#personal computer romaji

[zenkou-izumi-blog]

今回はパソコンでの日本語ローマ字出し方の一覧表を作りましたよ!

ど忘れの時にも便利だと思います〜

ご利用下さいませ〜

リンクはご自由にどうぞ！

[bmpmp3]

utaformatix... save me..

utaformatix

save me utaformatix

[shimmerloid-ai]

Preliminary Considerations - Which Vocal Synthesizer Software is Right for You? - Free Softwares

Although this blog puts a major emphasis on the VOCALOID 4 editor, it, or VOCALOID in general, is not the only vocal synthesizer that exists. There are tons of other software that have the same function and a variety of different voicebanks, with some being cheaper and of higher quality than VOCALOID, or even free! That’s right, there are quite a few free vocal synthesizers out there (however the lack of frills may come at the expense of some missing features or difficulty of usage), which I recommend trying out before pouring your hard-earned savings on a program that you may not even use. What if you learn that you do not enjoy tuning or do not have the time to use the software? It would be a huge waste of money that could be invested in other stuff, such as basic necessities (GOOD FOOD) or other leisurely items, like video games, clothing from your favourite bands, art supplies, or merchandise. In addition, there has been a rise of a lot of smaller companies coming out with vocal synthesizers with incredible UIs that not only look appealing but are easy to navigate, and voicebanks that sound far too human and advanced than hATsUnE mIKU (don’t worry, I love Miku with all my heart, I am just trying to prove a point here). There are also some really sick features that you may not find in the franchises with bigger names.

In this post, I will be describing the features of different free vocal synthesizers and their advantages and disadvantages so you can find the one that meets your vocalo-p needs. Please note, I do not own all of these synthesizers, some of these are from reviews on Reddit and VocaVerse Network. In addition, some cons like lag could just be a me problem and better computers may not experience such issues. Also , I will not be covering every single singing synthesizer in existence, just the well known ones and those with proper UIs because there are so many. I am omitting NEUTRINO because it does not have a UI despite having such high-quality vocals, along with ALTER/EGO, as it does not have a piano roll.

UTAU

(Song: Meltdown by iroha(sasaki); UST: Tanjiro Taidana)

UTAU was designed to be the free sister software to VOCALOID. Not only can you use it without spending a cent, but it allows you to make your own voicebank as well! There are tons of popular voicebanks out there, including the Vipperloids, Gahata Meiji, Kohaku Merry, Matsudappoiyo, Denatsu Sora, Shuu Mawaine, and my personal favourite, SUZU.

Pros: 

Almost every single voicebank is free to download

Different types of voicebanks (CV, VCV, CCVC; Monopitch vs. Multipitch; Power, Weak, Soft, Whisper, Growl, Screamo; tons of languages)

Can make your own voicebank right in the software

Pitch bending on the piano roll instead of a parameter box!

Variety of job plugins to make usage easier

Credited for its growl and vibrato handling

Cons:

EXTREMELY dated, UTAU has not been updated since 2013

Not friendly for beginners, especially due to its old UI

Need to change your system's locale, and installing voicebanks can be frustrating

Most voicebanks (namely Japanese) can only read Hiragana phonemes and not Romaji ones; but job plug-ins can fix this issue

Open Utau

(Song: The Lost One's Weeping by neru; UST: Tanjiro Taidana)

If UTAU is the sister software to VOCALOID, then Open Utau is the younger sibling to normal UTAU. Open Utau is an open-sourced vocal synthesizer on GitHub with every feature in the original software while being easier to use.

Pros:

Dark mode with a sleek, easy-to-navigate UI!

Pitchbend with a click of a button; piano roll tuning is still consistent

Splice tool; useful for note-bending

No need to switch locale to Japanese

Easier to get the hang of

Frequent updates

Can use VSQXs and svps. without needing to convert them into USTs

Cons:

No Defoko…

Choppier and buggier than classic UTAU

Slow with rendering wav. files and launching the software

Phonemizers are tricky to work with, you don’t always get the same output as the same phonemizers in normal UTAU

External resamplers can cause overheating and slow down the software

Tuning is more dependent on job plugins than the original UTAU

Many users claim that otoing is easier in classic UTAU

SynthesizerV Studio Editor R1

(Song: Tengaku by Yuuyu; VSQx by Adam Edmond)

This preliminary edition of SynthesizerV was a major breakthrough for the vocal synth community when it was first released. With its realistic-sounding voicebanks and minimalistic aesthetic, this software has changed the game by a landslide for synth users. Although it's quite limited, R1 was an amazing start for what will become a godly program in the future. Pros:

Pitch bending on the piano roll and in the parameter box (very smooth, I experienced no lag when using it nor did I have to make pitch points or pause while editing the parameters)!

Voicebanks sound quite human

MIND BLOWING GLOTTAL EFFECTS (nine different growls, two screams, and a vocal fry that do not sound robotic!)!

Really simple UI, easy to pick up, great for beginners!

Cons:

Outdated; is no longer being updated by Dreamtonics

Needs a recording license for commercial use (though I highly doubt it is still being upheld)

Only four voicebanks are available; Eleanor Forte, Yamine Renri, GENBU, and AiKO - who is paid and an outdated version of her R2 voicebank (R2 versions of the same voicebanks sound much cleaner and realistic)

A little too minimalistic; aside from the addition of glottal effects and the typical pitch deviation, loudness, tension, breathiness, voicing, gender, and vibrato parameters, there is not all that much you can do in this edition of the editor

SynthesizerV Studio Basic

(Song: Antibeat by Deco* 27; UST: Mayu Sama Desu)

Also known as SynthV R2, this is the free edition of the software that is currently being updated, despite having fewer features than its complete, paid version. 

Pros:

Ready to play with as soon as it is installed

Twenty-five free voicebanks; sixteen Japanese, seven English, and two Chinese; all with unique sounds

AI voicebanks!

Instant mode; allows you to automatically tune the pitch of an entire track with the press of a button, although it may make the voice sound too pitchy

Waveform that allows you to see the volume and pronunciation of certain notes

Can use paid voicebanks in the free editor!

Just as easy to figure out as SynthV R1!

Cons:

Can only have a maximum of three vocal tracks in a single svp. file

Pitch bending is a lot more finicky compared to SynthV R1

Lite voicebanks sound mono-pitch

Lacks a ton of features that are available in SynthesizerV Pro; scripts, auto-pitch tuning, rap vocals, cross-lingual synthesis, vocal modes, alternate phoneme choices, and many other features are not included in the basic edition (even paid voicebanks can not use cross-lingual synthesis, vocal modes, etc)

The glottal effects parameter that was in SynthV R1 is sadly not included in both the Basic and Pro editions of the current program

VoiSona

(Song: iNSaNiTY by Circus-P; VSQX: Cirty_09)

Previously named “CeVIO Pro”, VoiSona is a vocal synth that uses AI technology to create beautiful vocals with characters that originated from a variety of other vocal synthesizers (such as VOCALOID!) and are created with the recordings of talented singers and voice actors. CeVIO project has also launched a trial speech vocal synthesizer called “VoiSona Talk” for their first anniversary.

Pros:

Users get Chis-A’s full voicebank upon downloading the synthesizer!

The program itself is entirely free to download

AI technology makes tuning easier

Piano roll pitch-bending

Has some features that are missing in its sister software, CeVIO AI

The “husky” parameter is great for making whispers

Can be used as a VST plugin in most DAWs or a standalone editor

Cons:

All other voicebanks are paid; either you purchase the entire voicebank once, or get a subscription to use all of them

HEAVY LAG; the program is quite slow with processing commands

Free-hand pitch-bending is not as easy to perform compared to UTAU or SynthesizerV; can be quite sensitve and the AI may not always yield the desired result

DeepVocal

(Song: New Darling by MARETU; UST: Mimisan15)

The successor to the Sharpkey Galaxy software, this vocal synthesizer was designed for Chinese voicebanks. Its UI is a combination of VOCALOID4 and UTAU, giving it a sense of comfort and familiarity. Speaking of which, you can create your own voicebank in DeepVocal as you can in UTAU and OpenUtau, and there are some pre-made voicebanks of popular UTAUs, including Namine Ritsu, Inari Akane, and Kuro Bousuka. In addition, there is also a Kiana voicebank commissioned by MiHOYO and based on the protagonist of Gun Girls Z and Honkai Impact 3rd!

Pros:

Ready to use as soon as its out of the box

Great engine for Chinese voicebanks

Can create your own voicebank

Runs smoothly

Has all of the necessary parameters needed to create songs and covers

Cons:

Voicebanks can be kind of shaky, choppy, and more sensitive to pitch changes compared to other engines like UTAU and VOCALOID

Pitch bending can be quite clunky

Voicebanks may have difficulty reading certain phenomes from converted USTs; you may need to edit them if you don’t want lyrics being read as “a” or “ra”

These were all of the major free softwares I found, but if I come across another vocal synthesizer in the future, even if it is not talked about in the vocal synth community much, I may make a post about it.

I know there are a ton of cons I found for much of the vocal synths on this list and they sound like nitpicks on my part, but as I stated at the start of this post, some of these issues could be a Shimmer Thing�� and they may not arise for you when using these softwares. I won't be surprised if you read through this post and are now feeling thrown off by the various features and pros and cons of these programs, so here's my two cents on what I think beginners should go for:

If you like realistic voicebanks and want a very simple software to start with, get either SynthesizerV Editot (R1) or SynthesizerV Studio Basic (R2). If you would like to experience them (spicy) glottal effects and very kind pitchbending (like it does not make you want to bash your head against the wall because Renri won't cooperate) along with unlimited vocal tracks, then try out R1, and if you want more features, voicebanks, and continous updates, go for R2. Or even better, try out both and decide which one suits your interests better.

If you have a preference for robotic voicebanks, would like a variety of vocals to play with, and find plug-ins interesting, then UTAU may be for you, especially if you want VOCALOID but you can not afford it at the moment. Although I shitted more on Open Utau than I did on regular UTAU, I recommend the former over the latter as it is still being updated and the UI is signifcantly easier to navigate, along with its phenomenal pitchbending function.

Finally, please take my words with a grain of salt. If you like the voicebanks or are interested in a specific software, or discover one that is even better than any of the listed vocal synthesizers, by all means, go for it! This is just a surface guide by an idiot who spends most of their time trying to make Fukase not sound like a computer dying, and I have not used any of these softwares as much as I have messed with VOCALOID. Plus, my computer is an absolute bitch, so you guys will probably have much better luck than me.

I hope this guide was of use and provided a better insight on the various engines out there. My next post will compare different paid vocal synthesizers, including CeVIO AI, Piapro Studio, and of course, the various VOCALOID softwares. Don't worry, I'll get to the actual tutorial bit very soon.

Also, feel free to ask any questions about vocal synthesizers, or... literally anything! I'm practically starved for asks-

Thanks for reading!

[birdmenmanga]

btw I've perfected my stupid ass jp -> en translation procedure. for the curious:

Ignore all kanji, type all the hiragana out in romaji in the romaji -> hiragana conversion website

past the hiragana into google translate, and add in all the kanji I can type using my chinese keyboard

for all the ones I can't (not sure how it's pronounced in chinese, straight up is a jp-exclusive kanji) use the handwritten kanji recognition site (stroke order can be divined 99% of the time because it follows the same rules as chinese stroke order) and paste it into the appropriate spots in google translate

voila. and now make sure it makes sense in the context

Q&A

Why don't you just install a Japanese keyboard on your computer?

Lazy. Also it was kind of a pain getting my Chinese keyboard onto my Linux PC and I don't really think I'd use the JP one often enough to justify the trouble of getting it. The converter works just fine.

Isn't it time-consuming to visually match the hiragana to a hiragana table?

Actually when you spend a shocking amount of your free time staring at Vocaloid lyrics and imagining PMVs to them it turns out you start absorbing hiragana readings subconsciously. There's only a handful of hiragana I can't recognize immediately, and a second handful that I get mixed up between. So this part actually goes quite fast. And because of my stupid Vocaloid lyrics thing I have a reasonable intuition of what sounds might be coming next. Really Chinese rooming this shit but it works.

