works of wanderlust

Category: learning

  • japanese, part two

    How’s it going?

    Hajimemashita  はじめまして。 

    Yesterday was oddly milestone-ish for my language learning. Not only did I hit the two hundred consecutive days in Duolingo, but my second night at my in person language classes went a lot better than the first. Bank on that also in the last couple weeks we have secured tickets to both Ghibli Park and Tokyo Disneyland for our upcoming trip, my immersion into the culture of Japan recently has taken up a good chunk of my brain space.

    Last night in class we spent the first hour working through some common greetings and expressions, and of course the culturally appropriate ways in which to use each of them. I now have a long list of two or three word phrases that I should probably spend the week working to memorize.

    After the break we focused on some of the hiragana and numbers. It’s basically like kindergarten, singing the count to ten song and learning how to draw basic characters.

    Though, I suppose, every technique I’ve tried to date has had a wildly different approach. Duolingo treats you like a cross between a rushed tourist and a language scholar and works through the foundations of the language basics to build grammar and understanding. That audiobook I bought started by throwing complex thoughts at me, like “I’m going to eat sushi at the restaurant tonight with Hana,” and then shifting the words and ideas around in the hopes that understanding is uncovered. My flashcards, of course, are all about rote memorization. And this language course, as it turns out, seems to be a kind of building-blocks of conversation approach where we learn simple phrases and then add to it as we go along.

    My brain is less of a sponge for any of this than I was anticipating. 

    I have been learning words and phrases one day and then feeling them there on the tip of my tongue the next but unable to spit them out. It’s been a grind. Japanese is not for the feint of heart. 

    Many of the people in my class are relative pros, of course. I’m having trouble parsing the participation matrix in this particular set of people which seems to range from absolute beginners (like me, guys who have been dabbling with apps for six months or so) to folks who have obviously studied the language in the variously distant pasts so much so that some seem to have a firm grasp on what we are doing: as if a grade two student showed up in kindergarten and flummoxed the other kids with their proficiency at tying their shoes. You know? 

    I don’t expect proficiency, but having a few dozen things comfortably (and permanently) lodged in the ridges of my grey matter would sure be a quality result here. 

  • japanese, part one-ish

    I have written here previously about a couple of my self-study efforts to start learning Japanese, in part for our upcoming trip to Tokyo, but also just as—well—something interesting to pursue. Skills, languages, all that stuff—it broadens the mind, right?

    I figured I would make my updates a bit more formal because as of last week I signed up for actual in-person lessons. Right-o. Things are getting a bit more serious all of a sudden. The local Japanese Society, a cultural organization made up of and supporting Japanese immigrants happens to have a series of courses to teach the language to anyone interested in learning.

    The first class of my introduction to Japanese is tomorrow evening.

    We have a homework, tests, and cultural things to do in between classes.

    I just passed something like day 175 in Duolingo, and my hiragana and katakana skills are starting to settle into a comfortable familiarity—by which I mean I have about fifty percent recognition of the characters and their sounds. This is probably more-so with the hiragana, for now, but I’m starting to be able to look at characters when I see them out in the wild and sound things out. I mean, I usually don’t have the vocabulary to know what the word means, but I can sound it out—which is a great start, I think.

    I also bought myself a dictionary. That’s it. Nothing special to add about it, other than like any time I bought a translation dictionary it is a fun time looking up words and just flipping around through the pages looking for curiosities. 

    And, less useful but maybe interesting as the project progresses, our next door neighbours are hosting an exchange student from Japan for the year and she has already poked her nose over the fence to say hi (mostly to meet the dog, of course) and maybe there will be some opportunities to speak to her in Japanese when I get some lessons (and verbal confidence) under my belt.

    But the core of it, really, I think is the lessons. Eight weeks of three hour focused instruction before we go, and then I can try the test for the second level course and keep going in the new year and when we’re back from our vacation. By next summer I suppose I could have some serious progress.

  • hobbi-fication

    I resist the label of dilettante.

    That said, it may just be the most accurate representation of my entry-level approach to many of my artistic pursuits. It is, after all, the goal of most anyone to rise above what is largely considered to be a negative branding of one’s effort towards any creative interest. 

    Is labelling something a hobby bad?

