...or not.
So, not being fluent in the language means you're at the mercy of what the English teachers decide to actually tell you. Important things like "You have a class next period" might reach your ears seconds before you have to suddenly and rapidly do something, if such information arrives at all. It's not too common of a problem at my schools, but it happens.
But this time, they actually told me in advance. Mostly. A teacher informed me that we were getting study abroad students. She gave me a list of names and abbreviations for countries (one of which I still think is made up) and eventually I was able to talk details out of her. Apparently it was the first time my school had study abroad students.
I was super excited. I was looking forward to helping our new students adjust to living here. I told her I was ready to help them whenever they needed help, too. Nothing of what I said ever made her realize I was missing a key piece of information - they weren't study abroad students (nothing I'd call study abroad), they were there just for the day.
So I spent a few weeks thinking we were getting new students. I thought it was strange that while they all spoke English very well, none of them had any real Japanese experience. I wondered how they would take classes.
They arrived Monday and I was right on time to meet them as they were waiting in the office I first came into. I was expecting them to have school uniforms and everything, but saw they certainly were not - one was not even appropriately dressed by school code. But I thought they must be getting them later or something. All the events that were planned, too, seemed strange and a lot more than what they did for me, but I thought they were just welcoming events.
The students were divided up among the many ESS members and given classes. Some of the teachers said it would be nice if I came and helped them, but they disappeared when I wasn't paying attention and just left me in the room. When they got back from homeroom, the math teacher joked that it would have been good if I came. So I said I'd come to his next class when I was free. I was supposed to help out with the two calligraphy classes and then later the after-school tour / tea ceremony.
The calligraphy class wasn't as much a class as a demonstration, but most people seemed happy with it. Most of the students knew zero Japanese so drawing was difficult. The Malaysian student, however, had no problems and made many great drawings. The vice principal taught them how to write 友 (friend). Well, he showed them how he did it and then had them try at least. So everyone tried a few times, then he'd evaluate them, then eventually they got a special square to write their final versions on. Then he made them one himself of a word of their choice and signed and stamped it with his calligrapher's name. Which is apparently a thing. The Malaysian student donated his artwork to the school.
I went to the math teacher's class, which was apparently a computer class. The students had made gifs. The teacher attempted a few minutes of English before rapidly giving up. The students all found it hilarious. The study abroad students basically just sat there and watched the animations, but the student's presentations weren't very enlightening anyway. Japanese students are not very good at explaining things or giving reasons; they make strange assumptions about what everyone knows already or something.
I decided during this that I, too, wanted to make a gif to show. So I tried to get the student next to me to show me, but I think I just ended up bothering her slightly and she seemed confused. I ended up watching what another student was doing and made a short animation of explosion and text. When we ran out of presentations, I showed off mine. The class found it funny.
Other than that, I was not very helpful at all.
After school was the tour. I was still operating under the assumption that they were actually study abroad students, so I thought it was a good idea. The older woman that came along as a "teacher" insisted that someone (not her for some reason) wear the traditional Thai dress she brought. I said she could just do it another day, but she said she was going home the next day, but I assumed it was just her. I did think it was strange to have a study abroad teacher. Eventually fingers were pointed until one of the ESS girls was stuffed into the dress. She wore it for a while in the room until we were actually going on the tour, a total of maybe 5 minutes. The Thai lady seemed disappointed when she took it off, but what did she really expect?
Everyone was split up and led around the school. I ran around, changing groups, but was not helpful at all. I did manage to find new parts of the school I never went to before. We also heard a few songs from the band.
Then we had the tea ceremony. The sitting style was difficult for everyone, so we were allowed to relax. There was a flurry of camera pictures, even with flash on. I thought the poor old lady trying to run the tea ceremony must have felt a bit strange, having her picture taken so often without anyone asking at all. Honestly, a few of the "study abroad" students were pretty rude most of the time anyway. They seemed to be acting more like they were on vacation.
During the tea ceremony I found out one of the students was staying with the principal and apparently he had taken him to an onsen. He said it was very awkward. I guess there was probably nudity involved, which would definitely make any non-Japanese person very unsettled.
We drank tea, did some bowing, and filled out the questionnaire the teacher made. Then everyone was heading home. They had told me they were going to Tokyo for the night the next day, which again I found strange, but still figured they were coming back. It wasn't until they were leaving that I finally pieced it together. I finally figured out they were only here for a day, and only even in Japan for a little less than a week. I was pretty disappointed.
Oh well, at least for a moment there were some new, interesting people at the school. Maybe there's a way to arrange it to send our students abroad or get new, actual study abroad students. Or maybe a kitten. That'd also be nice.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
It's Not Up For Debate!
I should have wrote this post a little less than a month ago, but I thought there'd be a follow up to it, so I was going to wait for that. But as always, ESS is very busy, so we won't have our own debate until next term.
So, one day early on, I got an email about a debate competition. One of the JETs was training his students for debate and wanted to hold a competition for practice. I thought it was a good idea to try to participate, but I guess I ended up forgetting about it. Then some months later, a follow up email came. It sounded like he was pretty desperate for schools to participate. I knew we didn't have much time and we were busy, but I asked around and there was interested so I told him my school would be in.
Then I started looking over my calendar...
Every week was either tests, speeches, I wasn't there, or Halloween parties. We had to use the Thursday before the competition to just learn the rules. There wasn't even time for practice. The competition was Saturday so the students had almost no time to prepare, and the day I explained the rules, I was kind of learning them myself and had to change my mind and explanations a lot. The students had a lot of difficulty understanding it seemed and I was getting really worried.
I got to school a bit before we were scheduled to head out so I could eat breakfast. I figured if I had to be awake early on a Saturday, I might as well eat McDonald's breakfast. Some other competition was going on, and the teachers from that let me into the building and told me how to close it when I was done. I had the office all to myself, so I was finally able to get some pictures of this place - and eat McDonald's without my supervisor scolding me for not eating vegetables. Eventually the teacher and students showed up, we locked up the place, and drove off.
On the car ride over, we worked on making their opening statements more grammatically correct. When we started to get car sick, we pulled over to a rest station. There was a vegetable stand and eventually we all wandered over and gathered there. One of the students picked up a giant melon she intended to buy for some reason and asked me what it was called in English. I didn't recognize the fruit, so I asked the teacher what it was in Japanese. She replied with some word, and I parroted a slightly different word which apparently meant testicles. This was rather funny to the students. On the way back to the car, one of the girls asked what the word I said accidentally meant; her innocence was cute.
We then resumed talking about the debate. Everyone was very nervous, and I felt pretty guilty because I knew I had not prepared them at all. Probably because of the guilt and nervousness, I was acting more hyper than usual, and using a lot of Japanese - an ability I usually hide from students.
We got to the school and we greeted and showed to the waiting room. I think. I saw some people I hadn't seen since Kudamatsu, including "Howdy", as he liked to be called.
We had an opening ceremony, as all things in Japan do, and heard some speeches or something. One guy explained the style of debate in Japanese which was probably very helpful to the students. Almost certainly better than my explanation. I was able to understand a lot of it and learned some new ways to explain the two teams and their goals and methods. One of the speakers explained that our main goal was "Making friends", which I told the students at every opportunity after that. Like when one of the students returned someone's pencil that rolled away, I told her, "Make friends!"
After that we ate lunch. No one told me or maybe I just forgot to bring a bento, so I had no food. But I ate a ton of McDonald's in the morning, so I was still pretty fun. Still, the teacher and students insisted on giving me food. I fought the good fight, but eventually accepted something small and a drink. But then after rapidly drinking the drink, I said, "They always make these too small, huh?" to which the teacher said, "Well, sorry!" in a joking manner.
