Gorgonzola Cheese!

The best feature of the iPhone is having the ability to download applications from the App Store.  But you don’t have to get locked into a 2 year contract with AT&T and pay ridiculous $90+ a month phone bills to take advantage of these applications.

Go and find yourself an iPod Touch, which can run the same App Store applications as the iPhone without the monthly phone bill.  An iPod Touch can run you from $215 for the 8 gig model to $370 for the 32 gig model.  It may seem like a bit much, but the investment is well worth it for what I’m about to show you.  For those with iPhones already, all you need to do is download these apps and you have a whole portable Japanese studying machine with you at all times!

The best thing about these Applications is having the ability to have a Japanese/English dictionary with you at all times.  A standard Japanese electronic dictionary like the Canon Wordtank G55 will already run you about $236 and is made for native Japanese speakers learning English, which isn’t exactly what I was looking for.  So for something that does everything a Canon Wordtank can do for less (in addition to playing music and videos, surfing the web and checking email, and a form factor of half a deck of playing cards), it’s not too shabby.  So let’s get started on the applications.

Kotoba!

The dictionary that I use the most on the iPod Touch is called “Kotoba!,” which you can download for free on the App Store.  This application will let you search in English as well as Japanese and is a very robust dictionary based off of Jim Breen’s EDICT project.  So it will be searching through the same databases as your standard online Japanese dictionaries but since it is completely downloaded onto the iPod Touch, it does not require an internet connection.

Here’s a direct link to Kotoba! (this will automatically launch iTunes on your computer)

ShinKanji

Okay so now you’re saying “Yeah that’s great and all, but what about kanji (Chinese characters)?  How can I make sense of these infernal moon runes?!”  That’s where a kanji dictionary called ShinKanji comes in.  The coolest thing about the touch screen on the iPod Touch is that you can actually write kanji characters out on the screen with your finger.  Even if you write the character a little off, a list of possible characters will show up for you to find the correct one.  Then it will show you the on and kun readings of the character, English meaning, an animation showing the correct stroke order, and as of the most recent beta version, common kanji compounds.

Here is the developer of ShinKanji, Benoit Cerrina, showing some of its features:

There are two free lite versions of ShinKanji available on the App Store.  The full version seems to be unavailable at the moment but I recommend helping out the author and buying it when it’s back up on the App Store later.  Here are the direct links to ShinKanji:

Shinkanji-lite (this link will automatically launch iTunes)

Shinkanji-search-free (this link will automatically launch iTunes)

When I started learning Japanese, there were so many times I would see a kanji character and have no idea how to find its meaning.  The only way would be to either write it down and bother a Japanese person to tell you what it meant or to count the number of strokes to write it and input that into an electronic dictionary or online dictionary to narrow down a list of possible kanji characters.  This was one of the most frustrating aspects of the language and made the whole writing system seem completely inaccessible to me.

But now with these advancements in technology, I can just pull out the iPod Touch and look up a word or kanji character with no hesitation.  No more “Oh I’ll look it up later” or “Ah it’s too much of a pain to try to look it up.”  It’s pure instant gratification.

Besides serving as an all purpose kanji dictionary, the iPod Touch is also useful for listening to language learning podcasts, Japanese flashcard training apps to prepare for the JLPT (Japanese Learning Proficiency Test), reading manga on the go, reading Japanese newspapers, and watching Nico Nico Douga videos (the Japanese equivalent to Youtube).  I’ll get into some of these other things in the future but I hope this serves as a good intoduction into taking advantage of the iPod Touch/iPhone as a valuable language learning tool.

