Shiira.Shiira

Starting July 1, and every day for a year, I will get rid of something. I will donate, discard, re-gift or recycle some bit of debris accumulating in my house. Anything non-perishable considered, exempting books and music.  –Randy Redding, ydnar.com      Several days ago I came across a blog post titled “Less 365″.  Scripted over on ydnar.com, it made short work of reminding me how cluttered and encumbered my life has become.  By getting rid of at least 1 item every day for a year [as the post suggests], I doubt I’ll reach Nirvana but maybe a little more peace of mind is obtainable.  Committment phobic as I am, I definitely can’t say that I will discard an object from my life every day for the next 365 days but I … Read entire article »

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from the awesome Japanese Grammar website, Jgram.  It was a tidy tidbit on ~tari.  You can find that information right here.  Briefly, ~tari means “doing/did things like …” and much to my delight, the lyrics to Kamenashi Kazuya/KAT-TUN’s “Someday for Somebody” came to mind.  When I can make a correlation between something I enjoy and learning something new in Japanese, I really get excited so I was more than … Read entire article »

It’s Tuesday.  It’s been a long day.  Tuesdays are extended clinic day at the Health Department (where I work) which means we’re on site from 730 in the morn to 6 in the evening.  A weird schedule has me seeing just 3 or 4 clients from 3:00-4:30 which means the majority of my day kinda drags along.  I’m not complaining, mind ya, just stating the facts. So, after 10.5 hours on the job (9.5 if you … Read entire article »

It’s Black History Month but I haven’t heard too much mention of that fact.  Perhaps we don’t need it anymore.  We have, after all, elected our first Black (African American) President.  Personally, I can live with or without it but on a basic level this year, my contemplation of a lack of celebration just reminds me on an incident that occurred during a visit to Japan.  Read on… … Read entire article »

December 6th was the day after my dad’s birthday and my day of reckoning with Level 4 of the JLPT. It was the day I would come face to face with a seemingly ferocious opponent but wouldn’t know the outcome of the battle until months later. The passing of time, however, would not be a big issue. I was fairly certain I would fail. … Read entire article »

Yesterday was our last “Introduction to Japanese II” class at the University.  It came with some mixed emotion.  A little melancholy because an [epic] era was coming to an end but a little joy about not having to drive round trip 3 hours every Saturday. If you’ve read anything in this blog so far, you’ll know I whined a little while back about how this particular class started out as  a “literal” study in “Introductory” — covering the same old same that every class before it had covered.  I’m not sure if the “powers that be” somehow got hold of that post, but the next week we jumped from “Introductory” to “Whoa, what the heck!”. I liked that, though. Unfortunately, one of the problems with this class was there was really no indication … Read entire article »

Tanaka’s House… There is a table, television and chair in the living room. There are flowers and a newspaper on top of the table. Tanaka-san’s wife is in the living room. Tanaka-san is in the garden with a young boy. No one is in the kitchen. This is a [very] close approximation of what sensei wrote on the board in Japanese class the other day.  She asked us to translate the sentences to Japanese, writing them out in our practice notebooks.   Sounds so 3rd grade doesn’t it? You’d think a task like this would be fairly simple but it took me 15 minutes of feverish writing before I realized  what I was writing was ALL WRONG!!! … Read entire article »

I’ve had some issues lately with my Japanese class.  Not “issues” really, but just some … well … issues. Several days ago I waxed on about hitting the wall in my Japanese learning and then I expounded on the situation when I went 3 days without studying.  I was feeling a bit flustered because all I can ever seem to take are these short, introductory Japanese courses at the University that end up being a re-hash of very basic stuff. It’s been a tad frustrating and had me contemplating whether to attend this week’s class or not.  A sense of obligation  co-mingled with the hope that things would move forward a bit more quickly had me with the rubber to the road — taking that 1.5 hour journey to the U to … Read entire article »

In our last encounter, you might remember I took center stage and pretty much whined about “hitting the wall” in my Japanese learning.  I admit I seized that rare opportunity to vent my frustrations so I’d like to thank those who indulged me in my self-pity and offered encouraging words. Unfortunately, the combination of that “standstill” along with my current three University classes has caused me to set Japanese aside for the past 3 days … and counting.  I can no more afford to take a day off from learning Japanese than I can go a day without breathing! Holy crap, Batman … What do I do???!!! … Read entire article »