Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Japanese Daily News Show

http://podcast.yomiuri.co.jp/video_news/

Here is a pretty informative news show, well almost anyways, sometimes it shows interesting stuff about current earthquakes disasters, or the latest goverment bribe scandal.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Tips on self Studying japanese language

We all know Japanese is a tough, sometimes weird, sometimes easy, sometimes frustrating (like counting) but its soooooooo worth it, just don't give up always look on the bright side and keep moving forward, here are some resources that might help you on your way:

http://www.himura-kaoru.com/nhklessons.php

It has some good educational videos, yes they are cheesy, but they cover all the basics and most the events look unscripted with actual japanese people helping each other out.

Let's learn japanese

is a japanese drama/educational video, it follows the exploits of Yan who looks like Jon Lovitz, with about 52 episodes, it gets pretty in depth. The videos and books are discontinued, but search on bittorent and you will find a well seeded source....

Japanese Drama's
I really don't know a better way to learn casual japanese dialog and the latest slang but by watching japanese drama's, some of them are actually good.

D addicts and http://www.dramaffa.com/ are your best friends

Books
Read some books, like "The Japanese have a word for it" by Boye Lafayette De Mente
and Japanland by Karin Muller

Buying stuff from Yahoo auctions japan

Yahoo auctions has some pretty impressive stuff, like this Code Veronica game:

Source


Or this FAT KoF95 cartridge box and book:

Source

Its all nice, too bad you can't order anything directly from Yahoo, you have to resort to a website like Rinkya

How they work is basically, they buy the stuff from the seller in japan, store it in their warehouse, wait for your money, and then send it to you. Its not cheap, but sometimes you can get a pretty good deal.

Decoding QR barcodes


If you're in Japan, you cant miss these things, they are called QR Barcodes, and the way they work is you take a snapshot with your cellphone, the program inside the phone process it, and through your WAP browser you are redirected to a site with information about the product.

First of all you need a decoder and an encoder, they can be found here: Use "save as" please when downloading

http://yurir.pcriot.com/Decode.bat
http://yurir.pcriot.com/Encode.bat
http://yurir.pcriot.com/QR_encode.jar
http://yurir.pcriot.com/QRCode.jar

Make sure you have JAVA installed on your computer too

I won't go into detail how to use them, just place all the 4 files into one folder and run a batch file, encode or decode.

So once you have encoded the QR barcode, you will get a link, now take this link and paste it into this website:
http://mtld.mobi/emulator.php

Its a cellphone emulator, and hopefully you will get somewhere.

Translating Japanese Text (Windows XP only)

NOTE: ONLY WORKS ON WIN XP, it crashes on VISTA and WIN ME (sucks I know)

This is a really simple procedure to translate stuff, and for some reason many people don't know this, which is silly considering how easy it is.

First of all you need PDFOCR by MediaDrive, its 10 day trial, unlimited use with no restrictions, after that you have to buy, download it here: http://pac.mediadrive.jp/support/pocr/pocr_trydl.html

And click on "体験版「pocr02_try.exe」をダウンロード(59.0MB)"

So far so good? Now install it, click yes on everything you see, soon you will install it.

Launch the program, if you get some errors on this screen:



Make sure to remove the question marks from the file name

Here is the main screen:


At the top of the screen you have 4 buttons, Open is the first one, the next 2 are the character recognition functions, and the last is the save button. You must press all the 3 buttons in order, no need to press the save button.

On the other side, you have the output options, Word, and PDF are the most effective ones.

Now lets try translating something: a Magazine article from Famitsu, about Jackie Chan and his mad skills at Virtual Fighter 2



I'm going to select some of the text, and cut it out like this:



Click Open, press the next 2 buttons, and you get this screen:



Thats it! You have the entire text scanned, go over it to make sure all the characters match up, now click to save as a Word or PDF, once that is done you have editable text, like this:

あのジャッキー・チェンが[バーチャファイター3]で新
宿ジャッキー&ブンブン丸と対決するという衝撃の企
画。初プレーのジャッキーに対し、新宿ジャッキーが
無難に勝利を収めるも、ブンブン丸は極度の緊張でま
さかの敗北1勝利したジャッキーはちゃっかり自分の
映画を宣伝して、笑顔で香港に帰っていきました。

Stick it into http://nihongo.j-talk.com/parser/ to convert it into Romaji, like this:

ano jakkii.chen ga [ baachafaitaa 3 ] de shin
yado jakkii & bunbun maru to taiketsu suru toiu shougeki no ?
e. hatsu puree no jakkii nitaishi, shinjuku jakkii ga
bunan ni shouri o osameru mo, bunbun maru ha kyokudo no kinchou de ma
sa ka no haiboku 1 shouri shi ta jakkii ha chakkari jibun no
eiga o senden shi te, egao de honkon ni kaette iki mashi ta.

Now take out your dictionary and start translating... or just go to Nifty Globalgate or Google translate, and let them do work for you....:

Nifty:

The plan of the shock that that Jackie Chan confronts a Shinjuku Jackie & BUMBUN circle by [Virtua Fighter 3]. as opposed to Jackie of a first play -- Shinjuku Jackie -- safe -- a victory -- also storing -- very much, Jackie by no means who won defeat 1 advertized his movie shrewdly with strain of the degree, and the BUMBUN circle returned to Hong Kong with smile.

Google:

Jackie Chan is that [BACHAFAITA 3] in the new
Inn & Jackie BUNBUN round confrontation with the impact of企
Painting. The first play of Jackie, Jackie is Shinjuku
Impunity victory, BUNBUN round of extreme tension in the moment
How defeat 1 victory is not shy Jackie's own
To promote the film, with a smile Hong Kong back to him.

You should have at least a good start now, you have the romaji, and 2 semi-good translated versions.

Welcome!

Welcome to this brand new blog, I designed it to basically spread all my knowledge on all things japanese, I plan to include tutorials, helpful links, best methods to study japanese, japanese TV, including Dramas, Movies, and (shrug).... Anime

Thanks for being here, you somehow found this blog and I hope you learn something nice.

yours truly
Kiryu

About me: I'm a graphic designer, I created Ads for magazines, posters, flash banners/movies, box art, currently unemployed, its x-mas, I hate being without a job :(
I like to watch Dramas, favorite place in japan is Hokkaido, I want to go there real badly :), I play video games, both old and new, at the arcades and at home.