Springer-JCCC

I) Intro: In which a crazy person does something crazy I began studying Japanese in December of 2020. We were nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic. I had spent the majority of that year indoors in a two-bedroom apartment with my wife and dog. When shit hit the fan, I was working as a manager of a software development team for a Kansas City company, and we transitioned into "remote working" nearly instantly. In a matter of days nearly all of my daily socialization was gone. (Later, I would replace it by buying houseplants to attend to. Still later, those houseplants would receive names. But that's a different story...) As the months whirled by, the "pandemic week" began to settle into a bizarro-normalized routine.  My work schedule was the center axle around which my daily life spun, and I was the anxiety-ridden, wide-eyed hamster running within the wheel. We're all going to die! But maybe not tomorrow! So I need to keep working! Gotta have money to buy foo...

 Ethnography:  Sumimasen すみません For our homework today, we read a short illustrated book that demonstrated the different uses すみません depending on context. Some of the uses in the book were as follows: Expressing thanks if someone assisted you. ("Sorry for the trouble...") As an acknowledgement that you inconvenienced someone. ("So sorry!") A method to get someone's attention. ("Excuse me...") Conveying gratitude for a gift. ("You didn't have to do that!") すみません was one of the first words I learned when I began my Japanese studies. I remember listening to the Japanese conversational recording and hearing "su-mi-ma-se-n", followed by the English translation: 'Sorry'.  "Easy enough," I thought at the time. "That's one word down. I'm on my way!"  Of course, language isn't so simple. (Sorry, すみません!  I underestimated you!) So much of what we say to one another isn't just in the words we employ...

 Assignment: Hiragana Chart FL-170-003 My first memories around learning to read and write are few, but my most vivid recollections come from the first years of elementary school. I can clearly recall a day in Kindergarten when I was being tested on letters. The teacher sat each student down and would quiz them on recognizing letters (as well as which hand was your right, and which was your left). When it was my turn, I remember looking over her shoulder and above the blackboard, along which ran a decorative illustration of all the letters of the alphabet.  That's right: my first memory of learning to read involved cheating on a test. (Coincidentally, I also didn't know my left hand from my right.) Later, in first grade, I remember another sit-down test with the teacher. We had to read a very simple children's book to her. The pages contained illustrations of a boy and his dog, and phrases like: "See Jack run. Run Jack, run."  In this image, Jack speaks just like ...

 Just a test post to ensure the blog is up and running!