Stuff, and Other Things

Apr 25

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So, there are a lot of things going on in the next few weeks, and it has impacted (and may continue doing so) my posting schedule. Basically, I’m moving to a new apartment, applying for a Grad School scholarship in Japan (all expenses paid, if I get it), getting ready for a completely unrelated vacation in Japan this August, and playing videogames like a madman in effort to unpack the stress of all of that. I might start doing shorter posts of my various digital escapades rather than attempt to forward some kind of thesis every time I write something, but we’ll see. Hell, there’s been a decent amount of juicy gaming news, but sometimes it’s tough to write without a narrative.

By the way, if you have suggestions for good blogs that you read that are not already listed on the sidebar, by all means let me know in the comments below (or email); I might not directly add them to the sidebar, but I promise to take a look. My Feedly app keeps me sane during breaks at work, and my normal dealers seem to be on vacation lately. Or, you know, they might be in similar situations to myself. Nevertheless, this dry spell couldn’t have come at a worse time. Feed me your words/arguments.

Posted on April 25, 2014, in Miscellany and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.

  1. Thrush | April 25, 2014 at 8:19 am

    Out of curiosity, and I won’t be offended if you don’t answer, what do you do for work and what do you want to study in Japan?

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    • Azuriel | April 25, 2014 at 8:46 am

      Right now I work for a county government agency, which has nothing to do with my Major (which was the extremely marketable East Asian Studies… sigh). The Grad School thing is basically a means to get a free Masters in something more practical, like a MBA, while potentially networking. It’s worth noting that I’ve tried this road before, although I’m probably better positioned now that I’m not competing with people in the more well-known JET program.

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  2. Matt | April 25, 2014 at 8:48 am

    Do you speak Japanese? The absurd writing system defeated me, though I may be back.

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    • Azuriel | April 25, 2014 at 8:50 am

      Never got fluent, unfortunately, and was discouraged from going the translator route. Studied abroad over there during college though, and my buddy has been teaching English there for the last 6 years. I’ll be hanging out with him this Fall.

      Edit: all the Masters classes would be in English, if that makes more sense.

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      • flosch | April 25, 2014 at 5:19 pm

        Or in what passes for English ;)
        At least that was my experience: the level of English proficiency at the professor level varies wildly. But you probably already know that.

        Oh, also: jealous, and all that, in case it works out. But I think I said that before.

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  3. Brian 'Psychochild' Green | April 26, 2014 at 7:26 pm

    Ooh, good luck on the grad school application. I love languages; I have a degree in Spanish (in addition to Computer Science) and took night classes in German a few years ago in preparation for a move to Germany that never happened. I have started studying Japanese on my own for the past year or so using online resources. I wanted to see if I could wrap my head around the written part of the language. Going is slow, but it’s very interesting after learning a lot about Romance languages in university. My big problem is that there seem to be few resources that really cater to the way that I like to learn languages; I tend to want to learn as much of the rules as possible rather than trying to remember phrases at the beginning that I don’t understand.

    Anyway, I look forward to more blog posts, and that you find some time for your theses. We may disagree on details, but I respect your thinking on the topics.

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    • flosch | April 27, 2014 at 8:22 am

      That was something I wasn’t a big fan of when I learned Japanese, either. It seems a lot of programs focus on memorizing stuff instead of understanding the rules behind it. I always wonder whether that’s just a Japanese way of doing it. Even helpful books such as the “Dictionary of Japanese Grammar” have only helped me scratch the surface of what the grammar regularities in that language are. It’s as if nobody cared codifying it, though I believe there must something like that around for university-level studies at least. It’s one of the pillars of language studies, after all…

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