I’ve constantly been searching for technology that can facilitate learning and recently stumbled upon one of the best free tools for learning Japanese. iKnow.co.jp is a web site where English speakers can learn Japanese vocabulary and Kanji (there’s also a ton of Japanese users on there that are learning English). You start by creating a log in or use an existing Google or Yahoo account and then enroll in some classes. Beginners are quizzed on Hiragana and Katakana characters while intermediate learners can start out with the first 2000 words, which is split up into 10 lessons. For those that already speak Japanese at home but want to learn Kanji, there is an option to do the lessons with a Kanji focus. For the upper intermediate to advanced folks, there’s the 6000 class, which adds 4000 on top of the basic 2000, where you’ll eventually end up reading Japanese newspapers without batting an eye. In addition to the default 6000 words, there are hundreds of user generated lists like Japanese RPG vocabulary, vocab words from Hiragana Times articles, and even vocab lists from the Minna no Nihongo text book I used in Japan.

A calendar tracks your progress, ala Brain Age or Wii Fit, and suggests that you study at least 30 items a day. It isn’t hard at all to find some time during a commercial break or lunch break since each 10 word quiz can take as little as 5 minutes.

Following the trend of Google apps of storing everything in the data cloud, iKnow! keeps your progress stored with your profile so you can continue where you left off from any computer instead of having to install a program like Rosetta Stone on one computer.

iKnow! offers many Web 2.0 features such as blogging your progress in journal entries, a friends list, and broadcasting your progress like the Facebook newsfeed, which can keep you motivated or even competitive like Trophies on the PSN or Achievements on Xbox Live.

I’ve been using the site for about a week so far and can’t get enough of it. It makes learning Japanese so fun that it feels like it should be illegal for being so addictive. It also feels good to be using the time otherwise wasted on Facebook or online games and putting it into something similar but useful.

Here is a video of what iKnow! looks like:

Japanese owners of the Nintendo DS have been using it for all sorts of uses outside of games, like learning how to cook with Shaberu! Dīesu Oryōri Nabi or using it as a sweet synthesizer with the Korg DS-10.  It looks like this trend is finally coming to the U.S. as people begin to discover how versatile the hardware can be for education.

A recent example of this is the new game called My Chinese Coach, published by Ubisoft.  This game falls under a whole series of titles that teach language with the Nintendo DS.  Previous titles include My French Coach, My Spanish Coach, My Word Coach, and My Japanese Coach is expected to be released in October.

I am ethnically Chinese but I have grown up speaking a dialect of Chinese known as Fukienese or Fujianese, which is so different from Mandarin that it is almost like learning a completely new language.  So I went in without much prior knowledge other than the basic fortune-cookie Chinese of Ni hao (Hello) and Xie Xie (Thank you).

I was expecting My Chinese Coach to be a rather shallow program but boy was I wrong.  The first lesson introduced me to Pinyin, which is the romanized version of Chinese.  It does this by playing a sample of each sound through the speakers and then allows you to record your own voice with the DS’s built-in microphone.  You can then play it back and view the waveforms of the recording and compare and retry until you have the correct pronunciation.

The next lesson introduced the 5 different tones and how to read them in Pinyin.  A word like ma can be said differently with rising or lowering intonation to mean different things.  For example, ma said with a low tone to a higher tone like a question can mean “hemp,” while ma with a high to low tone means “scold.”

These lessons were followed by mini games where you rack up points and “level up” each word.  The first minigame is a multiple choice quiz where you have to match the Pinyin or Chinese characters with the English word and vice versa.  The next game is a whack-a-mole style game where you are told to only whack the mole that pops up with a specific Chinese character.  I found that this greatly forced me to recognize a Chinese character in a short period of time.  Another game makes you write the Chinese character with the correct stroke order on top of an example in the background.   Each time you write it, the character that you are tracing begins to disappear faster until you are forced to write the character without any guidance.  As someone who has had to write Japanese characters over and over in the past, this is an excellent way of learning how to write properly.

