2011年8月10日

Today was another semi-easy day in 日本語。It feels like things are really winding down and I am two days from the end of the long road to graduation. And it has been lonnngggggg.... I'm not sure what to do with my time afterwards either. I'll probably feel like I'm doing something wrong by not working my @%$#* off everyday and will have to find a new "normal" without schoolwork taking up the majority of my life. But at any rate, I can't wait to get out of Kent. I think my new "normal" will consist of me sleeping 'til 2pm everday for a few months and getting out for some excersise to work-off  all of the ビール I'll be のむing on a daily basis. LOL. I wish... I'm tired of being broke, so off to the work force just as quickly as I can find a job (in the western U.S.).

Today we had a few new grammar points and 六あたらしかんじ！！！

verb (presnt, short) + つもりだ。(I) intend to do...

adjective + なる。To become..
い-adjectives:　あたたかい　あたたかくなる
な-adjectives:　しずか　しずかになる
nouns:　かいしゃいん　かいしゃいんになる
かんじ：雪、立、自、夜、朝、持

2011年8月9日

Today was another easy day in 日本語。 We had a new grammar point (which is my kind of grammar point):

私は黒いセーターをもっています。あかいのももっています。

の-takes place of repeated noun making the response quicker and more natural.

We also had 四あたらしかんじ。。。買、町、長、道

And someone brought up earthquakes before the start of class today, so that got the wheels in my head grinding. I had a sneaking suspicion the fault in St. Louis ベッツィー先生was talking about was the New Madrid Fault, even though I said I didn’t know.

It runs through a good portion of the Midwest United States. I’m not sure, but this could be the NOVA special she was talking about today and I remember seeing it a few years ago..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/earthquakes-midwest.html

I could still be wrong about this being the fault, because there are so many all over the place. But it’s the most notable one in our region, and there have been several somewhat significant earthquakes in our area because of it in the past few decades, which is a good thing, since it releases the stored energy in the fault. So when it does “let go” there is not so much energy released as there would be if there had not been a quake for a longer stretch of time which is the situation So-Cal is in.

Southern Cali is overdue for a major quake, but thankfully is not at risk of 津波 due to the strike-slip fault type. Which, of course, is of little to no consolation when your house is a pile of rubble, is swept away in a landslide created by a seismic event, or the highway overpass you are driving across suddenly collapses.

San Andreas Fault, a Dextral (right-lateral) Strike-Slip Fault.

So where was I going with all of this? Oh yeah. There was also a NOVA special that was on a few months ago and is available to watch in its entirety here: Japan’s Killer Quake.

津波 Wave Propogation Model 2011年3月11日

2011年8月8日

Today we had some new Grammar points:

A のほうがBより(property).　「A is more (property) than B.」

AとBとどっちのほうがやすいですか。

[(class of items)の中で]Aがいちばん (property)。=　A is the most (property)[among (a class of items)].

And 4 new Kanji: 住、正、年、売

2011年8月5日

Friday was an easy day. We did a Kanji review for our Kanji quiz on月曜日 by reading a letter in the text but seemed to be a little less painless to read out loud than some of the other ones which can mean several things. I, for one, am nowhere near a reasonable realm of fluency in Japanese but overall I think this class has given us the foundation to continue forward in a very difficult language so that is pretty cool.

ベッツィー先生　also looked over our rough drafts which we will be presenting on Thursday. I will definitely be making a video for mine then the next day is our final. This is crazy we are already headed into the final week.

2011年8月4日

I missed today along with the grammar point and the last few Kanji for which we have a quiz for on 月曜日.

The new Kanji was:　古、知、来

The grammar point was incorporating ～から into sentences rather than creating separate sentences themselves such as あしたしけんがから、私は今べんきょうします。

2011年8月3日

Today was vocabulary review for unit 9 and new grammmar point(s).

The new grammar was: 

もう。。。＝have done the activity already.

まだ。。。～ていません。＝have not done the activity yet.

There were also some corrections for a grammar point we went over a few days ago for past tense short forms　～かわいかったです。

We also learned 四つあたらしい漢字。。。
間、家、話、少

We also got to go home early today to work on our final projects!!! Yay...

2011年8月2日

ケイチィさんはおさけをのんでいる人です。

サムさんはテリビをみている人です。

メアリーさんはしている人です。