But the students seemed to be getting annoyed with my jocular attitude. I wanted to reassure them that they were mostly there for the experience and not to worry about winning (also to "make friends"), but it's only natural that they'd worry. Of course, I didn't realize just how bad it'd be.
They were short judges, and having unlimited ambition, I wanted to do some judging. The teacher said she'd judge the first competition so I could watch my school and I'd judge the next one. We got taken to the judging room and had pen colors explained to us.
I then went to go watch my students try to debate. The room had a camera man and everything, I'm sure the students were very nervous. My team was the negative side. The topic, which was decided a while ago and announced so the students could prepare was "Japanese universities should begin their term in September" (as opposed to now in April). Even I wouldn't be able to argue effectively against that. When the debate started, I realized how bad it was going to be. The affirmative team was the team that practiced every day for a year - you know, the team with graphs. They had stop watches and everything. They rattled on so fast, even I didn't know what they said. They had tons of research and were well-prepared.
Then it was my team's turn. Now, one of the rules is that you have a certain amount of minutes for each section, regardless of if you use it. So after my team read their few lines at 1/10th the speed as the other team and sat down. The remaining 2 minutes were painfully slow and maybe a bit embarrassing. The follow up question time was mostly "You said _____. Do you have evidence?" "...... No."
The rest of the debate went on like this. The affirmative team attacked with their full strength, and my team did what little they could, but mostly just confused the other team. I guess it might have worked in Pokémon, maybe they'd hurt themselves in confusion.
Needless to say, my team lost by unanimous decision. I felt awful for them, but when I saw them outside, they were in a flurry of action, trying to improve their argument for the next round. But before I had much chance to talk to them, I was pulled off to judge a different competition. I was a bit nervous to judge. These two teams were much weaker and would have probably not so brutally destroyed my team. I announced a winner and went back downstairs to see how my team had done. They lost again, but it was still good experience for them I think. They were finally done competing at least.
I thought we were finally done, but then I found out I had to judge another competition. I tried to tempt the teacher to take my place, but she was all too happy to let me do it instead. So I judged that, too.
Then I thought I was finally done.
No.
I got drafted to judge the final round, too. It was the ultimate team from the host school versus the West version of my high school in my city. I think the hyper team was on the negative this time, so I got to hear them arguing the opposite of what they argued originally which is kind of strange. It was actually a pretty intense debate. However, I really could not understand a lot of what the ultimate team was saying. It was either too fast or just unclear enough that I could not understand. And even though they showed graphs, they only lasted a few seconds. The opposing team put up a good fight though. I was secretly rooting for them, but they ended up proposing something as important in the opening, then essentially said it wasn't important, thus destroying a large chuck of their own argument. The super team also made a bunch of mistakes, but I ultimately felt their mistakes were less than those of the underdogs.
I was given the task of announcing the winners for some reason. I was also told to give my advice and said since I was a native speaker, my advice would carry the most weight. I announced the winners and made sure to tell the super team that it's all fine and great to have that much to say, but if even a native speaker can't understand you, you can't hope for anyone else to and to slow down and speak clearly.
Afterwards, one of the students told me she was impressed to see my rare serious side. Not sure if it was an insult or a compliment, haha. The students told me they wanted to practice, improve, and try again. And that they wanted to teach the club how to debate and have their own mock debates. I was pretty moved. It was a pretty good competition overall, and I was happy in the end we went.
We had a closing ceremony and announced winners. One of the students told me, "Make friends!" So I guess they eventually had fun, too. As we were leaving, the teacher tried to convince me to change my major to teaching, but I told her one day I need to return to my one true love - programming.
Since the teacher's mom's house was nearby (which isn't that great of a reason), we stopped there for a bit. Her mom lives in a mansion... Like big even by American standards. It's huge! She gave us some fancy cakes, and we talked about the debate a little with her. One of the students needed to be home soon, so it was a short stop.
Then we drove home, and I talked with the teacher the whole way.
When we finally arrived, we all set out for buses and trains. One of the students told me she wanted to study abroad in Canada (or maybe America [she added because I'm American, but she totally means only Canada <my predecessor's home country>]), which is pretty awesome. I'm all about the encouraging study abroad, wherever one goes.
Overall, it was success I guess. But the follow up won't be until next term. Next time, we'll win! (Okay, probably not, but it'll be fun to try)
P.S. The school is getting some foreign exchange students Monday. I said it was exciting and one of the students replied, "Make friends!"
So, one day early on, I got an email about a debate competition. One of the JETs was training his students for debate and wanted to hold a competition for practice. I thought it was a good idea to try to participate, but I guess I ended up forgetting about it. Then some months later, a follow up email came. It sounded like he was pretty desperate for schools to participate. I knew we didn't have much time and we were busy, but I asked around and there was interested so I told him my school would be in.
Then I started looking over my calendar...
Every week was either tests, speeches, I wasn't there, or Halloween parties. We had to use the Thursday before the competition to just learn the rules. There wasn't even time for practice. The competition was Saturday so the students had almost no time to prepare, and the day I explained the rules, I was kind of learning them myself and had to change my mind and explanations a lot. The students had a lot of difficulty understanding it seemed and I was getting really worried.
I got to school a bit before we were scheduled to head out so I could eat breakfast. I figured if I had to be awake early on a Saturday, I might as well eat McDonald's breakfast. Some other competition was going on, and the teachers from that let me into the building and told me how to close it when I was done. I had the office all to myself, so I was finally able to get some pictures of this place - and eat McDonald's without my supervisor scolding me for not eating vegetables. Eventually the teacher and students showed up, we locked up the place, and drove off.
On the car ride over, we worked on making their opening statements more grammatically correct. When we started to get car sick, we pulled over to a rest station. There was a vegetable stand and eventually we all wandered over and gathered there. One of the students picked up a giant melon she intended to buy for some reason and asked me what it was called in English. I didn't recognize the fruit, so I asked the teacher what it was in Japanese. She replied with some word, and I parroted a slightly different word which apparently meant testicles. This was rather funny to the students. On the way back to the car, one of the girls asked what the word I said accidentally meant; her innocence was cute.
We then resumed talking about the debate. Everyone was very nervous, and I felt pretty guilty because I knew I had not prepared them at all. Probably because of the guilt and nervousness, I was acting more hyper than usual, and using a lot of Japanese - an ability I usually hide from students.
We got to the school and we greeted and showed to the waiting room. I think. I saw some people I hadn't seen since Kudamatsu, including "Howdy", as he liked to be called.
We had an opening ceremony, as all things in Japan do, and heard some speeches or something. One guy explained the style of debate in Japanese which was probably very helpful to the students. Almost certainly better than my explanation. I was able to understand a lot of it and learned some new ways to explain the two teams and their goals and methods. One of the speakers explained that our main goal was "Making friends", which I told the students at every opportunity after that. Like when one of the students returned someone's pencil that rolled away, I told her, "Make friends!"
After that we ate lunch. No one told me or maybe I just forgot to bring a bento, so I had no food. But I ate a ton of McDonald's in the morning, so I was still pretty fun. Still, the teacher and students insisted on giving me food. I fought the good fight, but eventually accepted something small and a drink. But then after rapidly drinking the drink, I said, "They always make these too small, huh?" to which the teacher said, "Well, sorry!" in a joking manner.
But the students seemed to be getting annoyed with my jocular attitude. I wanted to reassure them that they were mostly there for the experience and not to worry about winning (also to "make friends"), but it's only natural that they'd worry. Of course, I didn't realize just how bad it'd be.
They were short judges, and having unlimited ambition, I wanted to do some judging. The teacher said she'd judge the first competition so I could watch my school and I'd judge the next one. We got taken to the judging room and had pen colors explained to us.
