Dave Dash

So watching Heroes has made me want to learn Japanese again. I’ve noticed that one difficult thing is using hiragana-only to learn Japanese. Here’s the same sentence that means The book is good:

1. hon wa ii desu.
2. ほんはいいです。
3. 本はいいです。

The problem for me isn’t the script, it’s the spaces. It’s very easy for me to read the first one and know that there’s different words.

The second example is in hiragana only. There’s no way of knowing (unless you know the language) what the different characters represent. It’s all one space-less sentence.

The third example is actually quite easy to read in comparison to the second. The kanji for book is easily recognized.

I’ve been doing the Rosetta Stone Japanese lessons and I go through the lessons three times. Once to just figure out what words are what and what is a part of speech, so Romanji (the first one) is best. Then I go through it to torture myself using hiragana. Then I use the kanji which are just symbols that represent things, thus making it easy to say, “oh yeah, that’s a book, that’s a tree, that’s an elephant” and immediately answer questions.

Katie and I are “officially” moving to California. A lot of people have been asking questions about this, so I’ll try to create a FAQ:

Why are you moving?

Short answer:

I got a job at Yahoo!/[delicious][]

Long answer:

I work on the symfony project a framework that makes building quality web sites easier. I will be contributing to this project in a way that is beneficial to Yahoo!. Furthermore, Katie and I are looking for an adventure. Moving out of our home in Minneapolis and into a new part of the country will be a big adjustment for us.

Where in California are you moving?

We are moving to the San Francisco Bay area. We will find a place when we arrive. We will likely be in Mountain View or if we can find some place affordable, the City of San Francisco.

When are you moving?

We are moving in early November. I start my job in mid-November.

That’s really soon?

Yes! I know!

What will you do with your house?

We own a duplex, we’ll rent out the half we live in. We’re also finishing up our attic as I type. Initially our good friends Marc and Sadie will live here.

What about your cats?

We are not sure. They will eventually join us in California, but we are not sure if they will come with us right away in November, or later.

You’re going to have a going away party?

Of course, just email me

What about your car/bikes?

Car is being shipped to CA. We bike a lot and intend to do so in California, so we’ll be moving our bikes as well.

Are you excited?

Yes.

What is Katie going to do?

We will be getting an apartment that has a pool. I can only imagine she will spend her days making daiquiris sitting by the pool.