Ben the Japanese American

Hi all...

It's amazing how I can be sooo busy without really venturing outside of this tiny apartment...

Here's what I'm up to these days:

• Studying from 9am to 12:20pm at Yoshida. I really like this school. We have spoken Japanese only since day 1. We gain about 30-50 vocabulary per week. We started kanji in our third week (this week). I'm making progress! Yay! But of course, it's hard work (in class and out). I go to class 5 days a week...
• Working 3-5 hours per day on GlobalChat.com, an online private English instruction website. Right now I spend my time giving free trial lessons ( :( ), and developing curriculum. It's hard! So far, I've only given 3 paid lessons... although I will give 2 paid lessons tomorrow. I still can't get any students to continue with me after the free lesson...
• Playing basketball at Ochiai Park! I'm getting better again...
• Reading cognitive neuroscience. Right now I'm reading Mechanisms of Language Acquisition ed. MacWhinney, Introduction to Connectionist modelling of Cognitive Processes by McLeod, Plunkett, and Rolls, and Human Language and Our repilian Brain by Lieberman. Progress is slow because I'm so busy, but I'm really enjoying all 3 books. I would also like to start writing some review papers of the material I've read, and a paper about the role of anticipation in language production. Maki and I have talked some about that subject. Which reminds me...
• I have a girlfriend! Right... ;) Her name is .. Maki? Right, right... Things are going well, going well. We don't see each other much though--She leaves for work at 1 and comes home at 11pm. :( However, we're surviving just fine, and we're looking forward to continuing to work hard.

So that's about it for now. We haven't had too much time to do many "cool" things. We've visited Shinjuku Park and Ueno park, but that's about it. We still don't have plans for Golden Week--the 1 week vacation we have coming up on April 29. (Thinking hard)...

OK, I will go prepare for tomorrow's two lessons. I'm also going to review Maki's experiment proposal for her Master's thesis project. Hope to hear from you! Post a message to my new BBS! It's on the left.. I made it just for y'all--by popular request... For all y'all Microsoft people, I used my training in ASP, JScript, XML, and XSLT to write the darn thing. Yeah yeah... if I could find free ASP.NET hosting, I would have done it all in ASP.NET, TRUST ME!

It's been two full weeks since I've last written. I feel like I've been here two years. Things are going well.

I had orientation at school on Friday. School starts on Monday, April 6. I am still studying my old book (Genki--thanks Russ!), and I will take a look at the textbook for school as well. I am trying to learn every day. So far, I am learning about 5 new words a day. Of course, I'm also forgetting about 3 old words a day as well, so ... doh!

My brother Matt's birthday was on April 2. I went to Takadanobaba on Friday and sent him a card. I've been jogging or biking pretty much everywhere. The subway is nice, but the cost adds up fast. It is only a 20 minute bikeride to school. Cars move slow here because of the traffic, so I can stay in the flow of traffic easily. It's nice. I just follow the paths that the motorized scooterists (?!) take.

Besides studying Japanese, I've been actively reading journal articles and books. I'm still touching on a very wide array of subjects: memory, language (bilingualism, translation, interpretation, acquisition), distributed network modelling, and attention. Things are progressing well. I will begin to write some preliminary summary papers this month.

I am also working on learning some music on piano. The piano is a nice instrument; I enjoy it. I wish I had a piano while I was taking music theory. Anyway, I am learning the following music: "Variations on The Kanon" by George Winston, "Rondo Alla Turcata" by Mozart, and "The Music of theNight" by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I'm very roughly through about 1/5 of each piece. It's slow progress, but I like it.

Otherwise, not much is going on. Maki and I are doing well in adjusting to each other. We have our share of small problems, but like everybody else, we work together to solve them.

I've posted new photos of the cherry blossoms here. They are very nice. Last weekend and this weekend there were quite a few cherry blossom festivals. We went to the Imperial Palace; the blossoms still weren't in full bloom. I went back on Thursday alone (Maki had been there before, and couldn't make it because of work), and the view was nicer. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Take care!