Short Story Project – Weeks 6 and 7

What I read these past two weeks – as before, no ratings, but I’ll still say if I recommend (R), strongly recommend (S), or don’t recommend (D) a story:

1.  James Baldwin, “Previous Condition” (S) “I didn’t believe that she could really understand it; and there was nothing I could say. I sat like a child being scolded, looking down at my plate, not eating, not saying anything. I wanted her to stop talking, to stop being intelligent about it, to stop being calm and grown-up about it; good Lord, none of us has ever grown up, we never will.”

2. Lesya Ukrainka, “Святий вечір!” [Holy Evening] (S) “Вся сім’я гомонить, кожному хочеться сказати щось радісне, кожний почуває себе щасливим і повним надій, хоч ніхто не знає, чого, власне, сподівається він і чи справдяться його надії… Тая радість перелітає з одного обличчя на друге, мигтить, мов зірниця, в очах, бринить чарочками, лунає в дзвінкому дитячому сміхові.” [tr. below the cut]

3. Nazlı Karabıyıkoğlu, “Elfiye,” trans. Ralph Hubbell (R) “tear it up, tear it up, tear it all up, you, and you, and you keep          what’s left this constant gyre of orders, my mouth was going dry my heart was rattling, so then the spirits and the fairies          had finally shown up, ah—!”

4. Natalya Rubanova, “Шесть музыкальных моментов Шуберта” [Six Musical Moments by Schubert] (D) “как ты думаешь, вот если кто-нибудь заглянет в окошко… – никто не заглянет, дурочка, девочка, три часа ночи, мы одни, одни во всей Москве – как славно: одни во всей Москве! иди ко мне… – смотри, снег хлопьями валит… – это для тебя, это всё для тебя – а для тебя? что для тебя? – ты…” [tr. below the cut]

5. Shih Chiung-Yu, “Wedding in Autumn”, trans. Darryl Sterk (very disquieting. can’t say if I recommend or not bc I think it’s written well but I wouldn’t read it again) “Women’s wombs are strange places: they can nourish new life and discharge it, over and over again. In that respect, a womb’s kind of like my big sister’s temper. One moment she’d say she wanted to play house hopscotch, the next minute she’d be whacking my head with the wooden spoon saying she’d never speak to me again. Soon she’d forget all about being angry and say: ‘Ah Chung, want to play again?’”

6. Anton Chekhov, “Корреспондент” [The Reporter] (R) “Теперь кому кушать хочется, тот и пишет, а пишет что хочет, лишь бы сбоку на правду похоже было. Хотите денежки из редакции получить? Желаете? Ну, коли хотите, то и валяйте, что в нашей Т. такого-то числа землетрясение было да баба Акулина, извините меня, mesdames, бесстыдника, намедни единым махом шестерых ребят родила…” [tr. below the cut]

7. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Winter Dreams” (R) “Dexter raising himself on his arms was aware of a figure standing at the wheel, of two dark eyes regarding him over the lengthening space of water--then the boat had gone by and was sweeping in an immense and purposeless circle of spray round and round in the middle of the lake. With equal eccentricity one of the circles flattened out and headed back toward the raft.”

8. Fatimah Busu, “The Lovers of Muharram,” trans. Pauline Fan (S) “The Angel of Paradise turns to face west. The flaming red-gold rays of the evening sun saturate the sky above the desert, unfurled in its ochre vastness. He sees the panorama of the sprawling city all the way to the gray-blue sea. And the walls of the city have turned parchment yellow in the dusk. Ships glide, their funnels churning black smoke into the evening air. He sees the pinnacles of skyscrapers strewn against the boundlessness of the galaxy. He sees the network of telegraph wires. He sees the labyrinth of bridges and roads. He sees countless vehicles crisscrossing in all directions. He sees people moving like swarms of ants. He sees everything. He sees all.”

