I've been living, working, studying, playing in Japan for the last 8 years. I came here with no knowledge of the language (except "ohayou" because of that Sesame Street where Big Bird goes to Japan). Learning katakana and hiragana took an afternoon of riding the train and reading signs. The first 3 years I didn't really study much, but talking to old men in bars and spending time in the hospital boosted my communication level a ton. By year 6 I had business level spoken Japanese but had never been able to get into kanji, so I was basically illiterate, but stilled managed to get hired by a Japanese company (with no use for my English skills).
I've been using WaniKani for the last half year and it has massively improved my kanji level. It's definitely aimed towards native (american) English speakers, but if you want to learn Kanji, I can highly recommend it. It's actually the only online service (other than Netflix) that I've ever paid for ($50/year with a coupon).
Most of the other free apps I've used have been like gym memberships, but for some reason this one sticks.
Fair enough. I guess I should have posted it. If you do some google searches you can find a bunch, but a lot of them dont work any more. The one that worked for me was CRAB YORI GATOR
Although I was never a fan of Powers Boothe, I can highly recommend The Emerald Forrest, a movie that never got enough attention.
R.I.P. Dah-day from my dreams.
I highly suggest reading the book Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. It goes over a long history of really stupid people (along with some extremely sad stories) who have died in the park.
There are similar books documenting deaths in both Yosemite and Grand Canyon. While a number of the deaths are accidents or wrong-place-wrong-time things most are caused by the person doing the dying. Example: those who chose to swim in the pool just above Nevada Falls in Yosemite and getting swept over the falls.
The main reason I found this interesting is that recently my wife and I started eating Shyojinryori (the food the Japanese monks eat) quite consistently. The food is vegan and also contains no onions, spiciness, or garlic. It was a first for me to leave these out. I noticed within a few days that I could smell multiple times better. My wife had a work party where she broke her diet. When I came home, the entire house reeked of garlic and alcohol to the point where it was uncomfortable to breath. I had to open the windows in our room despite the freezing temperatures.
I ended up also breaking the diet because I just couldn't stand the smell of people in the subway. Popped a bit of garlic and onions in my food, and I could no longer smell the people around me.
I also speak Japanese and English, but I learned Japanese while living in Japan in my 20's. Did you grow up in Japan or in a western country? I'm wondering if, as the blog post implies, that the situation/period in life in which you learn the language changes your personality in that language.
I grew up in California, in a household speaking Japanese at home, and going to two schools at the same time: one American school 5 days a week, one Japanese school all day Saturday following the Japanese government curriculum (it was mainly for students going back to Japan after their families' overseas work assignment was over).
All my friends were Japanese until middle school, and my social life was dominated by Japanese. Definitely didn't fit into American elementary school at all and was a problem student.
But then I stopped going to Japanese school in HS, and then figured out how to excel in American school, met likeminded friends for the first time, etc.
Then I went to work at a Japanese megacorp in my early 20's.
It's a strange mix of time spent using the language.
Do you like that you grew up getting to know two cultures, or do you wish it had been different? Growing up bilingual sounds super cool to me, but people who actually did it often tend to sound less excited about it.
In a vacuum, it's a net positive to be able to understand an additional language very well. But I've felt that my life would be easier in Japan if I were "more foreign", since I wouldn't be subjected to the expectations of a domestic person while actually internally being a foreigner.
Also I'm convinced that had I spent the resources that would put towards Japanese into English, I would have become much more proficient at English earlier in my life. That would have translated into better verbal test scores, and may have meant I wouldn't have had such a hard time in my younger years in school. Then again plenty of solo-English speakers of the shy nerd bretheren have problems at school of not fitting in, so this isn't only a language issue.
Honestly it's just a grass is greener type of situation. It's brought me great advantages (I wouldn't be doing my current company without this advantage, and I genuinely think the language is a beautiful and sonorous one, and the cultural traditions are admirable), but it's also held me back in many ways compared to my 100% American English peers as well.
I actually ended up in the same article because VX is related to オウム真理教(Aum Shinrikyo), the group that was responsible for the gas attacks in Tokyo. They were also manufacturing VX and are the only ones on record to have used it to commit a murder, until now I guess...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo
1. One of the companies we started working with is named after megalightning (ELVES-Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources). I had never heard of megalightning before and wondered why.
2. There seems to be very little information about ELVES and wanted to know if anyone had some insight on it.
