Ed Marshall @esm@mastodon.social

Visiting Japan has taught me that it was a mistake to focus on kanji/vocab and hiragana and not worry about katakana; katakana is used at least as much as hiragana from what I've seen, and because almost all loanwords are written that way, words I'd normally recognize are unreadable or slow to register.

I'm cramming katakana flashcards on the shin to Kyoto as penance.

I feel like I've been on some sort of personal improvement bender since the year started: losing (a lot of) weight, learning 日本語, "swiping right" again, even stopped biting my nails.

It seems I'm coming to a critical juncture though: I would cut someone for a little pasta, Japanese makes me feel dumber every day, I remain desperately lonely, and my goddamn fingertips itch.

(Not really looking for advice or help here, just having a shitty night and screaming into the void a little. It'll pass.)

Your April Fools Day joke isn't funny.

Still having fun. 🙂 #日本製

Also, jisho.org is an international treasure. I don't even have the words to explain how good their dictionary is.

The GNOME 日本製 IME is tremendously good with a Latin keyboard: type romaji, get hiragana/katakana/kanji automatically. Even an idiot like me can use it.

I'm similarly impressed with Google's IME for Android: it's basically T9, but for hiragana. I'm guessing this a pretty common input arrangement on mobile in Japan?

(It'd be easier to use if my instant recall of hiragana was better. 😛 I have so much work to do here; I'm still not sure why I thought learning a new language was a good idea.)

If I once had the notion that I was modestly intelligent, and perhaps even capable of learning new things, I have thoroughly driven those ideas away by trying to learn a new language.

(But I still think Japanese is a ton of fun.)

Holiday traditions should be delicious

Trans bay-area friends looking for portfolio shots, or who just want to try doing an artistic shoot: an amazing friend who does queer & body-positive photography is looking for models for a (timely) new project.

I can put you in touch, or their Instagram post is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpVTWV8l0n2/

IM NETZ DES FBI

I am unreasonably happy about acquiring this.