Christopher’s Pencils n Junk

This is just a blog to summarize my 20% project, learning Japanese. My accomplishments made during this project were learning small amount of words and characters for Hiragana and Katakana. I can give a simple greeting to someone or ask for water, but that is about it. I did struggle a lot with Japanese as it has a very different grammar or sentence structure and many of the characters for Hiragana have complex designs and look very similar. Kanji has much more complex and confusing designs, but I never got to that point. Adjustments I had to make include spending more time with learning the individual characters and the designs and sounds each one makes, although I only have a few memorized. All in all, Japanese was a very difficult language to try and learn, although I do plan on continuing my course in Duolingo. This is all because I do plan on going to Japan when i am older.

I have three favorite memories from my seventh grade school year. My first of these is making a jitterbug for my computer app class. Me and my teammates coded and constructed a small rec car with microbits, motors, and cardboard. We tried to make it look like Lightning McQueen from the movie Cars by Pixar and we named them Ker-choo. How it worked was we had the controller microbit to send a radio signal to the microbits inside of the car, with A making it turn left, B making it turn right, and both making it go forward. My second favorite memory is my knight at the museum project in core. Basically we had a few subjects that we could study about medieval times, and we had a few weeks to study for that and make a trifold, as well as practice a presentation. So at about 6pm, everyone got into the gym with their trifold and speeches ready, waiting for when people would come to ask them questions. Think of it like a science fair but about medieval times. Anyways, it was super fun to tell people about the subject I chose, medicine and remedies, and also to see what other people had chosen as well. My third memory is getting 100% on a really hard math test. Once, there was a math test that was very difficult, and I barely studied for it. I was dreading thee test, but a few days afterwards, we got our grades and I got 100%! It was very exciting and I felt very proud of myself.

I know it isn’t Mother’s Day yet, but I just wanted to write about some os the things my mom has taught me. And she has taught me many things. One of the first things she taught me was to try and be respectful. My mom has always tried to teach me to be respectful and kind to others all of the time, and I am glad that she has put so much effort into that. Another thing she has always taught me is to try and be responsible. My mom has also always been teaching me to be responsible and to do things on my own like washing dishes and doing laundry. And finally, the piece of advice that I find the most useful is… “Just be yourself”. I find this piece of advice very important and useful, as I do sometimes feel I need to change the person I really am to fit in. But now, I know to be more open with who I am. I am grateful that my mom has taught me all of these things in my life, and I hope I can use all of this advice to its fullest.

I have learned a lot more Hiragana this week and have learned about more characters and how to say and draw them. This is definitely helping with my struggles in Hiragana and I will probably do a large amount of practice before I continue my main course. Even with my practice, it will take a long time for me to get used to the complex characters, even if I dedicate most of my time to learning them. Speaking of that, the adjustments I made are just only learning the Hiragana characters for the entire week. And when I get back, if I just keep doing Hiragana, I might be able to have used every character at least once in practice. But I will probably continue my course and maybe get to telling the time and asking for directions in unit one section three. I might also do a few timed challenges. Anyways, bye!

At the time of me writing this blog, I have just completed the first half of section one unit two of my Japanese Duolingo course and learned a little more of Hiragana script. I have also memorized more words and grammar structure for speaking about yourself and other people. I am learning more about manners and to be respectful when speaking with people. Like usual, I am still struggling with the rest of Hiragana script and both writing them down and telling the difference between the different characters. A adjustment to help me memorize the characters is to compare them to other things like how “shi” looks like a J. Before I continue my course, I am supposed to learn more of the Hiragana characters before proceeding. When I comeback, I am going to study more of the Hiragana characters and continue my unit. I hope that I can finish that unit his week. Anyways, farewell!

In my journey of learning Japanese, I have moved onto my second section in my unit! So now I am learning to introduce myself to others and say things like, “I’m Chris, nice to meet you.”, or, “Hello, good evening”. I have also just gotten better at remembering the simpler words like water and rice. When it comes to my struggles, I still have not been doing well at writing or remembering the individual characters. It is still just so difficult to remember each detail as a lot of them look very similar with only subtle differences. To help with this, I am just going to be doing more practice with learning the individual characters than usual so I can become more familiar with them. I will also be doing some of the extra practice that you can do in the course to further improve my skills. When I come back to learning, I will be reinforcing my memory of various words to introduce myself. Anyways, bye bye!

My favorite room in my house is my bedroom. When h you walk into the room, there is my bed in the front left corner and a window as tall as me above it. Right to your left when you enter the room, there is my desk with my computer, and past that is my dresser. Also to the right is my closet with all of my coats and random knick knacks. The first reason I like it is that it is quite cold. When I open the window, even in the summer, it lets the room get nice and chilly, which I like. Secondly, the bed is really comfy! I have a bed that is really cozy and is super comfortable with the right sheets. The bed is also just a nice place to chill on when I am reading. The third reason is really one of the things that matters a lot. The third reason is that this is where my computer is. Because I live a fair distance from my friends, I spend a lot of time on call and playing online with them. We play various well known games such as Roblox or Minecraft, but sometimes I play other things with them as well. It’s nice that I can just play with my friends like this.

I have made a decent amount of progress on learning Japanese and hope to learn a lot more this week. Firstly, I have started to learn a few more of the individual characters and can recognize them. I know a few more words and can say simple things like, “he’s nice” or, “she’s cool”. Also I can count to one! The only thing is that i still struggle with writing the Hiragana characters exactly. This hopefully wont be a problem when I move on to Katakana which has much simpler characters to write. Paying complete attention and practicing at home has helped me tremendously and i feel I can learn a fair bit before the presentation day. I could still practice more though and pay more attention which i am working on. I also find it helpful to say the words out loud while I put them in. When I return to practice after this, I well do some more practice on describing people and ordering food before I learn to introduce myself and practice ordering other foods. Anyways, I have to return to practice. Bye bye!

I was just thinking about what games I am going to play when I get home, probably with my friends. I mean, recently I started playing a Minecraft mod pack called Into The Betweenlands that has the base mod as well as some quality of life mods. Right now me and my friend are in the dreaded Sludgeon, a towering building that lays in the Sludge Fields with a dungeon below that goes deep into the ground. With worms coming out from the walls and many traps in the halls, it is a dangerous place to explore. We know that there is a boss battle at the bottom of the dungeon, but we are not prepared enough for that battle and we will return home once we get to that floor as we are already struggling to get through to that area. To prepare, we will go deep into the earth to mine out the strange ores that are in that dimension. Most likely valonite, a strong gemstone that can create many tools to aid us in conquering the monsters and bosses that dwell in the swamp like dimension. One of these tools would be a humble sickle so we can collect ingredients for various concoctions. One thing we will most likely make is repellent to keep our home clear of unwanted guests. Everything else I do not know as we still need to get to the bottom of the Sludgeon. Anyways, bye!

For my 20% project, I am trying to learn as much Japanese as I can. Right now, my accomplishments are the fact that I have a few words memorized in Hiragana, and I learn that verbs go before the noun. My struggles right now are memorizing the characters of Hiragana themself, as some are very similar to others in appearance. It’s is also just difficult to memorize the more complex design of the characters when it comes to writing them. An adjustment I made that actually really helps a lot is saying the phrases out loud while translating them. This helps me remember the specific words that I am learning in this unit. This also helps with the different character that i was struggling with earlier. When I go back to learning Japanese after writing this blog, I will move on to learning to introduce myself, along with ordering food.