今日の修行は

違う形で行いました、

という言い訳でもつけてみよう。

シャドーイングをする余裕がなかったけど、新しい仕事が入って結構翻訳の練習はできた。

そして明日も翻訳！

 

シャドーイングもできたらいいな・・・

あっ、記事も読んでねえ！

やっべえ・・・

 

おやすみ

修行 Day 5

今日、海外から遊びにやってきた友達に会いに行く。

とその前に今日の修行の結果

・・・まだまだ満足できない。

今日は、わずか一分間の長さの教材を選んだ。それにもかかわらず、はじめからかみかみでした。

２回目は噛んでも発声しつづける事に努力し、３回目はなんとかちょっとは言えているようになった気がする。

しかし、４回目から３回目まで重なった練習の結果は再現できず、かみまくった上で、「かんじゃった」と意識するたび、わずか０．数秒の油断が当文章のまるまでのつまずきの原因となった。

数字もまた大きかったけど、やっぱり前舌と後舌の切り替えは形になってなくて、噛む原因は舌にあるんじゃないかと推測する。

心理的に考えれば、違った表現、発音を発声する恐れから始まり恥となりうる事実が耳から入る言葉と口からでる音の間を遮っている。

恥は社会では大事な役割がある反面、修行には大きな妨害となりうる。幸い、修行している平日は通常誰もいない時に行われている。

しかし、録音はしている。そして、その音声をいつか先生に渡して聞いていただく。

・・・それはこれから考えないでおこう。

今日の教材： http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/videonews/jnn?a=20160508-00000012-jnn-int

中国 ４月の貿易総額５．８％減、２か月ぶりマイナス

土曜日だー！

Sunday now, but whatever.

GWが終わって、授業は再開した。

土曜日の修行はどうしよう。

今日は修行のスケジュールを決める前から予定があったのでとてもする余裕はなかった。

シャドーイングなどはさておき、土曜日の授業の話をしよう。

毎週土曜の朝は日本語アカデミックライティングの授業である。ほとんどの課題は、話題について原稿用紙に作文を書き（写し）提出する事である。最初の話題はヘッドホンであった。

提出した作文が訂正され返されたらここに写したい。

うん、そうしよう！

修行 Day 4

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

今日妻と一緒に友達の新しいアパートに遊びに行った。いっぱいの人が集まった。バーベキューは美味しかった！

なぜかこういう簡単な事を文章にする時、すごく緊張する。なぜだろうか。

土曜日のアカデミックライティングの先生の影響なんだろうか。

文法や語彙・発音・文章構成にたいして非常に厳しい先生だ。しかし、その厳しさの裏には優しさが感じられる。

今日の修行についてだが

 

 

ちゃんとしたで

まじで

まあ、形がいつもとちょっち違うけど

今回は２回だけ録った。長さは３日目までの修行の倍はあるけど、話す速度はゆっくりだから助かる。

易しくはなかったけどな。

第１回は４段落目で頭がぽーんと白くなってスティーブは聞く事だけに必死になったのである。

第２回は同じところで多少ロスは受けたがリカバリーがまだましだった。

でも、なんつうか・・・まだ聞いてはいないけど、発話している時になまりが感じられる。

 

あ。いい事思いついた。

声優のドラマCDなどをシャドーイングしたい。まずは難易度の低いやつからがいいな。

目標はもちろん、若本。

目指せ、若本！

ぶるるるるるるららららららああああああああああ！

修行３日目 シャドーイング

今日は４テイク録音した。

しかしさすがに舌があまり良く回らなかった。

うまく行く時もあり、聞き取りに集中しすぎて出力もまったくできず時もあった。

振り返って聞きましょう。

 

一回目

さすがに一回目は不慣れな語彙、数字でよくつまずく。

空白も多い。もちろん、言葉になっていないのも多い。

非常に長い空白は、縄跳びに飛び込むタイミングを迷う小学生見たいな思考パターンだろう。いつ入ればいいか分からず、下手に入ればすぐつまずいてしまう恐れに絞られている。

単にしんどいと感じた時もあったな。

次聞こう。

 

二回目

多少ましになっているが、沈黙が無意味なutteranceに入れ替われている感も否定できない。沈黙よりましか。

 

三回目

数字は出せている・・・！沈黙もほとんどない。かなり気合が入れた様子。

妻が梱包素材をいじっている音が目立つな・・・そればかりに夢中になってろくに自分の声も聞いていなかった。

そもそも自分の声が聞きたいわけでもないし・・・あ、ダメだ。集中しよう。これは修行！

今日録音した回の中で一番かもしれない。

 

