If there is a God, then only one religion can be real. If God is not an arbitrary tyrant, then his laws are meant to promote friendship with both him and our neighbors.

Many people may claim to follow the Constitution, even as they mock its principles right in front of us. Many who call themselves Christian are just as hypocritical about the Bible. In fact, the Bible gives repeated warnings against hypocrisy.

Christianity did not start as a state religion. In fact, it began as a religion that worked against the pagan state religion of Rome. Jesus taught that all people are created with equal rights. Such a statement went against every popular culture of the time.

Christianity existed long before it was perverted into a tool for conquering elites. There have always been both good missionaries and evil ones.

The historical basis for democracy has been the Christian belief that all men are created equal. The failures of democracy come from hypocrisy — about both the Bible and the Constitution.

Finally, as far as I can see, the atrocities on the part of Western conquerors have been roughly what Japan would do — and has done — with similar power.

Please do not unfairly single out the West. The Axis Powers included Germany, Italy, and Japan.

A work of fiction is a novel, but every work of fiction is not a novel.

Reading comprehension, yo.

and this I say not only as learner of Japanese but also as a teacher for German as a Foreign Language & (this even more, since literature is my dearest non-human love) as a sholar of German Literature… we need to read more & fail & read again & fail & practice & read – I need to remind myself of this as well, as a learner of Japanese that is & as a teacher

being illiterate is the start, but it shouldn’t be the end

I am so going to spread this text to ALL my students (and to my friends as well)

Thank you

also: changing the prespective is something we – the “west” – are definitelly need, in a much smaller sense I can relate to it, since I am from Eastern Germany, so 40 years of usually taught 20th century German history are not mine, but 2/3 of Germany doesn’t care all… but yes, it’s insignificant compared to the (often) attempt to destroy a culture or to “normalize” it

Maria

Religion is a weapon, a perfect weapon and it’s people like you that make it perfect. Without you the whole game shuts down. Your mind is infected and your post is full of symptoms of this infection.

For the sake of my waning interest I will just copy some observations I made to a chum pertaining to your last ….. chunk ….. of text.

“Whatever. I know this sounds like a whiny complaint. But it’s not, and I don’t wanna start a fight. But I just wanted to set the record straight. I basically agree with everything else you’ve said though.”

: see
: the guy starts by saying whatever
: like he doesnt really care either way
: but thats a lie
: because if he didn’t care he wouldnt have said anything
: then the next thing he says is “I know this sounds like a whiny complaint, but its not”
: which is a lie
: it IS A WHINY COMPLAINT
: and the wrost part is, “I dont want to start a fight, but……”
: and then the last bit
: “I basically agree with everyhthing you saying though” Ties up his whole massive degrading assault in a neat little bow and makes him seem as though he is being the open minded one
: and that if you challenge him
: you are the asshole
: not him
: and the best part?
: HE DOESNT EVEN REALISE HE IS DOING THIS
: ITS UNITENTIONAL
: ITS JUST THE WAY HIS INFECTED BRAIN WORKS NOW

F##king great article though, this website is the bollocks mate.

This is all just my opinion but… I think it must. I’m at a similar stage right now. In making the jump from N3 to N2 I’ve found my vocabulary is woefully inadequate. I’m trying to address this by reading native materials but as you say it’s painfully slow to the point that it’s practically impossible.

What I’ve done, which seems to be working, is taken some material from Japanese websites (blogs are best, especially blogs on topics you’re interested in) and split it down into sentences using an automated script. If you’re not into farting around with computers you could probably do something similar with a word processor/text editor and “search & replace” to take all the full stops, question marks or exclamation marks and replace them with the same punctuation plus a new line. Then you can use these sentences to make flashcards. There is no “answer” – just “could you read it? could you understand it?”.

Then for each card (I use Mnemosyne, sorry Khatz…) I look at the sentence. I try to read it “out loud” including the readings for the kanji (there’s no furigana of course). If I have trouble I can cut and paste it into Google Translate or use the WWWJDIC to check the readings. It takes time – it takes no less time than just reading straight out – but it’s only one sentence, and putting it into an SRS means I get to see it over and over again until I do remember (rather than just reading, where each time you finish a sentence you get another one you don’t know).

