Japanese!

In my never-ending pursuit for more stuff to learn, I decided to take up Japanese. =D Got myself a DIY Japanese book that's written in Chinese. Taiwanese Chinese, which is, well, 繁体字. I took a Chinese version instead of an English version 'cause Japanese is very much like Chinese. Plus, I can skip most of the Kanji parts which would be omitted in a Chinese version since Kanji's basically Chinese characters, with the same meaning, but different pronunciations. I think the Japanese learn Kanji by memorising them. As they do with Hiragana and Katakana. There's no link or image behind the characters unlike the Chinese characters do. Then again, with over 100,000 Chinese characters, we had to have some image to memorise them all. Plus we have all sorts of complex non-image versions as well, just think 璧 or 懂. Not much relation with 辟 and 董. Unlike 火，烧，灼，烤。 [On second thought, there isn't much similarity either, is there?]

Just started today after translating all the weird Chinese headings by referencing an English-Jap website. Like how was I supposed to know that 平扳名清 is Hiragana. =X Well, got about 15 Hiraganas down now,　あ、い、う、え、お、か、き、く、け、こ、さ、し、す、せ、そ。 It's easy typing and reading them, but doing that without remembering the row and column those characters belong in is hard. 'cause I don't think you're actually supposed to learn a language by regurgitating the exact replica of a table of characters. And I'm not just learning Romanji; I want to be able to read and write Jap too.

It's simply amazing how I've actually managed to learn English and Chinese. I mean, to be able to actually listen, speak, and write these two languages fluently is just nothing short of extraordinary that I can't even begin to imagine how we've done it.

Why learn Japanese, is probably the most pressing question here. It's cool to be tri-lingual, even though Japanese is already mastered by quite a significant portion of the world's teenage population [who are actively involved in fansubbing anime and manga]. Plus, I think it's more appropriate that I learn Japanese than say, French or Malay, since I'm exposed to Japanese media a quarter of my free time. And it's the perfect language for Chinese speakers. =D We have an advantage over the European language speakers.

Of course, it would be hardly right [for lack of a better word], that I learn Japanese but yet neglect my other languages. I mean, I probably fail horribly at SATs, judging by the fact that I'd taken a look at Huang Lu's SAT book once and at the grammar section, felt that all those supposedly wrong MCQ choices were sentences I would have written. And still would have. Nyah, I probably made tons of grammar mistakes above already, even though I wrote them as linguistically correct as I could. And Chinese, I miss Chinese. Haven't written a single Chinese character in ages. That leaky cauldron of 汉字 is held in place by 88.3 FM that I listen to on the car, and the Chinese TV and newspaper that I read. All Chinese. English is for the Internet use only.

So ... I decided, to complement my efforts in Jap, I'm gonna just flip to a random page in the Chinese dictionary everyday, and find out all the definitions of every new word, phrase. And pick up some English grammar book from the NLB to read.

Which by now I realise, going NS early is quite a nice thing. Got a few months before Uni to work on my own skills, get up-to-date with all the new tech developments, go out [to the Internet] and program all the stuff I'd always wanted to do, man, it's so cool...

Konjiki no Gash Bell rocks!! Don't say it ain't.