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Ethnography: "Chiwawa no Hanasuke ~ Onesan Gomenasai" (チワワの花すけ～お姉さん ごめんなさい)

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  Today I read another Level 0 book on Tadoku.org , called "Chiwawa no Hanasuke" (Onesan Gomenasai!), or "A Chihuahua named Hanasuke (Sorry Older Sister!)".  It was a funny little story about a Chihuahua named Hanasuke who is left to his own devices once his owner, (whom he calls "お姉さん") leaves for the day. Once  おねさん leaves the apartment, Hanasuke decides on what he wants to do for the day. He finds that  おねさん has left her purse behind, and decides to play with it. Unfortunately for Hanasuke, that's when disaster strikes... the bag was torn! "Oops," Hanasuke says, "Onesan's bag broke ( / Onesan's bag is in a difficult situation)". 😅 Hanasuke decides to lay low until Onesan gets home. Upon her return, Hanasuke greets her at the door and declares "いいこだったよ!" (I've been a good boy!). This of course is not completely true, as Onesan soon discovers when she finds her bag totally taihen'd in the next room. When...
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My Day 　私の一日　わたしのいちにち　

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 My First Japanese Essay March 3rd marked a new milestone in my Japanese journey: I wrote my first essay in Japanese! Now, even though: It was not incredibly long. It was not incredibly interesting. It was incredible that I could do it at all! These nine lines are awesome because of all that they mean beyond the words themselves. Being able to write a short description of my day meant I knew how to write the language, I knew enough grammar to properly construct the sentences, and I knew enough vocabulary to communicate the ideas. And most of all, that I had worked really, really hard to learn enough in those three areas to do it!  So what does the essay say? Here's the English translation: Every morning I wake up at 7:00am. Around 7:30 I get in the shower. Around 8:00 I eat breakfast. I like eggs. I go to work at 8:30. At 12 in the afternoon I eat lunch. Afterward, the dog and I go for a walk. Around 1 in the afternoon I work again. Interesting, isn't it? :) As I said, not ...
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Self Assessment

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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...
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