I then went to go watch my students try to debate. The room had a camera man and everything, I'm sure the students were very nervous. My team was the negative side. The topic, which was decided a while ago and announced so the students could prepare was "Japanese universities should begin their term in September" (as opposed to now in April). Even I wouldn't be able to argue effectively against that. When the debate started, I realized how bad it was going to be. The affirmative team was the team that practiced every day for a year - you know, the team with graphs. They had stop watches and everything. They rattled on so fast, even I didn't know what they said. They had tons of research and were well-prepared.
Then it was my team's turn. Now, one of the rules is that you have a certain amount of minutes for each section, regardless of if you use it. So after my team read their few lines at 1/10th the speed as the other team and sat down. The remaining 2 minutes were painfully slow and maybe a bit embarrassing. The follow up question time was mostly "You said _____. Do you have evidence?" "...... No."
The rest of the debate went on like this. The affirmative team attacked with their full strength, and my team did what little they could, but mostly just confused the other team. I guess it might have worked in Pokémon, maybe they'd hurt themselves in confusion.
Needless to say, my team lost by unanimous decision. I felt awful for them, but when I saw them outside, they were in a flurry of action, trying to improve their argument for the next round. But before I had much chance to talk to them, I was pulled off to judge a different competition. I was a bit nervous to judge. These two teams were much weaker and would have probably not so brutally destroyed my team. I announced a winner and went back downstairs to see how my team had done. They lost again, but it was still good experience for them I think. They were finally done competing at least.
I thought we were finally done, but then I found out I had to judge another competition. I tried to tempt the teacher to take my place, but she was all too happy to let me do it instead. So I judged that, too.
Then I thought I was finally done.
No.
I got drafted to judge the final round, too. It was the ultimate team from the host school versus the West version of my high school in my city. I think the hyper team was on the negative this time, so I got to hear them arguing the opposite of what they argued originally which is kind of strange. It was actually a pretty intense debate. However, I really could not understand a lot of what the ultimate team was saying. It was either too fast or just unclear enough that I could not understand. And even though they showed graphs, they only lasted a few seconds. The opposing team put up a good fight though. I was secretly rooting for them, but they ended up proposing something as important in the opening, then essentially said it wasn't important, thus destroying a large chuck of their own argument. The super team also made a bunch of mistakes, but I ultimately felt their mistakes were less than those of the underdogs.
I was given the task of announcing the winners for some reason. I was also told to give my advice and said since I was a native speaker, my advice would carry the most weight. I announced the winners and made sure to tell the super team that it's all fine and great to have that much to say, but if even a native speaker can't understand you, you can't hope for anyone else to and to slow down and speak clearly.
Afterwards, one of the students told me she was impressed to see my rare serious side. Not sure if it was an insult or a compliment, haha. The students told me they wanted to practice, improve, and try again. And that they wanted to teach the club how to debate and have their own mock debates. I was pretty moved. It was a pretty good competition overall, and I was happy in the end we went.
We had a closing ceremony and announced winners. One of the students told me, "Make friends!" So I guess they eventually had fun, too. As we were leaving, the teacher tried to convince me to change my major to teaching, but I told her one day I need to return to my one true love - programming.
Since the teacher's mom's house was nearby (which isn't that great of a reason), we stopped there for a bit. Her mom lives in a mansion... Like big even by American standards. It's huge! She gave us some fancy cakes, and we talked about the debate a little with her. One of the students needed to be home soon, so it was a short stop.
Then we drove home, and I talked with the teacher the whole way.
When we finally arrived, we all set out for buses and trains. One of the students told me she wanted to study abroad in Canada (or maybe America [she added because I'm American, but she totally means only Canada <my predecessor's home country>]), which is pretty awesome. I'm all about the encouraging study abroad, wherever one goes.
Overall, it was success I guess. But the follow up won't be until next term. Next time, we'll win! (Okay, probably not, but it'll be fun to try)
P.S. The school is getting some foreign exchange students Monday. I said it was exciting and one of the students replied, "Make friends!"
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Monkey See, Monkey Do
So, in addition to my three main schools (of which one is even more main by being my base school), I have a once a month special needs school (a former blind school, but now includes other special needs students [also apparently Helen Keller visited once which is pretty cool {it's a 107 years old school}]). I went again today.
It's not a particularly fun place. Not that any of my schools except Minami is (though Tuesday, the Chuo kids would quiz me on One Piece whenever I walked past). However, today was some kind of assembly. I actually participated a bit. There was some kind of quiz game where you had to run to the true or false side. I decided to be the lone person standing on the wrong answer to "Is Doraemon a robot cat?" and got out immediately. It was funnier that way, not trying to be a slacker.
Then I joined in on the rock-paper-scissors tournament. We had a bit of difficulty deciding when to shoot. I ended up winning round one, and after a vicious battle of ties, lost round two. The loser had to join his chain of people behind an every growing chain of people following the last winner. The prize was a person in a box (well, actually the blanket she was holding, but I would have preferred the person).
Classes sizes are incredibly small. One is four students or so, and the other is two. I only teach two classes there and spend most of the rest of my time on my phone. This time I at least brought my Russian book to study. Today was the election, so it was especially fun watching Facebook posts. Sometimes one of the teachers tries to invade my room they throw me into because they have no desk for me and make conversation.
The classes are mostly just talking about whatever pops into my head. There are "lesson plans", but it's basically "talk about semi-relevant stuff". Usually the classes break down into Japanese anyway. At some point (albeit last time) I invented a new food concept - tako + okonomiyake = takonomiyake. I want to try to make this.
I was supppppppposed to go to Minami afterwards to protect my promise that I would show the second half of the movie last week to the ESS. So I left early after my last class and went straight to school. The ESS teacher had tried to talk me out of it (as she does most things she is afraid would be a bother to me) and mentioned how she wouldn't be there today - but neglected to mention today was a shortened schedule. By the time I had arrived, club activities had already gone on for 30 minutes. I searched the whole school, but the ESS members were already gone. This makes the third time I have missed an ESS event where I said I'd be there because of various miscommunications. Tsubura's going to kill me...
At least I have pecans for a potential pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Slowly converting the club into a baking club...
It's not a particularly fun place. Not that any of my schools except Minami is (though Tuesday, the Chuo kids would quiz me on One Piece whenever I walked past). However, today was some kind of assembly. I actually participated a bit. There was some kind of quiz game where you had to run to the true or false side. I decided to be the lone person standing on the wrong answer to "Is Doraemon a robot cat?" and got out immediately. It was funnier that way, not trying to be a slacker.
Then I joined in on the rock-paper-scissors tournament. We had a bit of difficulty deciding when to shoot. I ended up winning round one, and after a vicious battle of ties, lost round two. The loser had to join his chain of people behind an every growing chain of people following the last winner. The prize was a person in a box (well, actually the blanket she was holding, but I would have preferred the person).
Classes sizes are incredibly small. One is four students or so, and the other is two. I only teach two classes there and spend most of the rest of my time on my phone. This time I at least brought my Russian book to study. Today was the election, so it was especially fun watching Facebook posts. Sometimes one of the teachers tries to invade my room they throw me into because they have no desk for me and make conversation.
The classes are mostly just talking about whatever pops into my head. There are "lesson plans", but it's basically "talk about semi-relevant stuff". Usually the classes break down into Japanese anyway. At some point (albeit last time) I invented a new food concept - tako + okonomiyake = takonomiyake. I want to try to make this.
I was supppppppposed to go to Minami afterwards to protect my promise that I would show the second half of the movie last week to the ESS. So I left early after my last class and went straight to school. The ESS teacher had tried to talk me out of it (as she does most things she is afraid would be a bother to me) and mentioned how she wouldn't be there today - but neglected to mention today was a shortened schedule. By the time I had arrived, club activities had already gone on for 30 minutes. I searched the whole school, but the ESS members were already gone. This makes the third time I have missed an ESS event where I said I'd be there because of various miscommunications. Tsubura's going to kill me...
