Henrik Falck

Learning Kanji - It's Called Literacy, Dumbass!

2008-08-18T19:50:00.010+09:00

Do You Have To Know All The Joyo Kanji?

I seem to see the question Do I really need to learn all the joyo kanji? It's like two thousands of them and that seems a bit too much...

You know, that list was created by a bunch of bureaucrats who have nothing better to do than invent stupid lists and laws all days. Especially the order of the kanji in the list is completely insane - in many cases complex, compounded characters come before the compounds they're made up from, for instance.

Also, the word 常用(jouyou) means "daily use", right? Go out any exit of any train station in Tokyo and look around, and tell me if you don't see the kanji 丼(don). That kanji is not on the list. I guess the bureaucrats don't eat domburi, but that's their loss. On the other hand, they put 匁(monme) on the list - and that kanji is so stupid and useless I can't help but remember it, but I've never, ever, seen it used.

So, no, you don't have to learn all the joyo kanji! There are maybe 20, maybe even 50 or more on the list that you actually don't need to know. But here's the catch: you have to learn a lot more than that!

How Many Kanji Do You Actually Need To Know?

Unlike the last question, where I held on to the answer until the very last paragraph, I'm gonna answer this one right away: maybe about 3,000. Now, granted, I pulled that number out of my arse, but I think it's a decent estimate. That's in order to be considered literate in Japanese... If you don't need to be able to read all male given names (yeah I understand it's cool to give your kid some uncommon character, but come on...).

You see, even though school teaches the roughly 2,000 joyo kanji until high school graduation, most Japanese people can read more than that, even by the time they finish high school. That's what happens if you spend 19 years surrounded by kanji. Non-joyo kanji are not uncommon - I'm speaking from experience here - and in fact most Japanese people don't really know nor care about that stupid list - kanji are just characters you use to write stuff.

But 95% Is Good Enough For Me - Or Is It?

When I started learning Japanese, and in fact some times since then as well, I've seen statistics saying that 1,000 characters are the 90% most frequent, and 2,000 characters constitutes 98% of the kanji used. That might very well be true - I believe those numbers are more or less correct.

So then a seemingly valid, and common, argument would go something like "I don't need to be able to read specialized texts - or even the newspapers - manga/technical specs/email/whatever is enough for me, so being able to read 80/90/95/98% of the kanji is all I need".

I used to think a little bit that way too, to be honest. But there's a fundamental fault in that reasoning: Yes, no one needs, or can ever hope to be able to, understand 100% or even 99% of everything - I mean a lot of stuff in this world is meant for specialists in a particular field - but that's not the same as not being able to read the characters it's written in - that is called illiteracy! And kids: say Yes to mild stimulants, and No to illiteracy - its the bad.

Let me make up an example. This isn't gonna be the best example ever but bear with me as I'm just making this up. Let's take a word like 国立造幣局. Now, three of those kanji (国・立・局) are very easy - I'm sure they were among the first one or two hundred I learned. 造 is also pretty easy, it's at least below JLPT level 2, and very common. But 幣 is not very common, and has a somewhat specialized meaning (but it's on the joyo list and not knowing it constitutes illiteracy). So in that five-kanji word 60% of the kanji are trivial, and 80% are easy.

But then there's one that - while definitely not complicated - is at least JLPT level 1 worthy of difficult. Yet that's the one kanji that conveys most of the meaning, not to mention you can't pronounce the word without knowing its reading, so those who settled for 90% of the kanji will be 0% literate in this example.

Look at it this way: say that pronouns, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions made up 50% of the words used in an average English sentence. Then, would someone who decides to learn only the pronouns, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions of English be able to get the meaning of an ordinary English sentence? Of course not! Even though that person would understand at least 50% of the words used. Now, kanji are characters used to write words and not words in themselves, but anyway... if you want to get down to the monkey's balls with the Japanese language, you have to learn kanji thoroughly. And you might as well do it right away.

Now I hope we have established a shared understanding that almost perfect kanji literacy is indispensable for the Japanese language learner. Next, I will be writing about how that literacy is best achieved.

JLPT1 Progress - Vocabulary Aside: Good

2008-08-12T21:38:00.007+09:00

As I've mentioned before, I intend to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), Level 1 - the highest level - this December. And I'm going to pass it with a good margin - defined as a score of above 80% (70% is needed to pass).

I've now done a mock test, using the Unicom book that contains two mock tests, to get a grasp of where I'm at and what I need to focus on. I can highly recommend that book, by the way. I used it for level 2 as well. Besides the tests, it assists in analyzing your weaknesses and tips on what you need to study.

Anyway, here's a breakdown of my scores:

Kanji: 82%
Vocabulary: 64%
Listening: 72%
Reading: 68%
Grammar: 78%

Interestingly, that means the average score for each of the three sections (kanji/vocabulary, listening, and reading/grammar) is 72% - quite a coincidence.

So what to make of this? First: it's a pass, with a 288 p/72% score. That also means I'm on track for my goal to pass with more than 80%. When I do the mock test at home I'm more strict than at the real thing in that I don't choose randomly when I don't have a clue, and I try to finish it as fast as possible - I don't stop to think and I don't use spare time for reviewing.

I do that because I want data on how much time I actually need so that I can plan how much time to spend on the different parts during the real test - potential points vs time. For the reading section I had more than 15 min to spare, so I think this affects the end result by a few percentage points. Also, when I did the same thing for 2-kyu two years ago at this time, my score was barely above 60%, but on the real thing I scored 81%, so I think my score on the mock test is lower because I don't concentrate as much as on the real test as well.

Second, the surprises: grammar score is high, reading is a bit low, and listening is lower than expected. I haven't studied grammar really, but my studies consist mostly of reading, so I would have expected reading to be higher and grammar much lower. I felt very uncertain when answering many of the grammar problems even though I passed them. The only reason I can think of is that my book reading and radio listening have made me grasp grammar intuitively, much like a native speaker would.

