Curious minds want to know what this accent sounds like. What's the name of the show? Can I find it on you tube?

It's the current NHK morning drama, 「ウェルかめ」。 I can't see it live (NHK is one channel that won't keyhole TV, and I've not signed up for certain VPN service so I can't view from the NHK home page either) but it's available by bittorrent.

He's some employee at the main character's jobsite who has normal speaking parts but he just has a foreign accent, it makes me wonder if he always does or if they're saying "ha, he has a foreign accent!" and he plays it or what.

It would be nice to see a foreign character with no obvious accent sometime, is all.

By the way, I noticed at the top of your page it says "akibare.org" so I typed it in. And I found an unko page. XD I was amused.

Also XD I just noticed the link to the 漢検 thingy. This is especially funny because I saw an ad for it on the train on my way home from work the other day. They gave three example sentences and you had to pick out the wrong kanji. It looked neat, but I failed...and it was level 2!

I can't remember where I have a link to to that (it's terrible!) but as far as 漢検 goes level 2 is high and respectable. I think it's only 準二級 that kids finished with junior high (so, done with official required education) are supposed to challenge.

I want to take this test now!

You should be able to easily, in Japan. Mostly kids take it in school if they take it, but there's public offerings.

Whether you ever take it or not though the study guides for it are worthwhile. Also they make a character guide for the 常用漢字 漢検 常用漢字辞典 (link pops to amazon) - I think that's it, anyway, the old edition was brown. It's great, has the modern "need-to-know" stuff all there compactly, plus it's got the stroke order and notes on there about what touches what, etc, so you can have good handwriting (and they test for that).

There aren't regular public offerings abroad, though. Pretty much the only people who take it abroad are kids in Japanese school (either all-day or the Saturday kind). They have to make a special arrangement to offer it for X number of kids, type thing.

Still in the meantime aside from that you can go to any bookstore and just get character quiz books (they will be in the 学習参考書 section). Get the ones aimed at high school entrance 高校入試, there are loads. Do a few as textbooks looking up the answers you don't get (properly studying any letters you don't know, from other reference books), then after a few of those take some as a real test and actually grade them. It's the usual homeschool method, and it means something to tell people that you can reliably do those books.

Thanks for the very detailed response :) It'll help me study my kanji, too, which is something I always need to do. When I'm in Ikebukuro on Tuesday I'll check it out.

あんなのも見つけたんか orz;

It's horrible, many MANY layers of sites ago but at least is still the contents are able to be retrieved from there so なんかそれで安心、か… but... やっぱ本物のデザイナ—に見てもらうと恥ずかしい、ってか　：P

Stuff from 1992 when I first thought "what is this http, is it like ftp?" is probably there somewhere though :)

Man, I'm realizing that list of "learning" stuff is 10 years old. Made in vi on a Sun, why it's alphabet only. I finally got my bookmarks arranged, I should make a goal to make a new list with modern links... thing is search got so much better and browser so much better, I just started using google and bookmarks, so got lazy...

But yeah. I should make a new list, it might be fun.


Edited at 2010-02-07 05:09 pm (UTC)