At least I have pecans for a potential pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Slowly converting the club into a baking club...
Hello, World
So, I started programming my new game, more or less. I have been writing out the design for over a week now. I'm reviving an old idea I had when I was running the game-making club at DePaul. I'm also reusing our studio name from my senior capstone.
That's not the exciting part. Well, it is, but even more exciting - I have a server. It seems Amazon has some kind of cloud server service which, to make things even better, will probably be free for me for the first year. All my files are already up on my very own Perforce server. It might not seem like a lot, especially for people already very familiar with the internet, but it gives me a warm feeling.
I've actually wanted my own server for many many years now, since I first started gaming online. I temporarily had some server space when I was playing Minecraft. That also made me feel warm and fuzzy. But this server, I am the admin. I control everything. It's kind of fun. And it's free so far.
I only have a few files up, and I haven't really programmed anything yet. Once I get the programming and design in a more final state, I'll enlist the help of artists, sound designers, and more programmers. But for now, I want something solid to start with.
The game is a tower defense, nothing too fancy. It's multiplayer with a single-player campaign (maybe it can be made into multiplayer). You can attack as well as defend. It'll be styled like a pop-up book. That's the jist of it right now. I plan to release it for free on XBox Live and maybe (hopefully) Steam. Then I'll make some DLC that adds more units and some bonus campaign missions. That'll probably also be free. Or maybe I'll charge a tiny amount and donate half of it to science.
That's not the exciting part. Well, it is, but even more exciting - I have a server. It seems Amazon has some kind of cloud server service which, to make things even better, will probably be free for me for the first year. All my files are already up on my very own Perforce server. It might not seem like a lot, especially for people already very familiar with the internet, but it gives me a warm feeling.
I've actually wanted my own server for many many years now, since I first started gaming online. I temporarily had some server space when I was playing Minecraft. That also made me feel warm and fuzzy. But this server, I am the admin. I control everything. It's kind of fun. And it's free so far.
I only have a few files up, and I haven't really programmed anything yet. Once I get the programming and design in a more final state, I'll enlist the help of artists, sound designers, and more programmers. But for now, I want something solid to start with.
The game is a tower defense, nothing too fancy. It's multiplayer with a single-player campaign (maybe it can be made into multiplayer). You can attack as well as defend. It'll be styled like a pop-up book. That's the jist of it right now. I plan to release it for free on XBox Live and maybe (hopefully) Steam. Then I'll make some DLC that adds more units and some bonus campaign missions. That'll probably also be free. Or maybe I'll charge a tiny amount and donate half of it to science.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Shibafu
So, you're probably wondering by now what's with the lawn? Well, you see, when I moved in my place needed a lot of cleaning. And then I realized outside my place also needed a lot of cleaning. The stairs were coated in leaves, bugs, and above all else - sand. It wasn't long after I cleaned it that I needed to clean it again. I was getting tired of sweeping up the sand and generally considered the front of the building to be terrible-looking. In front of the building was nothing but sand and weeds. I decided I wanted to put something done, even if not the whole thing, to prevent the sand. Not just my building, but all of Shimonoseki seems to have this neglectfulness about the land and plants, everything is weeds and sand. I decided I'd put down some grass.
I was unsure the landlord would be okay with me altering the property and there was a building meeting coming up, so I waited for that. I showed up late (the address was in kanji, I just figured the circled thing on the paper was the location of the meeting), but was able to interject during the "Anything else?" part at the end of the meeting. I struggled to explain in Japanese what I wanted to do. I learned an important word in the process:
芝生 (shibafu) - lawn
I went to the local hardware store and eventually decided on using sod instead of seed because seed requires both more effort and more skill (and some equipment). I also bought a bike (a rather flashy one, but I kind of felt bad having the clerk take it down from the shelf for me to look at), so I put the sod and dirt on the seat and walked it all home. The people are the store were pretty helpful and were probably a bit amused.
This is the result of laying down the bushel of grass I got. I definitely didn't seem like enough.
I went back and got more, this time carrying two bushels. I had a nice old lady try to help for like 20 minutes or so until we ended up doing exactly what I was going to do in the first place. Though at least I figured out I can get plastic rope stuff if I asked. The store people were somewhat amused to see I had come back to get more.
This seemed like a good place to stop, but I decided maybe a little further would look nicer.
At this point, I had spent a ton of time and effort. And watering was becoming a pain. I quickly decided that the other plots weren't getting any grass. Though at least they are coated in weeds so it didn't matter so much.
Eventually I decided it was worth bribing a friend into helping me. She had a car so we just loaded it with the remaining grass and dirt needed. We worked into the evening and finished up the lawn. Though we got a bit lazy, so there was quite a bit of rocks and weeds under the grass. Some old man tried explaining to me something presumably about the weeds, but in a difficult accent, so I didn't understand. He even seemed pretty mad.
The end farthest from my stairs was the worst part. The area by the pipe was actually almost all solid stone. The stone had been tunneled into by years of water. This area was also brimming with rocks. I decided not to try to wrap around the building or anything and make my lawn a rectangle.
To formalize my barrier, I added some bricks. I eventually relocated some of the grass at the ends and used up the extra two squares.
I also added seeds between the edges and throughout the lawn. I think they are the random extra tall blades that have been popping up, but the edges of every rectangle tended to do better already anyway. Which causes my lawn to retain lines of green which make it obvious it was patched together.
I actually got a lot of praise and encouragement from the other people in the building that walked by. I watered every evening, so a lot of the other teachers coming home would see my lawn. They were also at the meeting when I said I was going to grow a lawn, but I think most of them were surprised when I actually did. I even got visitors like this guy!
The gaps between the squares eventually started to fill, but the green lines between the spaces still remains.
Still, the lawn got greener and greener at time went on. The newer the grass though, the less green. So the initial grass, which was planted with a large gap between the next set was noticably greener, but everything except for a few squares started turning green. Hopefully the non-green squares heal.
I eventually added what I hope is fertilizer. I asked the store clerk if this was "lawn food" and she said yes, so it should be good at least. The picture is a bunch of grass, so it's probably right. Also it has a dog and a rainbow on it, so that's something.
Watering was a pain. I made many improvements to optimizing watering - leaving the door open, filling the tub and just dunking the can, using my old shoes like sandals, taking them off while facing backwards so I can just slip into them, and finally only yesterday I realized I could water three times as fast if I used a bucket to refill from downstairs. My life would have been so much easier if they hadn't removed the spigot over my lawn and paved over it. But now that it's November, I've stopped watering for the year. Hopefully my lawn makes it through the Winter.
Also, you can follow my lawn on twitter! https://twitter.com/CorbinsLawn
Halloween
Boring title, but get over it.
So the last few days have been full of candy and costumes. Also pie.
On Halloween, I decided to reward trick or treaters.
The teachers tried it out first, then started telling students that told other students. My desk became rather busy. Fortunately, I had a ton of candy. They all got to use their new "Trick or Treat!" phrase.
I decided early on that I wanted to have a Halloween party, but then one of the students told me they wanted to eat food at the party and that I should get some kind of Halloween food. The only thing I could think of was pumpkin pie.
Fortunately for me, that wasn't foreshadow of a terrible event. We arranged a day to bake the pie, and on that day, the ESS (English Speaking Society [I didn't come up with the name so don't blame me]) teacher and I went and bought pie ingredients during school, which was pretty fun. Then after school, we prepared the pie for baking the next day. Here are some preparation pictures. Enjoy. Or don't. I guess I don't care what you do.
A lot of pictures have to be omitted for boringness or because a student's face is visible. Japanese law and all that.
So the last few days have been full of candy and costumes. Also pie.
On Halloween, I decided to reward trick or treaters.