9. Leila Aboulela, “Missing Out” (R) “So she, who had once braved tear gas, the crush of running feet, now faced a middle-aged teacher, a jolly woman who had recently travelled to Tunisia for her holidays and come back encased in kaftans and shawls. The teacher gushed at Samra, ‘You must be so relieved that you are here, all that war and famine back home. You must be relieved that you are not there now.’ From such a woman Samra recoiled and like a spoiled stubborn child refused to continue with the course.”

10. Veniamin Kaverin, “Пятый странник” [The Fifth Wanderer] (R) “Душа бургомистра, со одной стороны как бы коренастая и неуклюжая, с другой являла вид вполне очаровательный. Она повисла на щипцах с необыкновенной легкостью и переливалась всеми цветами радуги и не-радуги, при свете свечи и лампы.” [tr. below the cut]

11. Ray Bradbury, “Shopping for Death” (R) “‘People die every day, psychologically speaking. Some part of them gets tired. And that small part tries to kill off the entire person. For example—.’ He looked about and seized on his first evidence with vast relief-—’there! That light bulb in your bathroom, hung right over the tub on a frayed wire. Someday you’ll slip, make a grab and—pfft!’”

12. Yoko Tawada, “Where Europe Begins,” trans. Susan Bernofsky and Yumi Selden (S) “It was August, and there was no trace of the cold that had stiffened the Creator’s hands. The Siberian tribes mentioned in my book were also nowhere to be seen, for the Trans-Siberian Railroad traverses only those regions populated by Russians — tracing out a path of conquered territory, a narrow extension of Europe.”

13. Charlie Jane Anders, “The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model” (R) “The idea is, you evolve. You develop technology. You fight. You dig up all the metals and radioactive elements out of the ground. As you become more advanced, your population gets bigger, and you fight more. When your civilization gets advanced enough, you fight even harder, until you kill each other off. We don’t even find out you existed until after you’re all dead.”

2. The whole family is clamoring, everyone wants to say something joyful, everyone feels happy and full of hopes, though no one knows what he actually hopes for and whether his hopes will come true. That joy flits from one face to another, flickers like summer lightning in the eyes, clinks glasses, sounds out in the children's ringing laughter.

4. what do you think, suppose someone peeks through the window... -- no one will peek, silly, girl, it's three in the morning, we're alone, alone in all of Moscow -- how nice: alone in all of Moscow! come here... -- look, snow falling in heavy flakes... -- it's for you, it's all for you -- and for you? what do you get? -- you...

6. Now anyone who wants to eat writes, and writes what he wants, so long as it looks like truth from a certain angle. Want to get money from the editorial office? That what you want? Well, if that's what you want, then go ahead and scribble that in our T. on such and such a date there was an earthquake, and old Akunina -- forgive me, mesdames, for a shameless cad -- popped out six kids in a single sweep....

10. The bürgermeister's soul, on the one hand so seemingly stocky and ungainly, on the other hand had about it rather a charming look. She swung from the pincers with a marvelous lightness and glimmered with all the colors of the rainbow and not-rainbow under the light of the candle and the lamp.

How are you learning Japanese? Are you self teaching or taking classes? If you're self teaching what are you using? I want to learn but I'm not sure where to start and classes are both expensive and not available to me

Hi Anon! I personally believe that college/school Japanese courses are trash and it's much better to self study! This is gonna be a kinda long post, so I hope it's helpful!

The first thing you need to do (if you haven't already), is learn hiragana and katakana. There's tons of resources out there for learning those, but I personally like these videos. Once you've learned those, you can start learning a lot more things!!

For grammar, I've got a few different recommendations. 1. To get an actual grasp and core understanding of the way that Japanese functions, I highly highly highly recommend watching these videos by Cure Dolly. She breaks things down to the basics so that you understand how Japanese grammar functions, instead of just teaching you that ___ phrase/grammar structure = ___ english structure. So you actually understand how things piece together and work, which helps SO SO SO much. As a warning, the doll in the videos is a bit jarring at first and she talks really slow, so I usually play the videos on 2x speed and I promise you'll get used to the doll after a little bit. It's definitely worth it. 2. If there's specific grammar concepts you're unclear about and want to learn more about, you can check out the youtube channels Japanese Ammo with Misa and Miku Real Japanese. 3. I'm not a big fan of textbooks, but if you do want to use some, I like Soumatome. It's technically a JLPT prep book, but it gives you the bare bones of things without all the excess textbook junk that isn't actually helpful. I know Genki is a super super popular textbook series, but personally I've found more use for it as something to prop my computer up with rather than actually learn Japanese from...

