. At night we’ll post the answers to our Kanji Scrabble in another tweet.

4. Check our tweet again at @japanesepod101 and compare to your answers.

5. That’s it! It’s that simple to play!

We’ll be tweeting our first Kanji Scrabble on 04/22/2009 at 10:00 p.m. Japanese time so get ready! Answers will be posted 24 hours later.

Here are some examples to show you how to reply to the tweets.

Correct Replies:

@japanesepod101 Kanji Scrabble Answer: 二日

@japanesepod101 Hrm… Are these right? 二日、一日

@japanesepod101 I know only 4 Japanese words and this is one of them 一日

Incorrect Replies:

@japanesepod101 一時, 中三、国、人
These answers don’t contain the key Kanji in brackets.

@japanesepod101 日本の人

These answers contain Hiragana.  No Japanese readings or Hiragana may be used.

@japanesepod101 ichinichi, futsuka, ichinichijuu, nihonjin
Because this is for your Kanji practice, make sure to practice by actuallly typing the Kanji. Let’s graduate from romaji!

@japanesepod101 Today I read a book. Also mowed the lawn. It’s getting hot today! Kanji Scrabble 二日、一日、一日中
Try to tweet about only one topic or thought at a time. Don’t worry, everyone tweets often so turning the above into 4 separate tweets is okay!

Want to Play with your friends? Retweet!

If your friends aren’t following @japanesepod101 on Twitter, share the Kanji Scrabble question! “Retweeting” our tweet lets you work together on the Kanji Scrabble and then you can answer later. You can also share the link to the blog post.

Here’s how to “Retweet”

RT @japanesepod101 Kanji Scrabble #01 [日]　二、本、一、国、人、十、中、三、時 (Learn How to Play  http://ow.ly/3xU3)

RT is short for “Retweet” and saves on character count (remember, 140 characters is the tweet limit).

We’re waiting for your tweets and blog comments!

UPDATE: #kanjiscrabble   Under 3 hours left.  Did anyone get the 4 character compound?

To keep you updated on our lessons and better communicate with you, we created a Twitter account (actually a long time ago) and urge you to do so too! In case you’re confused what in the world Twitter is or don’t know how or why you would use Twitter, we’ve made a simple FAQ & guide just for you.

What is “Twitter”?
Twitter is a “micro-blogging” service. Each post is limited to 140 characters so that each post, called a “tweet”, is short and to the point.
This makes it perfect quickly sharing internet links, messages or ideas with others.
To see automatic updates of others’ tweets, you go to their page and then “follow” them. If they want to see your tweets, they’ll follow you.

1. Start your own account
To start using Twitter, go to the official web page, http://twitter.com/ and register for an account. The sign up process is very easy to do and there is a lot of help on the official Twitter website.

2. Install the Japanese Input pack
Don’t know how to read and write Japanese Kana and Kanji on your Windows PC?

Install the Japanese Language Guide
http://newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/Language/asianlanguageinstallation_XP.html

Writing in Japanese Guide
http://newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/Language/japanese_write.htm

3. Follow us
After starting an account and making sure you can read and write Japanese characters, start following us to see our tweets automatically. Click this link here: http://twitter.com/japanesepod101 and click “Follow”.

See you on Twitter!

Top Secret Project with the Legendary Jim Breen Finished!

Well, it’s done, and it’s alive!

Mr. Jim Breen, Innovative Language Learning, and JapanesePod101.com, are happy to announce that EDICT, Jim Breen’s legendary Japanese to English dictionary, now has…

Audio clips for all entries!

So what exactly am I going on about?

First, let me back up a second.

If you’re studying Japanese, you’ve encountered Jim Breen’s EDICT Japanese to English dictionary, whether directly at WWWJDIC or through another Japanese language learning tool. (Many popular Japanese language learning tools use EDICT.)

Having used the dictionary at WWWJDIC countless times during my Japanese studies, I’m a huge fan of the site. Last November, I contacted Mr. Breen about the possibility of working with him to provide Japanese audio clips of native Japanese speakers for the entire EDICT dictionary! Mr. Breen not only welcomed the project, but he also joined us in the trenches! (More on that in a bit.)

The Mission: Provide Audio Clips for EVERY entry in the ENTIRE EDICT dictionary!

To put the task into perspective, we’ve been teaching Japanese for 3 years and amassed an audio library of only 20,000 words. Mr. Breen’s Dictionary was 120,000+ at the time we undertook the project. Furthermore there were technological issues, coordination issues and the holiday season standing in our way, but last November we started.

