The R3dragon’s Blog

Late night… did the JET Orientation thing all day today and while I’m tired– I couldn’t sleep. So I loaded up the 2003 film “The Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise and watched it. It’s amazing that however inaccurate that film is or however misrepresenting of Japan– it’s the only movie that by the end will [...]

HEY! I made a VIDEO: At the beginning of the year I posted about a few books I wanted to read this year and Remember the Kanji wasn’t one of them. In fact I didn’t know about until around late February when one day I read someone talking about it then decided to check it [...]

Over the past several days I’ve been mulling over a single reoccurring thought about the importance of dedication. Dedication in our society follows a number of different rules based upon the context in which it is used. For example, if one person says that they are dedicated to finishing a project vs. if one person [...]

Tonight I broke the 1000 kanji mark in my Remember the Kanji Challenge using RTK. 1000 kanji isn’t technically the halfway point or any particular chapter break or anything. In fact the halfway point is 1,021 kanji. So why the 1k w00t post? Ah! well as I’ve said in the past– Japanese, for me, has [...]

This is yet another post about Kanji, Language, and some personal struggles I have with Japanese language learning… As of current– RTK is going swimmingly…  I love it, I love every bit about it… The stories, the primitives, and the kanji. However, for all the goodness it brings it also brings with it new challenges, [...]

Last night there was a great show on.. it was called “Kanji Nerds Take back the night” it was a show about a young guy in his early to mid 20′s who stayed up past midnight unlocking the hidden secrets of China’s and Japan’s coded language of “Kanji.” Later in the show the young boy [...]

I’ve broke yet another ceiling… 801. It’s absolutely downright amazing at this new found kanji-wielding power. Bit by bit– the strange becomes the usual, the unfamiliar becoming ritual, and Kanji slowly becoming a new appendage to that which I will call ‘common knowledge’. But really, it’s more then all that… It’s literally the act of [...]

I remember back in the Movie “Lost in Translation” (a must-see for any Japan-loving Foreigner) there was a scene when Bill Murry landed in Japan and was rushed with business cards from all directions which he just shoved in his pocket with this bored (see left) expression. I had just learned in Japanese class the [...]

I’ve just finished tonight’s new additional kanji to my ‘little red book’- a book I started March 22, 2009 to keep track in written form all the stories I make up (or borrow) for the kanjis in RTK. Currently I’m at 751 and scoot’n…

Got an email today at 2pm (5pm EST) that said: “Dear JET Program Applicant: It is our great pleasure to inform you that you have successfully passed the 2nd stage screening process for the 2009 JET Program year and are now on the final short-list of ALT candidates. You have been scheduled for placement in [...]