四回目

口が諦めている。まあ、聞いている側の僕も思考停止状態に近いものだ。

最後のまとめは四回ともなんとかいえている気がする。そこはアナウンサーもゆっくり言ってくれているから当たり前だと思うけどね。

 

残念ながらオーディオソースは録れなかった。

 

明日は楽しい事をシャドーイングしようか。あまりにもかけ離れたらあれだから、ニュース関連、できればファイナンス関連がいいと思う。でも、オーディオソースと合成したファイルを載せたいな。

 

授業で練習したものでもいいかも。

 

修行教材ソース：

NY株反落、世界経済めぐる懸念再燃で（3日）　ロイター 5月4日(水)5時57分配信

貼り付け元  <http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20160504-00010000-reutv-brf>

修行2日目 シャドーイング

昨日の２番目のニュースを再挑戦した。

 

最初は聞こえるくらいの自信の差。半端なかった！

あくまでも最初だけで、自信だけが・・・（苦笑

 

その今日の１トラック目だが、追いつかない時にすぐ諦め、３割くらいがため息になっている。いや、分かっているよ・・・これは日本人でも難しいと思うよ。悔しい事なんてない。ないはずだけど。録音での悔しさはバレバレだ。

 

主に最後口にした感想、“That was horrible.”こらバレバレだな。

 

２回もやったな、これ。ふむ。２回目は最初n子音につまづいた傾向が聞こえる。な、ん等。

 

そして「し」、「ち」も、聞こえるところは舌の調子が悪いか、運動不足か・・・いや、舌が運動不足なんてありえる？

 

ありえる事にかけよう。

 

運動不足は運動で治る事ができる。下手な舌訓練しても下手だから。運動不足にかけよう。

 

そして、舌がうまくなる事が神様の御心である事を祈ろう。しもべが主が求めないスキルを身についてもためにならないからね。例えば、いくら筋肉が盛っても、見せびらかすためだけであれば自己愛、自己賛美にすぎぬ。主のため、もしくは筋肉がつかない人のために使わなかったら、何のための筋肉だ？

 

よし、続きだ。修行は修行。恥ずかしい事、悔しい事は当たり前な事は日常茶飯。（入力時は最初「にちじょうちゃはん」。「さはん」ですね。すみませんでした。日常チャーハンおいしそｒｙ

 

昨日のニュースを諦めて、今日のニュースに入りました。

 

修行の改善

 一回目

昨日みたいに２つ２回ずつじゃなくて、１つに３回（明日は４、５回）録音する事にした。

第一回は始まる前に口の調子について感想を話した。思うようには動かない。そんな感じ。

やはり追いつかない時はしゃくれるね。でもきれいに発音してるところは（少ないではあるが）昨日と比べたら形になっている気がする。

「さんじゅってん・・・うぬ」ちょっとツボる

空白は多いな。言い直しもある。２回目聞こう。

二回目

練習前にやはり数字や会社名はつまずく事が多い。口の調子についてまた言及。力が入らない感じだからなにかウォーミングアップ運動があればいいかも。

「るなぬなどぅだん」

空白が少なくなってはいるが、悔しい急な吐息も増加。

 あ！クラクション！

「あいびーえんぶ」なんで？なんでIB演武なの？

 

三回目

最初は好調だったけど、やっぱり数字にひっかかる。

 

それでもスティーブは止まらない！

 

走れよ、口！

 

・・・どういう走り方やねん！一人で二人三脚か？！

QWOP? QWOP選手なのか？！

 

最後はなんとかきれいに走り終えた。じゃ、今日は３回分をAudacityに入れて聞き比べしよう。ゴールデンウィークだからこの余裕だな。来週どうなるか分からないけど、分析できる時は分析しよう。

 

聞き比べ

明日から本家のニュースも聞き比べに入れようと思うけど、今日は自分の声だけで。

 

 

耳が・・・耳がぁぁぁ！！！

教材ソース：NY株反発、金融株や消費関連株中心に買い戻し（2日）2016年5月3日　http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20160503-00010000-reutv-brf　ロイター

スティーブの現状 State of the Manly GW Edition

やあ。お久しぶり。

４月を以て大学院生活が開始した。それまでは忙しくて、ブログもろくに更新できなかった。

授業４週目を終えてGWに入りました。だが修行は始まったばっかり。

今日から記事読みとシャドーイングの修行が始まった。朝起きていきなりハードだった。だって、これから２週間の課題はファイナンス。僕からしたらほど遠い分野だから、なじみがないのは当たり前だと分かってる。分かってるけど・・・やっぱり悔しい。

結果は録音しといた。いずれなんらかの形で公開するけど、今日はここまでにする。

Hey. Long time no post.