Huh? Wait, so if you have such a strong background (relative to the average person) in hiragana and kanji why don't you just sit down and learn Japanese for real?

I don't know man. Takes a drag of my cigarette. Maybe I should?

[maywrites264]

[OC Post]

This is my main OC for Charisma House, Kaname Maeno! He is very special to me and I plan to start posting a story surrounding him and the other charismas every Sunday!

Kaname Maeno

(images all from assorted picrews)

Kanji: 前野かなめ

Romaji: Maeno Kaname

Charisma: Leisure (余暇)

Age: 20

Birthday: February 3

Blood Type: AB

Height: 156 cm

Weight: 47 kgs

Room No.: 102

Voice Reference: Megumi Ogata (Shinji Evangelion, Makoto and Nagito Danganronpa, Hanako TBHK, etc.)

Description:

Version 1: He works as a waiter in a café, and he does his job rather normally actually! A lot of people (who are attracted to men) think he is cute due to his polite behavior and chipperness when working, but in reality, he is NASTY. As in personality.

Outside of work, he is lazy and spiteful, and never wants to do anything that doesn't involve his phone or computer or any type of electronic. Like Ohse, he also shuts himself in his room whenever he doesn't have work. A few housemates think he is a vampire because he absolutely hates the sunlight and he occasionally hisses whenever forced to go outside.

Version 2: He is always playing video games, on social media, or otherwise always has his eyes on a screen.

He works as a waiter in a café that Fumiya frequents, and is often seen as attractive to customers due to his boyish good looks and upbeat personality, but in reality, he is a toxic and foul-mouthed gamer.

Known as 7_eyed_dragon online, he is well known for certain online circles for his high skill level in the game Dragon Rhapsody Online (note: not a real game), but his behavior on these platforms have been called into question.

Relationships

(Real talk I did not finish these but he gets along with Ohse, sometimes gets along with Fumiya, Iori, Sarukawa and Terra, and wants to throw Rikai and Amahiko onto oncoming traffic.)

Trivia

He is the shortest member of the sharehouse.

Due to his height, hairstyle, and effeminate voice, many people think that he is either a girl or a prepubscent child.

He was part of a band when he was in high school, as the band’s drummer.

His very first console was a Super Famicom (known worldwide as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES), which he got when he was 3 years old.

While not completely fluent in English, he is capable of speaking and understanding the language at an advanced level.

He has an older cousin named Yohei, who introduced him to many games and would be the only person he played with for multiple years.

Kaname met Ohse online on Discord. Yes this is relevent.

[usabun-tl]

Girl A・少女A — PELICAN FANCLUB

English+Romaji Translation

眠れない夜の少女A

nemurenai yoru no shoujo A

Girl A that can't sleep one night

眺めていたコンピュータ

nagameteita konpyuuta

Gazed at her computer

教室の隅に少年B

kyoushitsu no sumi ni shounen B

Boy B in the corner of a classroom

頼りを探して

tayori wo sagashite

Searched for something to depend on

バレエを踊る少女C

baree wo odoru shoujou C

Girl C does ballet

クラシックを浴びていた

kurashikku wo abiteita

She basked in classical music

ギターを買った少年D

gitaa wo katta shounen D

Boy D bought a guitar

ミュージシャンを夢見て

myuujishan wo yume mite

With dreams of becoming a musician

眠れない夜超え少女A

nemurenai yoru koeru shoujo A

Girl A made it through a sleepless night

あのバンドの映像を見た

ano bando no eizou wo mita

Looking at pictures of that band

教室嫌った少年B

kyoushitsu kiratta shounen B

Boy B that hated the classroom

あのバンドに心を

ano bando ni kokoro wo

Was captivated by that band

バレエの帰り少女C

baree no kaeri shoujo C

Girl C on her way home from ballet

あのバンドを最大音量

ano bando wo saidai onryou

Listened to that band at full volume

ギターを弾いた少年D

gitaa wo hiita shounen D

Boy D that played the guitar

ステージの上に立っていた

suteeji no ue ni tatteita

Stood on stage

どうにかして 今日を守って

dou ni kashite kyou wo mamotte

To make it through today somehow, by some way

今日を祈って 今日を描いた

kyou wo inotte kyou wo egaita

Someone prayed for today, someone painted a picture of today

どうにかして 今日を歌って

dou ni kashite kyou wo utatte

I'll sing of today so that somehow, by some way

誰かが何処かで繋がる歌

dareka ga doko ka de tsunagaru uta

That song will reach someone, somewhere out there

どうにかして 今日を守って

dou ni kashite kyou wo mamotte

To make it through today somehow, by some way

今日を祈って 今日を描いた

kyou wo inotte kyou wo egaita

Someone prayed for today, someone painted a picture of today

どうにかして 今日を歌って

dou ni kashite kyou wo utatte

I'll sing of today so that somehow, by some way

誰かが何処かで繋がる歌

dareka ga doko ka de tsunagaru uta

That song will reach someone, somewhere out there

どうにかして 今日を守って

dou ni kashite kyou wo mamotte

To make it through today somehow, by some way

今日を祈って 今日を描いた

kyou wo inotte kyou wo egaita

Someone prayed for today, someone painted a picture of today

どうにかして 今日を歌って

dou ni kashite kyou wo utatte

I'll sing of today so that somehow, by some way

誰かが何処かで繋がる歌

dareka ga doko ka de tsunagaru uta

That song will reach someone, somewhere out there

どうにかして 今日を守って

dou ni kashite kyou wo mamotte

To make it through today somehow, by some way

今日を祈って 今日を描いた

kyou wo inotte kyou wo egaita

Someone prayed for today, someone painted a picture of today

どうにかして 今日を歌って

dou ni kashite kyou wo utatte

I'll sing of today so that somehow, by some way

誰かが何処かで繋がる歌

dareka ga doko ka de tsunagaru uta

That song will reach someone, somewhere out there

Translation notes:

Have Japanese to English translators just been choosing pronouns/subjects based on vibes because. LOL

The last chorus-like thing at the end there doesn't specify any subjects so I made a couple assumptions which are:

1. The person that is "singing a song about today to reach someone somewhere" is almost positively the singer of this song, and

2. With context from the rest of the song I decided that the people praying and painting are separate entities from the person singing the song.

I'm not sure if things like this even warrant a translation note since it's just like a part of translating a subjectless language into a language that almost always needs a subject. But now you all know anyway.

[japanese-cryptic-beauty]

Building the inner parser

When I was a kid, probably elementary school age, I tried one day to understand what actually the difference was between English and German. I had had some minor exposure, but for example my mother, always my primary caregiver, didn't really speak it. I tried coming up with English words, but this trial-error approach was almost entirely error. I found it hard to understand in what way English was different. At times it seemed like a badly pronounced German, but I couldn't figure out the difference.

Had I had somebody knowledgeable in my environment, I might have learned early on how many English words of Germanic root origin are in fact one shift of spelling away from German. I had kind of intuited this myself, probably with the uncanny way children pick up languages anyway from exposure.

But more interestingly in hindsight - what else had I been lacking?

How do you learn a language?

Over the course of starting out to learn Japanese I had a few intuitions, nothing groundbreaking or new. Let's just say it shifted my own, personal priorities, what I considered helpful and what I needed to do.

Naturally, through my experience in school, I gravitated towards finding a textbook that would suit me. As I mentioned before, I very quickly rejected Romaji-based books for their focus on business Japanese (I certainly don't dream of working in Japan...) and eventually came up with "Japanese from Zero" - at least it seemed to align with where I wanted to go.

I quickly became dissatisfied with its approach of throwing "Hajimemashite" style sentences at me without explaining anything about what that really means. It left me equally puzzled as the nonsensical "How do you do" exchange in English, partially because they wouldn't go into the grammar and origin of those things in particular, and partially because it sat there like an artifact, an atom, not further broken down for real understanding. It creates an illusion of understanding by throwing common constructs at you, just like a phrase book for a tourist would.

And then came my detour into kanji.

A genius move, obviously.

Exposing yourself

But even before that, I had already decided I would watch lots of anime for simply exposing myself to the language. I consider the ready availability of anime one of the biggest boons for learning Japanese. My English, especially conversant, spoken English (American style) really took off with the availability of multiple language audio on DVD. No longer did I have to buy a separate VHS of a title in English - for extra money, as they often were "imports." I could just buy the regular. And even better, they came with subtitles.

I was a huge Futurama nerd back then, and ironically I owe a big debt of learning how to speak English fluently to imitating and quoting a cartoon, albeit a smart one. Watching it over and over not only improved my English through exposure to actual speakers, it made me puzzle over idioms and cultural intricacies... and made me spot, over time, an enormous amount of translation errors in the German dub, sometimes completely reversing the meaning.

So, I watched a lot of anime this last year, always enabling Japanese audio, of course. Later on I learned this is called immersion. Just as I used my natural interest in available English material, I could watch stuff in original language that I actually found attractive - something which engages me naturally. Nothing worse than making yourself watch something just for learning, really. (To my mind.)

After all, I had noticed regularities in Japanese from watching Sword Art Online, even if they were rather minor ones and partially owed to the lack sonic variety in the Japanese language. And from exposing/immersing myself, I had some intuitive insights over time. I noticed how our inner parser works and what can help it function.

What is a parser?

While computers, deep down are only working on numbers or even bits or minor voltage differences, humans have always needed layers of abstraction to actually make good use of that. Nowadays we talk about "programming languages," but in order for the computer to understand these "languages," they need to be broken down into parts and then translated. The breaking down part is done by something called a parser.

There are many parsers. In the early days of computers "text adventures" were a common genre of games. You would be presented with text describing your situation and you had to type your actions as response. Again, analyzing what you typed fell to something called a parser, and the best text adventures were known for their advanced parsers, "understanding" language like "give banana to three-headed monkey" and pointing out things it didn't understand in a way so that you could improve your instructions accordingly.

This didn't happen in a vacuum, though. Computer science had actually looked to linguistics, or rather its most formal part, for inspiration. It took part of what linguists use to understand language itself, its basic building blocks, and derived lessons for how to make a computer understand what we want it to do.

The first thing that happens when a computer breaks down a "stream of characters" is that it tries to find usable tokens in it. This is, IIRC, called the "lexical stage." And when faced with Japanese, I noticed I would have to develop a similar thing within myself in order to break down spoken Japanese.

What helps and what doesn't

Anime Japanese will repeat certain idioms, phrases, and words endlessly. You cannot miss it. I marvel however at the endless variety that translators resort to when bringing them to English. Certainly not helpful for the learner!

Given how often they appear, certain words like "hontouni" ("really"), "ano..." ("errr..."), "des(u)" (helper verb, often used in constructs like "I am") are impossible to miss. But the rest largely remains an unbroken stream of syllables interspersed with tiny islands of understanding.

Now there are several ways to go from there, and two primarily present themselves. You can try to learn more vocabulary or you could learn more grammar to fill in these gaps.

I opted for vocab first (as part of my Wanikani approach). The main reason was is that each vocab word constitutes one token that you can pick from the stream of syllables. And Japanese aids with this. A lot of vocab is itself not modified but spoken as is in a sentence, especially nouns. Even vocab that is modified, like verbs and adjectives, is modified at the end, so you can at least recognize the stem of the word.

Grammar is, in my opinion, not as useful for this purpose initially. One reason is that a lot of Japanese grammar relies on particles, little helpers made of one or more syllables, that tell you what role a word or part of sentence plays in the whole, like who does what to whom. They're comparatively easy to spot in written Japanese, due to the dreaded kanji. Particles are part of the hiragana that appears between the concepts largely represented by kanji.

But in spoken Japanese, the same sounds like "wa" (topic), "ga" (subject), "mo" (adding another subject), "to" ("and"), "ni", etc, are really hard to spot because these sounds are so common in Japanese words as well. If you can't tell at least the individual words apart - tokenize them - then you have real problems spotting the particles that modify them at the end. And that's where vocab is useful.