The low reading score might be caused by me doing that section after coming home from work. I felt very tired by the end... And as I mentioned above I didn't do any reviewing using spare time. After all, I read normal (actually, some of them are probably more academic than most people prefer to read) books written for native readers pretty much every day, and I don't feel I'm missing out on the content of those books, so I don't think my reading skill is bad. And time is definitely not a problem - my Japanese reading speed is good.

Low score on listening, despite listening to the radio for a few hours every day, I think was mostly caused by me not being up to date on the vocabulary used. Describing how people look and asking strangers for directions might be very common textbook examples, but it's not something you do very often in real life... I am going to go through the Unicom listening comprehension book for 1-kyu as well, which contains the equivalent of about 4 tests' worth of exercises, and that should be enough to easily get me above 80%.

Third, as expected: kanji is my strongest point and vocabulary is my weakest. Kanji are natural for me now, although recently I've been working on improving my kanji skills even more (I'll write about my study methods some other day). But acquiring vocabulary is tough! I don't really like repeating words or sentences or anything like that - I'm lazy - but I just hope to pick things up after seeing them enough times in books and news articles, and from hearing. The vocabulary used in JLPT is somewhat specific and specialized, albeit limited, and I have not been reading material specifically targeted at the test. Here as well, I am going to rely on the Unicom, namely reading comprehension book. But I'll probably hold off on that until right before the test and keep reading normal literature that I enjoy reading for now.

Lastly for this post, I'd like to mention one more ingenious scheme I've come up with to extract more data from doing mock tests: marking certainty of the answers. I mark them essentially in 4 degrees, although I only make physical marks for 2: feel quite certain (no mark), feel a bit hesitant (one dot), feel like I'm mostly guessing (two dots), and don't have a clue (no answer). Afterwards, I compile the percentage of correct answers for each certainty level (last level is obviously 0%). A stimulating paper exercise if there ever was one! But this time it also told me one thing: if I feel certain or hesitant doesn't impact the score. But for the two-dot level the probability of a correct answer is halved. In other words I can go ahead and use my intuition even if I feel a bit hesitant, which saves time, and focus my reviewing (using time left after answering all questions) on a few questions that I felt very uncertain about.

Anyhow I'm interested in hearing about other's progress on the JLPT and if you're blogging about it, please post a link in a comment. Please also post comments on your own findings regarding the test. I'm quite exited about the test itself, besides becoming fluent in Japanese!

In the near future I also intent to write something about what I've learned about learning - because I feel I'm really getting into that now, and I'm already looking forward to the next language learning adventure - and also about my own study methods targeting JLPT1, and something about learning Japanese vs passing the JLPT.

Don't forget to apply!

What Language Is This? Dot Com!

2008-07-05T16:40:00.003+09:00

Since the language analyzer is becoming one of the most used web services that I run, the other day I was thinking that it would be cool get it its own domain (and a .dom domain costs just 50 SEK (around 850 yen in normal times) anyway). So I was thinking about what domain name to get - that isn't already taken - and well, one of the most common search phrases people use to find the language analyzer is "what language is this webpage/blog/text/whatever" and luckily whatlanguageisthis.com was available, so there it is! I think it's quite easy to remember and very easy to tell people. 4 stars out of 5, perhaps? Pretty good.

Setting up the new site was pretty easy; it's essentially just a php script that chdirs into the language analyzer directory and continues from there as before.

I also did another nice update: the data file that the app uses to identify the language is now downloaded after the page and all the application javascript files have loaded. That means the page should load much faster, and the user can start reading the instructions or entering text while the data is being downloaded in the background. If the user clicks "Go" before the data file is downloaded, it will stop and wait, while displaying a typical web 2.0-ish loading indicator.

I'm planning to add support for more languages soon, and improve identification of similar-looking languages even further. Anyway, here's the url for the new site again:
http://whatlanguageisthis.com/

Revised JLPT Announced - New Test Same As Old!

2008-07-01T10:46:00.006+09:00

I was reading the JLPT home page (or whatever you'd want to call it) yesterday to see when applications for this year's test will be available (July 15) and if there's some place close where they are sold (there is: the Yurindo bookstore in Atre Ebisu where I always buy books).

Anyway, I also found this shocking announcement of changes to the JLPT test! Shocking not in itself nor in its scope, but because they finally got around to doing it. For my fellow students who have not yet reached level 2, here are changes in a nutshell:

Starting July 2009, exams for level 1 and 2 will be held twice a year.
Starting 2010, the test itself will change. There will be 5 levels, N1-N5.

The new levels will be laid out like this:

N1: Like the current level 1, but with a somewhat higher scope.
N2: Like the current level 2.
N3: Between the current level 2 and level 3.
N4: Like the current level 3.
N5: Like the current level 4.

In other words, there'll be a new level between levels 2 and 3, and level 1 will be adjusted to be a little bit harder. There will be no changes in the composition or methodology of the test. So still the same parts, same scoring, still only multiple answer questions, no writing, no speaking, etc. The "N" stands for "Nihongo" and "New"... bit lame if you ask me. ;)

So what to make of this? Having the test twice a year is definitely a good thing. I would have taken it now in July if it was available. As we all know, passing a test doesn't just mean studying the target of the test, one must study the test itself too (unless it's really below one's level). I wonder why they only included levels 1 and 2 for the July exams though. Going from level 4 (N5) to level 3 (N4) in half a year should be possible...

The new N3 level: a good motivator perhaps for people struggling between old level 3 and old level 2? That was probably the largest gap in the levels, since it meant going from essentially only trivial kanji to actually being able to read some real material. But since everything below level 2 is hobby level without practical significance, I can't help thinking that part of the reason is to make more money from applications... as mentioned in the report, there are now over 3 million students of Japanese world wide, and with each application costing 5,500 yen, that's serious money.

Changing level 1: it would have been nice to get a little more concrete information regarding that change. They essentially say "it's gonna be that same... but a teeny weeny bit harder", which isn't very informative. I would have liked to see one more new level above level 1. As I'm approaching level 1, I still feel there's more to go for Japanese fluency. A new top level would not only certify that, but also serve as a motivation. Well, at least there's the Business Japanese test and kanji kentei...

