I took JLPT 3 today, it was my first time taking JLPT. It was pretty okay since I’ve learnt all the stuff that’s tested in my Japanese lessons. Just a few questions here and there I wasn’t too sure of despite the fact that I didn’t study at all (ehe ^-^;), and as for the Listening section it’s over once you miss or mishear a keyword, really…

I had a lot of leftover time, especially for the Grammar and Comprehension section… I spent 40 out of 70 minutes half-asleep even after checking -_-

To be honest, I kind of wanted to take level 2 this year, but seeing how difficult the grammar patterns were and just looking at the huge number of kanji I hadn’t really learnt started to scare me. And so in the end I decided to take JLPT 3. What a coward, you might say, but I’m not that much of a mugger, especially if I haven’t had proper lessons at all.

Next year, I’ll probably be taking Level 2, I wouldn’t be ready for Level 1 imho. How was Level 2, mish? |D

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Update: I’ve been reading lots of Detective Conan, in addition to Skip Beat!. DC’s really nostalgic but still really enjoyable! I never guess the murderer correctly (then again I don’t expect the likes of an idiot like me to) but I feel like I learn something from it all sometimes. I really like all the characters, too. The manga makes me want to watch the anime, which I would expect to be 395431.1954903x more nostalgic because I used to watch chinese dubs in Taiwan… For Skip Beat!, the art still irks me sometimes (that is, quite a bit) though I’ve really come to like Kyouko. Her hatred for Shou has also been successfully passed on to me, somehow. I find myself cheering her on when she gets some of that revenge against him, and I feel increasingly disgusted when he appears in the manga. That the seiyuu for Shou is Miyano Mamoru in the anime doesn’t really help either. I sometimes don’t think his voice suits the roles he does.

P.S. These flash games are really fun, somehow… sigh, the Japanese and their quirky ideas. Some games have been translated into English while others have not. Rose & Camellia (maybe better known as the slapping game?) is especially creative and addictive, I find |D Highly recommended if you are bored at the moment.

On a random note, I really want to watch Sky Crawlers and have my own week of leisure and do other random things which I enjoy as usual, but from tomorrow till Friday I’ll have to go to a camp I don’t even really want to go to :\ which I find really ironic since the camp actually costs quite a bit. I’m not really a camp-person, either…

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I’ve also been wondering a bit about how scanlations work and stuff :\ there always seem to be an awful lot of people involved in any proper scanlation of any series.. How many people does it take to change the lightbulb, really?

Miku, Rin, Len, Meiko and KAITO ♥

I know, I know, (;_;) crai I don’t really lurk on Nico much, so.

I love this as much/ more than the Nico Nico Medley.

If you have a Nico Nico account, please enjoy the VOCALOID version here, otherwise you’ll have to make do with Part 1 here and Part 2 here on YouTube. It goes on for about 14 minutes.

I mean, this features lots of different otaku songs like Caramelldansen, Ievan Polkka, Danjo, Yatta! (lol), THE DANGO SONG, MY FAVOURITE CHRONO TRIGGER TRACK♥, and even a Yaranaika song in addition to a large portion of the rest of the “classic” Nico Nico Medley songs. It does get quite confusing when they overlay the songs, though.

I like the VOCALOID version much. KAITO makes me laugh. A lot. KAITORAMAN!

And there’s Miku; need I say more? みっくみっくにしてあげる~♥

Taituon’s version is pretty dang good too. It’s here on Nico.

I can’t recognise all the songs D: That’s a whole chuckload of songs stuffed into 14 minutes! This has all the annotations for each and every song (but it’s only Part 1 for now, and it’s the version by Taituon), though.

They're such a loving family.

Oo, 0verflow is releasing a new product called Cross Days sometime soon… I really hope it’s better than Summer Days, that piece of crap. And could they start using other characters other than the original set of characters in School Days already? Summer Days made me realise how sick and tired I was of them already.

*Pictures, you ask? Maybe, maybe not. Depends. It’s late now, after all.

My dreaded examinations are finally over, and the results are only gonna be in next week. Frankly I don’t expect much of myself judging by how badly the papers seemed to go.

In any case, I’ve got more time on my hands now. I’ll probably start trying to improve both my English and Japanese vocabulary as much as possible – through iKnow and the like, probably.

I’ll be catching up with animu and stuff now. I might even eventually get around to watching G00 if I feel like it. I’ve finished Natsume Yuujinchou, it was an alright series. I feel happy after watching but I don’t find much meaning to it, nor do I find anything worth fangirling. I didn’t like the voicers much when I first watched it but they grow on me, almost all voices do. The ending was rather… anticlimatic, as the whole series generally is. Or maybe I expected too much out of it.

I’ve started on the Tales of the Abyss anime as well. The cheagles are so adorable |D Although I do find that the plot development seems quite strange. I read the first few chapters of the manga as well, it’s pretty much the same thing, and I found it very weird even then. I’m not a Lit student so I can’t really pinpoint what aspect of it seems weird to me, but uh. Either way, I’m guessing it has to do with how it was adapted from the game. I was actually kind of disappointed with the voicer for Luke when I watched the trailer, but as I said, it kinda grew after the first and second episodes although I still prefer a voice with a somewhat different kind of feel for a character like Luke.

I’d like to try and play more of my games too, my Wii has been rotting beside my computer monitor for at least two weeks (actually, maybe three) already. I haven’t really tried out SSBB properly yet, and that kind of game isn’t exactly my forte, but whatever. Super Mario Galaxy is also still unfinished as yet. There are way too many galaxies to cover! Although I did get all the Grand Stars already.

