The last day of the year is always a day of contemplation. It’s been a challenging year for all of us. But I hope your year was filled with positive experiences, as well. For me, creating this platform has been one of the best experiences of the year. Many thanks to all of you for showing so much enthusiasm and for making this community the collaborative environment that it is.
Today, we spent the day doing typical things, such as cleaning the house (大掃除) and picking up some 年越しそば to finish off the year. How are you spending New Year’s this year?
Instead of our regulary scheduled programming, I thought I’d send you this clip from the film adaptation of Higuchi Ichiyo’s short story 「大つごもり」, which means ‘the last day of the year.’ The movie, directed by Imai Tadashi in 1953, is a combination of three of Ichiyo’s short works. I found a short clip from 「大つごもり」 on YouTube. If you’re interested in the original narrative, you can find it here.
For me, 2021 was a year of minimalism and keeping my cool, while countless Americans were freaking out and upping Amazon stock while cursing billionaires sending dildos to space, I managed to not buy a single new item of clothing, not a single single tube of toothpaste (I use baking soda), and not a single new cell phone while countless people lost their minds and made much use of their AppleCare plan. (I don't think its at all an accident that Apple unleashed the unbreakable/unsoakable iPhone13 when they did!) I moved on to advanced yoga despite never mastering a press to handstand split, learned Zen meditation from a Buddhist friend to help bring down low grade fevers, learned countless KPop Dances despite incessant fatigue, completed my 2 year goal of learning 2,000 Japanese Kanji & 3,500 Russian words despite massive headaches and brain fog, managed to loose my sense of smell, but cook some of my best meals and make my best homemade wine ever. So its not all bad. When I failed in engineering a thriving vertical farming aquaponics system in my living room window due to a lack of space and proper resources, it was hard to cope with the last possibility to be able to grow food by my own hands, but I took it in stride when someone that used to live off the land and in the wild, as I had....I think they would have lost it....Doctor Zhivalgo style.
2021 isn't about how crappy things are....for everyone, but rather how you handled how crappy things are. Even if you look back with regret and say "I didn't learn anything, I barely read anything from Bunsuke, I didn't progress at all in reading Japanese.....heck! anything! I was too busy freaking out" Well you aren't alone. If you are still here, you're lucky, probably more lucky than you deserve and frankly isn't that enough?
So don't shy from giving 2021 a recap just because it was so horrible. This year should get a recap because we did it. We made it through it.
Hi Loren, I enjoyed this post. I'm glad you were able to keep your life free of dust-resistant iphones and space dildos. I'm also a big fan of decluttering. My many years of moving countries have helped limit the number of my possessions, and New Year's is always a good time to reassess what we really need and what acts as interference.
It sounds like you handled 2021 pretty well, despite all of the challenges that it posed. I hope the newsletter isn't a source of stress; it's there to help you not to pressure you. The only one who is really on the hook for this every single day is me :D So don't worry if you can only do a few.
Congrats on hitting 2000 kanji! I'm curious to hear what you used to study kanji. Have a great Sunday!
WaniKani.com I'd studied Japanese independently for several years off and on, but I couldn't get anything to stick. Always just a beginner. Well.....60 Levels, 2,000 Kanji, thousands of respective vocabulary, the majority of Kanji found on the JLPT N1? It sounded promising. I had heard that someone had completed the WaniKani program in a little over a year. "Okay, two years should be no problem! Piece of cake!" I thought. Very funny. About halfway through the program I started noticing I was confusing older kanji with newer kanji since the meaning or radicals were very similiar in my mind. That's when I started to go past the basic mnemonics system they use to help with memorization and began constructing these things called Memory Palaces that a Memory World Champion told me about, Yan Jaa Wintersoul. It's helped immensely.
Grammar is my next thing to tackle over the next six months with Bunpro. I'll keep using WaniKani, but I need to start learning how to string some of these cool Kanji into actual sentences. lol. My experience with my native English language has taught me that reading improves grammar the most. Wish I could say that was true for Russian! Thank you for all of your posts. They really are fun.
good to know, thank you for this information, for my goal to is to learn 2000 kanji, using kanji in context, but I still have a long way to go and grammar also be my next goal. Again congratulations on managing it all.
