「Aisatsu」 Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu

Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu – “happy new year” but only to used after the moment of the new year.

(The reply is also akemashite omedetou gozaimasu).

じゃ、またね！

[WOTD] Oomisoka, Gantan

New Year’s Eve, December 31, is called Oomisoka and is generally a time for relaxing after a hectic few days’ preparation.

Misoka means “last day of the month”, and Oomisoka is “big last day of the month”, or the last day of the year.

＊＊＊

New Year’s Day, January 1, is called Gantan (“first morning”).

Happy New Year!

advance happy new year to everyone!

new year = oshougatsu

im not sure if it’s correct to say oshougatsu omedetou gozaimasu.

Youtube videos

Bad news.
I have restored Episode 2 of Let’s Learn Basic Japanese. But unfortunately, Episode 1 of the Let’s Learn Japanese is no longer available in Youtube. It’s either the user deleted all his videos or youtube is cleaning copyrighted materials.
But then im not sure. I dont know if these videos still have copyright to the original owner.
*sigh* zannen desu ne.
ja, mata kondo ne.

Weekly Vocabulary

We were able to take up 270 words for the week 21-30. Below are the words of the day. Do you still remember what they mean?

• imaimashii
• hachimitsu
• kumo
• kami

Weekly Summary

This is a summary of my posts from dec 21-30.

• First of all we learned how to introduce ourselves.
• Next, we learned the three Japanese systems of writing namely: Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. We learned that Hiragana and Katakana are generally called Kana. We also learned the history of Kana, how the Kana order came about, and when to use Hiragana and Katakana. Lastly we learned that there are two other Hiragana that were abolished from the list.
• We also learned that there is another old system of writing that is very seldom used, the Hentaigana.
• On the 22nd, we bid farewell to my Kato-sensei with the song Ookina Furudokei and said “iroiro osewa ni narimashita.”
• Our very first activity was writing the Hiragana a-e and ka-ke. How did you do with the worksheet? Did you have fun practicing writing Hiragana?
• Then I showed you a picture of our cat, Tuldok, and learned a few words by looking at the picture. Do you still remember those words?
• We also watched a Basic Japanese video. We were able to take up three episodes for this week and learned a lot of basic sentence patterns used in the skit. Can you still remember how to construct those sentences?
• A day before Christmas we learned a famous Christmas song in Japanese – Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer. Although we were not able to listen to the song, we were still able to learn a lot of things in a fun way.
• After Christmas day, I provided some documents that we can follow for the new study schedule. A conjugation guide was also provided for easy reference.
• We then learned 6 JLPT level 2 grammar points and 22 grade 1 kanji. We also learned the difference between the two Kanji readings: the On-yomi and the Kun-yomi. There were even kanji mnemonics we can refer for easier kanji memorization.
• We also learned the Japanese of the human body parts, some related trivia, and useful medical terms and expressions.

For the words of the day that we learned throughout the week as well as the new words added to our vocabulary list, read the Weekly Vocabulary.

Basic Japanese Ep. 3

Today, we will watch the full episode 3 of the Learn Basic Japanese series. You can find the dialogue and the vocabulary used in the skit after the lesson.

This episode is really fun.　じゃ、みましょう！(Ja, mimashou!)

Kanji Grade 1 – Up Down Eye Ear

Yesterday we took up the parts of the body for our words of the day. Today, we will take the kanji of five body parts: the eye, the ear, the mouth, hand and legs. In addition to that we will also learn kanjis for space: up, down, left, right and middle.

This set of kanji are also easy to learn and memorize.

	Kanji	English	On	Kun
	上	up	jyou	ue
	下	below	ka or ge	shita
	左	left	sa	hidari
	右	right	u or yuu	migi
	中	middle	chuu	naka
	目	eye	moku	me
	耳	ear		mimi
	口	mouth	kou	kuchi
	手	hand	shu	te
	足	foot or leg	soku	ashi

Just for fun. In the pictures above, Naruto is the 上, Sasuke is the 右, Neji is the 左, Shikamaru is 下 while Sakura is 中. kawaii!

These are the kanji mnemonics by Henshall:

	Kanji	Mnemonics
	上	bar with handle, sticking up over baseline
	下	t-bar with droopy lower handle
	左	left hand steadies carpenter’s square
	右	right hand to the mouth
	中	Chinese arrow pierces middle of target
	目	upright eye
	耳	pointed ear
	口	open mouth
	手	hand with fingers spread
	足	round knee and foot suffice to show leg

Additional resource links:

	Kanji	Link
	上	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=41
	下	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=42
	左	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=43
	右	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=45
	中	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=54
	目	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=90
	耳	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=94
	口	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=82
	手	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=88
	足	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=98

Source:
http://jlpt-kanji.com
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/henshall_mnem.html
http://www.thejapanesepage.com
Image:
http://www.characterstore.com/
http://www.deviantart.com by eiko-chan
http://naruto-hinata.webcindario.com
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Shera_Selece/
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f211/katherine_jean

Kanji Mnemonics 一 二 三

Kanji mnemonics are “sometimes” useful in memorizing kanji. Below is a table of the mnemonics for yesterday’s kanji.

	Kanji	Mnemonics
	一	one finger
	二	two fingers
	三	three fingers
	四	four fingers in clenched fist
	五	a reel is better than five fingers
	六	eight topped by six?!
	七	badly written ten again: now worth only seven
	八	eight can be easily divided
	九	less than perfect ten: worth only nine
	十	all points considered, ten out of ten
	百	score one hundred with one white thumbnail
	千	that one person is worth a thousand others

I still prefer 1, 2 or 3 lines rather than fingers. Its makes more sense to me.
As for the other kanji:

	Kanji	My Mnemonics
	四	there are four sides in a square
	五	it kind of looks like the number 5
	七	It’s the number 7 rotated clockwise (the number 7 with a line
	十	the first letter of the word ten is letter t
	百	after 100 years your hair becomes white 白(い)
	千	the first letter of the word thousand is the letter T (Thousand is bigger than ten)

Additional kanji resources:

	Kanji	Link
	一	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=1
	二	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=2
	三	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=3
	四	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=4
	五	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=5
	六	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=6
	七	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=7
	八	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=8
	九	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=9
	十	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=10
	百	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=11
	千	http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji.php?u=1&kanji_id=12

Try to browse through these pages to find more sentence examples.

Source:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/henshall_mnem.html
http://www.thejapanesepage.com

Level 2 Grammar – nikurabete

~に比べ / ~に比べて
~にくらべ / ~にくらべて
~nikurabe / ~nikurabete

意味：　Compared to~
接続：　[名]＋に比べて
例文 1：

兄に比べて、弟はよく勉強する。
あににくらべて、おとうとはよくべんきょうする。
Ani ni kurabete, otoutou wa yoku benkyou suru.
Compared to my elder brother, younger brother studies well.

ani – older brother
otoutou – younger brother
yoku – well
benkyou suru – to study. benkyou means study.

例文 2：

昨年に比べて今年は春の訪れが早かった。
さくねんにくらべてことしははるのおとずれがはやかった。
Sakunen ni kurabete kotoshi wa haru no otozure ga hayakatta.
Spring has come early this year compared with last year.

sakunen – last year
kotoshi – this year
haru – spring
otozure – arrival, visit
hayakatta – was early. Hayakatta is the past tense of hayai which means early or fast.

I think this is an easy grammar point to study.

じゃ、ね。

Source:
http://www.jgram.org