Haha, maybe I'll be able to understand those jokes when my grammar skills become more complex. Hey, I've been meaning to ask you, what's your method of memorizing vocabulary and kanji? I'm trying to find an easier way...

Did you have any Japanese before you went over?

Kanji is important, but personally, if I were you (and I may get flamed for this), I would say to learn the kanji you are assigned in class very well, take notice when you see the same kanji used in other compounds and ask your friends about them, or look them up...

Hrm... what else... Foreign language weird. When you're starting, you need to learn what you 'need'. I mean, there is no sense in being able to say "eiseihoushou" (satelitte) in Japanese, when you can say, "kutsushita ga yogoreteiru" (my socks are dirty). Think of things that you wish you knew how to say in Japanese... ask your friends how to say them... write them down... then later on your own, pick them apart and learn the grammer that makes them up. When your friend tells you how to say "my socks are dirty", take that and learn to say, my shoes, socks, sweater, pants are dirty. Then learn how to say they're not dirty, and keep saying it over and over every day until the grammer pattern is grilled into your brain.

I'll stop preaching now.

And use those word card things while you're on the train ;-) I think you got that though.

Hrm. Anyway... Im done. Have fun!

Preach! Preach! Any other tips? I'm going to buy a small notebook today just so I can write down new words and verbs that I learn. Also, when I don't know something I can ask my friends, write it down and study it later. I get you on the studying what you need thing. For now, my plan is to learn the onyoumi for some kanji each week. I can learn the kunyoumi later on when it comes from reading or something. But I want to know the on meanings so I can at least read them, you know? Anyways tell me some more tips if you have them! I want to know what worked for you :D

One major thing I have to say is, don't just memorize vocab one word at a time, remember them as an entire phrase.

Example, don't just learn 警察、police, learn, 警察に捕まれた! (kesatsuni tsukamareta!) I got caught by the cops! What I do now is write a vocan on my vocab card, then on the back write an example sentence. if no one is around to give me an example sentence, I just steal one out of the dictionary.

I'm sure remembering the phrase will help you remember both the noun, the verb, -and- the verb tense longer term! Hey try posting on the forums on this site in the Study Japanese section, there are a lot of old school Japanese hacks here way better than me who can probably give you some advice too!

Rock on man.

Actually, Harvey, I think the phrase you're looking for is 警察に捕まった (caught by the police). I can't say for sure that 捕まれた is wrong, but I've never heard it used. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not right, but you always get refuted on these... ;)

Great monologue about the Japanese jokes there, though. Okay, the jokes weren't that good :D, but your reaction was.

Usually I make dajyare's by accident. My uncle-in-law always comes up with silly pun's like that. I've only met him a few times. The last time was after my mother-in-law's 7-kaiki (7th year "death anniversary") so a bunch of relatives were gathered. We were eating sushi & drinking. Typical atsumare.

Everything was jovial but the conversation got a little serious when they were talking about their experiences during WWII and how my aunt-in-law had somehow either come face-to-face with a pile of bodies or was in the pile or something like that. So I tried to make some sympathetic remark and I said 酷い目に会いましたね (hidoi me ni aimashita ne) meaning "You really had some terrible experiences didn't you." The meaning was correct but literally the phrase says "You met some terrible eyes didn't you." As she had been looking terrible corpses in the face, she literally had met up with some grotesque eyes. My uncle caught it and said something like "ha ha good one... hidoi me..." They knew I hadn't been trying to make a joke and everybody laughed it off but I still felt stupid.

Funny story mdchachi :-)

And Iku, I dunno about the 警察に捕まれた thing. I'm sure *I* would say 捕まれた、 but then again I could be wrong. Judging by your name though I'm sure you're more Japanese than I am ;-) You're probably right, and I'm one step farther away from passing that exam in Dec!!!

Darn, my Japanese friend says 「捕まっただと思うよ」ということは、ハービーが間違えた。また。許してくれ!~

~日本語一級の試験に出る文法を使ってみましょう~
私は日本人ではあるまいし~。
~ああ、すっきりした~

Actually I often say that form of the verb too. And if you search for 警察に捕まれ on google.co.jp, you'll see some natives do too. Thinking about it now, though, I think that Iku is probably right. Since 捕まる is the intransitive form of 捕まえる there is no need to convert it to an intransitive form which is essentially what you (we) are doing. Guess you could call it a double-intransitive (kind of like double-negative) and, therefore, superfluous.

I didnt think it was 捕まえる、I thoght it was ツカム。 Oh wait, that would get back to the Tsukomi Boke post...
Tsukkomi Boke

I'm confused now. BTW, Iku has a cool site, have you guys seen it?

Ah, good point. That's probably one source of my confusion as well -- you can indeed transform tsukamu to tsukameru. But that's "spelled" differently. Either 掴む or 攫む. So probably if you had said 警察に掴まれた, Iku would have been okay with that. No, I haven't seen her site. Where is she hiding it?

Click on her name in this thread dude ;-)

*He*, guys, not "her". :) But thanks for the comments about the site. You should see some of the stuff out there by other Japanese photographers, I am a complete beginner by comparsion.
http://www82.sakura.ne.jp/~airliner/

Anyway, glad we sorted out the 捕まった thing. In retrospect, I can understand why you thought the way you did; つかまれた is used in "grabbing" one's arm (as was mentioned previously).

You learn something new everyday... ;)

I learn something new everyday too huh, I thought Iku was a girls name!

なんだ~~

This is the longest front page discussion this site has ever seen.

I don't know about y'all, but I learned my Japanese by watching Yakuza movies (don't correct them, Harvey).
You can listen to the clip over at
jingai.com/yakuza/lesson1.html

Gang member 1: 逃げてた売人に捕まえてきたみたいですよ。どうします？

Gang member 2: 指詰めろう、この野郎！

> I learn something new everyday too huh, I thought Iku was a girls name!
Don't worry, happens all the time. :D

私の仕事と言えば

2.9999999999999999999999......

です。

私の仕事は何ですか？

Huh? にきゅうきゅうきゅうきゅう~~。にてんきゅうきゅうきゅう~。2きゅうきゅう？

わかりません~~ This is a joke right Gman?

にてんくくくく？ No idea!!!!

Sorry, Iku. I used to know somebody named Ikuko -- Iku-chan for short. So I made a bad assumption. gomen.

2.9999 ~ I don't get it either. Knit-n-Q?

describe 2.99999

Hey. I still don't get it!

The answer in English is 2.99999 is "about 3"

In Japanese you could say that as "ほぼ三”、which is pronounced "ほぼさん”which is "保母さん”or nursery school teacher.

I learned that from an actual nursery school teacher ;-)

hi. could somebody please email me some jokes in english and translated into japanese (romanji only). thanx in advance. email to kaspalog@yahoo.com

Found this link while searching Google, thanks

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hi