kalin

I’ll try and write more about the process of actually preparing for, and travelling to Japan, for those who might be curious. Prior to leaving, all that is basically required is getting a new passport, plane tickets, and a Working Holiday Visa, which is a fairly straightforward process — although it takes a couple of weeks to process, so be sure to start sorting it out at least 3 months prior to departure!

You need a flight booking to get the Visa, and you need a Passport for a flight booking, so all 3 elements are non-parallelisable, which makes things a bit slower.

I’ll write more shortly about the exciting part of discarding everything you own, and fitting your whole life in a suitcase and a backpack. Hooray!

Well, it’s time to write a post, now that I have free time, and no job, since my workplace liquidated.

I’ve been spending lots of time studying Kanji and Japanese Grammar. Using a DS for Kanji study is excellent, my game of choice is Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu ) (なぞって覚える大人の漢字練習).

The hardest thing about Kanji practice is that most of the words have no conceptual attachment. Even if you understand one of the Kanji, having context of the sample sentence or word is necessary to help memorize the different readings of the Kanji. Since most of the DS games are made for native Japanese speakers, this is a problem for non-natives using it for study.

Still, digging through it with a dictionary at hand is pretty good, and you expand your vocabulary while memorizing the readings of the Kanji. There seems to be a lot of transformations of the pronunciations of a Kanji that are not actually listed in the dictionary, but where the pronunciation changes due to surrounding sounds — this is probably much easier if you can find and learn the linguistic-based reasons for these changes.

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