Yeah!

Been a long time, I know.

I got lazy, then forgot I had this blog, and ignored it at some point too! Well, about two months since my last post, I'm back but who knows how often I'll post. Can't make any promises.

Well, let me start by saying that my third semester of grad school came to an end, and my semester project wrapped up beautifully, so I'm glad for that. I put a lot of work into it and it paid off in the end. Who knew Japanese manga could be so fascinating and rich in history, culture and also provide a very tangible pedagogical resource through the understanding of visual media as a interpretative form of prose.

Yeah, it sounds like WTF? but it was worth the invested research and time. Even with what I did manage to include into the final paper, there was so much more to include, but in the end I just wanted to finish. I still felt proud with what I had accomplished and my mentor had been a great help and such a supportive drive to reaching my goal.

And speaking of Japanese. I started my second 3-month course of Japanese instruction at the Japan Society. I started in June and continue until August. It still a lot of fun, but the material is getting harder this time. It's a follow up course, picking up from the last course I took, so many particles and sentence structure elements are slightly being tweaked with additional usage and meaning. Miyashita sensei is still my instructor, and she continues to be a hoot, ha!

It's really intense at times because she wants us to become comfortable with fluency and drills us every class with rapid fire repetition. Of course, she'll also calls on us individually at random to repeat phrases. So we are all on edge at times, but it's still fun and everyone enjoys the experience. I'm actually pretty good with pronunciation and/or articulation, but remembering grammar structures and appropriate particle usage still hinders me, a bit. I just need more practice.

Well, that's it for now. More stuff coming soon, but not sure when.

Peace, ja ne!