Anyhow, I'm still on track to pass the good old level 1 in December. I'll probably take it the following years too to make sure I'm still progressing. Might as well take the new N1 level in 2010... Keep studying, everyone!

家に帰らない男たち - Guys Who Don't Go Home

2008-06-27T09:04:00.001+09:00

Owing perhaps to what seems like a strong strain of introspectiveness, there are a lot of books in Japanese about what it means to be Japanese. They don't get translated and seldom get any attention outside Japan though. Since I'm interested in both Japanese society and the language this suits me well. Anyway, I thought I'd do my part and write something about one of these books.

It's called 家に帰らない男たち (Guys Who Don't Go Home, roughly) by 松井計 (Kei Matsui). The book is about men who don't return home after work, many of them having a family that they only see on weekends.

The book has six chapters, each chapter focusing on one particular man and his situation. Following is an outline of the chapters:

A Guy Who Don't Go Home? A Guy Who Can't Go Home?
44 y.o. advertising agency worker
Started not going home just after getting married and changed jobs, because he had to work late and the commute too long. Got divorced but still maintains the mostly unused house in the suburbs, two-and-a-half hours from his workplace. Sleeps in capsule hotels and likes to go out drinking on weekdays after work. Sees his kids on the weekends but always brings them to his parents home instead of the house they grew up in. The reason why he retains the house is something of a mystery.
A Dreamless Person Chasing Dreams
22 y.o. guy who does day jobs for dispatch companies
Came to Tokyo to get "big", but can't really define what that means. Won't return home until he's "made it" in Tokyo. Says it's important to be independent and take care of himself but still lets his parents pay the mobile phone bill. Sleeps at net/manga cafes. Seems generally quite stupid to me but the author stresses that he is at least polite.
Going Home Is Scary
43 y.o. salaryman
Came from the countryside and made it as a sales guy in Tokyo. Has a home in the suburbs and a family. Gets on the train home every day, but when nearing his station, feels scared and gets on to the backwards-bound train into the city again. Says he doesn't want to ruin the perfect balance of his home, which he thinks is what would happen if he was there on weekdays, but enjoys spending perfect weekends with his wife and kids. Sleeps at capsule hotels or saunas or, to save money, at the office.
Weekend Marriage
38 y.o. high-earning IT industry salaryman
Spends only the weekends in the house with wife and daughter. Used to rent an apartment between the office and the house, but left it after realizing it was more fun to spend the night at saunas where he could chat with others. The weekend marriage is by mutual consent with the wife, whom the author also met and interviewed. Both enjoy this lifestyle, but are prepared to change it once the kid grows up and maybe starts thinking it's odd.
Has Everything, No Problems
50 y.o. salaryman-turned-self-employed
Formerly a salaryman who was stationed all around the country by his company, and even in the Middle East for a few years, but grew tired of that and started his own company with a friend. Lives quite close to the office, but still started to think it's unnecessary to go home in the evening. Enjoys the communal aspect of staying at saunas. Kid has moved out. Returns home occasionally. Wife doesn't seem bothered.
A Double Life
46 y.o. designer
Grew up in the sticks where everyone was expected to become a factory worker/engineer, but went to Tokyo to go into design instead. Has wife and kids, but shares an apartment with his 21 y.o. hostess girlfriend during the weeks. Wife thinks he is working hard, or at least that's what he thinks. Loves his family and realizes this can't go on forever. The girlfriend is also interviewed and she seems to enjoy the situation. The girlfriend is otherwise the female equivalent of the guy from chapter 2.

Matsui frequently makes a point of having interviewed many people as material for this book. I think the men that this book centers around are all quite stereotypical and easily imaginable - but all with some disturbed psychological twist in their heads. I'm not sure if that's because he incorporates material from other interviewees into these men, thus making them somewhat generic, or because he hasn't actually interviewed many people at all, but just invented most of it. In any case, it's an interesting read, not an academic paper.

From my own experience, I have heard Japanese coworkers say things like "the office/train is where I can relax", claiming their houses (with wive, kids, and parents) are stressful. It's not uncommon for Japanese office workers to spend all night at the office - it seems to give them credibility and respect among their peers too (despite being completely unproductive the following day). This book sheds some light on why. Saunas' communal aspect, with people napping in reclining chairs in a common area, is one thing.

The language is quite simple: Not much specialized vocabulary outside of society-related concepts such as 脱サラ (quit working as a salaryman) and プータロー (loser). Grammar is about between JLPT level 2 and level 1. The author uses quite a lot of non-general use kanji, though, as well as kanji for words usually written in hiragana, and there is almost no furigana. Not because the vocabulary requires it, but because he just likes to, I suppose. That's good for learning a little extra that probably won't show up on a JLPT exam.

Anyway, this is the first of Matsui's books that I read but it is unlikely to be the last. If you don't know who he is, he's famous for having been homeless, but he then wrote a book about being homeless and now he's a successful author, writing mostly about typical Japanese social phenomena.

Updated the Language Identifier with ranking of most popular languages right now

2008-05-10T13:07:00.003+09:00

Over time I've been making some smaller changes to the language analyzer (my language identification web app), like manually tuning it to better distinguish between hard-to-distinguish languages, like the Scandinavian languages, Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian-Slovenian, Afrikaans and Dutch, and Czech and Slovak.

But I've been wondering what languages people use it for, so yesterday evening, while drinking shochu (in spite of which I could only find one bug today! but I did write a processing and database-intensive function, n00b style, which I replaced with a single SQL query today...), I added logging of the results. Only when the language identification certainty is reasonably high is it logged, and only the result; the actual text inputted is not sent. This, of course, happens in the background. A language is only logged once per client, and results from clicking the "example" button (Tower of Babel extracts - I like that story) are not logged.

This morning I added the top ranking to the page. It's generated on the server side in order for the search engines to see it. The top 5 languages for the past seven days are printed. At this time, i.e. about 15 hours after the result logging started, these are Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, and Thai.

You can see the currently most inputted languages live: http://henrikfalck.com/languageanalyzer/

We'll Always Have C

2008-04-26T13:02:00.006+09:00

The other day there was an interview in Dr. Dobb's Journal with the managing director of TIOBE Software, who publishes the TIOBE Programming Community Index, a ranking of programming language popularity. It was also discussed on Slashdot.

