Zelda Skyward Sword

Again, if you don't want things spoiled for you, feel free to skip this post.

Oni are creatures from Japanese folklore, variously translated as Demons, devils, ogres, or trolls. They are popular characters in Art, literature and theatre.

Depictions of oni vary widely but usually portray them as hideous, gigantic creatures with sharp claws, wild hair, and two long horns growing from their heads. They are humanoid for the most part, but occasionally, they are shown with unnatural features such as odd numbers of eyes or extra fingers and toes.Their skin may be any number of colors, but red and blue are particularly common.

They are often depicted wearing tiger-skin loincloths and carrying iron clubs. This image leads to the expression "oni with an iron club", that is, to be invincible or undefeatable. It can also be used in the sense of "strong beyond strong", or having one's natural quality enhanced or supplemented by the use of some tool. (Wikipedia)

Recognize this? That's because they use Oni in Zelda. Skyward Sword and also in Twilight Princess - Although they are more recognizable in Skyward Sword.

Also they are in DBZ.

I Should make More Mistakes

When learning Japanese. Seems simple enough, but when you think about it, we’re wired to try to avoid making mistakes. It’s embarrassing. It’s painful. Yadah yadah yadah. Mistakes aren’t things that we as humans like to make.

There’s a few reasons for this.

1. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not pushing boundaries. If you’re not pushing boundaries, you’re going to end up learning at a slower pace.
2. If you’re afraid of making mistakes, you won’t try to learn new things. To learn new things, you have to make a lot of mistakes.
3. If you make a mistake, you can learn what you did wrong. Going back and learning why you did something wrong gives you better insight into the thing you’re learning. If you’re not doing this, you’re just skimming the surface.
4. If you’re not willing to make mistakes, you’re probably not willing to practice conversation with people. Practicing conversation is really important. It helps you to practice recalling things you’ve learned in new and different situations. Remember how important recalling information is for learning?
5. Mistakes mean you’re trying. If you’re trying… well, that means you’re trying. You should try more.

The list actually goes on and on. No matter who you are, you can strive to make more mistakes. The important thing, however, is learning from them. This also isn't just for learning languages but can apply to anything that involves learning.

I stepped on the cat

Yuika is learning the piano and this is one of the first songs that she mastered. My husband tells me the song means "I stepped on the cat's tail" but I think he's a liar because the word "tail" isn't in the title, so I'm thinking it just means "I stepped on the cat".

Here's the piano version:

Except that she knows the song so well that she will play it in high speed. And when she's frustrated at learning a new song. And when she's bored. And when she's not bored. Basically at all times when she is in this house that is not eating or sleeping, this song can be heard.

Ha!

I don't know if this is even worth mentioning but the other day I was out singing karaoke with Yuika and she was singing "Maru Maru Mori Mori"　Maru Maru means round, I think. Or whole. And mori mori means to swell.

Here's a video for you.

Feel free to listen to it over and over until it gets stuck in your head. Or not. Might make you go crazy. Here's what they are saying if you're curious:

Maru maru mori mori minna taberuyo

Tsuru tsuru teka teka ashitamo hareru kana?

Dabadyua dabajyaba dyua

Wasure mono sunnayo

Dabadyua dabajyaba dyua

Ookiku nattara osora ni koe ga todoku kana?

Itsu made demo issho dayo

Maru maru mori mori minna taberuyo

Tsuru tsuru teka teka ashitamo hareru kana?

Kanashikute naiteita hitori aruku kaerimichi

Konna toki honwaka na

Minna ni aitai na

Maru maru mori mori omaji nai dayo

Tsuru tsuru teka teka nikkori egao

Ichi ni no san shi de goma shio san

Takusan dato oishii ne

Maru maru mori mori puka puka ofuro

Tsuru tsuru pika pika goshi goshi burashi

Minna san gunnai mata ashita

Asagohan wa nandeshone?

Dabadyua dabajyaba dyua

Onaka dashite neruna yo

Dabadyua dabajyaba dyua

Yoku dekimashita

English translation:

Maru maru mori mori We’re gonna eat everything

Tsuru tsuru teka teka Will it be clear again tomorrow?

Dabadyua dabajyaba dyua

Don’t’ leave anything behind

Dabadyua dabajyaba dyua

When I grow up, will my voice reach the sky?

We’ll always be together.

Maru maru mori mori -We’re gonna eat everything

Tsuru tsuru teka teka - Will it be clear again tomorrow?

I was so sad, I walked alone crying on the way home

At times like this, I want to see the warmth and comfort

of everyone

Maru maru mori mori - It’s a magical spell

Tsuru tsuru teka teka - A sweet smile

1, 2, and a 3, 4 and Mr. Salt and Pepper

It tastes best when you eat together

with many people

Maru maru mori mori - Floating in the bath

Tsuru tsuru pika pika - Scrubbing brush

Good night, everyone, see you tomorrow

I wonder what’s for breakfast?

