こいちゃん

You don’t even have to understand Japanese to find this guy amusing! 小出水 (koi de mizu) a.k.a. こいちゃん (koichan) is my favorite Japanese comedy performer. I owe my blog-quote to him: オーマイガットトゥギャザー！ (Oh my god, together!)

シャンプーハト こいちゃん

冬のソナタ (Winter Sonata)

Oh my god together compilation

I had some other great ones in my playlist on Youtube, but some are gone due to copyright claims… (‘>_<”)

Road to Japan : One Year Anniversary

This month I’ve been studying Japanese for one year!

With absolutely no background or prior knowledge of the Japanese language I started learning. To me, the most logical first step was to learn some basic words and most of all: 平仮名 and 片仮名 (Hiragana and Katakana respectively), the basic phonetic script. Using the Nintendo DS has played a major role in all this using applications such as Project JDS (<- highly recommended) and My Japanese Coach to make a start. After learning 平仮名 and 片仮名 I worked on my vocabulary using Smart.FM and grammer skills using the book: Japanese for Busy People I: Romanized Version while making a start on 漢字(Kanji) via About.com.

So where are we now? Well, my trip to Japan helped a great deal in mastering basic vocabulary and grammer, no doubt about it. And it also taught me a basic understanding of Kanji. Being surrounded by a language and it’s characters gives one a feeling of “must understand this”. Added; Some Kanji make a whole lot of sense by themselves. For instance: The Kanji for train station looks like this: 駅. If magnified a bit one can clearly make out a train and its rails, some stairs and is that a bench perhaps? Here is the mentioned Kanji in a bigger form:

Can you see what I mean? On the right is the track with a train on it, and on the left are some stairs and what appears to be benches or maybe even an escalator. Of course this doesn’t mean that every kanji is decipherable by taking a good look and using a bit of imagination. Colors are a good example of this. Red: 赤 Blue: 青 Black: 黒White: 白. What shape is a color? This can only be learned by studying. My Japanese coach helps a little, so does Smart.FM, but I guess most of all About.com’s Joyo Kanji. (Joyo Kanji are the first 1006 Kanji taught in primary school.) Since it also teaches you the right stroke order plus the 音読み (onyomi) and 訓読み (kunyomi); The different readings of a Kanji.

But the biggest help so far has been these books I picked up in Japan. (Very cheaply, I might add!) As I now understand the meaning of pretty much every first grade Kanji. Next challenge: Getting the on- & kunyomi stuck in my head and learning a greater understanding of creating sentences.

Happy 2010 and happy studying everyone!

Bye 2009, hello 2010

You were great. I will always remember you.

• DJ Workshops
• Prowess Records
• 日本
• ＊＊ちゃん (Censored for privacy, let’s just call her Luneちゃん)

In another post I explained who (and why) my favorite DJ of 2009 is. In this post I’ll tell you about my favorite track of 2009. It’s shear beauty, it’s great production; melody, synths, vocals. And to me, essentially, it’s emotional value:

We listened to this song together in the car, an route to Himure in 滋賀 (Shiga) with お母さん behind the wheel. I already loved this song for personal reasons, but at that exact moment in time I realized, with a lump in my throat: “I don’t want to go home. I wanna stay here with Luneちゃん forever. We were counting down the days till we could finally spend time together. Now that we are, I don’t wanna go!”

2009 was a brilliant year. I have good hopes for 2010, but, this year was special in so many ways. Unexplainable, I can’t put it in writing. So, without further ado I’ll let the music and my favorite track of 2009 do the talking.

Gui Boratto – No Turning Back

Of course, there were many more great tracks produced this year. Offaudio had some brilliant releases, Lele’s Marble EP was the best electro I’d heard in a while and my own productions have finally started to sound like release worthy. (Yes, yes, very soon, I’m sorry for the delay!) I’ve finally been able to toy around with real hardware, the MC-303 and TR-606 and the already brilliant Korg DS-10 found it’s big brother; Korg DS-10 Plus. Not too mention how kind Ableton Live has been to me the past months.

2009 was hard work and it had it’s downs. But the good memories outweigh the bad in so many ways. Thank you 2009, with you in the back-pocket, I can only imagine how brilliant 2010 will be. Thanks so much 2009 and please send me a postcard when you think of me.

Empire Of the Sun – Walking On A Dream

Luneちゃん, I will be back soon…

Homesick III