Flash cards

I've created a set of flash cards to be downloaded. You'll need 3x5 blank index cards, Arial Unicode MS. The Word file was made on Word 2000 so anything newer then that will work. At this time, I didn't include the compound voice and unvoiced kana.

Set 1: Hiragana - 73 cards [PDF] [Word]
Set 2: Katakana - 73 cards [PDF] [Word]
Set 3: Kanji - [PDF] [Word]

Kanji strokes

While doing my homework, I realized that the handout that sensai gave us was hard to see the stroke order. Least it's difficult for my eyes. So I went looking for a website that had the kanji stroke order and I found a nice one called Japanese Writing.

We're in chapter 3 now

Sensee has us in chapter 3 now and we're to have the first two kanji written 10 times by Monday. Tuesday that really thick packet she handed out is due and on Thursday we have a chapter two test.

I scanned this page out of one of the books I bought and figured it might be helpful to other people in my class. Sensee also hand this particular page out about two weeks ago.

Quick post

Konbanwa minasan!

Today’s quiz in class wasn’t that bad. Least we have two more weeks before chapter 2’s test but man oh man, sensee handed out that thick packet that’s due next Tuesday! She also assigned WB pages 23 and 24 that are due tomorrow so I better go finish that! Lol

Don’t forget, those of you in the Japanese Culture Club, that membership dues ($5) are due by Thursday.

Oh yeah. A classmate asked me to scan a couple of pages from one of my magazines so I uploaded a PDF copy of it over on Sendspace.

Japanese 101

Konbanwa minasan!

You're probably here from me giving out this url at the first meeting of the Japanese Culture Club tonight. So I tossed up this blogger page for the mean time until I get something better up.

What you'll mainly find here are files and other useful items I used in class. If you find them helpful, great and if not well... :þ

I've been using Jim Gleeson's Writing Katakana and Writing Hiragana books and found them to be very helpful in getting the stroke order correct. I gave Sensei (sensee) a copy of Writing Katakana tonight at the club meeting so if she finds it useful then she might use it in class. I'm also using, but don't really care too much for it, Learning Hiragana and Katakana : Workbook and Practice Sheets.

I've been studying Japanese on my own for about four years now and frankly I don't recommend learning a foreign language on your own simply because you have no one to correct or help you. The only advantage I can say that I have is that certain words I have some familiarity with... except when it comes to writing it. Yea, I found the actual writing in kana to be VERY difficult hence I went out and bought even more books to help me learn stroke order.

At any rate, a while back I created a chart of kana that I use in my writing. If you find it useful great and if not... :þ WARNING: There are several kana that are not used in modern Japanese and are NOT in the Genki textbook so you might want to cross-reference the kana in my chart with what we're learning in class. Oh, and before I forget... you'll need to have installed Arial Unicode MS as that's the font I used. Or you could just use the PDF file I made of that page. ;)

The audio files associated with the Genki I textbook can be found at the Loyola University website and at California State University's Language Labs.

Oh, I forgot to add, the Japanese Culture Club meetings will be held on the first and third Mondays of each month at 5:30 PM in our classroom. Our next meeting will be November 5th, 2007. Contact Janelle if you have any other questions or comments. She's in the 9:10-10:10 AM Japanese 101 class.