Adding in some structure

While Japanese is not as structured and simple as English, understanding the structure can help at some point. English favors us by adhering to a strict "subject verb object" structure for the basic sentence design. Japanese is less forgiving, but at least the verb is at the end of a sentence that has one, and a lot of Japanese sentences are merely that - a verb. Knowing this can help spot verbs.

It's always good to know what the "doing" part is to break a sentence down, after all. To that end, I would say, knowing the conjugations of a verb is more useful initially for building our parser of spoken Japanese than particles.

Being able to spot patterns like "-anai" and "-imasen" helps us identify verbs and its meaningful stems early on, and this breaks the language apart further. Since these constructs naturally repeat over and over they become easy to spot, so I recommend to do the basic verb forms next. And there aren't that many common ones, either.

Think of it as playing a game of elimination. Each word of vocab you actually know eliminates those tokens from the stream if you recognize it. Each verb ending helps you identify one of the tokens that keeps changing in a sentence, but also helps you spotting what is being done and where the sentence likely ends. Combining these two eliminations, over time, will break down the stream of spoken Japanese considerably.

The great weakness of immersion

One big problem is that we don't get the structural information about what is being said on screen when we hear the spoken word. Subtitles in Japanese would certainly help, as we could clearly see the distinction between meaningful concepts (kanji) and grammar and helper constructs (hiragana) while following along. However, we would likely no longer understand the show we're watching, so this has to wait for later. (Also, a quick check tells me that Netflix typically offers Japanese subtitles and Crunchyroll does not. Might be wrong, but that's what it looks like when checking two shows.)

This is where we leave the media immersion and basically go to the typical "teaching grammar" approach. A good website like Bunpro provides plenty of examples that help immerse yourself in a somewhat artificial and (optionally) slowed down stream of Japanese along with the written word. Kind of like the textbook approach, but with audio. I found that Bunpro came naturally to me after all this mixture of immersion and training kanji and hiragana through Wanikani.

It comes as no surprise that a mixture of approaches is needed, but in the end it all goes towards building that parser, I feel. More vocab identifies more tokens. Specific grammar constructs help breaking down the stream further towards its parts. And yes, knowing idioms helps, too, but I still would like to be taught them properly.

Unsurprisingly, for adults Japanese can't be learned through immersion only, especially if you can't bombard a Japanese adult with questions like children do. But it can be a huge help in building that parser and a general feel for the language, its pronunciation, how the written word relates to the spoken word, and for learning the melody and rhythm of Japanese. And each construct you learn will eventually hook into that parser, until one day, you begin to understand more and more of Japanese in realtime.

In hindsight, this process I just described did for me a lot more than school for becoming fluent in spoken English. Just like reading built my understanding and vocab, nothing beats immersion ultimately for learning to first break down and then understand a language reliably when hearing it.

But now I have to get into reading. Because putting the horse before the cart does have some problems to say the least.

[pens-swords-stuff]

Hello, and happy AAPI month! My question is based on the names and the strokes for the characters. For curiousity's sake, how would I go about finding out what sort of name I'd have as a Westerner? Kanji, dob, etc? If this is possible that would be cool, versus I-like-this-name-so-it's-mine sort of deal (which I've heard is disrespectful?)

I don't think you would have a "Japanese name" in the way that I believe you're thinking!

A lot of people come up to me really excitedly to ask "How do you say my name in Japanese?? What is my Japanese name??" only to be really disappointed with my answer: Basically the same as your actual name.

As a foreigner, your name would be written in katakana.

For those of you who don't know, Japanese is a phonetic language with three writing systems: Hiragana, katakana and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are the same sounds written differently as illustrated below. Hiragana is on the top, katakana is on the bottom. The romaji pronunciation for each letter is written underneath in the English alphabet. Look at how they coincide with each set of letters.

Kanji on the other hand, are symbols with meanings ascribed to them. This image has just a small handful of kanji; there are thousands of them. They can be put together to create words and names. I talk a little bit more in-depth about kanji here.

Why am I talking about the three forms of writing systems in Japanese? It's because they each have a purpose! What's relevant here is: All foreign words that make their way into Japan are written exclusively in katakana. This includes loan words that make their way into the Japanese language (i.e., computer, Twitter, forks, etc.) and foreign names.

While the vast, vast majority of Japanese people will have their names written in kanji (and sometimes hiragana), you, as a foreigner, will have your name written in katakana. Because Japanese is phonetic, it's just a matter of writing out the sounds in your name in the Japanese writing system. It will sound extremely similar to your actual name.

(And yes, that means that you will not have a cool Japanese meaning to your name because it will not have the symbolism and meaning that kanji have, sorry to disappoint. It's just based off sounds).

In order to learn how to write your name in katakana, you will first have to translate your name into romaji. Romaji is basically the romanization of Japanese — writing Japanese in the Roman alphabet. Once you have the sounds written out in a romaji form, you can just look and identify which katakana fits with each sound.

Or you know, you could also ask a Japanese person to write it out for you which is much easier.

An even easier alternative is using this converter that I found using google. From what I can tell, it's not perfect but it is generally accurate. Just plug in your name, and it'll spit out the katakana and the romaji for it!

If this is possible that would be cool, versus I-like-this-name-so-it's-mine sort of deal (which I've heard is disrespectful?)

Yes. Giving yourself a Japanese name just because you like it, you think it sounds cool and you want one is what I would consider cultural appropriation. This is a topic that is pretty hotly debated, so keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and other people may have different thoughts.

Japan is not your accessory to show off and play with — and that's what I think picking a Japanese name for yourself would be: an accessory. You (general you, not necessarily you specifically, anon!) would be giving yourself a Japanese name just because it's cool and exotic-sounding, despite the fact that having a Japanese name is not necessarily accepted or okay for actual Japanese people living in other countries.

I have an extremely Japanese name — one that is not super common or well-known in America like Sakura or Yoko. In fact, a lot of people have trouble pronouncing it. I go by an Americanized nickname because people don't even try to learn my name. I grew up hating my name because I would get bullied about it. I elaborate a little bit more about this in this post. To me, it feels extremely unfair that an American person (especially a white person) could just pick a Japanese name for themselves and have that be okay and cool, when I had to struggle and fight for my name to be accepted.

That being said, I think that there are a couple of times where it's okay to have a Japanese name for yourself!

1) When you are a part of a Japanese learning class. Many language classes will start off by having students pick a name from that culture to go by. I did it in my Spanish class, and I also facilitated this when I was a counselor at a Japanese language immersion camp. You're learning about the culture, this is part of immersion, and people don't take it too seriously usually!

2) When a Japanese person offers one to you. The keyword is: offer. It's not asked or demanded, a Japanese person willingly out of their own volition decides to give you a Japanese name for fun. My family recently did this with my American partner — it was a lot of fun! He's not going by the Japanese name we've decided for him, it's not something serious, it's just a fun little thing for us that includes him in our family and heritage. Sometimes, Japanese people will help their foreign friends out and ascribe kanji to their name, which is also not super serious and just for fun!

And again, this is all my personal opinion! Other people may have different ones, and that is fine.

AAPI Heritage Month AMA

[akihabara-division03]

Makina Setsukura

"Lost is a lovely place to find yourself."

Profile

Makina Setsukura, a.k.a Screen Shot, is a gamer and the third member of Pixel Syndicate.

A beloved but lazy shut-in with a short temper and competitive spirit who stays in front of her computer, streaming and playing video games all day long.

Etymology

Makina means "real, genuine" (真) (ma) and "valuable" (貴) (ki) and (奈) (na), which is a phonetic character

Setsukura means "section, period, verse, melody" (節) (setsu) and "storehouse" (倉) (kura)

Character Information

Kanji: (節倉 真貴奈)

Romaji: Setsukura Makina

MC Name: Screen Shot

Gender: female

Age: 17

Birthday: Sept. 1

Star sign: Virgo

Blood type: O

Occupation: gamer

Division: Akihabara

Team: Pixel Syndicate

Height: 153 cm (5’0)

Weight: 41 kg (90 lb.)

Hair color: lilac

Eye color: apricot

V/A: Manami Numakura

Rap voice: 페리 (on YouTube)

Stage actor: Dayeon Kim (Kep1er)

Appearance

Makina is a slender girl of below-average height with porcelain skin and apricot-colored puppy eyes. Her wild and unkempt lilac hair is loosely styled into half pigtails and pinned in place with her indigo and silver puzzle piece-shaped barrettes.

Her attire usually consists of a black tight, sleeveless crop top paired with bubblegum-pink lace-up shorts, held with white overalls and a chain belt. She sports an oversized white and ruby-pink cropped hooded jacket where the sleeves extend far past her hands, covering her pastel purple and clear painted nails littering with holographic flakes. Her only piercings consist of her lobes: one side being a black rose-shaped stud attached to a silver skull joined with a black coffin, the other being a longer earring with a black coffin attached to a dangling silver chain with a silver skull on the end. She finishes her look with white thigh high socks and black lace-up platform boots to make up for her lack of height.

When away from the camera, she wears a ridiculously oversized sweatshirt that reaches the middle of her thighs, the colors split down the middle— one side being baby blue, the other being bubblegum pink. The bottom portions of her sleeves alternate between the cotton material and a sheer cloth in a stripe pattern.

Personality

Makina is a lazy and unenthusiastic shut-in with a sarcastic nature and a sharp tongue who spends much of her time on the computer, streaming her gameplays online. She is not particularly interested in whatever is going on around her and remains uncaring in any situation. She feels no shame in running off to avoid any trouble and refuses to make decisions, since she doesn't want anything to be her fault, and doesn't want to disappoint anyone.

In the game world, however, is where her intense competitiveness shows. She has a strong drive to place 1st or complete every game she plays and tends to throw a fit when things don’t go her way.

Regardless, she is kind-hearted and loyal to her friends and fans. She feels that her viewers make her feel accepted and she no longer feels alone.

Ability

Her rap ability, Rage Quit, allows her to cancel or shut down an enemy attack for the rest of the match, but she won't be able to attack either.

Trivia

Makina is right-handed.

She likes ice cream, video games, arcades, and nail art while she dislikes outdoor activities and thunder.

Her favorite food is pizza while her least favorite food is fried fish.

She refers to herself as "ore,” which is a casual way to say ‘I,’ generally used by men.

[snowimatsu]

hello, first off thank you for the hesokuri wars soundtrack! i love listening to it!

secondly, its not exactly an issue but when i export the files all the title/album/artist names come out as "???????", is this intended or do i have to change something in my computer ? (image example imgur (dot) com/r9WF9Qm)

I'm glad you enjoy the music!!

And I'm not sure tbh?? When I exported the songs from the CDs, the artist, albums, and song titles already had names. I can share those here in case you wanna manually add the names though:

Artist: 来兎 Composer: 来兎（リサレコ） Album/Disc 1: おそ松さんのへそくりウォーズ ～ニートの攻防～ オリジナルサウンドトラック Album/Disc 2: おそ松さんのへそくりウォーズ ～ニートの攻防～ オリジナルサウンドトラック [Disc 2]

and here's the Romaji version (taken from CDs).

Artist: Raito Composer: Raito (Lisa-Rec) Album/Disc 1: Osomatsusan no Hesokuri Wars ~ NEET no Kobo ~ Original Soundtrack Album/Disc 2: Osomatsusan no Hesokuri Wars ~ NEET no Kobo ~ Original Soundtrack [Disc 2]

//// I just noticed the artist/composer are the same person for everything ff 😭

Also, the "???" in the titles section is probably because the music player isn't recognizing the Hiragana text. For example, its putting "??? Naval Chestnut Wars" instead of "俺達のNavel Chestnut Wars". I'm not sure how to fix that, but that seems to be the issue.

[sootbird]

Hi sootbird :) I was wondering how you study Japanese, like, what materials or books do you use, do you attend a class or are a disciplined self-study person? I've tried several methods and apps and such and so far, nothing really turned into a routine for me...