Daba dyua daba jyaba dyua

Cover you tummy when you sleep

Daba dyua daba jyaba dyua

Good job

The point of me telling you this is the boy. See that boy? When I was watching a television show with Yuika in the past week I thought I saw the same boy, so I asked her if it was. And I was right! This is the television show.

Can you spot him? Also I totally watch it for the cute silver hair guy. It's called Youkai Ningen, which means Human Monster.

Oh man...

You know that feeling you get when you open your washing machine, expecting clean laundry and what you get is a bunch of white specks covering your clothes? That kind of "Oh man..." feeling because you know you have to get all those specks off the clothes?

Yeah. Me too.

There's more! (Avatar)

For the Avatar lovers

I have never seen this video, although it was posted in 2009. So I thought I'd share in case anyone else who enjoys the show hasn't seen it before either.

"Hey there, I like your hair loopies."

Results are In

Yuika went into Shinji's bedroom to tell him a message from his dad and she saw the girl inside all nestled in his bed with him. I guess that explains it all. Good way to introduce her to us. I guess..

Who owns the heels?

I don't usually look at the section of the house that has all the shoes (unless I'm going outside) so I was unaware of these heels and how long they had been there. Although it's safe to assume that in the morning when everyone left for work and school that those heels were not there. Which means that they belong to someone. And that would mean that there is a person (I'm just going to go out on a limb and say it's a female) inside Shinji's room. Shinji being the "ghost" (nickname because we hardly ever talk even though we live in the same house).

My conclusion? I am and have been, all day, a wall apart between a guy and a girl in a bedroom. A girl no one has met, apparently. When my husband's mom came home she asked me if I had bought some new black high heels and when I shook my head her eyes widened and asked if someone was with Shinji, to which I replied that I didn't know. So now she's wondering if Shinji has a girlfriend. Actually I'm wondering that too. Also sneaking her into the house to have fun bedroom times isn't a good way to introduce her to the family.

That is... assuming that there is a person in the house. After all, they are only shoes. ... That weren't there this morning....

Teaching English

I bought some new flashcards today from a book store. They have pictures and such on them. I went to have a look through the fruit cards and found something that didn't belong. My first reaction to seeing the card? "Oh look, firefighter, my favourite fruit."

Mild winter, Canada?

I think you must have given Japan all of your snow. How inconsiderate of you. Japan is a lot smaller, you should know that we can't handle all that snow.

In all seriousness, though, Japan has been having major disasters due to heavy snow. Not around here. The most we've had is some light flurries. At seven am today the temperature was down to -5 which seems to have broken the norm for the past five or ten years (Or so I've been told. I haven't been here that long) which was to hover around -1.

However.

Up north there have been train accidents, avalanches and houses collapsing due to snow piling up. Several people have died this week, and more are homeless or injured.

We see the delays from the trains due to the happenings of up north. Some trains have even been cancelled. It wasn't particularly fun to wait for the train only to have the sign change to 5 minute delay, then to 10 minute delay and from there it went 15....20...30...1 hour... it just kept adding up. I probably could have walked home faster than waiting for that train.

I feel terrible for those people who have to suffer through whatever is going on with the weather up north.

It made me wonder if Canadian houses were built with that in mind. If a snow storm ever happened and there happened to be a ton of snow on the rooves of houses.

Random, off topic side note: Why does spell check think that roofs is the correct plural form of roof? I've looked it up. The Oxford English Dictionary clearly states that the plural form is rooves while the more widely used roofs is slang and is only accepted reluctantly.

Hmm, Amazon...

I'm not sure what to think about you now.

When I asked what should be done with my faulty DVD's you responded with this:

I am sorry to hear about the problem you experienced with your shipment. I have placed a new order for the item. There is no charge for this replacement. We also would like you to return the defective order at our expense. Please contact our shipper and arrange a date and time for the order to be picked up and returned to us.

Which was great! But when I called your shipper and had the date arranged it was for today between 8am and 1pm. Because I would be at home between those hours. And what do I find when I get back home later? That your shipper showed up at 6pm. That's five hours later, Amazon. Were the hours between 8am and 1pm not enough? I certainly felt like it was a long enough time. Standing and waiting at the door.

Luckily someone was home and everything turned out OK. I did like the fact that there wasn't much of a hassle to replace the DVDs, but, really, five hours?