I totally agree with you, indeed it's all about how you cope with things at might be less pleasant. And fantastic you were able to learn that many kanji, in spite of everything. Let's continue to celebrate the fact we made it, instead of having regrets, because indeed that doesn't bring us any further. Happy new year to all.
For me, 2021 was a year of minimalism and keeping my cool, while countless Americans were freaking out and upping Amazon stock while cursing billionaires sending dildos to space, I managed to not buy a single new item of clothing, not a single single tube of toothpaste (I use baking soda), and not a single new cell phone while countless people lost their minds and made much use of their AppleCare plan. (I don't think its at all an accident that Apple unleashed the unbreakable/unsoakable iPhone13 when they did!) I moved on to advanced yoga despite never mastering a press to handstand split, learned Zen meditation from a Buddhist friend to help bring down low grade fevers, learned countless KPop Dances despite incessant fatigue, completed my 2 year goal of learning 2,000 Japanese Kanji & 3,500 Russian words despite massive headaches and brain fog, managed to loose my sense of smell, but cook some of my best meals and make my best homemade wine ever. So its not all bad. When I failed in engineering a thriving vertical farming aquaponics system in my living room window due to a lack of space and proper resources, it was hard to cope with the last possibility to be able to grow food by my own hands, but I took it in stride when someone that used to live off the land and in the wild, as I had....I think they would have lost it....Doctor Zhivalgo style.
2021 isn't about how crappy things are....for everyone, but rather how you handled how crappy things are. Even if you look back with regret and say "I didn't learn anything, I barely read anything from Bunsuke, I didn't progress at all in reading Japanese.....heck! anything! I was too busy freaking out" Well you aren't alone. If you are still here, you're lucky, probably more lucky than you deserve and frankly isn't that enough?
So don't shy from giving 2021 a recap just because it was so horrible. This year should get a recap because we did it. We made it through it.
2021: We're Still Here
lol
~Loren Swan
Hi Loren, I enjoyed this post. I'm glad you were able to keep your life free of dust-resistant iphones and space dildos. I'm also a big fan of decluttering. My many years of moving countries have helped limit the number of my possessions, and New Year's is always a good time to reassess what we really need and what acts as interference.
It sounds like you handled 2021 pretty well, despite all of the challenges that it posed. I hope the newsletter isn't a source of stress; it's there to help you not to pressure you. The only one who is really on the hook for this every single day is me :D So don't worry if you can only do a few.
Congrats on hitting 2000 kanji! I'm curious to hear what you used to study kanji. Have a great Sunday!
WaniKani.com I'd studied Japanese independently for several years off and on, but I couldn't get anything to stick. Always just a beginner. Well.....60 Levels, 2,000 Kanji, thousands of respective vocabulary, the majority of Kanji found on the JLPT N1? It sounded promising. I had heard that someone had completed the WaniKani program in a little over a year. "Okay, two years should be no problem! Piece of cake!" I thought. Very funny. About halfway through the program I started noticing I was confusing older kanji with newer kanji since the meaning or radicals were very similiar in my mind. That's when I started to go past the basic mnemonics system they use to help with memorization and began constructing these things called Memory Palaces that a Memory World Champion told me about, Yan Jaa Wintersoul. It's helped immensely.
Grammar is my next thing to tackle over the next six months with Bunpro. I'll keep using WaniKani, but I need to start learning how to string some of these cool Kanji into actual sentences. lol. My experience with my native English language has taught me that reading improves grammar the most. Wish I could say that was true for Russian! Thank you for all of your posts. They really are fun.
good to know, thank you for this information, for my goal to is to learn 2000 kanji, using kanji in context, but I still have a long way to go and grammar also be my next goal. Again congratulations on managing it all.
I totally agree with you, indeed it's all about how you cope with things at might be less pleasant. And fantastic you were able to learn that many kanji, in spite of everything. Let's continue to celebrate the fact we made it, instead of having regrets, because indeed that doesn't bring us any further. Happy new year to all.