The teachers tried it out first, then started telling students that told other students. My desk became rather busy. Fortunately, I had a ton of candy. They all got to use their new "Trick or Treat!" phrase.
I decided early on that I wanted to have a Halloween party, but then one of the students told me they wanted to eat food at the party and that I should get some kind of Halloween food. The only thing I could think of was pumpkin pie.
Fortunately for me, that wasn't foreshadow of a terrible event. We arranged a day to bake the pie, and on that day, the ESS (English Speaking Society [I didn't come up with the name so don't blame me]) teacher and I went and bought pie ingredients during school, which was pretty fun. Then after school, we prepared the pie for baking the next day. Here are some preparation pictures. Enjoy. Or don't. I guess I don't care what you do.
A lot of pictures have to be omitted for boringness or because a student's face is visible. Japanese law and all that.
It's not a particularly exciting story.
I had been thinking for a while that not cooking the seeds would be a waste and it seemed simple. So I looked up the recipe while we cooked and I realized it was. So I ran to the store and got the only thing missing - butter. I decided to completely disregard measurements and poured a stick of butter over everything. We also severely compromised the temperature and baking time. The result was pretty awful. I tried to throw them away, but two students forced me to distribute them to the students and staff. Most of them managed to pretend they were delicious. Of course at this time, everyone was studying or in club activities. We somehow managed to get rid of them all.
The pies turned out much better. We had to cook them the next day, and they actually came out. We served the up, along with a ton of bags of candy I made.
It seems I don't have a picture of the result, but it was quite a few bags.
I wore my fugu hat in the office and to the third year's class. The teacher wore an orange witch hat we got at the 100 yen shop while looking for pie supplies. I also distributed some more candy.
We had as a warm up (which turned into homework), writing out ghost stories on the pumpkins I drew for the kid class.
At the ESS Halloween party, we ate pie and distributed candy. Then we were going to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas.
We couldn't seem to get the door open to the A/V room. I managed to break in using a secret technique a bit before the teacher showed up with the right keys. I can now no longer be contained by sliding doors, locked or otherwise.
The movie went well (though I forgot speakers), but some students had to leave early, so there'll be a reshowing Wednesday.
Other than that, Halloween is finally over.
Still need to get real pumpkin seeds to undo the damage I've caused...
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Pixel Perfect Pumpkin Picture
This computer's slowness is something that takes a ton of getting used to. However, I finally completed my pumpkins. I find myself doing a lot of art.
Of course these aren't necessarily for my high schoolers. Another JET asked me to fill in for him teaching a class in my city. Why he, who does not live in my city, teaches this class instead of me in the first place is a mystery, but I accepted. He couldn't make it because he has to attend a speech contest (only later did I realize my own student's speech contest is this same speech contest so now I can't go). The students are primary school kids and their parents, so I figured coloring in pumpkins would be a good idea. I also stole and slightly recolored some crosswords and word searches I found online.
It's been an artsy week.
Also, there is a mysterious box of chocolates on my desk. It has a bow and everything. No one seems to know where it is from. My supervisor suggests it might be a bomb. If I die, I died doing what I loved: opening boxes.
I have both a version for drawing in and for writing in. I didn't draw the pumpkin, I stole it off the internet. But I combined and modified them so that counts for something.
Here are the pumpkins I used:
Of course these aren't necessarily for my high schoolers. Another JET asked me to fill in for him teaching a class in my city. Why he, who does not live in my city, teaches this class instead of me in the first place is a mystery, but I accepted. He couldn't make it because he has to attend a speech contest (only later did I realize my own student's speech contest is this same speech contest so now I can't go). The students are primary school kids and their parents, so I figured coloring in pumpkins would be a good idea. I also stole and slightly recolored some crosswords and word searches I found online.
It's been an artsy week.
Also, there is a mysterious box of chocolates on my desk. It has a bow and everything. No one seems to know where it is from. My supervisor suggests it might be a bomb. If I die, I died doing what I loved: opening boxes.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Tourist Trap
So, I'm home from Korea! Finally. You could say I arrived a day late and a dollar short. Korea was fun and awesome, but mostly I'm posting this in the odd chance someone is Googling about the Kampu Ferry and wants to go to Busan from Shimonoseki.
BE EARLY!
So, the website lists the departure times, but not the check in times because that'd be helpful. Even though I have had the exact same experience last time I was trying to come from Busan by ferry, apparently I never learn. I arrived an hour before departure time, ticket in tow, after a grueling 5 hour train ride, to find out check in closes a whole 2.5 hours before.
CHECK IN ENDS 2.5 HOURS BEFORE DEPARTURE!
So be there on time if you want to go. I wasn't, had to miss the next day of work. Couldn't reach my boss either; had to use the wifi to contact another JET to have her call my boss and explain. Never mind the pay phones with the international country codes listed, because they can't make international calls. Go figure. Or maybe I was just doing it wrong...
I first suspected something was wrong when the ticket booth window was empty. I ran upstairs to try to board, but discovered my ticket was useless. Eventually, some lady found me before I left and told me I could change my ticket for the next day if I paid some fee, but warned me about if I were late a second time, I had to pay full price. She asked how much I had, and fortunately I found a stash of money that probably would have caused me to have taken the fast train and been early if I hadn't forgotten about it or hadn't stupidly stashed it so I could take pictures of all the money. She looked really concerned with how little money I had. I told her I could just sleep in the station or on the street, but this didn't comfort her. She kept asking if I would really be okay.
I ending up meeting an English teacher from Laos. He was also late for his own ferry to Fukuoka. We ended up finding a motel in what was called Chinatown but appeared to be Russiatown. I was excited to read all the signs, but my Russian at this point has devolved to "My father is a biologist. Where is the library?"
At least you can get spicy fried chicken.
And prostitutes. I think. Didn't confirm, much to my new friend's disappointment. "What are they doing here...? Ask them what they are doing here..." Unfortunately, during one quarter of Russian, I didn't learn the word for prostitute. We did get offered "boom boom" though from a small, middle-aged Korean lady.
Next day, I foolishly decided to walk up a mountain and see a temple. The temple is nice, if a bit under construction but the walk takes a while and a lot of energy - an hour uphill.
So, I eventually got home, and was only 6 minutes late the next day. I was able to rush through the customs line as a Japanese citizen. I guess most people coming in were Koreans. They converted my one hour of vacation time to one day, and I seem to have no problems. I was really lucky that because of the holiday on Monday, my Tuesday school was running Monday's schedule, and I was scheduled to just sit around all day doing nothing, no classes.
CHECK IN EARLY!
BE EARLY!
So, the website lists the departure times, but not the check in times because that'd be helpful. Even though I have had the exact same experience last time I was trying to come from Busan by ferry, apparently I never learn. I arrived an hour before departure time, ticket in tow, after a grueling 5 hour train ride, to find out check in closes a whole 2.5 hours before.
CHECK IN ENDS 2.5 HOURS BEFORE DEPARTURE!
So be there on time if you want to go. I wasn't, had to miss the next day of work. Couldn't reach my boss either; had to use the wifi to contact another JET to have her call my boss and explain. Never mind the pay phones with the international country codes listed, because they can't make international calls. Go figure. Or maybe I was just doing it wrong...
I first suspected something was wrong when the ticket booth window was empty. I ran upstairs to try to board, but discovered my ticket was useless. Eventually, some lady found me before I left and told me I could change my ticket for the next day if I paid some fee, but warned me about if I were late a second time, I had to pay full price. She asked how much I had, and fortunately I found a stash of money that probably would have caused me to have taken the fast train and been early if I hadn't forgotten about it or hadn't stupidly stashed it so I could take pictures of all the money. She looked really concerned with how little money I had. I told her I could just sleep in the station or on the street, but this didn't comfort her. She kept asking if I would really be okay.