    In what is almost certainly a shallow and simplified reply to a deeply complex question, I submit that it is obviously fair for us to grade the effort that one puts into any form of expression, craft, or skilled profession by the level of achievement of an individual in said activity. Yeah. Sure. That is unequivocally fair. We should admire anyone who has created and cultivated their talent to a level largely out of reach from others. We should elevate them in our esteem. We should recoginize achievement where due. And this is even more so the case in a world where such achievement is eclipsed by the corporate patronage that enables it. When nepo-babies like Elon Musk get the credit for great achievement in science and engineering simply because he footed the bill, we very much should look past the douchebag claiming all the credit to those standing in the background who did the actual work, the ones who cultivated their talent and knowledge, sold their skills to a company and built amazing things. So, in brief, I very much do think we should respect game, but also work much harder to respect the game that did the actual work. Our society is really fucked up at this.

    Those folks are at the top of their game.

    I bring this up because yet again I find myself dabbling shallow into one of my many hobbies: music. I wrote about this the other day, and yet in every shape and form you should consider me nothing more than a dabbler in music. A hobbyist. A—gulp—dilettante. I am not a professional. I am not a recording artist. I am not destined to find my way into your playlist any time soon. This is not false modesty. It is the honest confession of a guy who knows just enough to fake his way through. I can play, but that’s about it.

    Is that a bad thing?

    No. I don’t think so. But not everyone would agree. And what it brings me to is the subject of gatekeeping.

    Let’s steer this away from art and music into another example I have found in the wilds of my hobby-filled life: running.

    Running is rife with gatekeeping. It’s a sport, after all. It is, like many things, a skill-based effort to which one’s achievement is directly correlated to many things but deeply, deeply correlated to the quantifiable number of hours and kilometers one runs in training. (There is nuance here, there always is, but bear with me.) Runners who train more generally win more races, while the rest of us earn a participation medal and say things like “it was only a race against myself and my own fitness.”

    And you know what? Lots of, if not most, runners are awesome, welcoming people. I run in a group and our philosophy is that literally anyone is welcome to join in a run and so long as you’re making any effort whatsoever then if we’re faster than you we’ll loop back to keep you with the group. We try very hard not to gatekeep the sport. It’s not perfect but I think it mostly works.

    But I have found so much of the opposite. There are people who train harder and then literally snub those who are slower, run lesser distances, or don’t pass some random threshold of achievement. Which in itself is the tricky point and leading into the point I’m trying to extract from this example. In running there is almost always someone who is faster. There is literally only one fastest guy and one fastest gal—in the whold damn world—and it’s measured and recorded on the regular.  Unless you are that person, you are not the fastest and that “some random threshold” that you have set down as a bar over which there are “runners” on one side and “posers” on the other is just exactly that: random and arbitrary.  Such has been true of every example of gatekeeping I have encountered in running in my eighteen years participating in the sport. Some gatekeeping dork who runs such and such speed or so and so distance looks down on everyone slower than them, and looks up to everyone faster than them, and says there, that’s the line. They’re serious, but these people who don’t achieve as they do are apparently lesser and don’t get the label that goes along with the sport. They’re all hobbyist joggers and I’m the serious runner. 

    Again, this is not common, but these special folks definitely exist and definitely show up at run club or meet ups or race corals or wherever. And they are everywhere. I once had a quasi-coworker who was this very person and who literally looked down their nose at me, rolled their eyes and gave an impolite “hmmph” in race coral because they knew my expected finish was slower than them.

    There is a gate to what is what and they are standing at it keeping it free of the riffraff who don’t make the cut. They are slamming it in the faces of the so-called dilettants and hobbyists behind them. If you are gatekeeping or a gatekeeper type of person, just know that there is probably a special gate for folks like you in the afterlife that you might not be able to walk through either. Rant done.

    How does this relate to music and art and all that other stuff?

    My point is just that there are gatekeepers in everything, for every interest, for any craft, profession, sport, talent, skill, whatever. There will always be those that stand with their hands up and out to tell everyone behind them in acquiring those skills or training those abilities, that to be lesser than the gatekeeper makes one a lesser: overall it makes one merely a hobbyist or a dilettant.

    And on the other side, there will be many more who lend a hand, reach backwards to teach or share knowledge, to build community and extend interest in the field. Game trains the next wave of game, as it were.

    But Brad, you say, one could argue that the label is a little more subtle than raw acheivement. Maybe it is more than gatekeeping on quantifiable ability, right? Maybe there is a vibe associated with hobbyism or being called out as a dilettant. An unseriousness. The dabbler is the guy who is knocking on the walls of the clubhouse trying to get in, but is more interested in the label than the skill. They want to call themselves a runner, but only so they can post race pics on social media. They want to be called an artist but don’t even try to cultivate a style or signature. They desire to fill a chair in a band so they can invite people to watch, but don’t pick up their instrument between concerts to put in the rigor of practice required to hone the talent. What do we make of these people? Are the gatekeepers among us correct in locking the door to folks like that?