Hello!! To answer your question about my own personal Japanese study, I took five years of Japanese classes at my university and have a bachelor’s degree in it. Right now, I’m self-studying, because I’m still not where I want to be in terms of fluency. It takes a fair bit of discipline, but I think it’s fun and I’m a big nerd so I like to study it every day. ;;

I’m so excited you’re interested in learning Japanese!! It’s such a neat language. I’m not entirely sure how to advise self-study straight from the beginning, but I can try! I’m sure there are lots of resources online for learning Japanese (it’s a fairly popular language to learn these days), but I also have a slew of books that I can recommend to you. Some are books that I used at school in my classes, and others are books that I acquired on my own over the years. The textbooks tend to be more expensive bc they have a lot of material, but I do think they’d be useful for beginning self-study, because you do need some sort of foundation before you can branch out on your own. I do think that having materials made me feel like I was properly studying it and I think has encouraged me to keep up with my self-study!

Textbooks:

Nakama books

These are the textbooks I used in my beginning classes. Nakama 1 was for first year, and Nakama 2 was for the second year. I think they’re pretty good books, and you can rent them for a semester on Amazon it looks like.

Genki books

I haven’t used these textbooks, but I have friends who did use them in their Japanese classes, and I’ve heard good things about them. I recommend checking the reviews and seeing which book series (Nakama or Genki) you wanna go with. Of course, if you feel like splurging, you can always get both and cross-reference them.

Other books: These are other books that I use to supplement my study. AKA you don’t need them right away.

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

The Handbook of Japanese Verbs -- Kamiya

A Dictionary of Japanese Particles -- Kawashima

All About Particles -- Chino

The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs -- Kamiya

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication -- Kamiya

The first step you wanna take before anything else is learning how to read and write the Japanese syllabaries. Japanese doesn’t use an alphabet like English does. Instead of the written characters representing individual sounds, they represent syllables. Let me illustrate this with an example: the Japanese word for “heart” is こころ. As you can see, there are three characters there. When written in Roman letters, it is spelled “kokoro.” Six letters in our alphabet, but only three Japanese characters. The syllables in that word are “ko,” “ko,” and “ro.” You can see how the writing system is syllable-based.

Japanese has two syllabaries. The first is called hiragana. The second is called katakana. The syllables represented by these two systems are exactly the same, but the syllabaries are used differently. Hiragana tends to be used more, and katakana tends to be used for loan words (words from other languages that have been integrated into Japanese). I’ll use “kokoro” as an example again.

Here is “kokoro” in hiragana: こころ

Here is “kokoro” in katakana: ココロ

The use of hiragana versus katakana is something you’ll get used to with experience, but it’s important to know BOTH syllabaries. I didn’t learn katakana well enough at the beginning and it haunts me to this day. Don’t rely too heavily on romaji (the writing of Japanese words in Roman letters) because the Japanese don’t use it. Only use it as a pronunciation tool at the beginning. I do use romaji on a romaji-to-Japanese keyboard I have on my phone, but that’s really just a matter of convenience and for quicker typing.

Learn both of the syllabaries and practice writing the letters as you go. I recommend using a fun pen! After that, the textbooks can tell you what to do next. (The textbooks do tell you how to learn hiragana and katakana as well at the start, if you need more guidance than the internet gives you.)

Here are some other important resources that will be a big help to you:

Dictionary app: A Japanese dictionary is gonna be really important and I find that it’s handy to have one on your phone. I don’t know about Android, but the App Store has a few of them. I use one that’s just called “Japanese Dictionary” and it’s got a red icon.

Online dictionary: If you can’t get your hands on a dictionary app or if you’re on the computer, you can use this great online Japanese dictionary called Jisho. I use it frequently when I’m on my computer.

Flashcard app: Flashcards are gonna be your best friend. I recommend getting a good flashcard app. The one I use is Anki, and I have it on my phone and on my computer. You can download it for free on your computer and I think it’s free for Android. I have an iPhone and I had to pay 25 bucks for the app but I’ve heard that there’s a free version on the App Store too? It might just have ads, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Anki is great because it will make note of the flashcards you’re having trouble with and give them to you with more frequency. There are also a lot of decks that people have uploaded to the Anki website, so you can find all sorts of community-made Japanese decks that you can import (I think you have to import a deck on the desktop version, but then you can sync it up to your phone). 

And finally, some things to keep in mind before starting Japanese. 

Japanese is generally agreed upon to be a pretty difficult language to learn (for English speakers at least). As a native English speaker, I would agree that it is kinda hard. The general sentence structure of English is subject-verb-object. In Japanese, that structure is subject-object-verb. Since the verb is at the end of the sentence, it can be tricky to switch your brain around to the order.

A lot of people will also tell you that kanji is a nightmare. Kanji are the third element of the Japanese writing system, and are characters borrowed from Chinese. In fact, Japanese did not have a written form until the 5th century, and all of it came from Chinese. Kanji characters however, have mostly retained their resemblance to Chinese characters. They more closely resemble traditional Chinese characters, and visually look like a step between traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.

Anyway, they may look quite complicated and there are a lot of them. But you will learn to love them, and they’re so fun to write. This is a kanji-positive zone so if you ever get stressed about kanji come chat with me and I will reassure you.

Here is a book I am currently using to effectively memorize kanji, and I highly recommend it. It’s beginner-friendly.

So, you may get stressed out by Japanese and maybe by all the information I just gave you, but don’t worry!! It’s a very fun language to learn and anyone can learn it if they put their mind to it! I believe in you! Come back and ask me if you have any questions.

Thank you for the ask and I hope this helps!!

[citrussdance]

SONG TRANSLATION LOSTTIME by BURNOUT SYNDROMES

KANJI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 明日なんか要らないから (tomorrow is hollow meaning) ずっと観客席で見守ってくれ 冴えない僕の総攻撃を

一人二人三人 (one two three) 躱す 君がくれたシザースで爆ぜる 歓声が今

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 tomorrow is hollow meaning LOSTTIME

時計が止まる位の轟音を連れた雨も 過ぎ去って私はベランダで虹を待つ サッカーボール片手に走っていく貴方を見ていた adidasのヴィジャ・モデルよく似合っていた

i hate my life yeah だから歌うんだ

i am in the LOSTTIME

篝火華（シクラメン）と旧校舎と貴方に この応援歌（うた）を捧げよう in the LOSTTIME 今放つモノクロームよ 貴方に無回転で刺されよ

in the LOSTTIME 限りなく透明なブルー纏う私の虹（ひかり）

光れ いまロスタイム

貴方はまだ知らない 私の病名（やまい）も 余命も

貴方が生まれて私が死ぬまで 時計が止まるまで

貴方の為に歌っていたいんだよ 画面越しの罵詈雑言では 消えない愛を 蒼穹と慈愛の虹色颱風（スカイラブハリケーン）

i’m proud of my life yeah  って大きな声で

i am in the LOSTTIME

向日葵と給水器と貴方に この蹴鞠唄（うた）を捧げよう in the LOSTTIME 生と死のグラデーションの真��中で 貴方と生きているよ

in the LOSTTIME 錆の無い人生が唯一つ放った希望（ひかり） カノープスの閃光（ひかり）

その距離も識らずに 何光年もの闇を超え 超え 超え あの星まで行きたい あと少し保てば良い

SOS ほら君の歓声（こえ） 喚声（こえ） 掛声（こえ） 声援（こえ）

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 明日なんか要らないから (tomorrow is hollow meaning) ずっと観客席で見守ってくれ 冴えない僕の総攻撃を

一歩二歩三歩 (one two three) 踊るようなマルセイユ・ターンで揺れる スタジアムが いま

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 明日なんて要らないのに (tomorrow is hollow meaning)

貴方ならなれるいつか 世界一のストライカー ファンタジスタ バロンドーラー

i am MARADONA in the LOSTTIME

笛 未だならないでよ 貴方にこの子守唄（うた）を捧げるの in the LOSTTIME 神様どうかあの子が虹のように朝日のように 世界に愛されますように

in the LOSTTIME

篝火華（シクラメン）と旧校舎と貴方に この応援歌（うた）を捧げるの in the LOSTTIME 今放つモノクロームよ 貴方に無回転で刺されよ

in the LOSTTIME 限りなく透明なブルー纏う私の虹（ひかり）

say YEAH

一人二人三人 (one two three) 躱す 君がくれたシザースで 爆ぜる 歓声が今

君がくれた歩幅以外は何も要らない ただ虹を待つ

一歩二歩三歩 (one two three) 踊るようなマルセイユ・ターンで揺れる スタジアムが いま

あの雲の向こうで見守っていて 冴えない僕の総攻撃を

ROMAJI

* there are lyrics here that aren’t actually sung

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 TOMORROW IS HOLLOW MEANING zutto kankyaku seki de mimamotte kure saenai boku no soukougeki wo

ONE TWO THREE kawasu kimi ga kureta SCISSORS de hazeru kansei ga ima

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 TOMORROW IS HOLLOW MEANING LOSTTIME

tokei ga tomaru made kurai no gouon wo tsureta ame mo sugisatte watashi wa VERANDA de niji wo matsu SOCCER BALL katate ni hashitteiku anata wo miteita ADIDAS no VILLA MODEL yoku niatteita

I HATE MY LIFE YEAH dakara utaunda I AM IN THE LOSTTIME

CYCLAMEN to kyuukousha to anata ni kono uta wo sasageyou IN THE LOSTTIME ima hanatsu MONOCHROME yo anata ni mukaiten de sasare yo IN THE LOSTTIME kagiri naku toumei na BLUE matou watashi no hikari

hikare ima LOSTTIME

anata wa mada shiranai watashi no yamai mo yomei mo

anata ga umarete watashi ga shinu made tokei ga tomaru made anata no tame ni utatteitainda yo gamen-goshi no barizougon de wa kienai ai wo SKYLAB HURRICANE*

I’M PROUD OF MY LIFE YEAH tte ookina koe de

I AM IN THE LOSTTIME

himawari to kyuusuiki to anata ni kono uta wo sasageyou IN THE LOSTTIME sei to shi no GRADATION no mannaka de anata to ikiteiru yo

IN THE LOSTTIME

sabi no nai jinsei ga tada hitotsu hanatta hikari CANOPUS no hikari

sono kyori mo shirazu ni nan-kounen no yami wo koe koe koe ano hoshi made ikitai ato sukoshi moteba ii

SOS hora kimi no koe koe koe koe

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 TOMORROW IS HOLLOW MEANING zutto kankyaku seki de mimamotte kure saenai boku no soukougeki wo

ONE TWO THREE odoru you na MARSEILLE TURN de yureru STADIUM ga ima

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 TOMORROW IS HOLLOW MEANING anata nara nareru itsuka sekai-ichi no STRIKER FANTASISTA BALLON D’OR

I AM MARADONA IN THE LOSTTIME

fue mada naranaide yo anata ni kono uta wo sasageru no IN THE LOSTTIME kamisama douka ano ko ga niji no you ni asahi no you ni sekai ni aisaremasu you ni

IN THE LOSTTIME

CYCLAMEN to kyuukousha to anata ni kono uta wo sasageyou IN THE LOSTTIME ima hanatsu MONOCHROME yo anata ni mukaiten de sasare yo IN THE LOSTTIME kagiri naku toumei na BLUE matou watashi no hikari

SAY YEAH

ONE TWO THREE kawasu kimi ga kureta SCISSORS de hazeru kansei ga ima

kimi ga kureta hohaba igai wa nanimo iranai tada niji wo matsu

ONE TWO THREE odoru you na MARSEILLE TURN de yureru STADIUM ga ima

ano kumo no mukou de mimamotte ite saenai boku no soukougeki wo

ENGLISH

note: there was too much soccer lingo to tag it all, but it should be fairly easy to search up.

