The end of the Knut era

March 20th, 2011, 12:17 | 3 comments

Berlin’s polar bear Knut died yesterday. He was always close to me, since he was born shortly after I moved to Berlin. I took this photo of him when he was about 1,5 years old. (DN, SvD)

Category: English
Tags: Berlin, Knut

7 months of Japanese studies

March 18th, 2011, 11:58 | 6 comments

I hardly studied at all in the last month, partly because I was sick for a week, but mostly cause I was just uninspired. I kept meeting my sensei though. He was here yesterday and we chatted about the じしん – earthquake.

I’ve realised I need new text books to keep me busy! I need the feeling of conquering the chapters one after another.

I considered buying Genki II, but seriously: 56 euros just for a textbook? Plus 47 euros for the audio CD. An additional 30 euros for the workbook, and if you want the answer key to the workbook, that’s a 22,50 euros extra.

That settles it: I’m not supporting a Japanese learning company that won’t provide the answers to the workbook questions in the workbook itself. It’s a fraud! Besides, the total of 155,50 euros (a whole 219 dollars!) would almost cover lifetime memberships at Textfugu AND Nihongoup. Too bad I don’t like learning Japanese online – I really don’t need to spend more time in front of my computer screen.

Something else meddled with my studies: The closing down of Smart.fm, and the turning of it into Iknow.jp. I was thinking of paying for Iknow, but several things made me decide not to.

First of all, the service shrank to include just a tiny feature of what had made Smart.fm so great. Most visibly, all user created content was deleted, meaning some of the courses I had taken just disappeared. Studies are so much about the feeling of actually mastering a certain step of a certain course. Seeing all my efforts being blown away just like that, I sort of lost my appetite.
Also, Iknow lacked the whole social idea of Smart.fm – it wasn’t possible to interact with other users anymore.
And last but not least, Iknow treated those users who had created courses at Smart.fm in such an arrogant way that I felt I didn’t want to support such a company. (Read the comments to this post to get the gist of it.)

Anyway, below you can see my progress. What a bliss, those first weeks in January when I devoted hours each day to extend my Japanese vocabulary back at Smart.fm. So sad to see it go! The decline in time spent on these sites is depressing. Gotta find new means.