Study Bug

[trickykitty]

He's already signed up for German and animation classes next year (we thought they would start this year, but apparently we were mistaken). He LOVES anime and spends hours gorging his brain on it. In his animation class, he wants to focus specifically on anime.

I have no idea from where the idea for learning German came. Mom was trying to talk him into learning Mandarin, because she found out it's the most spoken language on the planet. That's not a bad idea at all, especially if he were to go into the business world, but that's highly unlikely for him. Besides, I'm selfish and want him to learn German, because I also want to learn German and will happily learn it along side him, and I don't really have an interest in learning Mandarin (at this time).

So, we had a talk about it. He said that what he'd really like to learn is Japanese, because he's tired of having to read the subtitles for his anime. I can totally relate to this. Of course, eldest would also like to visit Tokyo after watching a video of some Americans touring Tokyo and seeing how embedded the culture is with All Things Anime. That makes two solid reasons for learning Japanese. The problem is that the school doesn't teach Japanese. Then he said some magical words - he'd be willing to learn it on his own.

Off to the bookstore we went. We managed to pick up two systems for less than $60. The first is a conversational program called 15-Minute Japanese which is a 15-minutes a day, 12-week course for learning conversational Japanese. We decided to pace ourselves after trying out the first 15-minute lesson. Instead of doing one lesson per day, we'll do one per week, spending about an hour each weekend on the lesson and making up flashcards, and then practicing during the week.

The second system is Living Language Japanese which goes more in-depth into grammar as well as reading and writing (hiragana, katakana, and kanji). I picked this system up after looking at a more expensive system, the cheaper 15-Minute system above, random books that didn't appear to include audio (one of my criteria), and some other workbooks and flashcards. This system seemed great for both the price and its inclusiveness of all the elements.

I am keeping in mind another series of books called Kana De Manga and Kanji De Manga.

Haha - one of the "customers also bought" books on the Kanji De Manga Special Edition: Yoji-Jukugo page is The Edogawa Rampo Reader. I really miss my Rampo Noir dvd. I need to replace it one of these days, and by then I can attempt to watch it without the subtitles!


As another development, eldest and his friends started playing D&D. They've been playing the World War Z and the Walking Dead games that are based on similar RPG mechanics, but one of the boys has officially bought a couple of the D&D books, and they're branching out into that arena as a group. I'm such a proud geek aunt. I was initially toying with the idea of getting eldest into Pathfinder a couple months ago, so hearing of this new development thrills me.

Eldest is doing the math of the future in his head. He knows I'm trying to teach his younger brother programming, and he would like to learn to draw/animate anime, and he's really digging into the RPGs. He'd like it if the two of them managed to make their own games.

I'm thinking it's time to introduce him to Persona or some of the other visual novel type games. This seems to be the direction he's heading.