Japanese

This isn’t the exciting “Let’s laugh at IE” blogging week. Sorry. I’m in a more mundane mood and after working a full day followed by a three hour foreign language class, my deep energy for anything (let alone a long blog rant) is, shall we say, blunted.

I’ve finished my second Japanese class (of 15 in this term). I do a three hour class every Thursday night, timed just right to allow me to go directly from work without any real dinner.

I’m actually enjoying the class so far though I find the structure to be a little frustrating. It’s hard to pack that much into three hours and I don’t think that the instructor is the most organized. She’s competent and a native speaker but I’m more into formal language structure where we go over grammar, etc. than just loosey goosey “let’s talk!” modes of teaching.

My primary goals for learning Japanese are not around speech, though that is a nice secondary goal. I really want to learn to read so I can use it in future academic work, perhaps, and my current Buddhist work, which is derived from Japan after all. There aren’t many people that I know, only two in fact, in my immediate Buddhist world that can read Japanese.

Obviously, the goal of reading in a language like Japanese (with only three writing systems of which one is foreign in root!) is a big goal. We’ll see how it goes.

One of R’s friends (whom I would like to be a friend but is only really an acquaintance now) has a Japanese degree and has lived in Japan for a bit. I’m thinking of talking to him about paying him to tutor me an hour a week. Realistically, I might get a lot more out of that than I do the class but the combination might work as well.

I guess we can file this entry under “Well, you’ve got your Master’s degree now. What are you going to do with all of that free time?”

Oh, and then I can watch more shows like this as well:

Buddhist Book Buying Day

R and I went out to Saul’s in Berkeley today for lunch. (For those that are in the area, Saul’s is a wonderful New York deli and restaurant which serves some of the best deli food in the area.)

Following food, I made a side trip into Black Oak Books, a few doors down, and made the mistake of going into the Buddhist portion of the used section in the back. I wond up walking out about 30 minutes later with a few hardcover books:

Since I’ve been getting rid of a lot of books lately, it goes against my grain to buy many more but all of these seemed too good to past up when I saw them. We’ll see what I get the time to work through all of them.

Thesis Masochism or “My Thesis is available…”

It is with only a minor feeling of dread that I make this announcement: For the few that have an interest in my Master’s thesis, I’ve made a book form of it available on lulu.com.

Thesis Book Cover

It is relatively short because of the guidelines for my program and I could have gone on at much greater length (ask me sometime about the twenty page fifth chapter that I removed or the whole section on talismans that was excised). For my occultist or cabalistic friends, many of the details will be old hat. Overall, chapters are kept to a fairly concise level without going off in all possible directions.

With these caveats in mind, it is available. I’ve made the PDF file of it freely available to anyone. There is a print version of it as well. The cost for that is the base lulu.com price. I’m not getting a single penny in return for any purchased copies. The print version is largely so that a few people, like my mother, can get decently bound copies of the thesis. For most othes, the PDF file will suffice.

I did purchase a copy of my own thesis (it is, indeed, a sad world) so I could make sure that the page flow, formatting, etc. was correct in book form. On the basis of that, I made a few changes (adding some blank pages in a couple of places and reformatting my table of contents) and also created a much prettier cover.

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