    As a certified hobbyist I can tell you that people who are truly terrible and trying to infiltrate a field of art or expertise for giggles and false cred are probably rare exceptions, possibily crafty sociopaths, and there are likely more signs of their unseriousness than simply weak ass skills in a field. 

    What I can also tell you is that more often the apparent unseriousness of a hobbyist is likely due to an extremely high barrier to entry in this modern achievement-based online world. Someone just learning art is never going to be as talented as 95% of the posts in their feed. Someone working full time and trying to train for a marathon on the weekends is never going to beat the twenty-two year old with a track scholarship who is training his ass off and earning the world records.  Someone who picked up an instrument at forty and can only get lessons from instructors used to teaching eight year olds while juggling family life is almost definitely never going to perform in the city’s premier symphony.

    We need to give these folks a break and simply welcome them to the club as people with a shared interest, no?

    As noted, I have been dabbling in one of my hobbies again: music. I have steered my summer into trying to build up my personal knowledge of musical theory and composition, including improvisation and sound design. I haven’t put down my violin, of course, but I have poked the bear of electronic synths and all the complex terminology and methodology around them.  My first blush at this popular but enigmatic field, tho, has been one of the steepest barriers to entry I have encountered in a while. There are countless jargon-laden explanations of the technical features of these tools but when it comes to using them to create music the most common piece of advice I have found is “just play around until you find your sound”—which, of course, is like me telling a new runner just to lace up and jog around until they get faster, find a race and win it. 

    I  have been doing art for most of my life, but when I got interested in watercolours a few years ago I quickly found colour theory tutorials, advice on layering paints, books on technique with endless examples and exercises, and of course classes at the local community centre. 

    When I started running, I joined a run club and learned about gear and training schedules and went for speed training sessions and hill training sessions and got into cross training with friends. 

    “Just play around” was on the table, but was never the whole buffet.  

    I wouldn’t necessarily think of this lack of resources as gatekeeping, but there is a kind of exclusivity to entry that resembles gatekeeping when a hobby, any hobby, doesn’t reach back a hand to pull the dilettants in the direction of something more. 

    I resist the label dilittant, not because it wrong or I am above it, but because it implies an unwelcomeness to some secret club. Far be it from me to judge an entire community based on my week of experience looking for the front door, banging on the walls and asking how do I get inside, how do I learn, how to I get better guys?!  I aspire to rise above and hone skills but I definitely doubt I will get there by dabbling and just “playing around” as it were. 

    For now, it will not disuade me from the effort—and maybe for some that is the whole point, to create a barrier to keep the field small and pure—but as a guy who has done his best to elevate others in fields where I do excel, where I am less likely to be kept from passing the closed gate, I have been the one reaching back to train and pull people along so I naively hope and assume that every field, every art, every sport, every endeavor of creativity or skill has people like that—one just needs to find them—and too, resist the label to keep at it.

    Hobbification is not a bug, after all, it’s a feature of a strong system and the key to bringing new people and new talent on board. And I honestly think that any field worthy of study or interest has reached maturity when it recognizes this and says sure, just “play around” but we’re here when you need to take the next step. 

  • hiragana two

    Our plans to leap over the Pacific are become more real with each passing day, and my progress in dabbling in acquiring at least some Japanese language prior to that trip is progressing with promise.

    Sorta.

    Fluency? Heck no.

    But I am hopeful that I won’t be completely overwhelmed by even simple basics in a radically foreign country (for us, anyhow) by the time we step off that plane.

    For an English-speaking middle-aged guy who was never very good at spoken languages, Japanese has been something of a new yet familiar challenge. I have been using a multi-pronged approach that includes flash cards, Duolingo, online resources and eating large amounts of sushi. The last one probably isn’t helping much, if I’m honest… but I only half contest that because our local sushi place does use hiragana on their menu and it really does lightly boost my confidence as I start to recognize the characters better with each passing visit.

    I also forced myself into a tougher difficulty setting on Duolingo when I just recently realized I could shut off the Romanised hints in the lessons and force myself to start thinking in the hiragana characters and not just the English-like phenomes.

    None of this is an endorsement for Duolingo. I just happened to have an account and I just happened to get it for a student discount because I was registered in University.