* sung “tomorrow is hollow meaning” ** sung “one two three” *** a shoe **** sung “uta”, song ***** sung “hikari”, light ****** sung “skylab hurricane”, which is a fictional soccer move from the captain tsubasa franchise. ******* sung “koe”, voice

1 - written “kemari”, an ancient japanese game somewhat similar to soccer. i’ve taken some liberties in translation here.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 since tomorrow is unneeded*, watch over from the spectator seats the boring “me”’s offense play

one person, two people, three people** i dodge them using the scissors you provided, they explode- the cheers, right now

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 tomorrow is hollow meaning LOSTTIME

the rain that brought roaring thunder so loud it stopped the clock has passed, and i wait for a rainbow on the veranda i saw you running with a soccer ball in one hand the adidas villa model*** looked good on you

i hate my life yeah that’s why i sing

i am in the LOSTTIME

to the cyclamen, the old school campus, and you i’ll dedicate this support song**** in the LOSTTIME monochrome that has just been fired, pierce through you with no spin in the LOSTTIME my rainbow*****, clad in an endless transparent blue

shine! right now, lost time

you don’t know yet neither the name of my illness nor how many years i have left

from when you’re born, to when i die until the clock stops

i want to keep singing for you to the barrage of insults through a computer screen,  give love that won’t disappear give the rainbow typhoon****** of azure skies and parental love

i’m proud of my life yeah  shout it out

i am in the LOSTTIME to the sunflowers and water dispensers and you, i dedicate this football song****1 in the LOSTTIME in the middle of the gradation of life and death i live with you

in the LOSTTIME

the single hope***** that the rust-free life released the glint***** of canopus

not caring about that distance, overcome the lightyears of darkness overcome overcome i want to go to that star i just have to hold on a little longer

SOS hey, your cheers******* cheers******* cheers******* cheers*******

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 since tomorrow is unneeded*, watch over from the spectator seats the boring “me”’s offense play

one step, two steps, three steps sway with a dance-like marseille turn******** the stadium now-

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 even though tomorrow is unneeded* if it’s you, you can someday become the world’s best striker fantasista ballon d’or

i am maradona in the LOSTTIME

whistle, don’t blow yet i’m dedicating this lullaby**** to you in the LOSTTIME god, please make that child like a rainbow, like the morning sun able to be loved by the world

in the LOSTTIME

to the cyclamen, the old school campus, and you i’ll dedicate this support song**** in the LOSTTIME monochrome that has just been fired, pierce through you with no spin in the LOSTTIME my rainbow*****, clad in an endless transparent blue

say YEAH

one person, two people, three people** i dodge them using the scissors you provided, they explode- the cheers, right now

i don’t need anything but the pace you’ve given to me i just wait for the rainbow

one step, two steps, three steps sway with a dance-like marseille turn******** the stadium now-

watch over from beyond those clouds the boring “me”’s offensive play

[jibunstudies]

I wish I could tell you that counting in Japanese is easy, but unfortunately it’s not as easy as it looks. The basic counting system (one, two, three) is quite simple, but from there it gets a little crazy!

I’m not going to put anything in romaji, so please don’t ask me.

This post is going to be quite long, so click below to keep reading!

First, let’s start with the basic counting system! NOTE: zero (0) is generally just ゼロ or まる in room numbers

一（いち）one

二（に）two

三（さん）three

四（よん・し）four

五（ご）five

六（ろく）six

七（なな・しち）seven

八（はち）eight

九（きゅう）nine

十（じゅう）ten

十一（じゅういち）eleven

十五（じゅうご）fifteen

二十（にじゅう）twenty

二十五（にじゅうご）twenty-five

百（ひゃく）one hundred

千（せん）one thousand

万（まん）ten thousand

一億（いちおく）one hundred million

When forming numbers larger than ten, it’s really simple! If you want to say 50, simply put 5 before 10: ご＋じゅう＝ごじゅう. Similarly, if you want to say 74 then put 7 before 10 before 4: なな＋じゅう＋よん＝ななじゅうよん. I promise the longer you expose yourself to numbers, the more this system will make sense.

However, there are six special numbers: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8.

1 -- this number almost always changes its reading when used to count. Generally speaking, when used to count the reading becomes いっ, with whatever follows after. We’ll talk more about this later!

3 -- this number never changes its reading, but the kanji after does change its reading. We’ll talk more about this later, but remember 3 is special!

4 -- four can be read both as よん, よ, and し. You’ll occasionally hear し when natives are counting, though it’s fine to use よん as well. よ is common when it’s used to count time or years. For example, “fourth year student” would be よねんせい（四年生）.

6 -- similar to 3, but the reading of 6 also changes from ろく to ろっ. However, this isn’t always true so just remember that 6 is also special.

7 -- this is similar to 4 in that it has two readings which are both fine: なな and しち. The first is most common, but you’ll see しち used with time and years. For example, 2017年 is read にせんじゅうしちねん.

8 -- similar to 3 and 6. The reading generally becomes はっ with whatever follows after generally changing its reading.

Instead of trying to memorize all of the rules, just expect that these numbers might have special readings. When I was first learning how to count in Japanese I spent too much time memorizing every single reading for these numbers but realized later that their patterns are more or less consistent.

So, let’s put this into practice! Here are some of those “special readings” that I was talking about:

三百（さんびゃく）-- Instead of the usual ひゃく reading, 300 is read with a “b” sound.

六百（ろっぴゃく）-- In the case of 600, you’re skipping sounds and adding a “p” sound.

八百（はっぴゃく）-- Luckily, 6 and 8 are generally read almost the same way! So in this case, it follows the pattern.

三千（さんぜん）-- Instead of せん, you’re going to read this with a “z” sound.

六千（ろくせん）-- It’s normal! Hooray!

八千（はっせん）-- Again with the skipping sound, but that’s it this time.

But what about 万(まん)? Luckily, everything stays the same for this one! Nothing gets too fancy here. Thank goodness, right?

Now that we know how the counting system works in general, let’s turn it up a notch and have some fun! Below is how to count things in the basic way...

一つ（ひとつ）one thing

二つ（ふたつ）two things

三つ（みっつ）three things

四つ（よっつ）four things

五つ（いつつ）five things

六つ（むっつ）six things

七つ（なのつ）seven things

八つ（やっつ）eight things

九つ（ここのつ）nine things

十（とお）ten things

This system can be used for things that are not countable in other ways. For example, you might say “I have three classes tomorrow” and say “明日は三つの授業がある,” in which case there is no counter for classes. You cannot use this system for people, books, animals, cars, floors in a building, and like a million other things. Remember when I said that the Japanese counting system isn’t easy? I meant it.

However, familiarize yourself with this system because it’s the counting system! You’re going to hear it all of the time. When ordering food in Japan it’s common to use this system, so get used to it. You also use this system when counting days in a month...

一日（いちにち）first

二日（ふつか）second

三日（みっか）third

四日（よっか）fourth

五日（いつか）fifth

六日（むいか）sixth

七日（なのか）seventh

八日（ようか）eighth

九日（ここのか）ninth

十日（とおか）tenth

二十日（はつか）twentieth

In this case, 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, and 20 are counted differently! Fun, right?

But what if you want to count people? This is definitely important! You’re going to count people a lot more than you think, but luckily it’s fairly simple once you get past one and two.

一人（ひとり）one person

二人（ふたり）two people

三人（さんにん）three people

四人（よにん）four people

五人（ごにん）five people

4 is different in this case (we’re dropping that extra “n” sound), but once you get past 2 it’s all easy from there! Simply take a number and add “にん” after it and you’ve got “X people”. Finally something simple!

But wait...didn’t you say there are more ways to count in Japanese? Well...yes, and no. Japanese has a fairly basic counting system when you think about it (you’re basically adding things together), but the problem comes up in how Japanese counts objects. Which is to say...not in an easy way.

Japanese uses counters, which you may or may not have figured out already in the way つ and 日 are used to count things and days, respectively. There are (and I’m not exaggerating about this) over 50 ways to count things beyond the basic counting systems we covered. You can even count loaves of bread!

I’m fairly certain Japanese natives know all of these things and don’t even realize they know them (actually this is kind of true because my Japanese native boyfriend had no idea about the 3, 6, 8 pattern until I pointed it out to him lol), but as a learner there are “common” counters you’ll be constantly exposed to that are definitely important to learn! They’ll make your counting, and therefore your Japanese, sound more native. 

Here’s a list of some of the more “common” counters:

部（ぶ）-- copies of a magazine or newspaper, or other packets of paper

台（だい）-- cars, bicycles, machines, mechanical devices, household appliances

杯（はい・ばい・ぱい）-- cups and glasses of drinks

匹（ひき・びき・ぴき）-- small animals, insects, fish, reptiles, and amphibians

本（ほん・ぼん・ぽん）-- long, thin objects (rivers, roads, train tracks, ties, pencils, bottles)

階（かい・がい）-- number of floors/stories in a building

個（こ）-- implies that the item is small/round; also used to count kanji and military units

枚（まい）-- thin, flat objects (sheets of paper, photographs, plates, articles of clothing)

名（めい）-- the polite way to count people, often heard in restaurants from staff

面（めん）-- mirrors, boards for board games, stages of computer games, walls of a room

冊（さつ）-- books

話（わ）-- stories, episodes of a tv series, etc.

There are also various time counters:

秒（びょう）-- seconds

分（ふん・ぷん）-- minutes

時（じ）-- hours

泊（はく・ぱく）-- nights of stay

ヶ月（かげつ）-- month-long periods (ex. 2 months = ２ヶ月)

歳（さい）-- age

And various counters for extent/frequency:

倍（ばい）-- multiples, -fold as in “twofold”

番（ばん）-- position, turn, sports matches

度（ど）-- occurrences, number of times, degrees of temperature or angle

回（かい）-- occurrences, number of times

Honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to counting in Japanese, but these counters will get you far in conversations or when you’re trying to list amounts.

Here are some tips for memorizing numbers + counters in Japanese!

Try not to think too hard about it! I know this sounds weirdly counterproductive considering there are so many counters to memorize, but if you just start familiarizing yourself with them it’ll become normal to use them for certain objects and not for others.

Memorize patterns. There are a lot of patterns when counting in Japanese because of 3, 6, and 8. If you memorize those patterns, it’ll be a lot easier to guess correct readings for new counters you discover!

Expose yourself to them. If you can, putting your phone in Japanese or your Netflix account can help with this. Your phone counts songs, etc., and Netflix will count episodes! They’re not common in spoken language so it’s good to expose yourself in other ways.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Cells at Work! 13 (FINAL) | Double Decker! 2 | Slime Datta Ken 1 | Run with the Wind 1 | Bakumatsu 1 | Zombieland Saga 1 | DakaIchi 1 | Radiant 1 | SSSS.Gridman 1

Warning for discussion of 18+, potentially triggery things within the DakaIchi discussion...and the nature of that show being a yaoi will tell you whether you want to read that discussion in the first place. (There are full stops and lines around it in case you want to dodge that particular part, since Radiant comes right after it.)

...Otherwise, have at it.

Cells at Work! 13 (FINAL)

Apparently “distal” just means your extremities…

For some reason, I already knew about the fact that you can die from losing one third of your blood…because I read a Tumblr post that was meant to be for action writers and it was about blood loss.

…Huh? Was this a blood transfusion? That would explain why these new RBCs are so clueless about our RBC. Update: Yup, guessed it.

Come to think of it, there’s a WBC Nendoroid and a Platelet one but no RBC. That’s a bit disappointing…

The WBCs using that wobbly stick thing in the background are amusing, eheh.

Anyways, that was fun, even if I did get used to the routine of RBC getting lost and WBC fighting antigens in the end. See you next time!

Double Decker! 2

We’re now properly in the fall season, and of course now that the first drop’s out of the way, we’re starting with the best show this season (at least for the moment).

So does that mean if we’re NEETs we’re not paying for these detectives…? Is this an incentive for people to pay their taxes (LOL)…? (Okay, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Sheesh.)

DD Partners…? Sounds…uh, partnery, considering what DD stands for.

Why is Travis blinking so much when he’s apologising…?

