Otsuki Camping, and Summer Break

hey all,

This weekend was quite the adventure. We headed over to Otsuki, which is in Yamanashi prefecture, about 2 hours away from Tokyo. There are several mountains in the vicinity, and on the second day the plan was to hike one that (on clear days) affords one a good view of Fuji-san.

Well, on the first day, we all met up at Shinjuku station, headed over to Otsuki, did some grocery shopping, then hiked into the mountains for several hours, before settling on our camp sight. By then, it was starting to get a little dark, and we set up our tents, gathered fire wood, and started making dinner.

Day Two: swimming in some shallow pools instead of doing the planned hike. An OCJ member gets emergency medical care (not really).

Some pretty bamboo.

Our camp

A really gourmet meal of tomatoes, chorizo, bread, and herbs. Of course, the woman who cooked this didn't bring a flashlight, toilet paper, a sleeping bag or mat, or many other things. But she ate well.

Sleeping for me was something of a trial. Because of the size of my backpack and the temperature, I had decided not to bring my sleeping bag. I figured we would camp on grass, and the weather would be warm, so I just brought a light blanket. As it happened, we camped on very rocky soil, so I cut down a lot of small bushes and stuffed them under my tent. The weather was also a little cooler and more humid than I expected, but I survived. The deer were also something of a nuisance. I've never heard deer in the US make much noise, but Japanese deer make a call that sounds something like a rusty nail being pulled from wood.

Anyway, the plan was to camp one day, then meet a bunch of day hikers back at the station, but the day hikers canceled on us at the last minute, and tempers were flaring over that and other problems, so the day hike was canceled and we hung out by the river and swam a little.

Luckily for me, we caught an express train from Otsuki to Omiya, so unlike my trip to Otsuki, I didn't have to change trains at all.

My summer break starts on Friday, and there is a long trip being planned to an as yet undeciced location for that weekend. I may go with the club on that. For next week, I'm planning on climbing Fuji-san next Wednesday. After that, it is still very uncertain. Hokkaido is definitely going to happen, but where, when, and for how long is unknown. I'd also like to see the Northern and Southern Alps. Hiroshima, and the Kansai area will have to wait until the weather cools down, as it is supposed to be hotter there than here, and it is pretty unbearable here.

Cheers,

Camping Trip

hey all,

So later today I head off for my second trip with the outdoor club. We will be camping near Otsuki, which is a few hours away from Tokyo, in the neighboring Yamanashi prefecture.

I need to start getting my stuff organized, so I'll post the details and some pics when I get back Sunday.

Cheers,

School Lunch Special

Some kind of sushi: cooked fish sticks with pickle, rice, and seaweed wrappers. Pretty tasty

Fried chicken coated in what looks and tastes like corn flakes, with vegetable soup, bread, and weird Japanese style salad.

Omelet so cheezy it tastes like Mac 'n cheeze without the noodles, plus vegetables and rice, soup, and more random bread.

Although all these lunches are good, they are somewhat eccentric. Japanese people don't really know what to do with bread, so they randomly include it in meals without any intention of you making a sandwich and without giving you any toppings for the bread: they expect you to eat it by itself. I think this comes from their own practice of eating rice plain by itself: they equate our bread to their rice, without realizing that we like food to have flavor.

Japanese people also make strange salads: corn, carrots, and onions with a dash of tangy vinegar seems to be their idea of a salad. Although good, (and much better in my opinion than a lettuce-based one), it doesn't seem to be based on any Western tradition of salad.

Cheers,

Some Linux Complaints

hey all,

So in the past, I've been highly critical of both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. I've been using various flavors Linux since 2007, mostly Fedora. I'm currently running Fedora 11, codenamed Leonidas. It seems like ever since Fedora Core 7, my experience with Linux has been more or less down hill. Fedora 8 was nice, but I could never get wireless to work. With Fedora 9, wireless finally started working, but I lost the ability hear sound in my internet browser, and KDE 4 (a disaster and a hazard compared to KDE 3.59) was manditorily included in the distribution. Fedora 10 and 11 continued this pattern.

In my current installation, which I updated just the other day, sound still doesn't work for the internet, and now I can't have my headphones and my headset plugged in at the same time, plus the sound feels a little choppy. I've also lost the ability to scroll and select items by tapping on the touchpad.

