a japanese study (?) blog

ハニー｜２8歳｜日本語学習者

[mochayoubi]

こんにちは！ハニー (Honey) と申します。このブログには日本語勉強についての個人的な進歩、意見、リソースなどを語ります。一生懸命に日本語を勉強しましょう　^_^

this is mainly to maintain my own motivation for keeping up with the language and probably just talk about random japanese things.

any pronouns

my main is @honrupi

my japanese level is ????? (in the intermediate soup, taking the N1 in December)

feel free to send an ask, have a good day ☕

[pixacola]

Japan, March 2018 NIKON COOLPIX P510

[kingdomoftyto]

My partner and I are replaying Okami and couldn't help but notice that a certain maze in the Oni Island dungeon had a familiar pattern of characters written on the floor.

In the process of confirming our suspicions, we found that no one else on the English-speaking internet has seemingly ever bothered to point out how interesting this room is, or at least not in a way that came up in my brief search.

Anyway, to those uninitiated with the Japanese language, there is a set of 48 characters (really 46, since two are obsolete in modern usage) called hiragana which can be used to write every syllable in the Japanese language. This makes it a syllabary, which is similar to but not quite the same as an "alphabet".

There is a famous poem (likely at least a thousand years old) referred to as the "Iroha" which uses every one of these characters exactly once, which is such a neat linguistic trick that it became the standard way of ordering the symbols for many centuries. Just like the English alphabet is arranged in the order of A, B, C, etc., so too was the Japanese syllabary remembered in the order い (i), ろ (ro), は (ha), and so on in the same order as the poem.

(This pattern shows up in Okami a few times, actually. The most basic enemies in the game are imps that wear masks with symbols--in a different but related syllabary, which we don't have time to explain--that also correspond to the "Iroha". The weakest imps wear "i", the next wear "ro", and so on.)

The characters are typically organized in a more systematic, "alphabetical" order now, but the i-ro-ha pattern is so ingrained in Japanese culture that it is still seen in everyday use in things like the musical scale (the equivalent of "do-re-mi") and children's card games.

Now, the room in Okami that I want to discuss in this post is a maze with each unit of floor marked with one of these symbols. There are three entrances to the maze, and they correspond to--you guessed it--the i, ro, and ha symbols. Once we recognized that, we couldn't stop ourselves from mapping out the rest:

(with the entrances at the bottom and the exit at the top, which I think is upside down in terms of North-South, BUT in my defense that's the way the symbols are oriented!)

And this map does in fact line up with the entire poem, when reading it in rows from left to right! The walls of the maze are unrelated to the pattern of characters, making them pretty useless as a navigation aid--though I suppose if you knew the whole thing by heart, it could give you a vague sense of how far you were into the maze and keep you from getting turned around.

Of extra interest is that it includes the old obsolete characters ゐ (wi) and ゑ (we), keeping the historical version of the poem intact, but also tacks on the relatively recent ん (n) at the end, which only became a standardized part of the writing system in 1900. This is obviously just because it is a video game and having the full syllabary included is very satisfying, but still fun to note!

[meowbrown]

バッチリ vs. ぴったり

I was trying to use 見てもらえる and 見かける in my diary today, as I recently just had a note on 見かける.

I was curious if I used it correctly so I asked AI for feedback and then checked with my Japanese teacher.

For my use of 見てもらえる, the feedback was 一番ぴったりです。

For 見かける, the feedback was 「見かけた（noticed/spotted）」と言うのは、過去形でバッチリです！

So I was curious what was the difference between バッチリ and ぴったり

ぴったり: Used when a word "fits" a situation perfectly. It’s all about the match.

バッチリ: Used when you "nailed it." My grammar was correct, so the result was spot on.

ぴったり is about alignment, バッチリ is about success/outcome.

ぴったり is also very common when talking about whether a physical size or space fits, for example:

この靴は私にぴったりです。 These shoes fit me perfectly.

[languagelvlup]

Idk how long they’ve been available but italki has group lessons now! Looking at the Japanese ones, some are much cheaper than private lessons, with one guy offering conversation practice for just $5 USD for an hour class

If you have a budget to put towards language studies but thought language lessons are too expensive, it might be worth looking into!

[seherstudies]

okay. but chapter 12 was also double as long as the others.

[seherstudies]

I am finally finished!!!!

[minimalist-language-learning]

This is the book I'm currently reading. I already have experience with drawing manga but there is always more to learn. That's why I'm very interested in advice and tips from professionals (especially from Japan).

Compared to usual "How to draw" books that were published in the west, books like these focus on valuable background knowledge (like storytelling, developing characters, coming up with ideas and themes, story structure, page layout / paneling and much more that is important when drawing manga).

I just started reading but I feel that this book will be very insightful. I like the clear structure: One page with detailed explanations and one page with an simplified summary for every topic (which is very useful for later review).

Plus, I'm not only learning about manga techniques but I also learn how these things are expressed in Japanese (which expands my vocabulary). It feels great when two hobbies come together!

[image-jpg-deactivated20260127]

kanji colours ✨️

[mochayoubi]

on a whim i'm taking the 漢検８級 tomorrow!! hope it goes well

[languagelvlup]

quick post because my blog hasn’t had nearly enough Japanese on it lately

最近、フルマラソンにチャレンジすることにした！ハーフは走ったことあるけど、フルは初めて

アドバイスあったらぜひ教えて！

[mochayoubi]

officially retaking the N1 this December, let's hope I pass on the second try

[mewitti]

Replaying Legends Arceus in Japanese because there are tragically few options to practice 日本語 while living in the American midwest. Bless the devs for including furigana

[mewitti]

I forgot how refreshingly skeptical everyone is at the very beginning. "No we're not going to feed and house you simply for being the main character? Get a job" + repeated hopeful-sounding fantasies about my character getting brutally murdered out in the wilderness

[mewitti]

Interesting jpn notes:

1) In English, Arceus talks with lofty olde-English thees and thous. In Japanese he talks in pure Hiragana. 2) In English, Volo has odd speech patterns. In Japanese he has ODD speech patterns. wtf is referring to oneself as ジブン??

[mochayoubi]

missed quite a few days this month just from how messed up my sleep schedule got but!! another month of anki and mood tracking done, so that's a win to me :3

[gon-iii]

響き合う光芒

2010年、多摩川。

雲がゴジラみたいになっていた。

[sticker-pop]

2000's point inc. animal transfer sticker sheet

[m-akasya]

花火の写真とったら笑ってた

[mochayoubi]

Another month gone by for Anki and mood tracking! I had a much better month overall due to some life changes that were for the better, and hopefully I can start doing a little more for japanese practice too. I really want to get back into steady reading.