Snarky narrator is fun. I thought it was Kirill during ep 1 (or at least, it was for a bit), but now this narrator’s talking too much in 3rd person for it to be true. Maybe…it’s future Kirill. *collective facepalms from the peanut gallery* Or maybe it’s Kirill and a narrator, and Kirill will then break the 4th wall somewhere.

Now that’s monkeying around…LOL. *gets pelted by tomatoes* Oh c’mon, can’t I get in a decent joke around here?!

Well, as much as the can thing Doug does to Kirill is tropey for anime, I gotta admit this ain’t monkey busin-eh? You want me to stop with the jokes? Aw. Fine then, I’ll stop…

There’s something utterly relatable about having gone down the path of your dreams, only for it not to work out. In fact, I think I’m going down that path right now and I need to decide where to head next. That’s why I’m watching this episode right now – to make sure I don’t regret my future, by focussing on the present with a good anime.

According to this link to Google Books I got when I googled “ignis” and “desperatio” together, this might have something to do with a Panegyric of the Saints…something to do with hell, worms, fire and despair…? Uh, wuh? Am I just investigating this the wrong way?

Sanctus Bridge? As in “sanctuary”? Wow, that’s…ironic.

The rabbit police mascot…you can see it on Deana’s dashboard, LOL. Plus the bird police mascot that goes with it.

The name shots you get of these criminals aren’t nearly as good as “dick suck” (sic) in Kekkai Sensen, but they’re pretty close. Plus they actually do have correct Japanese translations, unlike “dick suck” (LOL).

Seriously, what’s up with Doug’s head prodding? Is it to stop him from trichotillomania (which is the pulling out of hair)? I can see it getting vaguely annoying when the excitement of a new season wears off…

The CGI is kind of awkward in this. You’d need to stare at it for a bit to realise it’s CGI and it’s not the worst effort I’ve seen (*grumbles* Tsukigakirei *grumble*) but it’s still pretty bad…

Oh! Those doors! Is Doug’s car…a DeLorean? (dramatic piano SFX in background)

Was it just me, or did Kirill’s face go funny for a second as he was moping about how he didn’t get to do anything…?

“Let me be your Double Decker!” – That’s what he says as a double decker bus goes by…clever wordplay, huh?

“One is poverty. The other is class.” – Okay, my studies tell me that’s pretty much impossible. Even in social situations, you have a clear leader and subordinates. Poverty is fine and dandy in regards to giving the boot – heck, that’s why things like the Millenium Development Goals exist (or rather, existed in that case, since those were replaced in 2015) – but class? That’s a bit of a difficult one, unless you want to resort to hardline socialist methods, Marxist methods…or communist ones. Not that any of those are bad, it’s just that I happen to like capitalism,even with its flaws and no matter what imbalances it causes to others. It’s just that not having capitalism would mean everyone’s equal, but then everyone’s worse off as a result…because if everyone has the same stuff, no one is different and no one is diverse enough to make anyone special. Get what I mean?

I think this episode sold me even more on the show, the premise…the everything. Except maybe that “I want to get rid of class” part.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime 1

I just memorise this show as “Slime Datta Ken”, so if you’re wondering what that is…now you know.

What was that opening segment for, man…? This is just a boring isekai intro.

I’m laughing! He values his computer over his life? As much as I know I’m attached to my computer, you should prioritise 1) getting Mikami an ambulance, 2) stopping the blood flow or 3) just getting Mikami to preserve his own life. Not that I’ve ever been in a life or death scenario, but that’s common sense, even if it’s a bit nihilistic or unrealistic.

Seriously, there’s currently no pull but how intriguing these unexplained “acquisition” scenes are. Like seriously. Those effects are cool and somewhat intriguing in the same way as Juuni Taisen was.

The picture of a flower…where did it come from? A child? Hmm, interesting way to express such a though process.

The CGI of the reveal was actually really good. Like, Houseki no Kuni good!

Actually, this is very Houseki no Kuni. Reestablishing what it is that makes humans human and what causes a creature to live and all that.

I never knew a slime could be this expressive…

“I see you have guts.” – That’s probably something you shouldn’t say to a slime, LOL.

Oh! This reminds me of a writing piece I had to do one time where you had to tell a tale from a monster’s perspective and make them sympathetic. I wrote about a dragon, so there’s something nostalgic about this.

There really isn’t a lot of movement in this show. Not that I mind it – Juuni Taisen I used to love a bunch and that was based off a novel, but this is an LN-based show…the level of writing in this show is clearly from the LN camp, for one thing. How it got such great production values, however, is another question entirely…

The slime and dragon friendship that just formed made me wanna go “ET!”, just because the gesture they did to seal said friendship did kind of look like that, haha.

Mechasoft Doors MX…hey, I am getting my fix of anime OSs this season after all! Just…not in Gridman yet. Update: There are zero OSs in Gridman, not in episode 1 at least...

Oh wow! That fight scene was so darned cool! It makes me wanna see more already! And the fact he (I already know from promo material the slime’s name is Rimuru) uses his slime form and human form interchangeably…that’s even cooler!

The font down the bottom and up the top of the next episode box appears to say “Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken” (due to the frequency of one of the symbols that appears to be an S, then you do the same for E and you realise it works…then you realise the text is just stylised romaji). There are zeroes and ones on the left and right sides, which might correlate to Rimuru’s “analysis voice”…whatever that may be. Anyways, I’m pretty confident this’ll be something for my lineup, but it’s too early for judgement calls. It’s a keeper…for now.

Run with the Wind 1

Now here’s a show I didn’t expect to follow going in…I picked it up merely on ANN recs.

I’m laughing like a maniac! As much as it was a compelling opening, after the dude arrives on his bike and asks “Do you like running?” to a thief, I lost it. For some reason, I find it almost so unrealistic it became hilarious, in a stupid sort of way. Or maybe I just have a really bad sense of humour. Who knows?

That one guy running in the back in the OP is basically me every time I’m meant to do something physical. Even going up three floors via stairs gets me out of breath though and I live a fairly sedentary lifestyle, so I ain’t a good comparison.

That nickname “Shindo” puzzles me. I can’t think of a kanji combo that would result in wordplay with the characters for “god” and “child” using the name “Takashi Sugiyama”, but I guess maybe we’ll find out in a later episode…?

Thank…uh, goodness for the censorship on Musa…

Musa speaks unusually politely (because I noticed he used “gozonji desu” at one point, which is a keigo variant for “shitteiru”). Maybe it’s because they barely know each other that there’s keigo being flung about. That seems reasonable, at least.

There’s something authentic about this sense of camaraderie. I can tell because my extended family is huge, so gatherings are often like this but multiplied in scale.

“Tsuru no Yu” – Technically that translates to “Crane’s Bath”…”Public Bath” is the place’s purpose.

I was wondering why we’d somehow reverted to not having 10 dudes, but then they show this is actually Haiji’s perspective of the event from the start of the episode and show the scar on his knee. That’s gotta be important for later.

…and Haiji left his towel, LOL.

I still laugh every time I see Haiji’s stupid face (the one he makes when he asks “Do you like running?”).

I’ve associated the slurring of words like “yakusoku-ssu” to be for smol bishies like Yumoto, so having Haiji use it is a bit of whiplash. Then again, apparently that slurring is only used by men to assert their masculinity as far as I know…so, uh, yeah.

Actually…I’ve been wondering. How long are courses at this uni? Where I am, being a straight literature major is 3 years (assuming you also do other stuff that fulfils a straight Arts degree). Also, Fune wo Amu (by the same creator) is about a dude making a dictionary…hmm, so the creator really likes books.

Wait, as far as my short term memory operates, most of these guys at Chikuseisou do arts majors, aside from the law student and the smoker (who does engineering). They do literature or sociology, mostly. So if that’s correct…the author also likes sociology. I’ve been thinking about doing some sociology myself, it would really complement what I know about international studies.

As explained by Kyra, chiku – sei – sou. The sei means blue/green and the chiku means bamboo. Switching the two and reading them differently gives you “Aotake”.

Rent’s $300? Must be cheap, eh?

Also see Kyra’s post for information about the food-based suicide note.

The Kanto Gogakuren refers to this manga, Sakigake!! Otokojuku. It’s basically Again!!, but with more Fist of the North Star-style dudes.

Hmm…turns out you can refer to this show as KazeTsuyo. That’s going to make me confuse it with SekaTsuyo, though…(SekaTsuyo = Wanna Be the Strongest in the World!) Also, it turns out the character for “Kakeru” in this case means “to run” (normally it means “to dash” with a kanji normally used for flying). Wait…did I ever mention how much this show’s aesthetic visuals always look as if they’re a Powerpoint theme (see images below)? They do look like that, don’t they?

I still have no idea why Kakeru has a bad case of resting b**** face, but…uh yeah, forget I said that. The sound direction in this show’s really nice. It really takes advantage of quiet moment to insert natural sounds.

I think if you go “yes!” when Haiji says “I’m going to win over all the dudes”, then you’re sold on the show. I did go “yes”, just without speaking. You know those feelings you only get in your gut and heart? Yeah, like that.

Huh? I noticed a dude called Bruce Chiou is in the credits and he’s definitely on RErideD this season too…

Out of this one, Slime Datta Ken and Double Decker it’s ranked last, but this show’s still a pretty strong addition to the seasonal lineup. Only time will tell if I kick it out or not…

Bakumatsu 1

The only experience I have with this era in anime is Bakumatsu Rock, I think…and that means I don’t know much about it.

Actually…considering the OP, scratch that. I know a bunch because of Touken Ranbu and other similar historical shows.

A…boob window? On a man? I get the black skintight vest is meant to be sexy, but I can’t see the point of that diamond…it’s just something extra for the animators and the illustrators to deal with.

C’mon. Can we not have Dudes Swishing Their Swords at the 4th Wall as something meant to hype up the audience? It’s a cliché, almost as bad as the running scenes you often get in OPs and EDs…Seriously, I can’t believe I’m getting mad at 10 dudes swinging their swords like this (specifically I’m getting mad because they were all in succession – doesn’t matter if it was in time to the music or not).

Okay, who transplanted WWI into this? I know that’s the point of the show, but the sepia really sold the idea of “this is meant to be Old-Timey Wimey Stuff and whoever’s meant to be watching is meant to be a history buff so they can spot the difference”.

Part of the ep title is “Mou Ichido no Bakumatsu”, so a better translation is “The Bakumatsu (Era) – Again!”

Wait, I thought Kondo was meant to look hotter than this (especially because he had what appears to be a coin – or an old-timey family crest – on his head). The frumpy mouth doesn’t sell the goods, yo.

Somehow…I knew Katsura would have glasses. He has them in Bakumatsu Rock. But is it historically accurate to have glasses in the Bakumatsu era, though?

Come to think of it…something that controls time would be pretty hard to destroy, no?

I think I read on ANN that swords being too big to draw in ship quarters is accurate. Hmm.

If this is such an important treasure…then why not have more padlocks on it? Or more guards closer to it (although those guys probably ran away)? Or some other protection around it? Couldn’t this supposed Yoshinobu-sama fight for himself?...Then again, I think this is just a case of overthinking. (insert MST3K mantra here)

Puh-lease. As much as I want a kunoichi (lady ninja) in my shows, don’t make them Naruto run. That’s one of my pet peeves…

Uh…Hagi? That’s probably it, considering there’s a river in the show.

Kakesoba.

Kamaboko.

Tanuki soba.

Well, there’s something to be said about being able to steal Shinsengumi jackets while the men are eating noodles. At least it didn’t involve knocking them out though (weak LOL).

Okay…why do the Shinsengumi look like waiters now? As much as I like a dude in a waiter suit, if I wanted a waiter, I’d go to a fancy French restaurant…

I feel like I’m being clubbed over the head with themes in this show. C’mon, have more tact than that.

There’s basically no chemistry between these guys (Katsura and Shinsaku). How did they meet?

Wait, so Darker Blue is Sakamoto if Green is Katsura and Red is Shinsaku? Sakamoto (Ryouma) is the redhead in Bakumatsu Rock, isn’t he? Okay then. But who’s White?