Gotta sleep now, sorry it’s kinda short (or maybe you’d be thinking Don’t Be Sorry, It’s Finally A Semi/Demi-Short Post Hurrah)

In case anyone needs an online English-to-Japanese phrase translator, I think http://www.alc.co.jp/ is a pretty good site to start, although you probably need some Japanese grammar background before you learn to use that site properly since it’s Japanese and doesn’t translate chunks of text most of the time. To use, just type a phrase in either English or Japanese alone into that dark-blue bar below the words ‘英辞郎 on the WEB’ and press enter. If I’m not wrong, it shows you results based on the translation, as well as what it finds online with that phrase (or something similar) – In other words, you actually know what word to use in which context, if you can tell.

http://speedanki.com/ is pretty good for expanding your vocabulary before JLPT, too. (I think I linked this on the right?)

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C or WWWJDIC is a really good English-Japanese, Japanese-English dictionary.

I’ve started to write journal entries on Lang-8.com for a few days now, it seems to help my Japanese by posting and getting stuff corrected ;D

It’s also pretty fun (maybe it even helps improve my English a little too) to correct other people and help them with English.

But even though my Chinese exam is coming up, I really don’t have any kind of motivation to help myself with it. Lack of interest, you may say, but still. It does affect my GPA, after all.

Sigh, my math, physics and chemistry is doomed. I shall be off to study now. Just thought that the above would be helpful.

Edit: I also started an account on pixiv just to lurk around. kl-chan is one of the more popular artists there, as usual. You need a japanese email address to register, wtf? Ah well. It’s interesting to learn how to register for Japanese things they always ask for the prefecture etc.

AKA Work vs. Play, or as depicted, Homework Monster vs. Zelda

*Picture NOT owned by me in any way, I got it from a dArtist whose style should be quite recognisable. Very talented artist.

Play Wins! ONE HIT K.O.

Okay random, but that’s really what’s going on now.

I’ve gotten back into my semi-obsessions, which are, for now, the likes of a certain Japanese SNS fashion-related website, as well as Purime 5 (as usual T___T)

Bad timing, since my examinations are in, oh, TWO FRCKING WEEKS?!

On top of that, I have this project due THIS FRIDAY and I haven’t even started properly on it. I’ve kind of gotten a rough idea for it already, and I think it’s pretty feasible, just that uh. Not sure if the teacher grading me will feel the same way about it.

やる気がゼンゼンついてないんですよ～～神様、もう勘弁してぇ～

omake:

'Let's Play'

Miku Miku Shite A★GE★RU~! KIRA★ミ

Now that I have your attention, I shall ramble.

*BY THE WAY, this was supposed to be posted on 15 August but I think I wanted to get nice pictures but uh I can’t be bothered now, so here you go. Really late, yeah, but it’s quite a rubbishy ramble-post. My practical’s over, too.

I have the vague idea that I will fail my Chemistry practical (more of the theory part of it). My Social Studies essay is pretty doomed as well since multiculturalism is really quite vague imo, and my writing has never been good, or rather, only for all the subjects which require you to elaborate and/or inference a lot (along with the fact that uh, the answers are probably not found directly in the textbook and notes.

Oh well.

Either way, I’ve been catching up with Soul Eater, which I still kind of dislike despite the very slick and very cool animation by BONES since the characters, though unique and memorable, do not happen to appeal directly to me. I am of the opinion that the voices don’t exactly match all the characters fully…(was that Chopper’s voicer I heard along the way, btw?!) And the character traits get irritating quite quickly, unfortunately, even though the development is coming along.. fine…. or worse. The occasional fanservice doesn’t help much, although the boin boin~ is not overdone unlike in Sekirei.

TUTE DIED HOW COULD HE. Tetsuwan Birdy Decode really appeals to me on the other hand. Despite the leotard, fanservice is not excessive nor overdone imo. Rather, the leotard is pretty elegant sometimes, and the action scenes are all really well-done despite high speed god-mode… Just right! |D Plus the main lead isn’t really of that horrible a character, unlike NICEBOATTHAR Makoto (unrelated but anyway).

Natsume Yuujinchou seems fine for the first episode, OP and ED not really very speshul or anything, but I like the Nyanko-sensei (I liek his voice in ‘true form’ better of course) although the impression I have of Natsume (as well as the series on the whole, for now) is still more of… weird.

Also been watching Ryoko’s Case Files, now I know why I love Ryoko so much, she’s so similar to Artemis Fowl. Rich, egocentric, scheming, it’s all there! In addition the fact that they both deal with the supernatural and have exceptional deduction skills, maybe. Furthermore they aren’t very honest with themselves half the time, and are great actors |DD I really want to read the whole Artemis Fowl series but being the deprived little Shift (are you Control or Alternate?) I am, I have only read around two (plus or minus one at the most) of the whole series. Time Paradox looks intriguing *o*

Speaking of books I have been trying to read Amatsuki for the art. The story doesn’t seem to have proper transitions or logic and keeps skipping here and there though. What’s more, half the time it reeks of Philosophy, what with the ‘Is this world real?’ and who knows what else, that doesn’t really make sense. On the other hand, I really like the art style. I think the anime semi-butchered it, though probably not that badly. Not anywhere near a Yashigani anime, thankfully, since most studios are funded moderately well these days.

Note– YES Hibari is finally back to normal in the latest chapter! (his hair was indeed quite fluffy in TYL mode)

I’ve been playing Super Mario Galaxy as well, got 3 Grand Stars already. I want SSBB and Mario Kart though… or at least Okami D: Also still waiting for FFXIII and Rune Factory. It is a sad long wait. A very sad long wait.

On another note, This poupee girl rubbish actually seems to be pretty interesting. It helps my fashion sense, at the very least, which is less than non-existent, fyi.