I ending up meeting an English teacher from Laos. He was also late for his own ferry to Fukuoka. We ended up finding a motel in what was called Chinatown but appeared to be Russiatown. I was excited to read all the signs, but my Russian at this point has devolved to "My father is a biologist. Where is the library?"
At least you can get spicy fried chicken.
And prostitutes. I think. Didn't confirm, much to my new friend's disappointment. "What are they doing here...? Ask them what they are doing here..." Unfortunately, during one quarter of Russian, I didn't learn the word for prostitute. We did get offered "boom boom" though from a small, middle-aged Korean lady.
Next day, I foolishly decided to walk up a mountain and see a temple. The temple is nice, if a bit under construction but the walk takes a while and a lot of energy - an hour uphill.
So, I eventually got home, and was only 6 minutes late the next day. I was able to rush through the customs line as a Japanese citizen. I guess most people coming in were Koreans. They converted my one hour of vacation time to one day, and I seem to have no problems. I was really lucky that because of the holiday on Monday, my Tuesday school was running Monday's schedule, and I was scheduled to just sit around all day doing nothing, no classes.
CHECK IN EARLY!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
The White Zone is for Loading and Unloading of Passengers Only
So, since I am starting this blog after my adventures already began, think of this as a flashback post. I don't plan to post about everything that happens here, just the more exciting or interesting stuff. And let me tell you, orientation was not one of those things.
However, I do feel like ranting about luggage! So, after a long and boring flight, it was time to board a bus to orientation and ship any extra luggage to our homes in our individual prefectures. I foolishly took the constant warnings of "Don't overpack" to mean I should underpack. Though later I realized though I was not missing anything I needed, I could have brought another 50lbs of free luggage instead of mailing it.
There I am, the only JET with one suitcase, one personal item thing, and one backpack. Everyone else is trugging (as an English teacher, I reserve the right to invent words) along the same things but with the addition of a whole 'nother suitcase. This apparently blows the minds of the people directing us to load our luggage. I try explaining over and over that I don't need to ship anything because I brought less than everyone. Everyone was supposed to ship their second suitcase, except they also had to pay for that shipping.
After fighting with the first guy for like ten minutes, they finally seemed to vaguely understand. To this day, I have not the slightest idea why it was so mindblowingly difficult for them to understand. I didn't get more than 20ft before the next person asked, "So what are you shipping?" After 10 minutes of arguing with them, I realized they must all be brain damaged and decided I might as well just ship my backpack since, presumably, nothing was in it.
You know - except all my money.
So I basically paid them to cause me problems because things like counting is beyond them. And not just one person, but two people could not figure out if I have no spare suitcase, I can't ship a spare suitcase.
Fortunately, the "you can't exchange money in Tokyo, there's no time" proved to be a lie (they exchange money in the hotel, and there was not even a line), but it was still very stressful, and it took a ton of effort and time to find an ATM that accepted my American card.
I finally got some money, I was able to eat and live long enough for my backpack to arrive.
Who gave these people college degrees?!
However, I do feel like ranting about luggage! So, after a long and boring flight, it was time to board a bus to orientation and ship any extra luggage to our homes in our individual prefectures. I foolishly took the constant warnings of "Don't overpack" to mean I should underpack. Though later I realized though I was not missing anything I needed, I could have brought another 50lbs of free luggage instead of mailing it.
There I am, the only JET with one suitcase, one personal item thing, and one backpack. Everyone else is trugging (as an English teacher, I reserve the right to invent words) along the same things but with the addition of a whole 'nother suitcase. This apparently blows the minds of the people directing us to load our luggage. I try explaining over and over that I don't need to ship anything because I brought less than everyone. Everyone was supposed to ship their second suitcase, except they also had to pay for that shipping.
After fighting with the first guy for like ten minutes, they finally seemed to vaguely understand. To this day, I have not the slightest idea why it was so mindblowingly difficult for them to understand. I didn't get more than 20ft before the next person asked, "So what are you shipping?" After 10 minutes of arguing with them, I realized they must all be brain damaged and decided I might as well just ship my backpack since, presumably, nothing was in it.
You know - except all my money.
So I basically paid them to cause me problems because things like counting is beyond them. And not just one person, but two people could not figure out if I have no spare suitcase, I can't ship a spare suitcase.
Fortunately, the "you can't exchange money in Tokyo, there's no time" proved to be a lie (they exchange money in the hotel, and there was not even a line), but it was still very stressful, and it took a ton of effort and time to find an ATM that accepted my American card.
I finally got some money, I was able to eat and live long enough for my backpack to arrive.
Who gave these people college degrees?!
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Word Endings Analysis
So I just got back from Korea, and that's a bit of a story, but more importantly, my program is complete!
It is apparently incapable of recognizing words that are exactly the searched phrase, but oh well. Update: the problem is case, not the length of the word, so "Ku" with a capital "K" is not equal to "ku" with a lower case "k". An easy fix, but oh well. The reverse version of the tokenizer function just leaves the list in reverse order, which is fine. Flipping it requires a ton of memory and time, so it is not worth it and doesn't help anything in this case.
I pulled a list of words from:
http://www.nicklea.com/articles/wordlist.txt
Some 78,205 words
Update: This list contains words and their conjugates, e.g. "run", "runs", and "running" and "aardvark", "aardvarks", and "aardvark's"; so that may slant the results a bit, depending on how you view conjugates.
Of course you're all thinking "but why?" The Japanese language has some rather restrictive phonetics. So, when a Japanese student tries to spell an English word, they tend to add in a bunch of extra vowels. After seeing my students write "Baraku Obama" and "ketchupu" or other u-ending variants, I got to thinking - how many words in the English language end in ku? or pu? or even u at all? The Japanese tend to us "to" or "do" for t/d-terminating words respectively, so I tried that, too.
78,205 words aren't all the words in the English language, but it probably covers almost all of what my students will be using in their lives.
The results:
Of the 81 words that end in u,
"adieu", "Ainu", "Baku", "Bantu", "bateau", "bayou", "beau", "Bissau", "bureau", "caribou",
"chateau", "Chou", "coypu", "cpu", "du", "Fizeau", "flu", "Fontainebleau", "Frau", "Fujitsu",
"gnu", "guru", "haiku", "Hindu", "Honolulu", "Honshu", "impromptu", "juju", "Juneau",
"Katmandu", "Kikuyu", "kinkajou", "Kitakyushu", "kivu", "kombu", "Ku", "kudzu", "landau",
"lieu", "Lou", "lulu", "Malibu", "Marceau", "Maseru", "Mathieu", "menu", "milieu", "mu",
"Nassau", "Nehru", "nouveau", "nu", "Ouagadougou", "parvenu", "Peru", "plateau",
"portmanteau", "Rousseau", "Shu", "situ", "snafu", "sou", "tableau", "tabu", "tau", "Thimbu",
"Thoreau", "thou", "thru", "Thu," "tofu", "Trudeau", "Tsunematsu", "tutu", "u", "Urdu",
"Vishnu", "Wausau", "Wu", "you", and "Zulu"
3 end in "ku" - "Baku", "haiku", "ku"
Baku, it turns out is a city in Azerbaijan, part of the old USSR
Haiku is cheating since that's obviously a loan word from Japanese
Ku doesn't show up in my dictionary and I have never used it, so it is not a particularly helpful word
But 670 end in "k"
2 end in "pu" - "coypu" and "cpu"
Coypus are large, South American, aquatic rodents
CPU is also cheating since it is an abbreviation
But 452 end in "p"
0 end in "gu"
But 6707 end in "g"
5 end in "ru" - "guru", "Maseru", "Nehru", "Peru", and "thru"
Guru is another loan word
The middle three are places
Thru is just a lazy way of spelling a real word
But 5939 end in "r"
3 end in "shu" - "Honshu", "Kitakyushu", and "Shu"
The first two are places in or parts of Japan (Honshu is one of the four main islands and Kitakyushu is a city)
Shu is the Confusian version of the Golden Rule or the Egyptian god of air
But 279 end in "sh"
1 ends in "ju" - "juju"
A loan word from Africa, something I doubt my students will ever learn, let alone use
Though to be fair, only 3 words end in "j"
0 end in "chu"
But 238 end in "ch"
1 ends in "yu" (which also covers all which might be "kyu", "gyu", "nyu", "myu", etc) - "Kikuyu"
A language and people from Kenya, probably not helpful to my students
Any word ending in y on its own would be transliterated to "i" or something probably, so I won't look up the comparison
1 ends in "hu" that doesn't end in "shu" - "Thu"
Thu does not even show up in the dictionary I am using, so I can guess not too useful of a word
But 912 end in "h"
2 end in "fu" (a more common way of transliterating "hu") - "tofu" and "snafu"
Tofu is another loan word
Snafu counts as a word I guess
But 173 words end in "f"
4 end in "bu" - "Thimbu", "tabu", "Malibu", and "kombu"
Thimbu and Malibu are places
Tabu is just a different (and less common) spelling of taboo
Kombu is another loan word from Japanese - a type of brown seaweed (also spelled konbu)
But 143 words end in "b"
2 end is either "tsu" or "su" (both "tsu") - "Tsunematsu" and "Fujitsu"
Both are presumably Japanese place names or surnames, even a Japanese teacher was not sure
But 24259 words end in "s", and of them, 1675 with "ts"
4 end in "du" (which is rarely used in Japanese and 'do' would probably be used before 'du') - "Urdu", "Katmandu", "Hindu", and "du"
Urdu is a language, and Hindu is a religion. They aren't native words, but they are somewhat common.
