Words of the day: 折り鶴 (paper crane, origami crane), 紅鶴 (flamingo), 鶴の一声 (final word; voice of authority; authoritative pronouncement), 閑雲野鶴 (life in natural setting, free from worldly cares), 風声鶴唳 (getting frightened even by a slight noise; hearing the enemy in every leaf that rustles; being afraid of one’s own shadow)
(they’re several today, but I liked them all!)
Today’s kanji ties in well with our origami challenge. 鶴 means crane, stork. It’s a Jōyō kanji taught in junior high, JLPT level N1 and WK level 49.
アルスラーン戦記 novel 1 - about as difficult as i thought it was gonna be, but having context really helped and cos i was looking forward to this one i actually had quite a bit of fun if we ignore the fact that i didn’t read the whole sample shhhh. looking forward to reading these like, two years from now when i actually can
Non-language related notes on today’s song because I really liked it! It was very catchy and uplifting! So I got curious about the band and googled Drop Dead Dolls to see who they were and found out they’re a virtual idol group! That’s a first for me to ever encounter! I was pretty surprised, though I know I shouldn’t have been since anime is such a huge thing in Japan. It should only make sense they’d have anime virtual idol groups. I might try this at a karaoke once. Seems like an easy enough song to sing!
On a side note, the first time a googled, some scary dolls came up on the search and freaked me out. Not nice… I have a lingering fear of dolls from childhood…
The first origami in this advent calendar that took me less than 10 minutes to make!
Replies
@omk3 I tried to look into it more but couldn’t find any references at all. I’m so curious… I’ll ask my japanese teacher the next time I have class and let you know!
Quite a different art style from most of the previous stories. I suppose that alone was what made this fun to read to my daughter. Again, only about 45% understood. My daughter wasn’t too keen on helping this time. Oh well, I’m just glad she still enjoys having me read to her at 10 years old.
At first I extended the 12th stroke too far down, and wondered why it looked all wrong. When I realized, I had no energy to start again, but at least I fixed it for all the next ones.
Origami
Picked two Kanji today, the first one being the one proposed by @omk3. I couldn’t find a stroke order diagram for the second Kanji within a few minutes, so I just wrote it in a freestyle manner. Luckily, it turned out okay.
Wait, now really want to know what song this was, because I don’t think I had a song by them on my calendar… (I think Day 21 was an 嵐 song). Do you remember the title?
Oh, wow, that actually sounds pretty close to the original! Well done! I think in this case 歌ってみた ＝ 歌う＋てみる as in, we tried to sing / attempted to sing.
The original group is these guys:
A very well-known boy-band in Japan with LOTS of songs (something like 256 songs total).
Not sure if you have Netflix or if it’s available in your country, but there’s actually a documentary on Netflix about their history as a group and their retirement in 2020:
With so many songs, they can be kind of a mixed bag, but worth checking out.
Words of the day: 竹籠 (bamboo basket), 灯籠 (garden lantern, hanging lantern), 蒸籠 (bamboo steamer), 片旅籠 (one-night stay (with just breakfast or dinner)), 籠球 (basketball)
籠 means things like basket, devote oneself, seclude oneself, cage, coop, implied. It’s a Jōyō kanji taught in junior high. It’s not on Wanikani.
Despite the start of today’s writing practice feeling relatively comfortable due to the box-like structure of this Kanji, my patience ran out by the 5th row causing the rest to become sloppy.
On top of that there is one mistake which I didn’t notice until the end: one of these (things) is not like the other.
2 out of 20 pieces done! My lord this is a crazy one but excited to see the finished product. Sad i don’t have 10 of the same paper so it’s gonna be like patchwork. Will edit this post later once I’m done!
Very quick read in the morning today! クリスマスの贈物 by 竹久夢二 with this 朗読. If anyone wants to give an Aozora story a try and they want a Christmas-y mood, this is a good one for that. A very classic type of holiday story and it’s only a few pages. Not too much for old grammar and because it’s aimed at children the kanji is lighter.
アルスラーン戦記 漫画 – obvs easier to approach than above cos there’s pictures. Much the same as the anime, the sample covered episode one. lots of furigana different to the kanji readings, especially for titles but also for some names, as renderings of older non-japanese words and, ofc, polite speech here there and everywhere.
why are there only two days left, when did that happen
I have a lingering fear of dolls from childhood…
Japanese Advent Calendar 2022 – Day 21 
Kanji writing
Advent of Ascending Kanji - Day 21 
I’ll look them up later and see if the docu is available on my Netflix!
will get back to it over the weekend when less busy!