Seriously, Shinsaku. Learn from the kunoichi and stay quiet and stealthy. I don’t need another shonen hero…

Oh man, Toshizou is normally one of the Shinsengumi I like best (or at least I recognise his name more) out of these kinds of shows. If he has Perma-Scowl, I can’t possibly like this version.

Oh goodness. Souji’s a friggin’ sadist. Come to think of it though, I think this (Okita) Souji looks like the one from Gintama.

Why does Toshizou sound a frigton like any given Touken Ranbu sword…?

If that katana is symbolic…Toshizou must be hecka masculine, LEL. (Note: A “LEL” is not quite a LOL, it’s mostly done in jest. If anything, it’s probably about half a LOL.)

If that blonde ain’t Abe no Seimei, Yoshinobu-sama or some other important historical figure I know the name of, I’m eating my hat! (Not that I’m wearing one, it’s a figure of speech.)

I like Sakamoto’s face here, but man, I get distracted by the man candy below it…(i.e. his abs and bare chest, LOL. What did you think I was referring to?)

Oh great. (sarcastic) Sanada Yukimura almost always has that silly helmet, ever since Sengoku Musou I’ve pretty much tried to run away from it. I’d recognise it anywhere.

Who had the grand idea of letting Sanada keep his horse, anyway?

Okay, as much as I like making snarky comments, I made one too many here, methinks. Time for the drop pile.

Zombieland Saga 1

I read spoilers just a little bit, so I know the main twist is “zombie idols that sing death metal” already. If you didn’t want to know that at this point…sorry.

Whoa! They killed their protag off the bat? Not that I didn’t know that wouldn’t happen (already knew it would), but that’s gutsy. Truck-kun, go back to your darn isekai shows already.

Okay, I know this is a schoolgirl, but can we not with Sakura’s Schoolgirl Run for Dainty Ladies? This is a zombie show, dangit. Run properly. Can we also not with the boob jiggle?

Well, that’s one way to defeat a police officer (or get yourself arrested): Spade to the Brain.

Otsumami appears to be the name for the squid in Kotaro’s pocket.

You can’t see Kotaro’s eyes, even behind those sunnies…hmm…

Wow. Miyano sounds like he’s having such fun voicing Kotaro, y’know?

From the flyer: “They are coming soon from the underground...” Yup, that’s right, alright. Zombies have already come from the underground.

Tae’s credited under ????. They’re still holding out on us!

It seems like a pretty good keeper, provided you can keep up with who’s who.

.

..

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DakaIchi 1

Yep, the BL anime. Thought I’d never try one? Think again.

As much as I do think I’d want to be hugged by Takato, his face…makes him look like he came out of Junjou Romantica…? Uhh…awkward.

Please don’t let this be a work full of sadism and BDSM. I’m not that kinky, y’know…?

Uh, if you ever knew “boundaries”, Azumaya, that would be great. Thanks.

LOL, what a way to win a dude over. $10! That is cheap for a star.

I’m still wondering if this all constitutes “assault” or some other illegal business. I mean, Takato agreed to everything under the influence of a bunch of drinks.

LOL, the director’s shirt says “concentration”. As in, “focus on the stuff you’re doing”.

Hey wait, how does anyone pull off a kabedon on an operation curtain?!

Uh…maybe it’s just my inexperience with the genre, but…what the heck was that scene with the feathers?

Dangit, Yaoi Hands. If I weren’t so aware of you already, you wouldn’t be breaking the immersion of this show!!!

Random Dance Ending? I so did not expect that, I’m laughing as a result.

Uhh…I cannot believe I did that. I watched an episode of a yaoi anime and coveredit without it ruining my pride! To think I watched 18+ shoujo ai before 18+ shonen ai is really something I cannot get my head around, though…not that I will ever tell you which shoujo ai show I watched. So…uh, it was actually pretty decent aside from the “I don’t get what the heck this scene is meant to be” bits which are probably staples of the genre.

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..

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Radiant 1

Uhh…why do I feel like I’m watching Deltora Quest for the 3rd time? Not that Deltora Quest is bad, it’s just too stereotypically high fantasy.

Mahoutsukai. Literally “mage”, but could be “wizard” or “sorcerer” if you went with it loosely. Then again, the French word for sorcerer must be pretty close to the English one which should be enough of a guide for translators, right?

Eh? It’s an…elephant –cow? What is this, Avatar  the Last Airbender? (half-snarking)

I think as the show goes along, its comedic timing is actually getting…better. That’s something, huh?

The show’s just a tiny bit too heavy-handed with its themes of racism or whatever sorcerers stand for. Then again, this is a shonen show. It’s allowed to be this way.

Geez, stylised English really is the order of the day for anime these days, huh? Lessee here…Alma’s…uh, Observatory, I think it says…?

Uh…all this talk about grimoires is giving me bad flashbacks…bad, screamy flashbacks involving a certain Asta…

I just noticed Alma gets referred to that way by Seth. Are these two not related, even though they share the same house (?) and hair colour?

Oh great. (sarcastic) Toilet humour. One of my worst enemies, aside from fanservice…

What’s up with the bat (?)? It knd of seems to be Alma’s…

Hey, I…think I know this kind of story too well. It’s going to eventually end, after a long run, with an adult Seth and that girl from one of the key visuals together…or something. Shonen are weird like that. They always end with a happily ever after and an adult protagonist, or the “the adventure just keeps happening!” sort of thing…y’know?

The plural of Nemesis is “Nemeses”, but it seems the book Seth read said “Nemesis’ Egg”. So the plural is the same as the singular in this case.

Huh? They chose to put both fancily-written French and then Japanese under it, as a homage to the French origins of this work? Huh, interesting.

Tommy’s saying “Gyaaaaah!” not “Yaaaaaaah!” - there’s a difference between those two, y’know?

SSSS.Gridman 1

As a self-professed fan of heroes who never actually got into tokusatsu because I keep missing Power Rangers when it airs on local TV stations, this and Garo are filling in a genre space I never really had until I started wandering tokusatsu wikis...which was before the live-action Power Rangers came out, methinks.

Why do I feel like I’ve seen this font (the one “SSSS.Gridman” is written in)? I thought it was a Calvin Harris music video, since I have a few downloaded legally (due to a CD I found in one particular library), but Harris’s font is slightly different to this one…Well, after some experimentation, it seems to be Arial with extra kerning.

“Amnesiac” is starting to become an anime trope in itself…

Seven-Two-One, LOL.

Ahh, children in puberty. Can’t tell whether relationships are romantic or just platonic. (wistful)

If Utsumi isn’t the goth dude from earlier, I’m eating my hat! (Not that I’m wearing one right-oh, I’ve used this joke before, haven’t I?)

…dangit, now I have to eat my metaphorical hat. By the by, I thought Utsumi was an Ume sort of character (as in, the type who would usually get voiced by Yuichiro Umehara), but no, it was Soma Saito.

The girl with the purple hair reminds me of the Administrator (or whatever her name is, the AI) from Yakusoku no Nanayamatsuri.

Regardless of whether the scene was with volume or not, that awkward pause between Shinjo, Utsumi and Hibiki went just a weeny bit too long…

When Takarada approached Utsumi and Hibiki, the colours of her earphones and eyes really popped!

They seem to treat memory loss as something minor, like a cold. It’s a bit awkward, I think.

Utsumi, kid. If you think computers from the 70s and 80s are huge, you should see server rooms! Those computers are huge! Not to mention, the first computers filled up entire rooms (just like servers do). Even portable server units are about a good 160 cm tall with wheels…oh, you don’t want to hear me prattle on about this? Okay, moving on.

“This really is a pile of junk, huh?” I had to go back and check someone hadn’t skipped a word – they did skip the word, in fact.

T-This is what Trigger have held out on us for? A monster like this looks terrible in CGI, man. Even if it is one of the better efforts. I mean, the eyes don’t even look in the same direction…

Why does Utsumi refer to the computer as “Junk”?

The Ultra series? Y’mean Ultraman?

Let’s just say…Gridman looks much better than the kaiju here.

They didn’t even dispose of the kaiju head properly, LOL.

I feel like the battle didn’t quite get my blood boiling. (Probably because I was grumbling too hard at the kaiju and the parts where the execution got a little too silly.) I’ll put it on hold and see if it gets better in a few episodes, but I’m not holding my breath. Since this is Trigger, it could pull off some great stuff if it tried…it’s just this seemed a little soulless in comparison to everything else I’ve seen them do. Or maybe my increased consumption of anime this year has left me jaded...

[yujachachacha]

Hi uh! I attempted to download a concert subbed from team onine, and I was wondering if you could help me figure out how to open it? I’m a bit confused

Hello! Who is “team onine”? I’m not familiar with that group. :^)

I am, however, a member of Team ONIBE, and I’d be happy to help you out here! For newcomers to downloading large concert files, the process can seem confusing at first. Don’t worry though, it’s actually pretty simple! All it takes is just two steps:

Download the concert through torrenting.

Watch the concert with a decent media player.

I’m assuming that you’re either stuck on Step 1 due to not knowing what a torrent is, or you’re stuck on Step 2 because you’re not aware that the default media players on most computers can’t handle .mkv files.

For stuff like this, it really works best if you PM me instead of sending an anonymous ask. That way, I’d know where exactly you went wrong, and thus be able to tell you exactly what to do. Since I don’t know where exactly you encountered an issue, I’ll just go over the whole process in general.

(I’ve also included a “tl;dr” summary section at the end if you want to skip my admittedly long explanation!)

1. Download the concert (if you already have a raw of it downloaded, skip to “1a. [Optional] Download the subtitle files”).

Most of ONIBE’s big releases (e.g. Aqours 1st Live, µ’s Final Live) are available in 720p and 1080p. I’d recommend the latter for the best quality, but some people prefer 720p because their computers can’t handle the larger 1080p files. Pick whichever best suits your needs.

You might have noticed that these downloads lead to a page on Nyaa Torrents. I’m not gonna try to explain what torrenting is because that could be the subject of a whole ‘nother post. Feel free to Google “what is a torrent” if you want details. All you need to know is that rather than traditional downloading, where you just click a link and download it straight onto your computer, you need a program called a “torrent client” to be able to grab these files.

Once you have a torrent client on your computer, you should be able to open the link properly and get the download started. I personally use µTorrent (and before you ask, I didn’t choose it because it had “µ” in the name lol), but feel free to pick whichever client you like. Again, you can Google something like “best torrent client for (insert your OS here)” if you want to take the time to research what’s right for you.

This part takes a while, especially if you’re downloading the 1080p files on a not-so-fast Internet connection, so expect to wait for several hours. Make sure your hard drive has enough storage to accommodate these large files as well! I personally save all my concerts on a portable hard drive since I own a tiny MacBook Air, and I believe most torrent clients should give you the option of choosing to save to an external drive when you start the download.

1a. [Optional] Download the subtitle files.

If you already happen to own the raw video of the concert, you can just download the subtitle files for some of our recent big releases (µ’s Final Live, Aqours 1st Live, and the Aqours event on January 11, 2016 AKA the “0th Live”). Most media players these days allow you to drag-and-drop the subtitle files directly onto the video if you have it open.

However, please note that ONIBE’s sub files are timed to our encode. If your raw video happens to be slightly different than ours, you’re gonna have to re-time the subtitles yourself to match your video. It’s not very difficult to do - provided that you have the right tools. Due to the fast-paced speech of the Aqours cast and some of our fancier karaoke effects in the Aqours 1st Live file, it might be hard to shift the timing to the correct position. That’s why I would only recommend this step to people who don’t want to go to the trouble of re-downloading several hours of footage, and who have some knowledge of subtitle-editing.

2. Watch the concert.

You might have noticed that the video files end in the extension “.mkv”. This is an extension that many hardcore anime fans will be familiar with - it’s the video format that allows for “softsubbing”. What that means is that you can turn subtitles “on” or “off”, and even switch between subtitles (if the file has multiple subtitle files attached). For example, ONIBE’s Aqours 1st Live release has two subtitles tracks - one that has everything, including romaji + translated lyrics for the song performances, and another track that just has the MC bits translated for people who prefer watching the songs without subs.