And here’s what it took to get it done:

• 8 voice actors (taking shifts) going at it 5+ hours a day
• 3 audio engineers editing 10 hours a day on 2 continents
• The technology team working in the US, Japan, and Germany
• Mr. Breen himself joining us in the trenches from Australia, as he rolled up his sleeves to code.
• The support of the entire JapanesePod101.com team
• And probably a lot more people working behind the scenes

This project was a beast! But, 5 months later EVERY entry in EDICT has an audio clip!

Well, almost…

The snag: EDICT, the Japanese Dictionary, keeps growing!

Just when the celebrating began, we got a nice and nasty reality check. You see, EDICT is constantly getting bigger, thanks to all the contributors out there. So when we started the project, the list was 123,000 words, the number of recordings we made!

EDICT is now 140,000 words! Thanks, contributors. :)  So, unfortunately for our voice actors, it’s back to the studio. You can help by reporting missing words, so that we can record them.

Enough already with the behind the scenes stuff! How does it work?

Okay, okay. Yep, you want to test it out. Here is what you do:

1. Head over to WWWJDIC
2. Search for any word
3. Where there is a clip available for an entry, a play button will appear at the start of the entry. Click this button to play the clip.
4. Click the link to a lesson about the word (if available) on the JapanesePod101 site.

We would like to thank Mr. Breen, who has been supportive or our site since its inception, for giving us this opportunity. We hope that adding audio to EDICT will be a valuable tool for your Japanese studies.

Thank you to every one who contributed to the project. There were so many of you, and we know that it was very intense, especially with such a short deadline. We truly appreciate it.
Our main goal here at JapanesePod101.com is to provide Japanese students around the world with great learning tools. We hope that this enhancement will be a well-received addition.

We’re looking forward to your feedback!

Note: Premium members, you have access to all of this audio in the premium section of JapanesePod101.com.

Welcome to the JapanesePod101.com blog, Feature Spotlight. Here we would like to periodically introduce some well known features as well as some not so well known features here at JapanesePod101.com. We want to make sure everyone knows about all the great features that you can use to master Japanese in just minutes a day.

Today we would like to introduce My Feed. This is a fully customizable RSS feed. What’s that mean? Well, for those that haven’t studied up on the latest Web 2.0 technology, that basically allows Premium members to decide exactly what lesson content they want on their Premium feed.

Here’s 3 simple steps on how you can use My Feed to really master Japanese:

1. You decide exactly what you want.
2. You download what you want with a single click of a button.
3. You master Japanese in minutes a day - in your own way.

It’s really that simple.

To learn more about My Feed check out the video below or if you’re a Premium member, click here to get started now.

(Sorry, the video’s a little outdated, but it still works perfectly for JapanesePod101.com!)

As a multicultural citizen of the world, you’ve probably left your hometown behind. You may miss it occasionally, but what do you miss?

The way the hills and valleys came together, a river running through it? The scent of honeysuckle in summers, and the crickets that never stopped chirping? The brilliant autumn displays, and the heavy snows in winter?

Do you miss the kind of people from that area? Your family in particular? The food you can’t find anywhere else? Your house and the room that was yours and yours alone? The familiarity of everything in that house—the layout, the way the place smelled, the possessions that acquired so much meaning along the way?

Or … maybe it wasn’t so great. Maybe you even hated it, feeling choked by the narrowness of options and of mindsets. Perhaps you were bored out of your mind, traveling the same roads again and again. If so, why do you miss it? If you return for visits, does that satisfy the yearning? Or does the trip home confuse you, making you wonder why you were pining for such a hellhole?!
Read the rest of this entry »

Today we’ll start with a Verbal Logic Quiz! But first, consider this compound:

郷土 (kyōdo: native place; birthplace; old home)     village + soil

If you come from Kyoto, you’re lucky, because you can say this:

京都は郷土だ。
Kyōto wa kyōdo da.
My hometown is Kyoto.

OK, now you’re ready for the quiz!

For Answers …

When it comes to 郷土, you likely know the common kanji 土 (DO, tsuchi: soil). It shows up in 土曜日 (doyōbi: Saturday, Saturday + day of the week + day), where it has acquired the meaning of “Saturday.” But 郷 is quite a bit more unusual. Here’s the dirt on this kanji:
Read the rest of this entry »