    My take on the whole do-it-yourself, language-in-a-can approach is of course, and has always really been, one of cautious skepticism. I’ve generally been poor at languages because ranked in order I would often put my personal verbal communications skills near the bottom of my list, even in English. I won’t say I’m bad at it, but I am much better at writing and visual communication methods. I’m also a bit of an introvert, and as much as I would hesitate to ever use that as an excuse for any kind of failure to participate, I do admit that I am less inclined to strike up conversations in general… and significantly less inclined to strike up conversations in a second language. It’s just a personal quirk that I should probably get over and work on, to be honest. But to that whole point, sitting on the couch and talking to my phone, and getting frustrated because my pronunciation is either wildly off or the speech recognition is weak or maybe I’m just not learning how to talk with Japanese words is something that I do put squarely on my methodology and thus on the effectiveness of these little language lesson services. They are better than nothing, I admit, but by how much I’m yet to be sure.

    That is to say, I could probably learn much better passable Japanese by signing up for a course and being forced to talk to strangers in a classroom a few nights per week than I can ever hope to learn by unlocking little digital badges and gaming the game that I downloaded on my phone.

    And ALL of that is to tell you that what I am actually really feeling good about learning through this app is the written portion of the exam: the hiragana. I probably can’t speak well enough to be understood, and my brain locks up when I try to listen to a spoken phrase and damned if I can remember more than a few dozen words of vocabulary BUT I have started to get my mind around the character set.

    The Wife is in the narrowing of date options phase of trip planning. It may sound slightly insane but our trip window now hinges on the ride maintenance schedule at Tokyo Disneyland. Really. But it seems like we’ll be seeking a pair of seats to Tokyo before the year is out, and that is super-exciting.

    And if nothing else, at least I’ll be able to order us some tea when we arrive.

  • about all the little details.

    As Ferris Beuller wisely reminded us, life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

    I spend a lot of time rushing. And this shortcoming often applies to my painting, as well.

    Of course, one of the so-called rules of watercolour painting that I picked up on early on in my artistic efforts was that in watercolour timing is gosh darn nearly everything. Almost every technique and method somehow relates to the timing of the application of the paint mixture onto the surface during a window of time while there is a certain moisture level on the paper or a particular dryness of the last application or at a very specific moment of diffusion of pigments. Timing can change the final look of a piece dramatically. Vibrancy comes from precision.

    Another of course, because of course, I mistook timing for speed.

    That is to say, I have had this knot in my brain as I reach for my brush to put paint onto the page that precision timing was all about being fast and efficient. I got tangled up in the notion that one wet the page and then zip-zap-zooey one flung the paint around in a glorious way, without hesitation, to create the perfect piece of art. I foolishly thought it was about racing the evaporation of the water.

    And sometimes it is.

    But usually it is not.

    I have learned, slowly, that in fact is goes a lot more like this: some artists are not so much good because they are fast, some artists are fast because they are good.

    short backwards strokes

    Last fall I realized that there was a certain beauty to be found in boundless intracacy. In the details. I dug into the art of sketching backwards from where I usually started. Usually, I would draw the shape of the whole then work inwards to elaborate on the details. A building would materialize as a box on the horizon and then the doors, windows, eaves, ledges, bricks and more would fill in the inside as if I was colouring inside the lines. A tree would begin as a silhouette and then I would scribble in the leaves and the branches and the shadows and all the internal shapes to make it more tree-like.  But taking that backwards, a building might start as  a valance light fixture on a brick wall that extended outward to fill outwards. A tree might start as a collection of inner branch-like shapes with some details leaves and shadows and then maybe only imply that the tree went beyond that. I think our natural inclination is to show the whole, but the edges of objects are only artificial boundaries we impose on them and in telling their stories through art sometimes its the details that are the most interesting.

    I finished the last week of the latest watercolour course just the other night and the instructor mentioned offhand that sometimes he will work on a painting for months, for a couple hours each session a few times per week. He didn’t outright say it, but it pretty much told us that his best work is slow and methodical.

    My goal for this summer is, I think, to narrow in on the details and slow down.

    When I gifted away a bunch of my painting last chrishmus I got asked repeatedly: how long did it take you to paint this?

    I dunno. I’d reply. Like, an hour.

    The paintings were nice. Simply, but nice. A work of efficiency and speed and, yes, even a bit of proficiency in a small handful of watercolour technique that allowed me to work fast—maybe even forced me to work fast.

    But those paintings were only detailed in as much as the randomness of the techniques I used implied detail. There was beauty in randomness. But the detail did not come from precision or intention, rather it fell out of accident and organic chaos, and was good because I had lightly harnessed that randomness.

    Just like when I had to re-teach myself to draw outwards from detail, I think I need to rethink my painting hangups too. What does it mean to paint the details slowly: to start with the heart of what you want to paint and then wrk outwards, rather that trying to affect the whole of the subject to the page and then fill in the bits and pieces with speed and precision?

    I dunno. But it seems like it’s gonna take a lot longer than an hour.