¡Sarah!

Oh my goodness how have I not posted since February. :|

Well if you would like to read posts by me I have just written a stilted couple of reviews here in the japanesebookrec community. Which reminds me -- I have books to add (totally out of order) to my list!!

6. 劇団６年２組 (Gekidan 6nen 2kumi), which you can read about at the link above.

7, 8, 9, 10. The Spiderwick Chronicles #2, #3, #4 and #5 in Japanese!
I quite enjoyed this series for its content but also because my current reading level is such that I could understand them easily but still pick up a lot of vocab on the way. Now that I have finished them I feel like I am floundering a bit trying to figure out what else I can read. I got out the first book of the sequel series but it looks like it might be aimed at slightly older kids and so perhaps more difficult? We'll see I guess. At the moment I am reading Coraline which is going better than I would have expected. I really need to stop picking books from the translated section though ...

11. The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn
An argument that there is no evidence that homework helps kids learn, and in fact it might be doing the exact opposite. I found this book perhaps abnormally interesting. It is pretty ridiculous how few studies have actually been done on the effects of homework! Also, my least favourite thing about this book is how every negative review on Goodreads employs an argument that Kohn totally deconstructs in the book. Did ... did you guys actually read it??

12. Achilles by Elizabeth Cook
I've mentioned this book before, but this time I wrote a much longer post about it here.

By the way, my super nerdy and ridiculous Trojan War blog has seven followers now.

What

How

More things I forgot I'm excited about:

- EPIC MICKEY. What I know of the plot so far makes it sound like little more than a less confusing Kingdom Hearts, and the gameplay graphics I've seen haven't impressed me terribly much, but oh my god the concept art-- and the unloved characters-- and PLEASE NOTE 0:40 OF THE ABOVE VIDEO

THAT IS THE PARTNERS STATUE WITH OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT IN MICKEY'S PLACE

ADLGHSDKAHGELWIHQLDHG!!!!!!! THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST OFFICIAL ALTERNATE REALITY FANFIC OF MY LIFE

SERIOUSLY CAPSLOCK DOES NOT EVEN BEGIN TO TELL YOU HOW I HAD TO PAUSE THE VIDEO THERE AND FREAK OUT FOR LIKE FIVE MINUTES

If Alice of the Alice shorts (which I looooove) manages to make her way into this game in any way at all, I am pretty much guaranteed to pass out from OH MY GOD DISNEY YOU JUST BLEW MY MIND.

- Tangled! I am glad to see Disney carrying on their new tradition of ridiculous heroes. First Edward, then Naveen, and now this guy? I'm down with that. xD

- Toy Story 3 is tomorrow and DON'T TOUCH MY MOUSTACHE!*

* Seriously guys, this joke is in Toy Story 2 and I really want to know how many people get it because I didn't get it until a good six years of studying Japanese. "Don't touch [my] moustache" is a beginner's way to remember how to say "Dou itashimashite," which means "you're welcome." How awesome is it that this joke made it into the movie, man I'm still not over it.

13. Liar Game (Season 1), 2007
So I finally took up frauleinfrog's suggestion of watching Japanese TV series as a way to get more listening practice, but, having forgotten the specific series she suggested (lol, I'm horrible as always), I found myself just going down a list of dorama and clicking on whatever random titles sounded interesting. After reading the summary of Liar Game's first episode I decided this would be the one I'd watch, and omg, accidentally finding something that you then discover is awesome is one of the best things ever.

This show begins with the "stupidly honest" Nao's accidental participation in the title game. She is given a hundred million yen and an opponent. If she can steal her opponent's money, she gets to keep it; if her opponent steals her money, she'll end up with a horrific debt. When her opponent tricks her out of her hundred million, she hires a swindler to help her get it back, not realizing that this is only the first round.

I kind of love this show, from its campy camerawork and slightly unbelievable plot (does Nao not have a job? how does she afford that apartment of which I am superbly jealous??) to its shameless use of the theme from Requiem for a Dream and its overuse of maniacal evil laughter. (I actually rather disliked that latter until I watched the final episode, in which it is used pretty perfectly.) I love that it's a G-rated psychological thriller that really knows how to create suspense (and has amusing moments and even made me tear up a couple times, haha srsly!), I love that you're always encouraged to try to figure out the games the characters are playing and the strategies they're using to play them, I even love that every possible form of the verb damasu ("to trick, to cheat, to deceive") is now permanently burned into my brain. I do wonder how much rewatch value a series like this has, since I think a lot of its awesomeness comes from not knowing what's going to happen next. But I won't worry about that now - I've still got the entire second season to enjoy!

Also, I downloaded this show and actually felt pretty bad about that until I discovered that to legally own these eleven episodes would cost about a hundred and seventy dollars. I don't feel quite so guilty anymore. :|

~ Apparently everyone who wrote the JLPT in Japan or the U.S. has their results already. Uncool!! I can understand Japan getting them early, but why does the States get their results before Canada does? I am getting pretty impatient over here. It sucks to not have any idea how you did. D:

~ So, remember that Korean class I was going to take that got cancelled? It's kinda sorta happening anyway! xD The teacher e-mailed me a couple days ago to see if I'd be interested in group lessons with her and one of the other students who'd signed up for the course. Um, awesome?? We're starting next Saturday. :D And right now I am paying all this attention to my other two most favourite second languages, just so they don't feel neglected. xD lol!