Katmandu is a city
Du is found in some French names or an abbreviation of Duke or Dutch
But 8734 end in "d"
1 ends in "zu" or "dzu" - "kudzu"
Kudzu is a type of Japanese and Chinese vine, so another loan word
But 82 end in "z", but of them, 0 end in "dz"- so there's one time a u-terminating word beats out the consonant version!
1 ends in "mu" - "mu"
Mu is a Greek letter and used as a coefficient of friction
or apparently a lost continent that sunk when Atlantis did
But 972 end in "m", though it would probably just be transliterated to "ん" anyway
If a word ends in n, the Japanese language can represent this like "m" as "ん", so I won't go through that list. The remaining words, too, cannot be directly transliterated or end in a vowel followed by "u" so you can look them up on your own if you care.
"to" and "do" are solutions to transliterating t/d-terminating English words into Japanese, and a lot more "to" and "do" words exist.
545 end in "o", of which 82 are "to" and 48 are "do", but 3542 end in "t" and 8734 end in "d".
Of the 670 words ending in "k", 287 end in "ck" and 162 end in "ke", but 1018 end in "c".
There are a bunch of other interesting phrases to look for, like "r" vs "l" or "y" vs "i", but this'll do for this post.
Update: I found myself curious about the distribution of final letters and have found these numbers:
Vowels - Of the 10,059 words that end in vowels,
1,181 are "a",
7,999 are "e",
253 are "i",
545 are "o",
and of course,
81 are "u".
Here is the rest of the alphabet:
"a" - 1181
"b" - 143
"c" - 1,018
"d" - 8,734
"e" - 7,999
"f" - 173
"g" - 6,707
"h" - 912
"i" - 253
"j" - 3
"k" - 670
"l" - 2,108
"m" - 973
"n" - 4,506
"o" - 545
"p" - 452
"q" - 4
"r" - 5,939
"s" - 24,259
"t" - 3,542
"u" - 81
"v" - 25
"w" - 238
"x" - 172
"y" - 7,258
"z" - 82
Because of the conjugates (e.g. "aardvarks" and "aardvark's"),
"s" comes way out on top with 24,259 words.
("g" probably has so many results because of these conjugates, too (e.g. "running").)
"j" bottoms out the list at only 3 words, but
"q" is a close follower with only 4 words.
"j", "q", and "v" are the only letters less likely to end a word than "u", with
"z" only 1 word more likely.
The point of course is that almost no words end in "u" in English. Of the 81 words that do, only "you" and "thou" appear in the list of top 2,126 words used in American newspapers, and I had to look up almost all of the words from the list of 81 words that did end in "u". So if you're a Japanese student of English and find yourself wondering if you should end a word with "u", I think you can assume it doesn't.
It's a pretty simple and inefficient program, but I like it.(defun tokenizer (st)(let ((x 0) (total nil)) (while (< x (length st))(let ((y x))(while (and (< y (length st))(not (eq (char st y) #\Newline))(not (eq (char st y) #\Space)))(setq y (+ y 1)))(setq total (cons (subseq st x y) total))(setq x (+ 1 y))))(reverse total))(defun tokenizer-reverse (st)(let ((x 0) (total nil)) (while (< x (length st))(let ((y x))(while (and (< y (length st))(not (eq (char st y) #\Newline))(not (eq (char st y) #\Space)))(setq y (+ y 1)))(setq total (cons (subseq st x y) total))(setq x (+ 1 y))))(defun find-final (megalist str)(let ((n 0) (lis nil))(while (< n (length megalist))(if (equal str(subseq (nth n megalist) (- (length (nth n megalist)) (length str))(length (nth n megalist))))(setq lis (cons (nth n megalist) lis)))(setq n (+ 1 n)))lis))
I pulled a list of words from:
http://www.nicklea.com/articles/wordlist.txt
Some 78,205 words
Update: This list contains words and their conjugates, e.g. "run", "runs", and "running" and "aardvark", "aardvarks", and "aardvark's"; so that may slant the results a bit, depending on how you view conjugates.
Of course you're all thinking "but why?" The Japanese language has some rather restrictive phonetics. So, when a Japanese student tries to spell an English word, they tend to add in a bunch of extra vowels. After seeing my students write "Baraku Obama" and "ketchupu" or other u-ending variants, I got to thinking - how many words in the English language end in ku? or pu? or even u at all? The Japanese tend to us "to" or "do" for t/d-terminating words respectively, so I tried that, too.
78,205 words aren't all the words in the English language, but it probably covers almost all of what my students will be using in their lives.