The methodology used by TIOBE to calculate a language's popularity is basically the good old google hits ad-hoc voodoo index, using "[language] programming" as the query. This measures the "web presence" of a programming language.

First of all, it's obvious to you and me that this measures something, that something being the amount of web pages including the term "[language] programming", obviously. There's nothing wrong with this method, as long as one is aware of what they're measuring. But is it fair to call this the popularity of a language?

Look at this blog, for example. I mostly mention JavaScript and PHP here, just like everyone else. Throw in some Ruby and Python too to max out the buzz factor. There is no mention of relics such as C in this blog. But you know what language I use ten times more than any other? C. I'd love to have a job hacking away in JavaScript, Ruby, and Python all days, but I'd have to settle with half the salary. So here it goes: C programming. Index that. Embedded, heavily multi-threaded, efficient, minimum memory, hardcore badass C programming, that's what I do, and I love doing it.

Most coders can't do C. That's why you see all these Visual This and Dot That and scripting languages on the ranking, because these kids blog about every little insignificant hobby project they manage to cut and paste together, just like I do. But let there be no mistake about it: real programmers can code in C. They do syntactically correct typedefs of function pointers in their sleep. (just kidding that's impossible.)

At work I also hack in Python, Perl, and Makefile. At home it's mostly JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python... Lately Python has replaced Ruby as my language of choice for home hacking because of its decent unicode support. (Although I've had to hack the Python standard library in some places where it didn't properly support unicode. I read the next version of Python (2.6?) will use unicode strings by default, which is great, and only ten years late.) I also sold my soul the other day and installed Visual C# 2008 Express Edition for some hobby hacking. Turned out not very fun though, but I haven't given up yet.

At my previous job I used C++ for doing essentially the same thing as I do in C now. I'm completely convinced that C is the right tool for the job. I'm also convinced C does object orientation better than C++, but that is a topic for another post. And I used to be a Java fan, but now I'm considering Java the best examples of software suckiness ever. It's a volatile industry, technologies come and go, but no amount of blogging will convince me that the C programming language is anything but #1.

I'm saying it because it's true: We'll always have C. Because we've got jobs to do.

Socks: An Engineering Approach

2008-03-12T17:37:00.004+09:00

Socks have an intrinsic tendency to pair themselves with dissimilar socks. I believe overcoming this defect is is one of the great engineering challenges for this century. While walking around in mismatched socks might be perfectly tolerable for some, I believe that even engineers have to uphold some level of civilized behavior, and I have never been fond of pairing socks manually.

Furthermore, my sock stock is growing obsolete. I am sure there are items at least 5 years old in there. I soon realized solving this problem required a radical, new approach. Some might say - a paradigm shift.

So I threw away all my old socks and bought new ones: 15 pairs of the same model of sock. The implication is huge: my socks will now invariably pair themselves up neatly, by the simple process of randomly choosing two socks from a pile. (And it's a nice model of sock - black and nifty enough to be worn with a suit.)

But I also need to establish a maintenance process. This model will go out of sale. Strange as it may seem, sock vendors do not provide End Of Service agreements even for small-enterprise customers such as myself, so you never know when this will be. It's safest to assume that once the items have been acquired, replacements are no longer available on the market.

So what I'm thinking is that when I'm - due to wear-and-tear, lossage, etc - down to, say, 12 pairs, I'll buy 15 new pairs of some other model. This of course will mean that the automatic pairing property breaks, but it will still be extremely simple to manually match the socks into two piles, for both of which the property holds.

Once one stock falls to, say, 9 pairs, then that model will be brought out of circulation - they will probably be approaching their natural end-of-life date by then anyway and already written off. So then I'll purchase a new set of 15 pairs. Again, a new model can be chosen to offset changes in taste over the life cycle period.

This means that there will never be more than two models in circulation simultaneously, thus the amount of manual sorting required will be kept at a minimum. And, once in the loop, there will always be at least 24 and at most 27 pairs in circulation, using the numbers I've conjectured above. These numbers will be tweaked based on gathered real-world usage data.

Of course, the exact number of socks in circulation at a given time will have to be estimated from observed data, which will be imperfect because of socks' other intrinsic property of showing up at indeterministic locations. If, due to inconsistency, an older generation model of sock - one already taken out of service - is suddenly found, it will have to be immediately disposed of.

This should solve all my sock problems.

Japanese studies - JLPT - passing the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 1

2008-02-24T20:47:00.012+09:00

After having spent last year mostly away from language studies, doing web technology stuff and other programming projects, this year I find myself spending much of my spare time on improving my Japanese. My goal is to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) level 1 - the highest level - this year. And not only pass it, but pass it with a good margin, or I'm not satisfied.

Two years ago, in 2006, I decided early during the year to take JLPT level 2. I didn't think I'd pass and neither did my Japanese teacher, but study I did and pass it I did with a score of 81% (60% is necessary to pass). This year I am aiming for over 80% again, preferably closer to 90% (for level 1, 70% is necessary to pass).

But this time I'm using different methods than I did in 2006 to pass JLPT level 2. Back then, I spent time studying kanji, memorizing grammatical patterns, and doing reading exercises from a course book featuring the same kind of texts and questions that appear on the actual test, and also a similar course book for listening. I used the UNICOM books targeting JLPT2, and found the reading and listening books very good, albeit short. I also bought the grammar and vocabulary books, but they were not good. For grammar and vocabulary, I found two books called 日本語総まとめ問題集 grammar (文法編) and vocabulary (語彙編) that were very good. Pictures and fun all over.

For reference, my strong point then was writing/vocabulary, and the weak point was listening. People say if you live in Japan, listening is easy because you hear Japanese all day, but it wasn't for me. After the test I bought a TV, mostly to improve my listening.

This year I've also got the Unicom books, and the Kanzen master grammar and kanji/vocabulary books. As before, I think the Unicom reading book is great, but still short. I haven't tried the listening book yet. As I wrote I was using different methods. Except for the reading comprehension, but that doesn't take you very far since the book is so short. The theme for learning Japanese this year is having fun doing it.

