I haven't updated in a really, really long time it seems. To borrow a turn of phrase from the British before I start a lengthy update: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin."
I've been in the United Kingdom, working on my MA in Japanese Studies for nearly 8 months now. I'm currently on the third and final week of my Spring Break. I'm not too sure how Spring Break works in the US anymore, but I remember only getting one week off at my college as an undergraduate. The three weeks have been brilliant, but professors don't let up on work assigned during break by any means. It's more or less 1.5 weeks to relax, and 1.5 weeks to catch up on work/prepare for the return to university.
The program I'm in is really, really intensive. I studied Japanese for about 3 years total, plus one year abroad, as an undergraduate student. Yet, when I arrived in this program, I was almost placed back in beginner level Japanese! The program here covers grammar in one year that took me two years to learn at the pace my undergraduate university took. It was really humbling at first, but I've passed one semester so far! What's left on the horizon for me is my second round of examinations, and then a roughly 27,000 word dissertation due in September. If I can clear that, I will have obtained my MA in one year instead of two. Keep your good thoughts with me; I can use all of them!
Gaming releases here in the UK, as I'm sure many of you know, lag behind the United States severely. It took a long time for a copy of Chrono Trigger DS to fall into my hands, and I'm still eagerly waiting the port of Final Fantasy VI to make its way over here. In fact, I'd say the DS is the only console I'm really playing nowadays when I have time; it's got excellent games, and I don't run into any region encoding problems between European, North American, and Japanese games. I make it a habit of playing for at least 30 minutes before bed, and make bits of progress in an RPG of some kind while I do so. I did find another very cool use for my DS: as a
kanji tutor and Japanese/English dictionary. In particular, I love playing with
Tadashii Kanji Kakitori-kun. It helps you memorize stroke orders for most of the required kanji from elementary to middle school (and improve the quality of how you write kanji by checking stroke position, hooks, etc.) There are also great fill-in-the-blank exercises to test your ability to remember kanji for certain words. However, it can be self-esteem crushing and quite difficult, even at lower levels, as the program was definitely designed for native Japanese speakers.
In personal life news, (and I'm
really excited to share this with those of you who don't know), I became engaged on March 1st to my longtime friend (and boyfriend of two years), Stuart. He's British and lives in the southeast of England, while I'm currently attending university in the center of England. We've received permission to marry from the border agency of the UK, and will be getting married in mid to late September. After I finish my graduate school studies, I'll be making preparations to live in the UK after we marry.
A picture of us from a couple months ago. The joys of on-board MacBook Pro cameras.
The next of our gigs that I'll be making every effort to attend will be Anime Los Angeles, January 8th-10th, 2010. If I'm
super lucky, I may be able to make Youmacon 2009 as well (and bring my then-husband along to finally see us!)
That's it from this side of the Atlantic. Take care, everyone!
-Ronnie
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Topic: Musings from the Bard in England (Not Shakespeare) (Read 1317 times)