Promiseland

[Fetian]

Like the characters think they're betting points on these prisoner's dilemma rounds but they're actually betting their reputation, and god I hope the writers are going to take that into account but I honestly just, do not trust the Spike Chunsoft writers as far as I can throw them

[Fetian]

Okay, what I actually need to do today is study the vocabulary list for the quiz tomorrow, because Spring Break + only one class this week means that I am less prepared for the quiz than I would normally be

[Fetian]

How is pewdiepie still relevant, I don't get it

[Fetian]

ash bought me a couple packets of marigold seeds, so I got those... on, the ground, and covered them with a modest layer of potting soil. I was too lazy/didn't have the spoons to properly put them in the ground, so. Hopefully they sprout this year

I also did successfully (touch wood) cram the vocabulary, through a couple different methods. I'll review them tomorrow before I take the quiz, but I'm comfortably confident about it. I've also restarted doing Kanji Garden, which a spaced-repetition method for learning kanji that I used and liked a while back, and then stopped because I wasn't at a point where learning kanji was at all useful to me. I am now, I think, so. I've also I think reignited my Japanese hyperfocus, which is useful. I will continue to attempt to not burn out on it.

Oz has been having a rough day, I think because I was late giving her her pill/the cbd. It could also just be, you know, what it is. It's a little disheartening because she's been doing so well lately but now I'm worried about her all over again.

 
And then I got distracted away from this page for several hours, and now it's bedtime

[Fetian]

Quiz done, 22/22. And the discussion assignment done (私は茶道が好きです。(I like tea ceremony¹) (Well, actually I didn't bother with kanji. But I could have!))

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<sub>¹This is an accurate enough translation, but like the 'は as subject marker' issue, it sacrifices the real translation for making things more understandable to English-speakers. A less smooth but more accurate translation would be something like 'When it comes to me, tea ceremonies have the property of being liked'. 好き (suki) isn't referring back to 'I' as the doer of the verb, see, because 私は (watashi wa) isn't marking the subject -- 茶道が (sadou ga) is marking the subject. But if you translate 好き as 'like' (as often happens, because anglocentrism) then that would mean that the tea ceremony is doing the liking, which doesn't make sense (except in a poetic sense, or a fiction of some sort). But 好き means 'is liked', 'is enjoyable', 'is pleasing', which the tea ceremony is doing.

This is not an especially weird part of Japanese -- a lot of other languages do it this way! 'Gustar' in Spanish is exactly the same, 'to me, it is pleasing', and you can tell it's working that way because you use the object-form 'me' with it instead of the subject-form 'yo' (or dropping it, as Spanish does with subjects). But it is weird to English-speakers, because we don't use 'like' that way, because it's a different word with a different meaning.

I've already talked about the は/が pitfall -- は marks topic, not subject, but these are often the same thing in a sentence so the explicit subject gets dropped -- so I won't go into more detail on it again.</sub>

[Fetian]

I don't know if I'm sick or just super worn-out, but I can tell you that I am very tired

[Fetian]

0321241204_HDR.jpg

 
For fuck's sake.

I guess I just can't have the bird feeder.

[Fetian]

Sad and tired.

[Fetian]

Just a bad brain day in general honestly

[Fetian]

Homework done -- I think I mentioned that there was six pages of homework this week, but one of those assignments disappeared, so it wasn't actually homework. It was rough, though, partly because I decided to write some of the words in kanji (because they're written in the book as kanji with furigana, so may as well practice them, right?) and partly because we're getting into like, actual 'translate this sentence into/out of Japanese' rather than rote 'write down what the book says about this'. I did check my answers against the answer book and I don't think I made any dumb mistakes. Aside from the dumb mistake of trying to write with kanji

Anyway, so that took me like two hours to get through (with a break in the middle), but I'm all caught up again.