I'm not studying kanji this year. One reason is that kanji is no longer a problem (relatively, of course). The other is that I think I will pick up enough kanji from increased reading. Also if you get dwelling on all the peculiarities of kanji, you risk spending too much time on that. At least I do, since I find the peculiarities interesting.

Grammar: I'm no longer memorizing patterns and functions, I'm copying all the example sentences from the Kanzen master book to flash cards and drilling them. Writing the flash cards is tedious, but drilling them is not (particularly). I'm writing on average about 4 example sentences for around 200 grammatical patterns. I plan to finish next month... I go through some of these flash cards on average a few times every day.

My thinking is that instead of, like I did on the JLPT 2 test, analyzing the grammatical structure of the sentence and remembering how the four alternative answers fit into that structure, this year my brain will do all pattern matching work for me. Like "this reminds me of that sentence, so that answer it is". On top of that, it's great for learnign vocabulary and expressions as well!

But that's all old school - the core of this poodle consists of something entirely different! The first one is reading books. Real books, in Japanese. When you get to JLPT1 level that is very much possible. I was planning to start reading books this summer, hoping to have picked up enough grammar and vocabulary by then. But then my workmate told me he's been reading the Harry Potter series in Japanese and recommended them for simple reading. So I borrowed the first book from him and started reading it - and now I'm hooked. Not hooked on Harry Potter, but on reading books in Japanese.

Harry Potter is really good, since it includes furigana for pretty much all kanji. One could argue this is not good for learning kanji, but I think it is. I don't want to learn incorrect readings - I might think I know the reading when in fact I have just made it up myself, and anyway as I mentioned before I'm not focusing on kanji - I think that will come by itself. Harry Potter is also good because it's a Western book. That makes it easier to read when even when you don't have 100% comprehension - at least you don't have to struggle with cultural understanding. The story isn't very complicated either.

So that's one thing: reading books in Japanese. Grammar, vocabulary, expressions, and reading speed all at once, and it's fun. The other revolutionary idea came from the same coworker. He had an old, analog radio on his desk at work for a while. I work in a high tech software company targeting the next, successor of the next, successor of the successor of the next, and successor of the successor of the successor of the next series Japanese mobile phones. Having an analog radio on your desk is weird. Initially I just thought it eccentric. But then it hit me: how much time I've spent looking for good Japanese podcasts, online radio, and just about any piece of spoken Japanese on the web. A cheap-ass analog radio is actually all that you need! Free (if you avoid paying the NHK fee), simple access to spoken Japanese blurted out like there's no tomorrow, any time of the day, on any subject you can think of.

So I got myself a small portable radio for 2,000 yen at the local electronics store in the alley. It's great! I can get on average around 2 hours of listening every work day. At work! It makes both learning Japanese and working fun. I think the radio is what will make the difference between a good score and a great score on the JLPT in December. For anyone in Japan who's above JLPT2 level I'd really recommend it. This year the listening section will be a breeze.

If only one could get some licensing agreement set up to broadcast all Japanese radio on the web for all the people struggling to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test who are not in Japan, that would be great. But probably unfeasible.

The Amazing Language Analyzer Web Application

2008-01-27T15:52:00.001+09:00

"Have you ever wondered what language a blog entry you glanced at might be in?" was the question I set out to work on more than two years ago, if memory serves me right. I always get curious when I see a blog post in an unknown language. I mean not just a language I don't speak - a language I can't identify.

I thought it would be a really hard problem to solve - writing a piece of software that could figure that out. It turned out not to be so hard though. Just hours of programming, and probably a lot of luck. Because my initial hunches on how to tune the algorithms proved to be pretty right, and I was, and still am, really startled at how good the software became.

I released it as the Wørd - Language Analyzer Opera widget. Unfortunately the target audience for Opera widgets is quite small, so I always thought of making it into a web page. I don't know why it took so long, but here it is!

The web page version has some new, cool improvements. It will try to detect as you're typing, for instance. It also has improved support for Swedish, Serbian, and Afrikaans. And the UI is in my opinion better than the widget version.

So please try it yourself and see how it works. It's pretty fun to just copy-paste any piece of text your can find on the Internet into it, or just type something in a language you know yourself and see when it gets it right. Here's the address again:

http://henrikfalck.com/languageanalyzer/

Jumbo Jets vs Embedded Software

2008-01-10T21:26:00.000+09:00

A while ago I bought a book called 747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation by Joe Sutter. Actually I bought it at Hong Kong airport to read on the way home - ironically not by 747 (I don't know what kind of plane it was - so no, I'm not an airplane geek). I bought the book because I was curious to see if the reaction I'd get was "Oh, that's exactly like in embedded software!" or "Oh, so that's how they do it in aeronautical engineering!". It turned out to be the former.

Joe Sutter, the author of the book (although he probably had a lot of help writing it), lead the engineering effort to design the plane, which does seem like the most interesting point of view to me. Beside the main story of how the 747's design came to be, he also tells some quite interesting tidbits from the history of aviation and from the aviation industry. These fit in nicely and makes the pages fly by. Unfortunately, there are a few too many autobiographical digressions that I didn't like, and also the literary quality of the book is very poor, with many repetitions, and sometimes even contradictions. Anyway, not bad for an engineer.

So yes, designing and delivering jumbo jets seems to be very similar to designing and delivering embedded software. The scales are, of course, completely different though. Not only physical scales - where they measure time in months and years, we measure in hours and days - and costs are similarly orders of magnitude higher in aviation.

What struck me as the biggest difference though, when I was sitting on a modern airliner somewhere over the South China Sea while reading the book's introductory chapters on aviation history, was that the jet airplanes he described in the early 1950s (such as the Dash 80), are exactly the same as the jet airplanes now, 50 years later! They fly at the same speed, same altitude, and use basically the same engines. That's really terrible! Commercial aviation has surely come a long way since the Wright Brothers flew, but it did so in the first 50 years of its history. I'm glad I work with software.