The results:
Of the 81 words that end in u,
"adieu", "Ainu", "Baku", "Bantu", "bateau", "bayou", "beau", "Bissau", "bureau", "caribou",
"chateau", "Chou", "coypu", "cpu", "du", "Fizeau", "flu", "Fontainebleau", "Frau", "Fujitsu",
"gnu", "guru", "haiku", "Hindu", "Honolulu", "Honshu", "impromptu", "juju", "Juneau",
"Katmandu", "Kikuyu", "kinkajou", "Kitakyushu", "kivu", "kombu", "Ku", "kudzu", "landau",
"lieu", "Lou", "lulu", "Malibu", "Marceau", "Maseru", "Mathieu", "menu", "milieu", "mu",
"Nassau", "Nehru", "nouveau", "nu", "Ouagadougou", "parvenu", "Peru", "plateau",
"portmanteau", "Rousseau", "Shu", "situ", "snafu", "sou", "tableau", "tabu", "tau", "Thimbu",
"Thoreau", "thou", "thru", "Thu," "tofu", "Trudeau", "Tsunematsu", "tutu", "u", "Urdu",
"Vishnu", "Wausau", "Wu", "you", and "Zulu"
3 end in "ku" - "Baku", "haiku", "ku"
Baku, it turns out is a city in Azerbaijan, part of the old USSR
Haiku is cheating since that's obviously a loan word from Japanese
Ku doesn't show up in my dictionary and I have never used it, so it is not a particularly helpful word
But 670 end in "k"
2 end in "pu" - "coypu" and "cpu"
Coypus are large, South American, aquatic rodents
CPU is also cheating since it is an abbreviation
But 452 end in "p"
0 end in "gu"
But 6707 end in "g"
5 end in "ru" - "guru", "Maseru", "Nehru", "Peru", and "thru"
Guru is another loan word
The middle three are places
Thru is just a lazy way of spelling a real word
But 5939 end in "r"
3 end in "shu" - "Honshu", "Kitakyushu", and "Shu"
The first two are places in or parts of Japan (Honshu is one of the four main islands and Kitakyushu is a city)
Shu is the Confusian version of the Golden Rule or the Egyptian god of air
But 279 end in "sh"
1 ends in "ju" - "juju"
A loan word from Africa, something I doubt my students will ever learn, let alone use
Though to be fair, only 3 words end in "j"
0 end in "chu"
But 238 end in "ch"
1 ends in "yu" (which also covers all which might be "kyu", "gyu", "nyu", "myu", etc) - "Kikuyu"
A language and people from Kenya, probably not helpful to my students
Any word ending in y on its own would be transliterated to "i" or something probably, so I won't look up the comparison
1 ends in "hu" that doesn't end in "shu" - "Thu"
Thu does not even show up in the dictionary I am using, so I can guess not too useful of a word
But 912 end in "h"
2 end in "fu" (a more common way of transliterating "hu") - "tofu" and "snafu"
Tofu is another loan word
Snafu counts as a word I guess
But 173 words end in "f"
4 end in "bu" - "Thimbu", "tabu", "Malibu", and "kombu"
Thimbu and Malibu are places
Tabu is just a different (and less common) spelling of taboo
Kombu is another loan word from Japanese - a type of brown seaweed (also spelled konbu)
But 143 words end in "b"
2 end is either "tsu" or "su" (both "tsu") - "Tsunematsu" and "Fujitsu"
Both are presumably Japanese place names or surnames, even a Japanese teacher was not sure
But 24259 words end in "s", and of them, 1675 with "ts"
4 end in "du" (which is rarely used in Japanese and 'do' would probably be used before 'du') - "Urdu", "Katmandu", "Hindu", and "du"
Urdu is a language, and Hindu is a religion. They aren't native words, but they are somewhat common.
Katmandu is a city
Du is found in some French names or an abbreviation of Duke or Dutch
But 8734 end in "d"
1 ends in "zu" or "dzu" - "kudzu"
Kudzu is a type of Japanese and Chinese vine, so another loan word
But 82 end in "z", but of them, 0 end in "dz"- so there's one time a u-terminating word beats out the consonant version!
1 ends in "mu" - "mu"
Mu is a Greek letter and used as a coefficient of friction
or apparently a lost continent that sunk when Atlantis did
But 972 end in "m", though it would probably just be transliterated to "ん" anyway
If a word ends in n, the Japanese language can represent this like "m" as "ん", so I won't go through that list. The remaining words, too, cannot be directly transliterated or end in a vowel followed by "u" so you can look them up on your own if you care.
"to" and "do" are solutions to transliterating t/d-terminating English words into Japanese, and a lot more "to" and "do" words exist.
545 end in "o", of which 82 are "to" and 48 are "do", but 3542 end in "t" and 8734 end in "d".
Of the 670 words ending in "k", 287 end in "ck" and 162 end in "ke", but 1018 end in "c".
There are a bunch of other interesting phrases to look for, like "r" vs "l" or "y" vs "i", but this'll do for this post.
Update: I found myself curious about the distribution of final letters and have found these numbers:
Vowels - Of the 10,059 words that end in vowels,
1,181 are "a",
7,999 are "e",
253 are "i",
545 are "o",
and of course,
81 are "u".
Here is the rest of the alphabet:
"a" - 1181
"b" - 143
"c" - 1,018
"d" - 8,734
"e" - 7,999
"f" - 173
"g" - 6,707
"h" - 912
"i" - 253
"j" - 3
"k" - 670
"l" - 2,108
"m" - 973
"n" - 4,506
"o" - 545
"p" - 452
"q" - 4
"r" - 5,939
"s" - 24,259
"t" - 3,542
"u" - 81
"v" - 25
"w" - 238
"x" - 172
"y" - 7,258
"z" - 82
Because of the conjugates (e.g. "aardvarks" and "aardvark's"),
"s" comes way out on top with 24,259 words.
("g" probably has so many results because of these conjugates, too (e.g. "running").)
"j" bottoms out the list at only 3 words, but
"q" is a close follower with only 4 words.
"j", "q", and "v" are the only letters less likely to end a word than "u", with
"z" only 1 word more likely.
The point of course is that almost no words end in "u" in English. Of the 81 words that do, only "you" and "thou" appear in the list of top 2,126 words used in American newspapers, and I had to look up almost all of the words from the list of 81 words that did end in "u". So if you're a Japanese student of English and find yourself wondering if you should end a word with "u", I think you can assume it doesn't.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Arbeit Macht Frei
I actually did work today! The whole day! I didn't even finish! Things are finally moving along. Spent the whole day grading, but it's a nice break from days of sleeping at my desk or reading Wikipedia or programming. (Still hard not to fall asleep at my desk though.)
Just finished some maps for giving directions for tomorrow's lesson. Used my campus map - DePaul Lincoln Park Campus. Hopefully it's not too hard. I have a backup map I can make quickly.
My lawn is going swimmingly. Today, there was a praying mantis chillin' and checkin' out my lawn. Just swaying in the wind.
Whoops, forgot to hit publish.
PS, I made updated maps, not sure why I thought I would make 161 color maps, so these have no color:
.png)
.png)
However, really, I wouldn't use these maps again. The initial start location is a bit unclear, you can really only go East, but it needs to be more clear anyway. And the blocks are uneven. In many, many places, the block length is different by which side of the street you are on and some places it is hard to tell if there is a new block or not. Also the word blanks appear to be buildings so, for example, when things should "be on your right", instead students think they are facing it. Also I didn't like the arrows. I really don't know why I didn't fix the first arrow when I didn't like it before I started copy-pasting it all over...
Just finished some maps for giving directions for tomorrow's lesson. Used my campus map - DePaul Lincoln Park Campus. Hopefully it's not too hard. I have a backup map I can make quickly.
My lawn is going swimmingly. Today, there was a praying mantis chillin' and checkin' out my lawn. Just swaying in the wind.
I'll fill everyone in on all the details up 'till now in another post. Hopefully soon. Particularly the part about the lawn.
Whoops, forgot to hit publish.
PS, I made updated maps, not sure why I thought I would make 161 color maps, so these have no color:
.png)
.png)
UPDATE!
Here are the empty and full versions for if you want something to demonstrate with without revealing answers or want to use as an answer key.
However, really, I wouldn't use these maps again. The initial start location is a bit unclear, you can really only go East, but it needs to be more clear anyway. And the blocks are uneven. In many, many places, the block length is different by which side of the street you are on and some places it is hard to tell if there is a new block or not. Also the word blanks appear to be buildings so, for example, when things should "be on your right", instead students think they are facing it. Also I didn't like the arrows. I really don't know why I didn't fix the first arrow when I didn't like it before I started copy-pasting it all over...
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
冒険だよ！
So so so! I finally got real internet! To mark this occasion, I have finally created a blog. It'll be full of potentially awesome ramblings perchance. As of now, there is already much to say: baggage problems, ex girlfriend reunions, missed welcome parties and contract signings, broken planes, lawns, festivals, flowers, fans, and fan-girls!
I'll get to posting what's happened up to now later, but so far it's been quite the adventure!
I'll get to posting what's happened up to now later, but so far it's been quite the adventure!
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