Why can't these people deliver on a simple promise to provide a useable alternative to Micro-tosh? Almost from the beginning, I've had Blackbox lean running as my desktop environment for Windows Vista, and I've had a really good experience with that. My webcam and headset are easy to use, I can watch videos on the internet with sound, and I don't suddenly lose my ability to scroll or select items by tapping on the touchpad.

Cheers,

Japanese

hey all,

Japanese is both very cool, and very frustrating to study. Perhaps one of the more frustrating things is the large number of homophones. 紙，神，髪，are all pronounced the same: kami, but they mean paper, god, and hair respectively. There are several other kanji/words that can also be pronounced that way.

One of the cool things is sometimes the kanji make sense. All kanji are made from 214 radicals, which are smaller pieces that have meanings themselves, but usually appear as part of a larger character. 親, for instance is composed of three radicals: 立、木、and 見: stand, tree, and see. The kanji means parent, or intimate, so you can create a story about a parent standing on a tree looking for a lost child. A lot of the time, they don't make any sense at all. 後　means after, and is composed of the radicals step, slight, and follow; while 家 means house, and is the radical for roof above the radical for pig. 書 means write, and has the radicals for pig's head, one, and sun/day in it.

I'm now at around 170 kanji that I can read, sometimes write, and sometimes pronounce. I think one of the really arbitrary things that annoyes me about kanji is the pronounciation. I can deal with kanji having a meaning that doesn't make sense give their radicals, and I can deal with 食　sometimes being ta and sometimes being shoku (the pronounciation changes depending on which other kanji it appears with, but its pronounciation is predictable from this other kanji), but I can't deal with 長野 being pronounced as Nagano sometimes and as Chono other times. There are a massive number of pairs like this: the same kanji pair having different pronounciations (and also slightly different meanings: 一日 (one day) could be tsuitachi, ichinichi, or ikka, depending on the meaning you want.)

As I think I've mentioned before, the literate Japanese person can read about over 1000 kanji. The newpapers limit themselves to around 500 kanji. In addition to the Japanese Language Proficiency test, there is also the Kanji Aptitude Test, which tests the native Japanese person's kanji ability. Supposedly, only 1% of Japanese people can pass the test's highest level, which seems to indicate that the Japanese people know what a burdensome writing system they have.

Part of this post was inspired by the fact that yesterday, I helped with a notebook check: the students copied a short dialogue from the textbook into their notebooks, and brought it up front for me to check. For me to mark that they had done well, I have to put a circle next to their name. Now, from experience teaching before, it helps and pays to know your students names, so I've been trying to learn to read the kanji in their names. This is complicated by the fact that Japan allowｓ an additional 200+ kanji (besides the official 1,945) that are only used in names. At any rate, I think I successfully read about 60-70% of their names. Needless to say, one of the cool things is seeing students smile because I can read their names.

Cheers,

Reading Ability

hey all,

So I've mentioned studying Japanese quite a bit, and I discovered today that my Japanese writing ability is now between a 1st and 2nd grader's. My vocabulary is easily above 444 words (words that I can write, say, hear, and read), but I only know about 150 kanji or so. 1st graders in Japan learn 80 kanji, and 2nd graders learn around 200: I know around 150, so I'm not quite at the 2nd grade level yet.

This means that I should be able to pass the beginer level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I've gotten to that level after less than 4 months of not too enthusiastic study. It is too late to register for the soonest JLPT, which is this month, but I think I should be able to pass the basic level for the next test in December. (This is somewhat confusing: beginer is the lowest level, then basic, intermediate, and lastly advanced.)

Cheers,

Week, Weekend, and Break

hey all,

Most of my work week has consisted of me studying Japanese, which is good for me in the long run but is pretty boring.

I never got to see the movie about Tsurugidake, because the club moved the time and location so that I couldn't get back home in time.

This weekend has been a bust as well. The weather forecast looked bad for Saturday and today, so I decided I wouldn't do the climb and went out drinking with a co-worker instead. As it happened, the weather here at least has been really good. There's a trip planned for next weekend to the Northern Alps, so I'll probably go to that.

My last day of work until September is the 17th. I still haven't made definite plans for my break, but I want to look into Hokkaido, and I may go see Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara anyway.

Cheers