Even more sad is that even if you double the speed of an airplane, it would hardly make any difference today anyway. The Americans (I didn't know that before reading the book), Europeans, and Russians all had their fun trying to make realistic supersonic commercial airplanes. But even if they had succeeded, how much of the total time spent traveling is really spent in the air, at cruise speed, anyway?

For example: from my home in central Tokyo to somewhere in central Hong Kong, which seems like a fairly typical scenario, the flight time is on average about 4 hours. Say you have to be at the airport 1.5 h before the flight, and it takes 1 h to get from the airplane out of the airport, 1.5 h for me to go to Narita airport, and 30 min to get to/from Hong Kong airport, and an extra 15 min in either end to go between stations/taxis etc - that's 5 hours! So even if the speed of the airplane doubled, you'd only get between where you are and where you want to go 20% faster. No, if anything close to aviation, I'd like to be an airport architect, city planner, and anti-anti-terrorist consultant. That would speed things up.

PS. I always thought of the Jumbo Jet as the airplane with two floors, but a significant part of the book is spent revealing how it came to be that the 747 ended up basically not having two floors! How strange.

Lessons learned in Scotland

2007-12-18T08:48:00.001+09:00

I've now been working for five weeks at Picsel Technologies. The last two of which I spent at company HQ outside Glasgow, and the branch office in Edinburgh, going through training and meeting people. The group of new recruits I was with for the first week was very varied, with men and women of varying ages (I was most likely the youngest) and nationalities and home countries. All had very solid software engineering backgrounds though...

So far I'm quite satisfied with my change of workplace. Although I still only work with Japanese mobile phones, which is probably one of the most interesting thing one can work with, I now get to deliver to all the major operators, manufacturers, and platforms. The engineering processes at Picsel are pretty solid, and the quality of the software is sincerely impressive, which makes developing software there feel meaningful.

The training, on the other hand, was of more varying quality, but at least included some new and interesting material towards the end, even stuff worth putting in the resume. Scotland, however, is frankly one hell of a shit-hole, especially I suppose in December, and I wouldn't recommend anyone to set foot anywhere near it, which includes the whole of Britain, and possibly all of Europe as well. After a few years in Japan, it's hard to take the rudeness, impoliteness, and untimeliness one has to endure in the outside world.

How to get a Japanese driver's license

2007-10-30T11:42:00.000+09:00

... if you're from, and have a driver's license from, a country that is on the list of countries that are allowed to just "switch" to a Japanese license. That means if you're from the US or China, for example, which are not on this list, then you should read elsewhere. I've found there's already lots of US-centric information about getting a Japanese driver's license on the web. You'll have to take driving tests etc. Sorry.

Anyway, for those of us who are from a civilized part of the world, it's actually a very simple task! You will need to prepare five things: Your valid driver's license from your home country, a certified translation of your driver's license, a photo, money, and a passport that shows (through the universally accepted cryptographically secure method of embarkation/disembarkation stamps) that you've lived in your home country for at least three months since acquiring your driver's license. Let's go through these in detail.

1. Valid driver's license
From your home country. I don't know what happens if your driver's license is from a country other than that of which you are a citizen. It'll probably be trouble.

2. Certified translation of your driver's license
You can get this at your country's embassy in Japan. For Swedes, this translation service is available on Monday mornings, and costs 2,400 yen. They translate your driver's license and give you a paper certifying the authenticity of the translation.

3. Driver's license-sized photo 30x24 mm. Photo booths in Japan have an option for this size called "driver's license", or something. Interestingly, this photo is used for your application only, i.e. not on the driver's license itself, so it doesn't matter if you look like a dork in it (you don't look like a dork anyway, do you?). They'll take the photo for the actual driver's license for you at the driver's license office.

4. Money
It costs 4,500 yen. No so bad... You trade the money in for the equivalent in stamps at a place in the license office that sells stamps, as is common in Japanese bureaucracy.

5. Passport
You need a passport that shows you've been living (or at least being) in your home country (which we're assuming is also the country that issued your driver's license) for at least three months since the date when you acquired your driver's license. If you haven't been living there for three months, you can't switch to a Japanese driver's license. This is presumably to ensure that people don't just run off to some other country where it's cheaper and easier to get a driver's license.

If you can show you've been living in your home country for at least one year since acquiring your driver's license, you'll be exempt from the one-year newbie period (which means mostly that you have to have silly stickers at the front and back of the car while you're driving).

The procedure
Go to one of the driver's license offices. There are three Driving License Testing and Issuing Centers in Tokyo, in Shinagawa-ku, Koto-ku, and Fuchu-shi. You can find the addresses, as well as some sparse information, on this page. For other prefectures, you'll have to google it yourself. I went to the one in Fuchu, which can be reached by bus 91 from Chofu (Keio line), or by bus from Tama-reien station (also Keio) or Koganei station (on the Chuo line). The bus stop is called, revealingly, Shikenjo Seimon (試験場正門). They have lunch breaks so get there early.

Find the counter for changing a foreign driver's license to a Japanese driver's license. Look for the word 切り替え/切替 kirikae. It's probably close, or the same as, the counter for international driver's licenses. But you don't want one of those. In the Fuchu office, it counter number 31 on the 3rd floor. Once there, present all your prepared materials at the counter. They will then take some time to examine your papers and make sure you've lived in your home country for the required amount of time since acquiring your driver's license, etc.

Actually, from there they were very helpful and provided quite clear instructions on what to do (in Japanese). You'll have to go buy a stamp, as mentioned above, and take an eye-test, which takes about 30 seconds and you'll invariably pass it, take a photo for the actual driver's license, and then input two 4-digit pin codes into a machine (smeg knows what they're for). That whole procedure took about 5 minutes.

All of this took about one hour to complete. One of the few non-unpleasant encounters I've had with Japanese bureaucracy. Then you're done, but I had to wait one and a half hour for the actual driver's license card, which you can pick up at an adjacent office. So two and a half hours in total, from arriving at the office until having the license in my hand. Sweet.