I started grad shool in April. Before that, I was too busy to update my blog.

The curtain rises on Golden Week as it falls on the fourth week of classes. But my training has just begun.

This morning I started my article reading and shadowing practice. Pretty rough for a morning routine. I mean, the next two weeks I’ll be focusing on the business section. I know nothing about business, so it’s understandable that this would be difficult for me. Understandable… but frustrating.

I recorded the results. I’ll upload them someday, but I’m stopping here for today.

This is who I am (written April 8th, 2016)

I am a Christian.

I am a husband.

I am a linguist.

I am a thinker/problem solver.

I am a video game enthusiast.

I am a man-child.

I think more than I act. I don’t act enough on what I think, and I don’t think enough when I act. I am thinking about how to change this. Hopefully, you can see the issue here.

So first, I thought about how to approach this post. I read in an article about Nintendo’s creative localization team, “The Treehouse,” that the creative process is never finished, it just runs into deadlines and product needs to be turned in. So here is my first post in this format: I have until lunch to deliver these thoughts. After lunch and my ride to school, I will format.

Actually, scratch that. I have a research plan to sum up and translate. Steve Manly, you have 10 minutes on the clock to write out some thoughts, then post it. Go.

LIMITS

People give limits a lot of undeserved guff. There are many limits in place to protect us. This ten minute limit is in place to keep me focused on one topic at a time, and the first I will address is limits.

Over the past few months, I have been fighting time limits, financial limits, physical limits, mental limits, social limits, and emotional limits. I encountered all of these during my application to grad school. It forced me to schedule more strictly, to push myself beyond what I could comprehensively explain at the time to my wife, and to really rethink how I live.

I have grown as a result, but only by the grace of God. When I do not have enough, there the grace of God will be enough for me, and there is where He raises me.

More on this another time.

CREATIVITY

I spend a lot of time in my own head, but less time recording it. One of my goals is to measurably record what is going on in my thinking process to learn how to make my thinking more efficient and productive. This is one of the shapes that will take. As I mentioned, creativity never ends, it just has deadlines. Mine is approaching. Moving on.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

All of this makes perfect sense to me because it all comes from the same source: my head. My biggest challenge is getting this into an externally understandable form. One method would be to temporarily remove myself from these thoughts (hence the journal) and come back to them later. Another is just to bring this to someone and ask them, “Do you get it?” And then get them to explain what parts of the thinking process are missing from the page.

I’ve got a minute to wrap this up. 感想: This was a bit exhilarating. I’ll want to add this to my schedule as a regular exercise. AND there’s the alarm. Next time–schedules and keeping them: routine and self-control.

The Purpose of the Man Cave: Part II

Excavation Blueprint Alterations: Adapting to the Land

I mentioned in my last post that I had a desire to chronicle my thoughts, but my purpose was hazy. I believe the idea came from the suggestion from many fellow Christians to try and keep a journal with my devotionals to track growth. That’s cool, I thought. I know I’m not the same man I was five years ago. I’m not the same man I was when I asked my wife to marry me two years ago. I’m not the man I was during a difficult job transition six months ago. I’m not even the man I was a month ago. I wish I had access to thought logs from each of those periods in my history. I wish I could read through them and see each selfish thought, each self-serving action, and the disappointment I felt at the time. I wish I could read what brought me to repent, what verses spoke to me, and how the Spirit used my surroundings to call me to seek God’s strength to become a better Christian and to love my neighbors.

In all this I thank the work of the Holy Spirit through me and through others, I praise Jesus for His power to transform us and make a new creation in us. He brought forth this growth in His love, and the actions of His Spirit through me were what brought about every positive change and every good work that people may mistakenly credit to me. It was not my willpower or perseverance that changed me, but His love and mercy.

Now, originally, my plan for the blog was to record my growth in different areas. I’d still like to do this. However, I hit a roadblock while thinking about how to go about it. See, around this time I had been questioning what “love” means. Yes, it seems tangential, but it resulted in a change of my worldview that was so radical that I had to rethink my approach to many things, including this journal. If we’re thinking about this in digging terms, I drew up blueprints for a cave before doing a geological survey. After looking deeper, I realized my blueprints needed adjustments. These adjustments would have to be made after a thorough survey.

Digging in Circles

As a Christian, my greatest desire should be to glorify God in all I do. I want my growth to aim for this. I want to grow to focus on God. To chart this growth, I wanted to be able to write candidly and honestly. For this to be possible, I would have to reflect on what I really feel. I would need to examine the state of my heart.