I'm kinda famous

My husband and I were doing some insurance things at the town hall and for some strange reason everyone there kept looking at me. I pretended that I didn't see it because I just figured it was more of that stereotypical Japanese looking at foreigners thing. It wasn't until my husband went up to pay some things that one of the guys had a bit of a conversation with him. I couldn't catch all of it but one of the things he did say was "It's been about a year now, eh? " And I had no idea what he was talking about, my husband looked a little bit confused as well. We both kinda clued in as the same time. I've been here for about a year-ish now. Although it's been over a year, it's still generally in the vicinity of 12 months.

My husband informed me after that I'm famous in our town. Which inflated my ego a bit until I remembered that there's only two Canadians here. And from what I gather, the stereotypical version of a foreigner in Japans' eyes is a white skinned, blue eyed, blonde hair American. They don't seem to count other Asian countries, or they just don't notice them too much as they have similar facial features. I've got two out of the four (No blonde hair, not from the USA) so I guess that's why. The two Canadians in this town are in the minority out of all the foreigners who live here (And there's at least twenty) yet we probably are the most well known.

Auckland, New Zealand and Kakogawa, Japan

What do they have in common? Well they're sister cities! Isn't that interesting? On Friday at the end of my class I was asked to come downstairs to meet with one of the top city guys. (This is bad. I can't remember his exact title. Or his name, though I never did get an introduction... He could be the mayor.. or a chairman... or a councillor...) His English is great, I was surprised! There was a slight New Zealand accent when he spoke but it was as if I had been speaking with an English speaker (Like an American or Canadian who had spent many years in New Zealand and developed a New Zealand accent) so my brain went automatically into relax mode. However when he spoke some sentences and the grammar was a bit off, my brain got confused. Poor brain. So easily confused.

He asked me if I could correct the English on a letter before he sent it off to the Mayor of Auckland, New Zealand. That's when my brain went into high power freak out mode.

Brain: You want me to correct your English on an important document between sister cities? An important document? Me? Really? Are you really sure about this? Well what if I can't think of the right wording? What if I mess up? What if something terrible happens because I forgot to punctuate properly? This is too much stress, I'm going to turn off now.

So for five minutes I just sat there with this red pen in my hand, looking over at the letter.... and blanking. I could point out what needed fixing but my brain refused to turn back on and help me figure out how to word everything nice and politely (The man had asked me to do my best to make it as polite as possible). It didn't help that the man didn't sit down and instead was hovering over my shoulder like I was a student at an important exam.

I'm pretty sure that because of the freak out my brain made a few mistakes. Looking back on it now, I do know of one that I made. "So and so will accompany." was the original sentence, with the "so and so" actually being a group of people and the name of the group having been forgotten at the moment. I had changed it to "so and so will accompany me." But later on I thought about it and decided that this would have been a better wording "so and so will be accompanying me." And then I realised that he is probably not even going as this important document was just a thank you for having the people there and so it should have been like this: "So and so will be accompanying them on this and that"

I had asked if I could take it home and bring it back or email it back to him with the proper wording as with more time I'd surely be able to think out some better phrasing. But that was just double speak for Hi. Yes, I speak English, but I don't do well under pressure. Unfortunately... he had to send it out today (I'm assuming that it's an email).

But I try not to think about the fails too badly as I'm sure the Mayor of Auckland will understand that there is a language barrier and will make allowances for it.

... Right? I'm right, right guys? Back me up here.

Oh, Phew...

I had been worrying there for a moment.

Note to self

Making your own banana muffins and banana bread will taste at least one hundred times better than any store bought kind. Not because it is homemade (Although that is a great plus) but because the stores tend to use banana flavouring instead of actual bananas. Making the bread/muffin taste like a bread version of that banana medicine that you used to love as a kid. Except without the intense banana flavour.

Never again buy that cranberry lemon flavoured bagel from the train station. It tasted like lip chap, complete with the waxy aftertaste.

Quote from an email forward from mom: "What fits your busy schedule better? Exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?"

Observations

This will be an ongoing thing. For how long? Who knows.

Number 1) I am really, really, desperately wanting shreddies. Shreddies, like the cereal. And it does not exist. At least not around here.

I learn things...

And then I use them, ha! Isn't that amazing? That or I find situations that seem to have topics related to the said learned things.

For example, I've learned about some interesting science stuff and will continue to learn interesting science stuff and world history and all that school stuff as long as Youtube continues to run and as long as the creators continue to make great, informational videos. A couple of those things were Epigenetics and the Higgs boson particle. We get into some interesting discussions in my Friday English class although not everyone can understand what we're talking about so we don't go into too much detail. Some of those discussions lead to cloning, children, and epigenetics and some others led to the big bang theory, creation and the Higgs boson particle.

There's really not much of a point to this blog post other than I wanted to share my knowledge that I've recently learned and the ways I've been able to share and use it.

I'd like less of this...

Person X: "So you live in Japan."