Self-fertilization, or: web 3.0, or: Mixi, or: One of those engrish.com moments

2007-09-27T18:39:00.000+09:00

Today I visited the brand new, hip and fancy offices of Mixi (in Harajuku, overlooking Yoyogi Park with a spectacular view of Shinjuku and Shibuya...). Now, my work, both as under-stimulated code monkey (by day) and as a web 3.0 consultant (by night), is of course highly classified shit. But I'd like to write a bit about Mixi, because I find the phenomenon interesting, and I really like Mixi (the site) and visit it daily.

If you haven't heard of Mixi that means you aren't Japanese or Japanophile. To put it generalized and bluntly: Mixi is the only social networking site in Japan. Japan is the second largest economy in the world (★pause for reflection★). The reason it's so popular is basically the same as why Microsoft products are: they were there first, and everyone else uses them, and the basic functionality is actually good.

Mixi, technically, is stone age. Although recently they've introduced video upload etc that we have become accustomed with on the modern web, the basic technology is just server-side perl scripts outputting broken html with a table-based design. In other words: it's web 1.0, although they have a pastel color, but it's the wrong hue, and pastel color alone doesn't make web 2.0 - you need rounded corners and rss too.

But as a consumer-oriented product, Mixi is really state of the art. It's actually statier than the statiest art. I started using the predecessors to nowadays' social networking sites in junior high school, back in Sweden. That was like 10 years ago now I guess. (Heh, when I think back, that was about the time I got my first mobile phone. Was that only ten years ago?!) . Even though they used about the same technology then as Mixi does now, the culture and usage patterns are completely different. They were about kids doing their best to make their pages look as hideous as possible (like today's Myspace) and presenting themselves as generally emo and cool. And guys (both young and very old) trying to pick up young girls, of course. But Mixi is not like that.

Oh well, there's that too. But Mixi is much more woven into the fabric of Japanese society. It's like an ad-sponsored public service page (fortunately, and strangely, the mobile version doesn't have ads). And fortunately, you can't design your own page, and there are no widgets etc, so it's actually possible to browse around people's profiles and community pages. Really nice, although I bet it's more because the Mixi people haven't figured out how to implement it technically than a conscious decision.

I joined Mixi when I realized my Japanese language skillz had gotten good enough for me to actually understand pretty much all of the communication taking place there. And the reason I keep using it is still mostly to practice reading Japanese; every day on the train I read some new, interesting tidbits from the parts of Japanese society that concern me. Like what's happening in my town, what's happening along the train lines I use, what events are going on at my favorite bars and clubs, or if there's a Swedish-speaking off-kai soon (off-kai: オフ会, people who talk online meet up in real life), etc. I give it three thumbs up!

Anyway, now for the real anecdote here, and the reason I figured I'd write this blog post at all: In their reception they had this wall with all kinds of catchy words and phrases written on it in the style of a tag cloud. Very, very web 2.0 hip I must say... If anything proves that you're falling behind current developments in the world of the web, it's that you're trying to mimic a Google office, I'd say. (I'd like my office to look classical and sophisticated, and there's always music in the air.)

Now, you can notice that, just beside "web 3.0", they've included the word "self-fertilization". I don't suppose I'm the only one who kinda gets a bit suspicious because of that. And I find the graphical proximity to "web 3.0" especially intriguing. I don't suppose it's a statement of theirs? Nah, it's probably one of those engrish.com kinda moments, you know, when Japanese people confuse R and L, or use Google Translate to translate business emails. Anyways, it's funny.

Online Sudoku Alpha Release!

2007-09-24T14:38:00.000+09:00

I tried to fight the urge to make a web-based sudoku, but well I just couldn't keep it up, so after I released Minesweeper I got started. Actually one of the reasons I wanted to do it was to see how much could be reused from Minesweeper to Sudoku - after all the basics are the same: a grid game field that the player modifies until it reaches a goal configuration.

But there are big differences as well. Where minesweeper starts with a randomly generated field, sudoku requires a puzzle to be correct, i.e. soluble with only one valid solution. The greatest challenge though, is to rate the difficulty of a given puzzle. Fortunately, I found one good program that can both generate and rate puzzles. My Sudoku game has an online database of thousands of puzzles, separated into five difficulty levels. Of course, it also has online high scores, just like Minesweeper.

I'm calling it an "alpha" though, because I actually suck at sudoku, so I can't really test it myself yet. I've invited people whom I know like solving sudoku puzzles to test it, and you're invited as well! Please add your comments to this blog post, and I will be extremely thankful. Things I'm looking at specifically are:

Are the difficulty levels correctly rated?
Are the puzzles "good"?
How can the interface be improved? I know sudoku software usually has some methods for making notations as you solve the puzzle. The next step will be to add that, but how should they be designed?
Any improvements you'd like to see.
Any bugs you find.

So please, start solving those puzzles! :)
http://henrikfalck.com/sudoku/

What is Web 3.0?

2007-09-18T13:43:00.000+09:00

I found this video today where Eric Schmidt (of Google) answers the question "what is web 3.0?". The guy (with The Christian Look) who asks the question boldly asserts that we know what web 2.0 is... do we? Anyway,

"Web 2.0 is a term that corresponds to Ajax."
My standard answer to "what is web 2.0?" would be something along the lines of "it's about control of users and data", i.e. you build a big web site where users can generate the content, market it, and pray you'll be among the 1% that are somewhat successful. Then you capitalize on providing pieces of that data. Google if anyone should know that. Ajax (or whatever you choose to call it) is a technology that is certainly a part of the modern web, but really, aren't pastel colors and rounded corners more important for a web 2.0 site? even if you build it with old-fashioned server-side scripts only. Ajax as a technology is an enabler, not a necessity.

"[Web 3.0] is a different way of building applications."
Yes, maybe that too. The web by the time 3.0 comes around is bound to have some new technology - or rather some new uses of the technologies we have. And this will allow us to make applications in a different way. So the statement is trivially true, but it does not provide a definition or even a speculation of what web 3.0 will be like. Let's move on...

"Web 3.0 will be applications that are pieced together."
This is more interesting. Like mashups? I'm sure all of us computer software users would like to have that. But I'll believe it when I see it: applications from different vendors cooperating. So far unix system tools are the only ones to come close to this ideal. Unfortunately, I don't think this is realistic for web apps.