Most default media players like Windows Media Player and QuickTime Player (for Mac users) can’t handle .mkv files. You need to download another one that’s powerful enough to handle these files. Lots of people use VLC, which I’d say is a solid choice (in fact, this is the very program you need to watch Aqours livestreams if you don’t have the LINE LIVE app). VLC is capable of handling .mkv files, and is usually the program that people use when they start out watching anime.

However, VLC has known issues with stuff like high-definition concerts, likely because these files are being encoded from Blu-ray quality. I’ve personally seen stuff like stuttering, weird green lines, and general lag when trying to open concert files on VLC.

Luckily, there are powerful alternatives out there. I believe that the most recommended media player out there for Windows users is MPC-HC. I can’t personally say much about it since I’m not on Windows, but I’ve heard very good things about it.

Another good media player is mpv, which works on Windows, Mac, and Linux! I have this on my laptop and would definitely recommend it. For Mac users specifically, I’d say MPlayerX is a great option as well. The interface for MPlayerX, in my opinion, is slightly easier to navigate for people who consider themselves computer novices. I actually have MPlayerX downloaded as well, and I usually watch videos on this player. However, if I had to recommend just one to download, I’d pick mpv since it works for everyone regardless of their OS. I think mpv might be more powerful than MPlayerX as well.

These programs pretty much work like any media player - just open the file and you’re good to go! If your computer’s having issues opening the concert file automatically in your newly downloaded program from your file browser, make sure to go to your computer settings and change the default program to your newly downloaded media player for the .mkv extension.

One last quick tip - this is a feature that’s also available on basic programs like QuickTime Player, but the more powerful media players I mentioned above can move between “parts” of a concert file if the release team encoded the file with chapters. Team ONIBE has in fact divided the concert into “chapters”, so you can skip directly to certain songs or MC segments without having to manually skip around the video yourself.

Hope that helps!

tl;dr:

Get a torrent client like µTorrent, which will allow you to download the concert. Make sure you have enough space on the hard drive of your choice to accommodate the large concert files, and be patient while the download finishes.

Download a media player such as MPC-HC or mpv to watch the concert, since programs like Windows Media Player and QuickTime Player aren’t able to handle .mkv files.

There are some details I didn’t go over here, but this should pretty much cover the basics. If you need further help, hit me up on Tumblr messenger. I’ll be able to reply much faster and give you specific advice!

[j-exclamationmark-l]

This was super easy to translate, so… I did.

BPM Scholarly Contest for the Front Page -English and Results of Entire Exam-

Teacher: Okay, let’s continue on to check the English section portion of our test. Please translate the following words into English.

(1)　青[ao] (___) 黄 [ki] (___) 白 [shiro] (___)

Teacher: They’re “ao,” “kiiro,” and “shiro.” Colors. From left to right, they’re “blue,” “yellow,” and “white.” There were many good answers; however, “kiiro”… “yellow,” yes… I understood what you were trying to write here. Kana, of Codomo Dragon… you answered “iero”.

Subaru: I get it, I get it.

Mahiro: That sounds gross. [it looks close to the word ‘ero’(‘erotic’)]

Teacher: Let’s continue. “White.” Kuina. Kuina, you wrote… “whete.”

Kuina: I was close.

Kana: Hey, you tried.

Hayato: What do you mean, he tried?

Subaru: I can’t read it, not at all.

Teacher: I really do understand how you could think that. Okay, number three.

(3)　おはよう [ohayou] (___) さようなら [sayounara] (___)

Teacher: “Ohayou” and “sayounara.” This would be “Good morning”… well, I’d also accept “hello.” Then “sayounara” is “good bye.” These are very simple greetings. Mahiro?

Mahiro: Yes?

Teacher: Mahiro, I really understand what you were trying to say. You answered with “Good monig.”

Mahiro: Good monig.

Subaru: Good monig.

Chamu (?): Yeah, I can see it.

Teacher: It’s very simple. I’m sure it could be understood. Alright, so next… “sayounara,” or “goodbye”… Kuina and Kana, you both wrote the same thing. Maybe it just comes with playing the guitar. Your answers.

Kana (God by) Kuina (god by)

Subaru (?): Hey, that sounds cool, though.

Teacher: You’re both wrong!

Subaru: That’s amazing that you both got the same answer, though.

Kana: But, but… that’s totally how I learned it. In the Philippians, it’s 'god by.’

Teacher: Is that so? Moving on.

(4)　鉛筆 [enpitsu] (___) 消しゴム [keshigomu] (___)

Teacher: “Enpitsu” and “keshigomu.” The correct answers are “pencil” and “eraser.” Yes. Many of you did write “pen”, though. However, that’s not exactly a pencil, so I did mark it as incorrect. Even so… Tomoya.

Tomoya: What? I don’t know at all.

Teacher: Honestly, I don’t know what you wrote, either. Tomoya, you wrote “hambr stick.”

Takemasa: What in hell is that??

Subaru: Yeah, really, what? How do you even pronounce that?

Someone: Hamba! Hamba!

Tomoya: No, no, it’s… hum… brr…

Teacher: No matter how you pronounce it…

Mitsuki: I see where “stick” came from, a pencil is sort of a stick…

Tomoya: Exactly! It’s a stick.

Chamu: Yeah, I mean, they’re both just sort of long shapes…

Teacher: Okay, next question. “Keshigomu.” “Eraser.” Mahiro and Koudai, you both said the same thing. You both answered “gom.”

Subaru: We’d understand “gom.”

Mahiro: Yeah, the word “eraser” just wouldn’t come to me at all, so I just used the borrowed English portion of the word “keshigomu.” [“keshi” means erase, “gomu” is taken from “gum,” which is basically “rubber”]

Chamu: “Eraser” is hard to remember.

Mahiro: I knew it, I’m just dumb.

Teacher: You know… it was written on the erasers we let you use during the test.

Subaru: That’s right!

Teacher: I guess it was useless. It was written before you and yet you still got it wrong. I guess it’s still cute. Kana of Codomo Dragon, you had another answer from “gom” entirely: “weit.”

Kana: I saw that it was written on our erasers and I thought about writing it, but in the end I figured it was wrong and went with something else.

Hayato: So you did the next best thing and wrote “weit.”

Teacher: Let’s move on.

雷 [kaminari] (___)

Teacher: Next, “kaminari.” In English, it can be either “thunder” or “lightning.” I understand that the “th” sound in “thunder” is difficult to say, and therefore difficult to remember the spelling of, so many of you did spell it wrong, with an “s” instead. Even so, Mahiro…

Mahiro: Eh?

Teacher: Mahiro… Mahiro, you… you almost got… something. LIGHTNING.

(Laigingu) [Beside it is the word “rising” and the definition, which I personally find unfair because it’s not what he wrote, he clearly remembered there was a weird silent “g” in the middle]

Hayato: It has a very romaji look to it.

Takemasa: With the “G U”. Goo!

Mahiro: You can kind of understand it…

Teacher: Not at all! Okay, next. Next, you were asked to translate the following English sentences into Japanese. Number one.

(1) Tom’s bag is heavier than mine.

Mitsuki: I got the meaning of the words, but I dunno what they meant all together.

Everyone: (muttered agreement)

Teacher: It’s heavy (omoi).

Kana (?): “Heavy?”

Teacher: The correct answer is “Tomu no baggu ha watashi no (mono) yori omoi desu.” However, Yume, let’s have a look at your answer.

(トムのバッグには地雷が入っている) [Tom has a land mine in his bag] [Beside his answer is a definition of the game Minesweeper (A single-player computer game released in the 1980s where you must avoid land mines and click all the safe blocks)]

Subaru: Mine! Mine!

Teacher: I see where you went wrong, you mistook “mine” as in “my bag” for “mine” as in “land mine.”

Junji: Yeah, it’s an unclear word.

Hayato: That’s really dangerous, though. Why would you put a mine in your bag?

Teacher: Next question.

(3) The man was happy to get medicine.

Teacher: Kuina. Kuina… let’s just look at what you wrote.

(すごいマジシャン（男）を手に入れた。ヤッター) [I got an amazing magician (man). Hooray!] [A line appears underlining “medicine” and “マジシャン (magician)”, indicating the words he got wrong]

Mitsuki: You got a magician?!

Subaru: Happy! Well, he’s just a man, right?

Mitsuki: That’s great.

Subaru: It really is!

Teacher: Well, actually, there are a lot of people who get “medicine” and “magician” mixed up.

Everyone: Whaaaaat?

Teacher: It’s an easy mistake to make in this country. That being said… Tomoya.

Tomoya: Oh.

Teacher: I’m tired of calling on you.

(彼はメディチネを手に入れてよろこんだ!!) [He was thrilled to get medichinay!!]

Someone: What on earth is medichinay?

Subaru: Medichinay… medichinay…!

Teacher: He was THRILLED!!

Tomoya: …To get his medichinay.

Someone: Are you serious?!

Teacher: He was serious, wasn’t he? Alright, next. Please translate into English.

(4) 彼女は輝く星を見た。 (She looked up at the shining star)

Teacher: So, starting with the phrase “shining star,” it should have been easy, but it seems you had some issues.

Takemasa: No one got it?

Teacher: No, but your answers were close. However… Codomo Dragon’s Kana…

Kana: I don’t knooow.

Teacher: Shall we show your answer?

(The woman loock at stare.,)

Teacher: The woman LOOOOOK at stare.

Subaru: What- what’s that at the end?

Kana: Isn’t that “star”?

Junji: LOOOOOOK!

Teacher: Okay, so this is “look,” even if you spelled it wrong, but “stare” isn’t “star,” it’s to look on continuously.

Kana: I told you I don’t know.

Teacher: Alright, the English exam is now finished. Now to announce the scores. The top score was 16. Number one… Codomo Dragon’s Hayato.

Everyone: Wow! That’s great!

Teacher: I know you’d like to celebrate. Next I’ll announce the lowest-scoring members. There are two… Codomo Dragon…

Kana: It’s not me, is it?

Teacher: IT IS YOU.

Kana: Yaay.

Teacher: And one more.

Mitsuki: Hey, cameraman, your anticipation of the answer is giving it away!

Teacher: It’s Kiryu’s Mahiro.

Mitsuki: You’re bringing down our team.

Mahiro: Yeah, I’m the dummy.

Everyone: Dummy! Dummy!

—

Results of the entire test:

3rd worst (tie): Royz - Koudai Japanese: 8 (lowest ranking) Math: 11 Science: 10 Social studies: 8 English: 6 Total: 43 (Average: 54)

3rd worst (tie): Royz - Kuina Japanese: 8 (lowest ranking) Math: 9 Science: 14 Social studies: 8 English: 4 Total: 43 (Average: 54)

2nd worst: Codomo Dragon - Kana Japanese: 10 Math: 6 Science: 5 Social studies: 6 English: 1 (lowest ranking) Total: 28 (Average: 54)

Kana: Sorry, I’m bad at English. Hayato: YOU’RE BAD AT THE WHOLE THING!

Worst: Kiryu…

Junji: Oh, it’s me, isn’t it? Takemasa: Nuh-uh, it’s Mitsuki.

Worst: Kiryu - Kurosaki Mahiro Japanese: 8 (lowest ranking) Math: 5 (lowest ranking) Science: 1 (lowest ranking) Social studies: 12 English: 1 (lowest ranking) Total: 27 (Average: 54)

Lowest band average: Royz, with an average of 45.75.

Highest band average: Kiryu, with an average of 62.2.

Mahiro: Isn’t that great? Even with the lowest scoring idiot on your team, you still scored the highest average.

Highest scoring individual members:

1. Isshiki Hiyori (82%) 2. Tokai Junji (75%) 3. Hayato (71%) 4. Sakai Mitsuki (63%) 4. Kujou Takemasa (63%)