The Sinister Scribe

Today Sam and I started working on days of the week in Japanese. We even made sound file (WMA) of the English days of the week song using the Japanese words. It takes the equivalent of 2 verses to get all the syllables in but it works… kinda. I’m desperately searching for ways to jump start our learning. Just feels rather stagnant lately.

This picture is of a filefolder game I made for the basic hiragana characters. The characters are on the top of the flap and the romaji is shown when you lift it. I made an oops doing “me” twice but I’ve fixed that in the PDF file here and added spaces between the columns. The black lines show where you cut. I’ll be doing another one where the symbols aren’t so organized to make it a little more challenging. Maybe someone else will find them useful too.

We have some other hiragana learning games in mind: solitaire (match hiragana symbol to romaji), go fish (pairs of hiragana, no romaji)… hmmm… seems there was something else. Anyway. I’ll post those when we’ve done them.

I was doing good. Going to bed on time. Then… I signed up for the free week trail at Jpod101 tonight.  It went something like this…

I’ll just download the newbie pdfs for us to use. Whoops! You only get to download 10 in the trial (musta missed that stipulation somewhere). Farg! I downloaded the last 10 instead of the first 10. But they’re so great! Really helpful. Ok. Ok. I’ll sign up for one month of basic… eight bucks. Done.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is bad. Info overload. Kanji. Kana. Hiragana. Katakana. On readings. Kun readings. (what the heck are those last two?) Books. Online games. Websites. Help! I don’t know if I’M ready to take our Japanese studies to the next level.

I’ve added the new links to the Japanese Unit page here. Kraiminy! I gotta go to bed.

Friday we went to a presentation on this amazing Japanese puppetry form held at Mizzou. Oh. Freaking. Wow. The “puppeteers” were from Japan and part of the Imada Puppet Troup. Really, really amazing to watch them manipulate these puppets. It took 3 puppeteers per puppet! Some of their puppets are 100+ years old!

After the presentation, everyone was invited to come up and try to use the puppets and talk to the puppeteers. Sam of course was one of the first in line. He was so jazzed to be able to speak Japanese to these very important visitors. I think they were also very impressed by him.

We were there for another half hour talking to the Imada group and the students in the Japanese program at Mizzou. Learned that there is a kanji recognition program (Kanji Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten) for the DS that costs about $40! Also, the university has a conversational Japanese group that meets on Thursdays. There is even a banraku puppetry group on campus: Banraku Bay Puppet Troupe.

I really can’t describe how excited Sam was after meeting the Imada group. I swear he was on an educational high! LOL! He said something like, “Mom! I’ve never spoken so much Japanese in my entire life! And to such important people!” This made me feel like I’d gotten my first homeschooling validation (from the one source that really counts). That maybe I’m doing something right… to see this fire and passion spark in him was beautiful. The credit for it is all his… but to have helped him find it… to have facilitated this spark… Way cool.

So I expect to see him even more interested in learning to speak Japanese. Maybe we’ll even start working on Kanji.

Update…

Click here to see an article in the Columbia Missourian about the demonstration. (we’re mentioned!)

The Japanese Festival in STL yesterday was so much fun. Sam said the best part was speaking Japanese and being understood! We received some pleasantly surprised looks from our first attempts. Very encouraging. Wouldn’t it be cool if next year we went and spoke nothing but Japanese while there. Sam thought so.

The beginning of the photos yesterday can be reached here. We visited the bonsai and ikebana exhibits inside and then wandered outside to wath sumo wrestling, ice sculpting, kendo and drumming and buy Japanese candies with play Yen. Oh, there was a water fountain you could play in too. That was a wonderful thing as it was nearly ninety yesterday. I remembered to bring waters for us all but forgot things like hats and sunblock. For all that we saw, there was so much we didn’t get to see. By 3:30 we were all pretty worn out and headed home.

Next year, I think I’d like to try getting there before the festival opens. Parking was difficult but thankfully we got lucky and didn’t have to park too far away. I also think it would be fun to sign up for one of the tea ceremonies. ($10 extra) There was also a deal with new garden membershipos. If you signed up during the festival, you got a free 3 day festival pass for the whole family. ‘Course I don’t know if we could survive more than one day at the festival. LOL!

This week promises to be a busy one with many things going on around town. We’re going to try to attend some of them if the temps allow.

On a whim, I searched the iTunes store for Japanese podcasts. (from within the iTunes application) I found lots; many of which are free! (my favorite price)

The best so far (really wish I’d found these guys sooner) is JapanesePod101.com podcast. Their premium yearly price a lot less than Rosetta Stone. If their free podcasts are any indication, it must be a great service. I haven’t subscribed yet, but they do have a free week trial we might try. If we’re still listening to their podcasts next year, I may subscribe. Hmmm… guess I’d better start saving now.

Another one we’ll soon be listening to is Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime podcast. If we’re going to listen to someone speaking Japanese, why not someone reading classic Japanese literature. I just need to burn them to CD.

If you are wondering what all this has to do with a tree frog on a peppermint plant… nothing. I just took this picture yesterday and thought it was kind of cute.