Non-Cheesy Dramas

As you already know, I love watching Japanese dramas. On an average day, I watch at least one episode. One a good day, I can finish a whole series in one night. I cannot stress how watching Japanese dramas has greatly improved my Japanese. When I first started watching them, my Japanese was barely above zero. I'd like to say it has improve leaps and bounds simply from watching dramas, which I do enjoy and learn from at the same time. :D

Most people who I know who are studying Japanese or want to learn Japanese are mostly into anime. I try to encourage people to watch dramas but most just don't seem interested. :/ It's a shame, because there are some great series out there. And you can finish them in a fairly short amount of time, since dramas tend to usually be twelve episodes at most, thought this varies. I think most people are not drawn to dramas because they are too reminiscent of soap operas, and tend to have romance heavy plots, lots of tears, and cheesy acting. But hey, so does anime. *AHEM*

While dramas do have their fair share of cheesiness and overly dramatic plot lines (they are called dramas for a reason), there are plenty that don't involve the typical romance, love triangles, terminal illness and cheesy plots. Of course, even the least cheesy dramas have that typical dramatic element, but overall, I think there are lots of dramas that even the most reluctant person will enjoy. I'm not going to base this on ones that I liked, but rather dramas that I both liked and disliked that don't contain the typical cheesy factor. There are many popular dramas that I hated so consider this a completely unbiased list.

Kisarazu Cat's Eye

Rookies

Gokusen

Stand Up

Hana Kimi

Tokyo Dogs

Dragon Zakura

Nodame Cantabile

Nobuta wo Produce

Liar Game

Yankee-kun to Megane Chan

Lucky Seven

Saru Lock

Mr. Brain

Akihabara@ Deep

My Boss My Hero

Bloody Monday

Trick

Boss

The Quiz Show

Ataru

Click the titles to be taken to the drama-wiki page. Generally, detective dramas, mystery dramas, cop/crime dramas, dramas involving gangsters and delinquents, and sometimes sports dramas tend to have the lowest amount of cheesiness. Suspense dramas are good to watch also. There really are very few dramas that are free of sappy moments and cheesiness. However, there are many that don't focus on romance and love triangles and overly dramatic plots. If you are really interested in watching them, then you will just have to do your research. Keep in mind that most of the American audience that views Japanese dramas is female, so dramas that feature good looking actors and romance are going to be more popular. Instead of checking whats popular, find dramas based on the genre or actors that are in them.

Dramas are like anime in that there is a drama about practically anything since there are so many made each year. There are so many different types, and many are actually based of manga and anime (though liberties are often taken with the plots). I think that it's worth it to at least give watching dramas a try. I'd say that one that is good to start off with is Gokusen. The author and creator of AJATT himself has praised the series as having greatly contributed to his Japanese. It can be a little cheesy at times, but I think it balances the cheesy scenes with good humor. Plus, it is set in an all-boys school so no love triangles and jealous scheming ex-girlfriends. Two others I would recommend are Bloody Monday and Liar Game. These dramas deal more with suspense and very little with romance. They have logic based plots and leave you hanging on with each episode. My Boss My Hero is great fun as well, and Nagase Tomoya is hilarious. Basically, these are dramas that guys who don't care much for the soap opera-like series.

I definitely think it's worth a try and you will probably find at least one series that you enjoy.

Korean Progress

Much more than before! I still can barely say a sentence, but we're getting somewhere!

Like I said before, I'm taking a much more lax approach to learning Korean because honestly it's just something I'm doing for the heck of it. The more languages, the better, eh? (I don't think I'll be learning anymore after this lol)

I listened to all of the level one lessons on talktomeinkorean.com. I got basics like the sentence structures and basic word and tenses. I'm probably going to listen to some of those again to further cement was was covered. I also completed the first level in Rosette Stone Korean. Again, this covered some really basic stuff. I can say that a dog is swimming. Woo. I also know things like the numbers, colors, honorifics, and some really basic vocabulary. I have noticed that the sentence structure and a lot of the grammar, along with the way the overall language is structured is very similar, if not identical to Japanese. Even some of the numbers sound like the Japanese numbers. Because of this, I can't really say it's been that challenging. It's like I'm not even learning a new language at all, just new words. Things like subject and object marking particles, the sentence order, and having an auxiliary verb that turns nouns into verbs are not new territory for me. All of these things are pretty much burned into my mind from studying Japanese.

The main problem I have is pronunciation. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to properly pronounce "ㄹ". It is somewhat similar to an "l" sound but not quite? I even tried to find videos on how to pronounce it but no luck. That syllable and how it is incorporated into words is the most difficult for me. I guess I'll just have to get use to it over time.

I am also doing Pimsleur Korean. The program has been okay so far. I just don't like how it uses an absurdly formal way of speaking. But it is good at cementing the basics.

And I have been trying to watch more Korean dramas. I enjoy them, but I can't say that I am so absolutely in love with them. When I first started watching Japanese dramas, I was hooked. With Korean dramas, I have watched dramas that I enjoy, but I can't say I'm quite hooked yet.

I think that online resources for learning Korean are so few. It may be because Korean seems like an intimidating and difficult language. Korean pop culture is obviously pretty popular with Kpop and K-dramas. But I think that even the most hardcore fans of these things don't want to bother with learning it because a) It seems difficult to English speakers b) Every dang thing gets subbed and translated so quickly that there really is no immediate need for fans to learn it. I've encountered so many people that want to or are studying Japanese...but hardly any that study Korean or even want to learn it, even the hardcore Kpop fans. I wonder why that is? Fundamentally, Japanese is a little bit harder to learn since there are thousands of kanji to learn, and few people want to put the effort needed to learn them. But resources to learn Japanese are abundant, and Japanese is a bit easier on the ear. The pronunciation is really simple and I think it sounds more pleasant and approachable than Korean, which can sound a bit "rough." But both languages have very similar grammar and sentence structure.

So that's how it has been so far. Until the next update~

Finished Remembering the Kanji 1!

After all of these months, thousands of kanji, thousands of reviews, headaches, and giving up, I finished it!

Celebratory gif time!

....Okay, I'll stop now.

But I did it! Over 2,000 kanji! Yay!!!!

I actually attempted the book a good 2 (?) years ago, but thought it was plain stupid and stopped.

Then, I realized that I really couldn't find any other kanji learning method other than route memorization and writing them over and over again, so I decided to try it again.

I started it up again last summer. Then, I got kind of discouraged and stopped again. I took it up again this year and was determined to finish it. And finish it I did.  I still can't say I'm absolutely in love with it, but it got the job done. The thing I like about it the most is that it makes sense of the kanji. To me, kanji were just a bunch of lines.The Heisig method actually breaks them up by primitives to make more sense out of them, so they aren't just a bunch of lines anymore. And the mnemonics help greatly in remembering, no matter how silly and ridiculous they are. That was what turned me off of the method first, the silly stories. But after a while you get used to the stupid stories and just go with it.

So a major step in my Japanese learning journey is complete! Fortunately, before I even stared doing RTK this time around I already had a fairly decent grasp of kanji and could read a good amount of Japanese. So the Heisig has raised my reading comprehension of Japanese even higher. I just wished I had done it sooner.

Next step...greatness!