~ I was going to write a longer entry but ... I've changed my mind. Have a good night, everyone! xD

Quick recap of my feelings re: Level 2 of the JLPT! I took it this morning, but omg it already feels like it was years ago. D:

( I can't believe I got up at seven-thirty. )

~ First off, if anyone cares, I edited the answers to my movie quiz into the post. And now I am stealing ( another meme. )

~ I should probably mention at some point that I have kinda-sorta-mostly dropped out of NaNoWriMo this year. In a previous entry where I was freaking out about my ability to finish NaNo and pass the JLPT, the_wykydtron correctly pointed out that I would be more upset if I failed the JLPT than if I failed NaNo, and ... there it is. I'm glad I made this decision, because I have definitely felt less stressed since I made it, but at the same time I'm really bummed and really frustrated that I let myself get so behind in both tasks that in the end I had to drop one completely. I shall just have to do lots of writing in December to make up for it, I guess! :3 (lol, but remind me to change my excerpt before it's too late! I'm not sure I like the current one enough for it to be up for an entire year. ^^; )

UGH though, the amount of work I'm having to do to protect my precious little study time! It's like as soon as I decided that studying was my number one priority, all of my co-workers have a desperate need for me to take their shifts. Often because they have exams to study for, lolariously enough. Well too bad, I booked this time off and it is MINE. :P

~ My mom's work is doing this thing through the Salvation Army where each employee is assigned a child in need to buy a Christmas present for! My mom was supposed to buy a gift for a five-year-old girl, and so yesterday she and I went and bought a bouncing Tigger board game sort of thing (and the necessary batteries) and a Dora the Explorer puzzle. (lol, yes, a puzzle - I'm totally going to be one of those adults from whom no kid wants to get presents, haha!) So that was fun! Mom asked what my work is doing for the holidays and I kind of laughed at that. Like, one year I think they did a can drive, and that's about it. I don't have a lot of faith in the humanitarian spirit of this company. :X

~ November has gone way too quickly, what the heck. :|

Things that are not awesome:
1) NaNoWriMo ends in nine days and I have only just now passed 10k. I'm not even really sure why this year is going so pathetically for me ... it just is.

2) The JLPT is in fifteen days and I am so completely unprepared. I am starting to seriously feel like I am going to fail. One of my co-workers asked me what will happen if I fail, and I replied with "Nothing," but ... I still don't want to. I'll really hate myself if I do. I don't want to have to wait another full year to take Level 2 again when it's already been five years since I passed Level 3!!

3) The above two points are frustrating me very much right now. :( I feel almost as if I should give up on NaNoWriMo so I can focus completely on the JLPT, but at the same time I intensely don't want to. ffffffffff I dunno. My next couple days off I just gotta BUST IT. And I have to ignore the temptation to fill up my days off with social outings, because I've just had an awesome four days off, but I definitely did not get any work done. :/

Things that are awesome:
1) I woke up this morning to a Christmas card from firecrackerrrr! <3

2) My co-workers being their ridiculous selves.

3) I've finally written over 8,000 LJ comments!! bahahahaha. >xD I'm pretty sure the last like 2,000 of those are entirely from July till now.

4) This song.

Time for a totally random picture post!

( hontou ni waratteru ko nante iru no kana )

For those of you not in the know, I shall be spending the first Sunday of December writing Level 2 of the Japanese Level Proficiency Test. I took Level 3 in 2005 (I can't get over that I last took this test FOUR YEARS AGO -- pretty sure I didn't intend for there to be such a huge gap) and passed with 80%, but now we are less than a month till I take Level 2 and I am pretty well FREAKING OUT. Like seriously, I am cutting down my work schedule quite severely just so I have more time to study. D:

Anyway, I was going through some kanji on Read the Kanji, and I figured I would post ( my Level 2 kanji grid! )

In conclusion: BRB STUDYING!!

lol sorry this post was kinda pointless. x)

Last night I learned of the K-pop group Kara through a random comment someone made in a MoMusu forum, and today I have had their song "Wanna" on REPEAT. I have no idea why I love this song so much, but omg, I kinda do. (Even if the video uses that "hey let's go destroy my ex's stuff" trope that leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.)

Anyway, I am only letting myself get into K-pop if I can put on hold my desire to study Korean. (That writing system just seems like the coolest thing to me!) I'm supposed to be passing the JLPT in two months!!! And somehow keeping up with my Spanish as well, somehow ... Studying multiple languages was so much easier when I had classes in both of them. I was looking at the list of language tutors on the UVic web site today, but before I get a tutor I should probably decide what I'd want from them, haha. Because I mean, it's not like I have specific homework they could help me with or anything. :/ Or maybe I should just start making use of all those language-learning sites I've signed up for in the past, hahaha, oh man I'm so disorganized.

I did study some JLPT grammar yesterday, though! So. There's that. :) Oddly enough I've been doing better on this workbook's kanji pages than on its grammar pages, something I definitely did not expect! I am a grammar fangirl, hahaha.

In other news, I find this fandom!secret kind of sad but also amusing, because it's so different from my life! Pretty sure when the_wykydtron and I go see a play, as soon as intermission hits we're already discussing gender. Especially when we went to see "The Fantasticks," which was ... interesting. D: