flonnebonne

Hello kaiko_tori_ai! I couldn't reply to your message because of your privacy settings! So I'm posting my reply here instead.

Glad you like my avatar, and go ahead and use it! You mean the "go for it" one, right?

yeah, I didn't even get close to finishing my fic.

Found these old LJ drafts I never posted. It was like, "hello, all this stuff written in the present tense is all past tense now." But I'm too lazy to change anything, so this entry is often in (temporally innaccurate) present tense.

( My students, occasionally they were rather strange )
I know I have more of these partial write-ups sitting around, I just need to find them. :p

This is not actually a proper write-up of my trip to Europe in April/May, it's actually just a cut-and-paste from an email to a friend, but eh, better than nothing, ja?

( Cruising the Mediterranean )

Huh. Suddenly there is stuff happening in Hikago!

hng_deathmatch is an anonymous fic/art/icon/etcetera contest-type-thing...? Participants are pitted against each other and voted on by the bloodthirsty spectators! Losing partcipants get knocked out every round! Sounds interesting...more info here! 

Someone is looking for links to Hikago meta. This is such a good idea.

Layout contest for the hikarunogo community. Oh good. The last layout didn't work on my laptop at all.

I wish I were less busy with summer school right now. X_X

Edit: And there's also the Hikago anonymous kink meme at Dreamwidth! Can't believe I forgot!

La la la, I should write something about Europe but I am too lazy, so I'm posting a lame FF4 fic (if it can be called that) instead.

Title: Lali Ho! Of Dwarves and Men (And Occasionally Women)
Fandom: Final Fantasy IV (Original Game )
Characters: Giott, Luca, cast
Genre: Parody
Spoilers: for the whole game
Rating: K+ for a few bad words
Summary: Have you ever noticed before that the dwarves in FFIV are the most amazingly trusting (gullible) little lumpheads?

( Poor Dwarves )

 

Going to be in Europe until May 18, won't be reading LJ until I get back, ta ta!

...I didn't finish my blind_go fic.  :(

I passed 2-kyuu!! With a solid 79.5%!!! Definitely higher than most of my practice tests! I have got some MAD GUESSING SKILLZ yo.

Writing & Vocab: 90/100
Listening: 74/100
Reading & Grammar: 154/200 (I repeat, MAD GUESSING SKILLZ)
Total: 318/400

Woot woot.

( My point-form essay on why Viera=Elf )

I think I remember someone on my flist describing FFXII as "a good game, FAR too long," which is a good summary of the game if you ask me.

( Thoughts, spoilers, yadda yadda )

Btw, REC ME SOME FICS PLZ. PREFERABLY WITH BALTHIER IN THEM.

So, I've decided that I need to record more of my thoughts and memories about my time in Japan before I forget too many of them.

That said, the following story is not actually about me. It's actually about a friend of a friend of mine.

( Japanese indirectness is indirect )

Whenever I hear stories like this, I always wonder why my town in Japan was so darn normal. Relatively, I mean. Am I culturally thick-skinned? Was it just my poor Japanese, which prevented me from understanding most of the craziness around me? (Probably)

Anyway, does anyone else have stories like this to share?

Title: What Company We Keep
Fandom: Hikaru no Go
Characters: Isumi, Kaga
Spoilers: For the results of the pro exam.
Summary: Kaga, meet Isumi. Isumi, meet Kaga. Hey, you remind me of someone.
Notes: Written for verloren1983 as part of the fifthmus fic exchange. Rather non-canon, seeing as how Kaga and Tsutsui apparently went to the same high school (as evidenced by their matching uniforms in the second character poll of the manga). Ah well, a girl can dream, right?

( What Company We Keep )

The Good Friend by corbeaun makes me so so happy and I can't stop re-reading my favourite parts!! Features Waya, Isumi and Le Ping and messy relationships up the wazoo. Read it!!

Ploughing through the snow
In a 20-horsepower TANK
O'er the cars we go
Laughing all the way MWA HA HA HA

http://gizmodo.com/5105938/obsessively-detailed-wall+e-bento-art-is-way-too-perfect-to-eat

I worry.