Around that time, during my Bible study and discipleship time with a mentor at church, I kept asking for a definition of love from the Bible. We know the characteristics of love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8—it is patient, kind, does not boast, and so on—but characteristics do not necessarily make a definition. I asked my mentor further. He quoted John 13:15: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (NKJV) He concluded for the time that to lay down one’s life is sacrifice, and the greatest love is the greatest sacrifice—sacrificing one’s life for others—so love is self-sacrifice. In light of this definition of love, I started to reexamine my actions.

Naturally, some concerns arose when I thought about how much this self-examination would cause me to focus on myself. It’s very hard to examine something if you don’t focus on it. It’s hard to sacrifice myself (that is, to love) when I am all I focus on. How could I focus on myself when I knew the key to the growth I desire, a God-centered growth, is to focus on and love (sacrifice myself for) God? I had to think about how to view things. I had to know where to look at myself, how to look at myself, and how to know what was from me and what was from God. In essence, I was asking where God ends and where I begin.

If you find this to be a valid question, I need you to understand something. If your desire is to commit your life to Jesus, to live for Him, then unless you are willing to question the question itself, this is not the right question to ask. Yet I asked it. I asked this question seriously and I got stuck. I caught myself in a paradox. How can I know how to focus on myself without knowing where God ends? How can I see the changes He’s made in me without that focus on the self? As for my relationship with Him, how can I, in good conscience, focus on myself when the Bible says to focus completely on Him? How can I focus on and glorify God with a blog that is focused on me?

If I may go back to Minecraft for a moment, I’d like to talk about a bad habit I have when exploring underground. When I find a natural cave formation, I don’t pay much attention to where I’m going. When this happens, I just run straight forward, placing down torches along the way to follow them back. Sometimes as I place torches down, I’ll follow the natural path of the cave and find myself in front of the torches I placed before. Before a friend taught me how to place torches consistently to lead back to the surface, this would, quite literally, throw me for a loop. I would follow the torches down one direction and end up running into the torches again. I’d follow more torches in another direction and find a dead-end. I’d end up stuck underground, running in circles. I would be walking, but I’d be getting nowhere.

When I was caught in my paradox, it was a similar sensation. I would keep looking for the answer and keep running into the same questions. In Minecraft, when I can’t find my path back I must dig myself out from another direction. When our questions lead us in circles, we need to start asking different questions and even questioning our questions. I realized later that my question was not the proper question, but getting caught in circles led me to dig deeper for the proper purpose.

A Christian’s Purpose and Defining Love

As I continued to meditate on love and God’s purpose for us, I looked deeper into the Bible for what Jesus teaches about love. In Matthew 22:37-38, Jesus answers a Pharisee’s question about the greatest commandment. Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment.” Jesus says that we are commanded to love God. Considering my understanding of love at the time, that love is self-sacrifice, meant that to love God with everything that we have and sacrifice everything we are to Him is not just a good idea, it’s the law! It made sense. In Luke 9:23, we are told to do something similar if we are to follow Jesus. “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” Here is the idea of denying, of sacrificing, the self to follow the Lord. All right, I thought. It doesn’t really answer my concerns about the blog, but if I’m to sacrifice everything, I may need to sacrifice the blog. If this is what God wants, I will do it, because my greatest desire must be to follow Him.

Hold on, though. Jesus doesn’t stop there. Jesus continues in Matthew 22:29, “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” I must love my neighbor. Love is self-sacrifice, so let’s read this again. I must sacrifice myself for my neighbor. All right, that makes sense, too. It’s hard to argue that self-sacrifice for the sake of others is not love. Let’s finish looking at the verse, then. You shall sacrifice yourself for your neighbor as you would sacrifice yourself for yourself.

Wait.

Ok, wait.

Ow. Thinking back to this is literally causing a dull pain in the back of my head. My mind is trying to reconcile the idea of sacrificing myself FOR myself. I mean, I can easily say, “For the sake of the health of my body, I will sacrifice my freedom to eat this delicious-looking cheesecake.” That is self-sacrifice for the self. But there’s still a problem! We’re to love our neighbor as we love ourselves! I looked in numerous English translations and the “as” was still the same. “As” didn’t change. “As” has more than one nuance in English, so which one should we be reading into here? I mean, a man can lay down his life for a friend, but this is certainly a greater degree of love than we can afford ourselves, isn’t it? How can we lay down our lives for ourselves in the same way, at the same time?

I decided to study these verses, and I was blessed to find a series of sermons by John Piper on those very verses that helped me understand my current definition of love. In Part III, I will record my findings from John Piper’s message and my own study and relationship with God.

The Purpose of the Man Cave: Part I

Thanks to everyone who has read any of my writing up to this point. I appreciate the patience it takes to read to the end of any large wall of text, if for no other reason than that I also have a hard time doing so.

The more I write, speak, and interact with others, the more I observe and experience the need for purpose. The clearer the purpose is, the more effective the thing made for that purpose—be it action, speech, or tool. Many times I write only for the purpose of chronicling my thoughts. As vivid as these thoughts are when they first appear, they sift out of my brain like water through clasped hands. Because I knew that much about myself, I wanted to observe these thoughts through newer perspectives. The primary purpose of my blog was self-observation, but what drove me to observe myself? Where did the desire to catalog and analyze myself come from? Well, that would be another question of purpose. What purpose does this observation serve? And what does it have to do with “digging a man cave?”

The Man Cave: Digging and Dabbling

When my wife and I were looking for an apartment to start our lives together, I wanted a “man cave.” If you’re not familiar with this term, you may think of it as a room set apart for purposes of primary, if not exclusive, use by a specific man. I believe the “study” served a similar purpose, but without expressly being for a man. I wanted a room set apart for myself to set up my games, computer, entertainment equipment, and other various toys. This is why we went with the term “man cave” instead of “study;” the only studying that would be happening in there would be studying of video game strategies.

The Lord has seen fit to bless me with a wife who enjoys video games, and she liked the idea of having a section of the apartment dedicated to my entertainment equipment, provided we call it the “play cave.” When it came down to finding our first home together, we had to face reality. Our most luxurious choices in our city, price range and cultural access (foreigners face hurdles when finding a place to live in Japan) had enough room to live in, but not enough to dedicate to one party or the other. An isolated man cave is not an option. The only doors with locks inside the apartment are the bathroom door and the shower door. And the shower door isn’t even completely opaque, nor does the lock provide any actual security since you can unlock it with a finger and no tools. Without going to deep into it, this creates anxiety for me whenever anyone else is in my apartment, including my wife.

When one such as I lacks a place to come to disconnect and recharge, he will usually try to make one. I thought about what I would need in a place of my own and what would make it my own, and then thought of how I could make this place, this “man cave.” I did what most people with limited physical options would do: make a place on the internet. Before I knew what to do with it, I started to dig to make space to do what I wanted.

The Minecraft Allegory

If any of you have played Minecraft, but like me are not very artistically creative, you’ll find that the first thing you want to do is explore. A vast land generates in front of you when the game starts, and in the beginning you are provided with one thing: freedom.

There’s a catch, though. Your game starts at noon Minecraft time, and monsters come out at night. When the sun goes down, you’ll need walls to protect you from the things around you.

If you know what you’re doing, you can punch trees, make tools, craft a workbench and furnace and build a house from wooden planks before the end of your first day and be perfectly comfortable before expanding. These are actions a Minecraft player with knowledge of the game would take right away. They are the house builders.

If it’s your first time though, you may get too caught up exploring to get anything done before the first night falls, and that’s when the reality of the game hits you. You may not survive your first night. To survive, you must adapt. Hopefully during your 10 minutes of daylight you learned to break blocks and place them, because the fastest way to be safe that first night is to dig and seal yourself in. These are the cave dwellers.

I am not an efficient house builder. Even now when I start a game of Minecraft I take a bit too long exploring my surroundings and thinking about all the great things I could do in this place, and it starts getting dark. I quickly make some torches and dig a hole in a mountain and wait for sunlight. This becomes my first base. This is where I put my tools and valuables. I have dug a cave, and its walls protect me from what is outside. When the sun comes back up, I can leave the cave and venture out. Exploring is fun, but I feel safest in the cave. Much of my creative work takes place in there, so I dig deeper and the cave expands

When I started my blog, “Digging the Man Cave” (working title), I wanted a place to express myself creatively without worrying about my surroundings. I had things I wanted to do, so many ideas, and nowhere to put them. I had also become increasingly aware that not everyone understood what I was trying to say or how my thought process worked, so I wanted to start recording it. I wanted a place to put my thoughts: my valuables. And recorded is all they will stay until I figure out how to use them. My thoughts are like all the baubles I find in Minecraft before I figure out how to use them. Sometimes I think of a short story or have an internal dialogue that I want to record but don’t know what use it is. Whether it’s a diamond or zombie meat, I pick it up and put it away for later. Maybe I’ll figure out how to use it. And I do all these things in the safety of my man cave.

image used without permission from gamesminecraft.org