For kanji and vocabulary (yes, you DO have to learn kanji, but once you start learning you'll realize they're not as scary/annoying as they first seem, and sometimes they're actually very helpful!):

1. I very very strongly recommend WaniKani. It does cost money (I think like $9 a month?), but only after the first three levels. It's on a spaced repetition system, so you can't binge a ton and then end up just forgetting it later. So, the first three levels takes about 2~ish weeks, which should give you plenty of time to figure out if it works well for you! Plus, not only does it teach you the kanji, but it teaches you a ton of vocabulary with those kanji! After a few months of that, you'll be surprised at how many words you've picked up. After about six months of that, I was able to dive into reading some otome stories of the stories I've read in English already. It was still super difficult, mind you, and I didn't understand a ton of it, but I could get enough bits and pieces to put together what was happening. 2. Another decent program is iKnow! which is an app on iPhone and I think Android as well. This does cost as well, though, I believe it's like $11 a month? They've also got a Mandarin Chinese course, which you would also have access to if you were to get the subscription! 3. Seriously, don't worry about being able to handwrite kanji. It's a waste of time unless you just personally like to write kanji because they're pretty and stuff. Daily life we've got smartphones and computers, so you really don't need to be able to handwrite any.

Private tutoring sessions. This probably sounds expensive, but it's actually not! Like, compared to college courses and stuff, it's incredibly cheap. I use iTalki where I can find native speakers to tutor me in whatever language I want to learn. If you want to check it out, here's my referral link. Right now I have like four tutors that are just for conversation practice, one who helps with grammar and conversation practice, and one helping me prepare for the JLPT! I also have two different Mandarin tutors, although I've only been meeting with one lately. You get to look through the list of different tutors and choose whoever you think seems best for you (and fits your budget), and then scheduling is up to you! You want to only have classes once a week? That's cool! Once a month? Also fine. Five times a week? As long as the tutor has the openings in their schedule, that works too! Don't like the tutor? You can always find another! It takes a lot of pressure off, in my opinion, cause if you get busy you can take a few weeks off or whatever, which you can't do with a school course and if you hate the teacher you aren't stuck with them for the whole class. In addition, not being graded makes things SOOO much better when it comes to learning a language. The fear of making mistakes is reduced dramatically.

Just get as much daily exposure to Japanese as possible, whether it be listening to music, watching dramas, etc etc. I set my phone to Japanese and then I primarily listen to music in Japanese, and then I also read otome stories in Japanese on a daily basis. Music though is one of my favorite ways to learn a foreign language. It's an easy way to pick up words and grammar without really thinking too much about it, because you'll naturally start singing along which helps pronunciation a ton! Vocaloid songs are pretty neat because there's such varied topics you can learn a tonnnn of stuff. I usually look for covers of the Vocaloid songs, though, since it's easier to understand. Deco*27 is my favorite vocaloid artist for sure. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve learned most of my Japanese from just listening to music and reading otome stories, haha. 

It's also important to figure out why you want to learn Japanese and what your goal is. Do you just want to be able to watch anime and understand without subtitles? Do you want to be able to read stories? Do you want to be able to write stories? Hold conversations in real life? Depending on what you want, you can focus more on the certain areas that apply! If you only ever want to be able to understand stories, then you don't need to place as much attention/worry about your conversation skills as much as if you want to be able to get a job in Japan, you know?

Alright I think that's everything I have for now? I hope this helped! If you have any questions, or just want to practice your Japanese, my inbox and direct messages are always open!!