Tofugu.com

Surprisingly, this morning I learned that it was Buddha’s birthday. The cool Frood is turning 2,571 years old today, so make sure you sing him a song (video comments, anyone??) and dip him in some ama-cha to clean him off (he only gets one bath a year). In celebration of today, I thought I’d do a special post about Buddha.

According to The Sutra of the Marks Buddha has 32 “main traits” and 80 “secondary traits.” I discovered this list (which I’ll go into more detail on below) about a year ago, and I was very pleased at how many traits I shared with the enlightened one. This was one of my main strategies for attracting women: “Did you know that I share [blank] number of physical traits with Buddha?”

Anyways, here are the lists. The ones that are highlighted red are ones that I share with Buddha, along with a final percentage at the end. Tell me how close you are, as well, I’m interested in my “becoming Buddha” competition so I can pick up the pace and get plastic surgery accordingly. (more…)

The title of this post says it all. Lang-8 is an absolutely amazing way to practice your Japanese. I’ve been using Lang-8 for about six months now, and plan on using it a lot more this summer. It is a mix of social networking and language learning, though I think the emphasis lands mostly on the latter. Although it’s not a website just for Japanese language learning, that’s what I’ll be talking about for the most part today. Those that are learning Korean, Chinese (traditional and simplified), English, Spanish, and Japanese are all invited…though that makes me wonder, why is it called Lang-8? Maybe they are planning on adding other languages later. Perhaps if a Lang-8 staff is reading this, they can fill us all in.

Anyways, I should explain to you what Lang-8 is all about. They do a better job explaining it than I do, so here you go:

Let me explain these three steps in more detail (more…)

So when I make my transition to (summer) full-time blogger, I’ll be writing a lot more posts on Tofugu (as well as my other blogs). I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I’m excited, but also a bit intimidated. Writing 4-5 posts a week is a lot of content. That’s where YOU come in. I’d like to know what you would like to see more of.

Here is my thought process on posting. Normally, I only write about things I don’t see anywhere else (compared to a lot of blogs that just snatch and cite content from other blogs, being all sheepy). I don’t like being a sheep…and besides, why would anyone read Tofugu if they could just read another blog with the same content? I want to still stay true to that, so with that in mind, I’d love it if you told me what you are interested in. Let me know in the comments. Here are some starter questions for you if you need them: (more…)

New Life: So, I’ve finally finished my thesis. Wow. Thank goodness that’s over. I only have one more project to do, and it’s a video, so that should be little to no sweat. I’ll be graduating in just over a week! From there I’ll move into an apartment with a couple other cool froods. What am I going to do then? Get a job? Psh. I’ve got one big work project at the beginning of summer and then a fairly clean slate. I plan on doing some web design work/practice, but for the most part, I plan on blogging.

That’s it. Blogging. Live the American dream, right there.

I’m hoping I can bring Tofugu back to the 4-5 posts a week blog it once was, and without cutting quality. In fact, I’m hoping to increase the quality. I really like this website, and I want it to be better than it is right now. I plan on doing more videos and coming up with more original articles (stuff you won’t find anywhere else, yeah?). I’m really excited to be able to dedicate time to blogging before reality comes to knock on my door (probably in August or September, when my savings runs out). I’ll even be writing in a couple more blogs…but more on that later. (more…)

Wow Mixi, way to put a damper on things. About two months ago, I put up a tutorial on how to get started with Mixi so that you could use it to practice your Japanese. Now it seems like Mixi is pretty much off limits (for now) to foreigners without a Japanese cell phone email addresses. This theoretically means you have to be living in Japan, and own a cell phone if you want to be able to join Mixi now.

Here are the new rules:

1. You have to confirm a Japanese cell phone email address (docomo, AU, softbank, etc).
2. You also have to confirm a normal email address (hotmail, gmail, whatever).

If you don’t have both of these, you don’t get into Mixi, simple as that. I’ll still be happy to send folks invites, just know that you won’t be able to complete the registration process unless you have a Japanese cell phone. (more…)

Contest is over - #2 won on April 17

inally! The time has come to vote on Nara’s New New Mascot. I got a lot of submissions for this contest, so unfortunately I had to narrow it down to my favorite top ten to make voting easier on everyone. Also, I haven’t read any of the submissions for the “continue this story” contest, but I’ll be getting to that within the week. I hope the City of Nara sees this article and realizes the error of their ways.

