Blog Pantsu

The difference between “different” and “difference”

I had just noticed that one of my blog entries had “different” when the correct form of that word is “difference.” My mistake. But, this brings an interesting question: what is the significance? (inside joke; if you can guess what it is, then you’re a competent English speaker [at least, from a linguistic perspective]).

Basically, my question is: do you rate a blog based it’s correctness of spelling?

The Max Payne movie

Only recently became interested in this movie. Will try and see it! Anyone else?

The best fucking costume ever

Click the image for the blog post. Isn’t this just the most awesome costume ever created in the history of mankind? Yes. Yes, it is.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 and the difference between Japan and NA

Right, I don’t know what the hell this is about. This genre of game is whole new experience to me. So, I’m going to get it. I’m not interested in how I’ll like it, I’m more interested in trying to make sense of all this new information.

This leads a very interesting topic: the different between Japan and NA. What are the chances of a North American company producing a trailer like this? Don’t get me wrong, this seems like a very interesting piece of game, but what are the chances? While Japan makes stuff cuter, us American are making things bigger, badder, and something that’ll make us say “Kick-ass!” or “Motherfucker, that was awesome!” Games are becoming more like Hollywood movies in America. Why? Because Hollywood is very good at making audiences weep in awe at a fight scene, or make us sit at the edge of our seats. Japan is creating it’s own style of game (the movies seem like something an American would watch and think it was made in Hollywood), and it’s very interesting.

I do know that it is an RPG of sorts, but it’s presentation made it feel like something completely different. At first, I thought that it was a type of life-simulator, but then I saw the fight scenes (I thought they were dancing at first, to be honest ^^) and knew that it was an RPG. But… what a different RPG, I must say. Presented like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

And with that, I bid you a due (I think got this idiom correct ^^;;).

Nihongo zuhyou

I’m too lazy right now to encode Japanese text, so I’m using romaji (pronounced, rlo-mah-jee). What “Nihongo zuhyou” means is, literally translated, Japanese language chart. What I mean by “literally translated” is that because Japanese doesn’t have pluralization (all nouns are singular), it is “chart” instead of “charts.” What the hell am I talking about? Well, let me thoroughly explain (you can skip the following paragraph).

In my Japanese 1 class, I am required to write all of the Katakana in 3:00 minutes. The first couple times, I failed miserably. Now, I made my own charts for me to practice. You can get those same charts on this webpage of mine. I just did the 3:00 minute thing today and scored a time of 1:51 (after doing this chart a couple times). I have some tips for studying Japanese:

1. First of all, how long do you study the kana? If you study it for more than ten minutes to an hour and you still can’t get all of them, then you’re doing something wrong. The most important thing to do when learning a language is to actually use it. What I mean is, don’t just memorize the kana through your eyes, but memorize the kana through your hands; in other words, write them! Learn to write in Japanese. And don’t just learn to write them over and over again; that won’t help you read. You have to do both, reading and writing, in order to get anywhere.
2. Get plenty of sleep. This applies to everything and anything in the world. Not only does a lack of sleep damage your brain (and therefore your memory), you’ll easily forget what you memorized. GET SLEEP! Get enough sleep.
3. Practice every single day. Just like with English, you’ll have to use Japanese everyday. Write journals in Japanese (romaji or kana/kanji, whichever you desire). Try and start with sentences and then gradually move into paragraphs (I don’t think Japanese has paragraphs, but you know what I mean) and then into entire pages. And then read what you wrote an hour or so later and see if you can make sense of your writing. The more you write and the more you understand, the better you are at Japanese! (Writing, anyway)
4. Lose some of the grammar restrictions. With Japanese, you would typically write nouns, adjectives, and verbs in kanji. If you don’t know kanji, then simply do what most Japanese do: use hiragana! If you don’t know the kanji, then simply use hiragana (DO NOT use katakana; that’s strictly for loan words and onomatopoeia/sounds on paper). However, you can try and look up what the kanji for that word is. There’s nothing wrong with that.

That is all for now. I have no tips for pronunciation, since I live in a English/Filipino speaking area. Good luck!

Take that, Obama!

I’m no Obama supporter, but lol.