If you haven’t tried out Google’s new igoogle, the personalized homepage that’s a quick and dirty way to simplify your web surfing, you should.  You can create sub-menu pages with themes- for example if you type in “News,” it will suggest a bunch of popular RSS feeds, gadgets, etc.  Type in “Japanese” and it will get you started with a bunch of gadgets like “Kanji of the Day” etc.  Do a search and see what you can find.  I was skeptical, but now I have 4 gadgets on the page that I look at everyday and are good for keeping that kanji section deep in the back of your brain alive.

-MY

In my post on recommended Japanese textbooks, I lamented the lack of decent Kanji textbooks around for intermediate to advanced students. Lately though, I’ve been using a series that somebody told me about by Chieko Kano et al, which divides the Kanji into chunks of 250. I started with “Basic Kanji Book Vol. 2″ (250-500) in order to get some review and a better foundation, and I’m excited to start the next in the series, called Intermediate Kanji Book Vol. 1 (500-750). Here’s a picture of that one:

I was hesitant to get Basic Vol. 2 because a lot of the book’s volume is taken up by space for you to practice writing the character 20 times- which I have seen in a lot of pretty bad Kanji books. It turned out to actually be a nice thing, though, and there are pretty good practice sections for reading and writing- not stellar, but better than I’ve seen elsewhere. It looks like the Intermediate series gets more complex and has a solid approach. Check the detailed reviews at Amazon.

Definitely worth checking out, and for other textbook suggestions see my other post.

-MY

Question of the day: Is this commercial sexist? God knows…

Pretty funny DS commercial.

After long thought, I have decided to enter the political fray with Nihonsukiaqui’s official endorsement of Barack Obama. I hope this is the real tipping point for his momentum in securing the nomination. Here are two clips that show how much Obama inspires and brings out the best in us, US voters and Japanese alike. Boy could I eat an Obama-manju right now! (I don’t care if that’s weird…) The second clip is the full 37 minutes of his most recent speech on race- long but fully inspiring. I recommend watching the whole deal.

Obama-shi, Japan (Clip in Japanese)

Obama’s Speech on Race – March 18, 2008

 Here’s a clip from today’s NHK news.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/toppage/navi/news.html

Go to the “ニュース” link on right side of page for more streaming videos.  (Not as great as Fuji News, those crazy kids, but one day they’ll have the success they deserve)

Funny jp.youtube.com video with PM impersonators…

The first episode of Anpanman sets a high standard:

Right on.

I thought these videos were kind of fun and ridiculous. The first 1000 kanji presented as a meditation. Part 2 is better than Friday Night Lights.