As you “level up” each word with each one you get right, you eventually master the word after you get enough right.  After you master all the words, it will unlock the new lesson.  There is a addictively rewarding satisfaction in unlocking new lessons similar to leveling up your character in World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy.  This is also good because it really does require you to master everything and prevents you from skipping through all the lessons. One thing I was worried about was that the game would not be robust enough for people who were experienced with the language.  So I asked my Mom, who’s fluent in Chinese, to try it out.  She was able to skip through the really basic lessons by taking a proficiency test at the beginning.  She really liked how it taught her the proper tones and pronunciation and she told me that she had actually learned a lot of things wrong when she learned it in the Philippines.  I was shocked to find that it teaches you over 12,000 words!

Here’s a little vid of the placement test:

My Chinese Coach may not be a complete substitute for a college level language course, but for people who can’t afford classes or don’t have time for them, it’s a great way to get your feet wet and familiarize yourself with a language so you will be primed and ready if you do decide to take some classes.  I liken it to having a portable Rosetta Stone with you when you’re waiting in line or taking the bus or train.  These games are also great for people who have learned a language in the past and need a refresher.  My Chinese Coach is $29.99 and available wherever Nintendo DS games are sold.

As someone who is also studying Japanese, I also can’t wait for My Japanese Coach, which uses the same format to teach Japanese and arrives later this month on October 15.  I will be sure to post my impressions.

So I was cooking juicy steaks today and enjoying my day off by remembering what Independence Day is all about: to commemorate the day that Will Smith saved the world from aliens back in ‘96.  Remember when he punched one in the head?  That was outstanding.  He even saved us again from zombie/vampire things in December last year, which I think is probably the reason why people celebrate Christmas.

Well I offer a 4th of Julyish tip that may improve your life as it has exponentially changed mine forever and even made me want to post about it.

My tip is how to get those coals on fire in your grill without lighter fluid.  If you are a manly man, you know that the only way to start a fire is by polishing the bottom of a Coke can with a chocolate bar to reflect the sun into highly focused beam of light to ignite your coals (this method is actually doable as shown in episode 45 of the Mythbusters). But I’m really lazy and want to light things as fast as possible.  Usually I just pile the coals into a pyramid and then give them a healthy Homer Simpson dousing of lighter fluid and toss a match at it and hope my eyebrows don’t get burned off.  This usually takes a couple tries to get it going, doesn’t light all the coals evenly, and makes my food taste sorta funny.  So the secret tip of the day is to use a Charcoal Chimney instead.

I picked one up at Target for about 7 bucks today and filled the bottom of it with about 4 sheets of wrinkled newspaper.  Then I filled the rest of it to the top with charcoal, lit the newspaper from the bottom, walked away and played some Katamari Damacy (which was on sale last week on Amazon for $9.99).  When I came back 15 minutes later, the coals were bright red and I was just amazed how quick and simple it was.  I owe this tip to my bro-in-law after seeing him miraculously make a fire in mere minutes using a charcoal chimney to start a fire to cook delicious Korean galbi.

I apologize if I might be the last person on Earth to know about using charcoal chimneys so bear with me if you already know this and pretend you just read something new and interesting and act surprised.

As a personal note, I know I haven’t updated this site in over 2 months.  So I think I owe all of you an explanation.  I’m sorry but it’s sorta a long story but my life recently got flipped upside down.  So if you have a minute, just sit right there and I’ll tell you how I became the Prince of Bel Air.  In West Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days.  Chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’, all cool.  And all shootin’ some b-ball outside of the school.  When a couple of guys, who were up to no good.  Started makin’ trouble in my neighborhood.  I got in one little fight and my mom got scared.  And said, “You’re movin’ with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air.”

Facebook used to be the simple and clean alternative to MySpace, but after Facebook opened up it’s platform to third-party developers, it’s gotten so bad that I’m spending most of my time on there clicking “ignore” for multiple application requests. Well now there’s a solution that makes Facebook bearable again. You can now block applications and never have to see them again. This video from 5min.com user, brandon90, shows you how below.

All you need to do is search for the application, click on its main page and click on the new Block Application button. Simple and clean once again.