Now that I have the Cowon A2, I pretty much have no need to talk to other people. Notice I said other people, because I do talk to the Cowon and I pretty much consider it a person.
Me: I'm so sad.
Cowon: Cheer up. I'll sing you a happy MP3 compressed format song.
Me: I'm so happy.
Cowon: Cool. Let's stay in and watch a movie then. How does a bootleg version of
V for Vendetta sound?
Me: I'm so lost.
Cowon: Silly Joe. I have a map.
Me: I need intellectual stimulation.
Cowon: I'll recite to you an audio book: A Short History on Nearly everything or the Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking?
Me: I'm sorry Cowon. I need something you can't give me. I need the physical intimacy of a woman.
Cowon: Might I tempt you instead to view the lastest censored Japanese porn? Or is Hentai more your pleasure?
Me: We can't have conversations.
Cowon: Oh but we can. Even better. How about a conversation in Japanese. I'll teach you.
As my friend Cliff once pointed out to me, I have a tendency to comprehensively involve myself into something that interests me. The lastest example was poker and so I watched all the WPT DVDs, read 5-6 poker books, spread sheeted my results and analyzed my game on a daily basis. Before that I wanted to be a professional gamer in Starcraft, and I won't admit the things I did for that lil adventure. Now I'm trying to learn Japanese, and although I do not have the same level of motivation I had for poker or videogames, I know this will be a practical obsession (although poker was financially practical).
Now, I want to learn Japanese.
It will not be an uncommon sight for my neighbours of this area to see me walking down the street reciting basic Japanese phrases: "Excuse me, do you understand english?"
I have the
Primsleur Japanese level 1-3 audio program as well as the
Subliminal Japanese audio program (my parents will be happy to know -- and I have no idea how they found my new webpage -- I also have, for the hell of it, the Vietnamese audio also. PS Whatever happened to the day when my father couldn't double click open a program quick enough or when he would scream in urgency every time an MSN messenger contact came online "JOE! JOE! KEVIN73 HAS JUST LOGGED ON!!" 5 minutes later "JOE, HEY JOE SXCBOY HAS JUST LOGGED ON! WHAT SHOULD I DO?" Now he's unearthing secret blogs that moved urls. What is the world coming to?)
I also have the
Learn Japanese NOW! software and the
Rosetta Stone Japanese levels 1 and 2 software. The Rosetta stone one is so much better. It is a combination of games, drills and immersion, the perfect way I like to learn. The name is fitting as you have to decipher the language on your own because they never tell you what the english word is. This makes for active work and rids boring translation memorization. You simply have pictures and the Japanese words. You figure out the rest as you play games and get drilled. It forces me to be unlazy and use my head to decipher and retain.
I also have the
Let's Learn Japanese Basics 1 and 2 television series. I probably won't use this too much because it looks as though it was made in the 70s and the video quality isn't that good.
Finally I have a lot of ebooks like
Japanese for Busy people and
Japanese is possible eBook series.
I find the
Primsleur Japanese audio program to be the perfect partner for my walks to work. I always felt that my hour long round trip walk was a waste of time and now it's an hour a day of language learning.
Ah Cowon. I can't say enough good things about you. I love you so much, but I'll have to replace you after three years when a younger, better looking (super)model comes out. Besides, your battery degrades as you age.