It is tough going, but it’s getting easier and when I sat the N2 paper earlier this month there were kanji I knew because I’d seen them in my reading sentences. I think having the context of a sentence is also a good way to learn kanji, rather than just isolated as a single word on a vocab card (although I’m going to make vocab cards for the kanji as well).

I’ve only been doing this a short while but already it’s helping turn the wall of squiggles into something I actually read, rather than skip-read for the few terms I recognize as I had been doing in the 4.5 years I’ve lived here in Japan (allowed a bad habit to develop, didn’t I!). Before this I’d been trying to read N3 and N2 reading prep books over and over to get into the reading thing but it was so goddamned boring I almost wanted to poke my eyes out. Do what works – your most valuable asset in this war is your motivation to succeed. You can do this. Thousands of Japanese people far less capable than you can do this. Those people who would happily glare at you for being the foreigner in *their* train station, patronize you for being able to use chopsticks, not give a sh*t about your employer’s blatant disregard for Japanese employment law because you’re a commodity… and that’s not everyone, at all, but it’s enough to pi$$ me off… chances are high that those people have barely made it abroad in their lives (otherwise they might’ve learned something about the world) but you know something? They can read. If they can do it, someone like you who is putting in time and energy to go out of your way and learn about another culture and its language… I’m certain you can. 頑張ってください。

You know, I am so glad that there are other non-Japanese, native English speakers in Japan who want to integrate, who see an inability to read in their adopted home as the adult illiteracy problem that it is and not some “oh yeah, Japanese is a *hard* language for us people, the FSI say so” problem. I know that’s not quite the point you were making here, but so, so many of my countrymen and those from other English speaking countries come here, stand in a converted apartment all day getting paid a respectable wage to talk their mother-tongue, spend weekends drinking cans of beer in parks or pissing it up at the nearest Hub, and make absolutely no effort to adapt to the culture. They’re paid to teach people how to learn a language but they’ve never done it successfully in their lives. As someone who does want to be fluent, who does want to integrate, who respects teaching as a profession but feels the industry here is too screwed up by its “easiest way to get a visa” and low entry requirement problems, and who wants to be taken seriously in this country I spend every day of my life challenging the barriers these individuals have constructed for me. And it’s so hypocritical; people who behave that way in our own countries wouldn’t last five minutes. Even the poor migrants who have worked really goddamned hard to build positive, contributing lives in my country now get tarred with all our social problems (see this: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10158678/Immigrants-create-overcrowding-and-fuel-tensions-report-finds.html ).

But in daily life here I meet almost nobody who sees things the same way. I work on a team with a couple of other native speakers in an office with what must be 99% native Japanese speakers. They’ve both been here at least three times as long as I have. Are they perapera? Of course not. Neither of them can read. WTF? I mean, they’re great people and all that but seriously, WTF? “Kanji is hard.” Yes, it is. So is walking and riding a bicycle, and getting the university degree necessary to get that Certificate of Eligibility from the Japanese Embassy but somehow we managed it.

I think we should form some kind of association for foreigners in Japan who want to build positive lives here – including integration. And that’s not to take an apologist position on everything that happens here; there is discrimination, there are problems with how things work, but let’s not pretend we have our own house in order. Let’s listen and try to understand before we condemn. Let’s not presume we have all the answers when it’s abundantly clear that we don’t. Failure to integrate makes life harder for all of us. It should be the exception, but right now it’s the rule.

This isn’t accurate Khatz. The first recorded work of fiction that we have is The Epic of Gilgamesh which was in cuneiform.Also while Beowulf, is technically considered an epic poem, it is thought to have been written between the 8th and 11th century and is the oldest literary work in English that we have. I’m not sure what you’re citing but I would guess that both of these works are older than this novel.

Now all we need to do is to start developing a way to put Kanji into English. The Japanese are already doing their part very well using that ridiculous amount of loan words, I think it’s time for the west to follow in their steps like we’ve never done before.

Only of course everyone will start complaining and saying this is stupid, despite it actually being super duper smart.

Oh well, I’ll try cooking up something, who knows? Don’t think I’m super duper smart enough to develop that entirely new writing system, though… sigh…