The mascots will be listed after the break. Afterwards, there will be a poll that will allow you to vote on your favorite! Please vote for your favorite New New Nara Mascot by using the number/name I gave each mascot (which can be seen on each image). The winner of this contest gets a brand spanking new Japanese textbook of my choosing, so make sure you vote now! Somebody’s education is on the line!

Voting will end in one week! (That’s April 17 at Midnight my time) (more…)

Those silly otaku are finally wishing they had met their moms. See? Never leaving your room does have implications.

They are finally putting down their Gundam model constructor kit. They are finally putting Street Fighter II down. Some of them are even facing that big yellow orb in the sky and huffing and puffing their way on over to “Mother Café,” a particularly maternal café in Osaka with “older looking women” who are actually instructed to nag you about things… “Just to get the experience to be more accurate.”

“Takeshi-kun! You really need to pay for your visit this time.”
“But moooommmmm.”
“No, seriously, you actually have to pay for this.”
“Seriously?”

You’d think you could experience nagging from your actual mother, if you wanted to. So how in the world did this place come into existence?

Apparently, “Mother Café” was created because “there wasn’t really anywhere that had a library of over 10,000 different manga, and also allowed people with a bit of a maniac streak about them to pursue their hearts’ desire.” Maniac streak is right. (more…)

For a while now, I’ve been doing my Godzilla (or Gojira, if you want to be cool) series over on my other site, Koichiben. It is all about Godzilla’s new life in Portland, OR, USA, and how he deals with all the things we take for granted. He is a monster, you know.

I was planning on uploading this video over on Koichiben, but that was before I took a look at the new statistics tracker that Youtube recently put up. It’s a really neat feature that shows all sorts of things, one of them being a geographical tracker; basically, I can see who watches my videos and where they are.

It turns out that all of my Koichiben videos are watched primarily by people in Japan…except for my four Gojira videos, which are all primarily watched by Americans, the Brits, and Australians (don’t worry Norway, you’re in there somewhere too!). Based on those statistics, I decided I should go ahead and pull the series over here. Just makes more sense, I think.

This video is kind of a mix of all the other ones, with a few new things added in. Godzilla’s New Life 5: American Buildings Too Tall was actually made for a Video Art class here at school (Art classes + thesis is what second semester senior year is all about), so it’s a much different style from my previous ones. This one goes a little into the back-story of Godzilla coming to America, some of the things he goes through, and then the story of what happens after he gets back from his Hawaiian vacation (Godzilla #4). Poor Godzilla. Times are a little tough for the lizard. So, without further adieu, check out the video! I hope you laugh, even though it’s a bit darker than previous ones. I really enjoyed making it, anyways. (more…)

So, I have more questions for you.

This time the questions will be shorter/easier and more specific. Although the previous data was incredibly helpful (and I will be using so much of it), I’d like to focus a little on “the use of technology to learn Japanese.” By technology, I mean everything from Mixi.jp, to your Nintendo DS, to your iPod. For those of you who are learning Japanese in a “formal” setting (i.e. in a classroom with a teacher), I am also curious to know if you use technology in your classroom, and if you do, I want to know what it is. Anyways, the questionnaire and polls are below. This one shouldn’t take very long for you to fill out, so if you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it.

Just like the other data, this going towards a thesis all about “how people learn Japanese,” which I will be making available to everyone after it’s all done in an e-book format. So, just know that if you are contributing, you will eventually get something back in terms of information that could be helpful, or at least interesting, to you personally!

Without further adieu, here it is (more…)

I want to thank all of you for your help. By filling out my questionnaire I (might) be able to finish my thesis on time! I will be getting to all of your thank you cards eventually, though I wouldn’t expect them right away. I still have to finish my thesis first, and then I’ll get cracking on them, I promise. I’ve read through all of them and I’m incredibly impressed. They were full of things I never expected. For example, who knew that almost everybody hates pair work? I certainly didn’t. Also, did you know that people who are self taught have the tendency to be more comfortable with speaking, whereas those who are taught in a formal setting (like school) tend to be more comfortable with reading and writing?

Anyways, the best part about the survey was when famous bloggers who blog on Japan helped me out. I have to say I was startled when I got submissions from some of the big names. Although they are really just normal people like you and I, I thought you might want to see what they had to say, since they are “professionals” on the subject, and all. (more…)