Me: "Yes! :D Yes I do."

Person X: "Can you translate this for me?"

(or)

Person X: "This song/movie/TV show/anything else that is in Japanese and could be translated ... what are they saying?"

(or)

Person X: "What's this word in Japanese?"

Me: ".... :( ...."

C'mon guys. I'm not a dictionary and I'm not a translator. Being in the country for a year does not make me fluent in the language. (Did you understand all the English words when you were a year old? Five years old? Ten, even?)

There are two exceptions to this. Two people that, if they asked, I wouldn't care and I'd happily translate stuff for them (If I can. If I can't, sucks for them ;) ). And I know that one of them reads every one of my blog posts (Because I know how interesting and thought provoking they really are and she's secretly caught onto that - there's really no other explanation) but the other... probably has completely forgotten this blogs' existence.

Don't let this scare you away from asking. I suppose that is what I'm complaining about, the asking part of it all, but if I ask you if you've looked at a dictionary already or if you've searched Google for an answer it's my way of saying I don't wanna do this, do your own research /whine/.

Because I'm not a very straight forward person. So I won't just come out and say it. I'll just hint at it with suggestions to look at dictionaries, online (or offline) translators, or just to Google it.

Books, Books, Books

PS - One of those books was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. And it was an enjoyable read. Went by too quickly, though. Took only a few hours. Shame on me for not reading slower.

In the book, there's a character who has the last name Van Houten. I knew I had heard that before but I was too interested in the story to really think about where I had heard it before. Lucky me, though, since the book pointed it out for me. Van Houten Cocoa is really famous in Japan. All over Japan, it's just everywhere. Powder, can, hot, cold, solid, liquid, if it could have been another form I'm sure it'd be here that way as well. Now I'm not a very seasoned traveller. I've really only been to the states, a few provinces in Canada and Japan. So I can't say what's been going on with it in Australia or the UK or anywhere else in the world, but man. Japan is all about the Van Houten cocoa.

Yay, books!

I bought a bunch of books from Amazon, because I love Amazon. Amazon.jp, I mean. Because I can totally buy things online without using a credit card. I will never cease to be amazed at how handy this is for me.

Anyway I received the package on Thursday night and despite having a really busy weekend, I managed to read all the books(!) before the next Thursday hit.

Have you ever had that feeling where you really into a good book and then you realize that your nearing the end of your super awesome book and you get a little sad that you know it has to end? I know that feeling.

Or how about when you read through a nicely sized book at an above average pace (1400 pages. 2 days.) you get to the end and....... the ending is not as satisfying as you thought it would be. It doesn't even have to be a nicely sized book. Just any book that you enjoy reading and the ending leaves an unpleasantness, kind of like drinking anything with sucralose in it, behind.

So I'm finished all my books, which makes me always want to read more books but there's a couple problems with that. 1) Finding English books for English people to read are far and few between around here 2) That leaves me with the internet which can be a gamble 3) There is nooooo spaaaace here. I have my books stored in the Amazon boxes that they came shipped in. And those boxes are being stored in random areas of the house. Like the bathroom. And the hallway.

I was watching my niece (niece? Niece-in-law?) read earlier today, so I asked her if she liked to read. And she said "No, not really" To which I was like "Uhh... okay... but you have a book..." And I'm not 100% on her answer but I believe she said that she reads to read. I suppose there are worse reasons to read, haha.

Observations

I was thinking about that crazy guy I met on the train. You know the one that I said talked about how he really wanted his wife to get a boob job? Have I talked about that? Well anyway... here's the thing I wanted to point out...

I was thinking about how he pointed to me and went (In Japanese of course) "Oh, a foreigner! Hi! Hello! My name is...." And today I realised that while this seems to be normal ("normal") in Japan and everyone who comes here is usually prepared for such things that this would never happen in Canada. Like I am pretty certain that no one who walk up to a Japanese person and go "Oh wow! A Japanese person! Konnichiwa! Ohayo! Sayonara! " If you did do that you'd probably be stared at by everyone else around you as they slowly back away. Haha that's a bit extreme but they'd definitely think that you were weird. I don't know if that's to do with the multiculturalism that Canada has or if it's just the culture. I'd like to think it's the former, though.

I hate my light

My bedroom light. Sometimes it takes a couple seconds and sometimes it takes two minutes but it's never instant. Usually it depends on the time of day. Later in the night it'll start taking longer and longer. I click the light switch and I stand in the dark. It. Is. So. Frustrating! I learned that if I wander around to the bed and click on the bed light (The bedpost has lights in it) then the overhead light turns on quicker, but man! I've never been in a room where I had to stand in the dark for 120 seconds or longer in order for the light to come on!

Lookit what make-up can do

Thoughts?