"The applications are relatively small"
Now this is one of my favorite pet peeves. I nagged a bit about this on my CSS Nite presentation as well: Right now, many people, and especially Apple, are thinking of web apps/widgets/gadgets as small, more-or-less useless applications for trivial tasks such as analog clocks or calculators, or something that in the very least is separated from the tasks of "real" applications. I don't agree with this at all...

Consider Mac OS with its Dashboard (even though it is a great reification of the ideal of web tech-based apps): you have a "normal" mode; your normal apps, running along in their windows as usual, and a "widgets" mode; your normal apps---no wait, these aren't normal apps - these are widgets, special kind of apps made in a special, even naive, kind of way, to be run in a sandbox isolated from your normal desktop working environment. Even Opera has copied this thinking.

This is definitely how it is right now, so I can understand Apple's decision. But I don't think it's how it will be, in the future, boys and girls. Web technology-based application will be just as common as other applications, I think. And in a few years they will be just as big as well. Many have tried to achieve this before - Java and Dotnet come to mind - but web technology has already won. I thought a lot about this, and I'll write about it some time.

"The data is in the cloud"
I want some of what you're smoking too dude, but there is no cloud. Data belongs to somebody, access is restricted, bandwidth is limited. The Internet is not a cloud (it's a series of tubes).

There are a few more goodies in the video. Anyway, what will the web 3.0 be like? I mean, if you can figure that out now, you'll be a billionaire. I think I have pretty decent idea, and I'll continue writing about web 3.0 here in this blog. I think and hope that Google won't be playing a big part in it. (They might be absorbed into something bigger, though).

What's In A Color?

2007-09-06T19:00:00.001+09:00

Cats and kittens, I am finally - after many months of brain draining hard work - ready to present to you my official color palette! So what? you may say. Since I'm also Japan's leading web 3.0 guru, that means these colors will also redefine what web 3.0 means.

I'm a big fan of colors. I love them! And even more - palettes! Palettes are collections of colors that fit well together. I also like painting with water colors. This palette I've developed - originally for paintmyblog.com - is, I would like to claim, the best palette ever. I've given much thought, googling, wikipeding, and time to choosing every single one of these colors. And I've gone through many iterations.

Although it is not out of the question that I might tweak a shade or hue here or there, I am prepared to announce this the final 1.0 release of my palette. Without further ado, I give you [pause for drama]... the colors.

In order, from right to left, upper to lower (yeah maybe my way of ordering is a bit strange, but that's how it is):

DA70D6 orchid
F400A1 Hollywood cerise
F34723 pomegranate
FF2400 scarlet
FF7E00 amber
800020 Burgundy
FDE910 lemon
BFFF00 lime
00FF7F spring green
808000 olive
228b22 forest green
008080 teal
1C39BB Persian blue
007FFF azure
7DF9FF electric blue
F5F5DC beige
FBCEB1 apricot
CDB891 ecru
EEDC82 flax
734A12 raw umber
C0C0C0 silver
464646 charcoal

These are the only colors I will use in my productions from now on. In fact, since I've been developing this palette for some time now, some of my recent productions, such as paintmyblog.com (ironically that palette is a beta version, not this exact one), and Minesweeper use these colors. Also I think this blog uses only colors from this palette... hmm... anyway, I haven't adapted the henrikfalck.com front page yet; it's completely incompatible still.

The Four Best Album Covers of All Time

2007-08-28T22:51:00.001+09:00

Although I'm against buying CDs out of principle (it's a short story), I'm a big fan of album covers. Nice ones, that is. After many years of pondering, I will now humbly present to you the four best designed album covers of all time.

This is not to say these are the best albums, music wise, ever, although all of them are incidentally (or is it?) among my absolute favorite albums. Without further search engine spam, I give you, in somewhat ranked order, the covers of these for respective masterpieces of musical history:

Led Zeppelin
the first album

The cover shows a drawing of a photo of the Hindenburg zeppelin crashing, like a lead zeppelin, and burning. Huge impact, don't you think? The impression is for me just like the music on the album.

Pink Floyd (who else?)
The Dark Side of the Moon

In this case too the cover shadows the mood of the album, in some strange way. It shows a prism refracting white light into the full spectrum of colors - or, of course, the opposite (which I think is the beauty of it). I'm inclined to say the Led Zeppelin cover is the best with this one being second, but, as an aside, for sure The Dark Side of the Moon is the best album ever made music wise.

Deltron 3030

I'm not really sure what the cover of the best hip-hop album ever made is supposed to depict, but also in this case it conveys the theme of the album; the dystopian story of mech pilot/rapper Deltron Zero in the year 3030. It looks like something from an early 20th century science fiction novel a la Metropolis, with people crossing a bridge and entering a sphere-like structure on the other side.

The Music
Welcome to the North

The step from 3rd to 4th place is large. In some way I think this album cover represents many nice ones with a similar theme - sweet harmony of colors and shapes basically. But this album does it best. Unfortunately, I don't get any feeling of connection between the cover and the music on the album. (This second album is quite disappointing compared to The Music's first, self-titled, album anyway.) But anyway, the design is kinda perfect: I mean the colors, the mirroring, all make it look very web 2.0, and yet it definitely doesn't seem to be computer generated. I think they actually set this up in plastics with a real mirror and lights and stuff.

That concludes today's completely subjective listing presented as fact. Isn't it intriguing that two out of four albums here, even though it's supposed to be about design, are theme albums? I really love theme albums. Especially Deltron 3030 - the story it tells from beginning (cameo by my beloved Damon Albarn) to end (cameo Damon Albarn) actually makes a good (somewhat extremely ironic) science fiction story in itself.

Now for some runners-up:

S.P.O.C.K
Where Rockets Fly
cool future/retro drawing

The Soundtrack of Our Lives
A Present from the Past

nice photo and colors, quite simply

Kraftwerk
Trans-Europe Express

it's just über

Embee
Tellings from Solitaria
funkey 60s/70s retro feeling