Hm, I should go see Wall-E.

So I took the JLPT 2-kyuu test on Sunday, and it was a bit harder than the practice tests, but that's how it always is with me. I get nerves! It makes it hard for me to do the listening portion, especially.

Anyway, it might be presumptive of me to give advice on writing the JLPT, considering that I might not have even PASSED the damn thing (I was getting 70-75 on my practice tests, so there's a chance I messed up and failed), but I figure I should write down my study tips while I still have them fresh in my mind. It's partly for my own benefit--the next time I take the JLPT, I want to study better instead of harder.

( JLPT study tips )

p.s. This Chinese site already has scans of this year's tests (except for 4-kyuu). 0_o

[Edit] This is NOT an ideal way to study Japanese. It is, however, not a bad way to cram for the JLPT.

NOES DON'T LET ME DOWN CHINESE WEBSITES.

I previously found some websites containing old JLPT tests...but alas, the mp3s don't seem to work! Also, jlpt.info seems to be down, which is the site I downloaded old tests from when I was studying for JLPT3. Booo! 

Does anyone happen to have audio files for the old JLPT 2 tests? Heck, if you have pdfs of the old tests too (the ones on the Chinese site are pretty blurry) I'd love to have those as well.

I bought a textbook with old tests in it but it turned out that there were only 2 tests. Thing cost me nearly 50 bucks too. At the bookstore there wasn't a pricetag on it so I naively thought it was selling for the list price (about 2000 yen, or $20) until it got rung up at the cash register for double what I thought it was. GAH! I paid, since the staff had held the book for me and all, and figured that I could return it later, only to find a big NO RETURNS sign on the receipt. WELL THANKS FOR NOT SAYING SO OR POSTING ANY SIGNS IN YOUR STORE BASTARDS. I'm never giving my business to Iwase Books again. Well, not to that particular Iwase Books anyway.

Okay, I'm done being a cheap whiner now. (Just kidding, I'll never be done with that)

Design your own soopahero! In Spanish! No artistic ability or design sense required! I wasted way too much time on this thing and maybe learned a few words of Spanish which I will promptly forget. If I were a Spanish teacher I would totally tell my students to go to this site to learn vocab for parts of the body/clothes.

Here is the thing I designed. I call him Fred. He looks vaguely like Green Arrow if he had blue skin and red hair and wings and a yellow dog. So not like Green Arrow at all. Also, I forgot to colour his moustache and maybe his vest and belt.

Wow, make my LJ profile page more ugly please. Was going to post a screenshot of how awful my profile page looks on my monitor--the words are running into each other!--but decided that would take too much effort and probably everyone is seeing the same thing, right? Or is it just my weird screen resolution on my widescreen laptop?

Anyway, I went to a video game concert last week! I am such a geek.

( Video Games Live concert )

Heh, I actually copied and pasted this description of the concert from an email I sent to my friends. Yay for plagiarizing myself! Saves so much time.

Zzzz. Me go bed now.

PAST TESTS: http://community.livejournal.com/japanese/1434629.html

SOME VERY PRACTICAL ADVICE
"The reading/grammar section is worth 50% of the points on the test. So, it's important you do well on this part. Many people run out of time because the section is so long. I found it helpful to do it this way:
Skip the reading questions and go directly to the grammar questions. Answer them as quickly as possible. If you don't know, just guess and move on. These questions are worth one point each. Finish all the grammar questions within 20 minutes. If you can't, just guess and move on.
Now return to the reading section. I found it helpful to do the reading section in reverse order. The reason is that the questions are arranged from longest reading to shortest reading, so if you go backwards, you can work your way up to the harder, longer passages. Each question here is worth 5 points-- 5x as much as the grammar questions-- so this is where you want to spend most of your time."
(http://nihongoperapera.com/jlpt/2kyuu.html)


If anyone has other resources/advice, I'd be very happy to hear it. :)