Shooting Star Dreamer

I want to first thank you Rekari-Kun for allowing me just chance to be a contributing author on his blog. It’s an honor to be here and I hope this will become an amazing experience for many others and us. Mangas and animes alike many of the times I feel they listen too much to the audience and twist and turn endings and plots to gain more publicity likes and views. That is an upsetting truth that we can only accept because creative people want their works to be accepted and obsessed over by fans than to be hated and shunned. However, I feel no matter how creative people change their works’endings and plots it can never be able to satisfy the hearts of fans. There will always be those who still hate and shun the ending either way, there will always be hate and unfavor. No matter how hard creative people work they can never understand their fans and must make decisions they see fit for their works. I feel that the manga Hirunaka no Ryuusei is one amazing example of thi...

Almost everyone in life has had a teacher of some kind. However, the level of importance that a teacher has is different. Some people remember certain teachers for life, and others don't think of their teachers at all. For me, I cannot say that I have had many good teachers or many bad ones. I have had a mix of both, but I feel this has benefited me in a way. Now while I talk a lot about Japanese, I don't think I have ever discussed the experience of having an actual Japanese instructor. Taking Japanese formally in class is a lot different than self study. It's the perfect thing for some, but a burden for others. For me, the experience has been somewhat in between. I've struggled a bit in Japanese through my classes, yet I don't feel I would have reached my current level without any help. Still, I practice self study because I want to become the best I can be at Japanese. Regardless, I am very thankful for my teacher. To make things more clear, I take Ja...

No, I haven't forgotten about this series! The speech this time is concerning the topic of favorite places. It was really hard for me to come up with a favorite place, much less describe it. I ended up picking the place I love the most, this world that we live in! As usual, I will post both the speech in Hiragana/Kanji/Katakana and Romaji. Towards the end I will include a rough translation of the speech. I hope you all enjoy this series, because it's a way to bring the formal speech of Japanese to my readers. We hear informal speech all the time in anime, manga, and the like, so I think this a nice breath of fresh air. With that in mind, here we go! 私の好きな場所 私の好きな場所はせかいです。せかいでたくさん人々がいます。そうして、たくさん人々やさしです。私はもっと友達がほしので、もっと人々にあいたいです。でも、私はがいこくごを話すのがじょうずにならなければいけません。 また、せかいはきれいと思います。たとえば、おきい山やきれいうみがあります。私は色々なばしょにいきたいです。 人々が好きだし、せかいはだいじだし、私はせかいにとてもきょみがあります。 みんなさん、せかいはたいせつですか。 Watashi no Suki na Basho Watashi no suki na basho wa sekai desu. Sekai de takus...

With midterms coming to a close for me, I am now regaining a lot of time to continue my Japanese self-study. Luckily, Japanese is always fresh in my mind due to class, but I feel the need to put in extra study time outside of school. Going through textbooks and such is great practice yes, but how about doing something that's fun and smart? I've made learning Japanese and brushing up on it pretty easy with a few simple methods. Use Technology to Your Advantage So you might be asking, what kind of technology? Basically anything that you use on a daily basis, for any amount of time. That means phones, video game consoles, and laptop/computers. In order to get used to a Japanese environment, I turn all my electronics to Japanese. My laptop itself is in Japanese, my Google Chrome is in Japanese, and my Playstation 3 is in Japanese. Give it a try, and if you have trouble trying to change your device's language, Google is always here to help. (Or leave a comment!) ...

I remember a long time ago when I was in middle school, anime was seen as a negative thing. If you liked anime or manga, you were considered weird. For some reason, liking most things that came from a different culture were viewed as wrong. Although I had support at home and around the family, many people still didn't understand my interests. It almost felt like otaku were the minority; that they weren't important or inferior for some reason. Many of us had to hide our interests from our peers, and the ones that didn't, faced many mocking comments and various other forms of bullying. It's like a type of discrimination in a way, not anything to do with race or ethnic groups, but simply for being different . Things started to change when I began my last year of middle school and high school years. I started to be more open about my interests and not worry about people's opinions. I have to say that it was a hard switch, but it was definitely worth it. I att...

A few years back I remember someone posting a particular picture. The image had two sides, one featuring cute anime characters, the other a man in a suit. There were only three words that filled the blank space, which asked "Anime or Success?" When I first saw this picture, I instantly thought it was crazy. In order to become successful we can't enjoy and love anime? What a bunch of garbage that is. However, at that time I was the only one who felt that way. At that point, I didn't really realize that way of thinking that came with such a mindset. Recently, I researched a way of thought process called " Success Without Sacrifice ." There was so little support to this way of thinking, that it was hard for me to find any sort of article that agreed with this point of view. It feels like our society conditions us to think that we have to give up something in order to achieve something else. While this may work for some people, I feel that we are only lim...

"It's just fiction, a mere cartoon. What in the world can you learn from something that's not real?" Day by day I see ecstatic fans lose their burning passion when faced with people who don't support their beliefs. It's happened to me before as I found anime that I relate to greatly. I learn from these various work of art, but they're constantly ridiculed for being "fake." So just like that, people stomp on my dream. "Don't even try relating this to real life, it's nothing like it." What do you mean? Our anime is written by real humans, so how can it not be based on their experiences? The next thing people say is "Well, in real life you can't do all these amazing things that take place in anime. Our world doesn't have these amazing conflicts and battles, it doesn't have all these fictional creatures, and humans are nothing like anime characters. You're just delusional." At this point I coul...

As we move on to the next season, a few of us are still left in the past. An example of such, is me. I haven't finished everything I wanted this season and my watch list has changed immensely, but I hope to catch up to Spring 2014 with the rest of you! For now, I'm currently working on Wake Up Girls! Concerning the idol genre, I haven't really had much experience with these types of anime. When someone says idol the first thing I think of is Vocaloid, and I love Vocaloid. So shouldn't I love real singers too? Well when it comes to Wake Up Girls, the answer is yes. So far I'm loving the anime, and the movie was great. I think that music is a great way to change the world, and it's exciting to watch girls of all ages, live up to this. While I tried out IdolM@ster, Wake Up Girls caught me by the hook due to it's more realistic setting in contrast to the vibrant colors we see throughout anime. I started the anime and I'm around halfway through, bu...

As you may or may not know, when I first started this blog I barely knew any Japanese. Since then, I've been studying on my own and teaching myself, but I never really learned until I started taking classes. However, something that did stick with me was Hiragana and my unique way of memorizing different characters. If you're a creative person, you might be able to understand as well, if not these may not be very helpful. I've begun to practice calligraphy, so took the time to write the original hiragana marking on the left, and my creative version or relation on the right.   Hiragana A ~ Pronounced Ahh Hiragana A ~ One of the easiest ones to remember. I didn't really have any issues learning this, as it looks like a lowercase a as shown in the picture. If you can ignore the t like marking then this should be pretty easy to learn. Hiragana E ~ Pronounced like English's E Hiragana I ~ At first you may think this is a mere parenthesis, and if that he...

Gemini remembers how to dream, you should too! Hello again! I feel like this post is something I should have addressed a long time ago, especially with regards to the name of this blog. I would just like to tell anyone who is reading this, that they have the power to accomplish their dreams, but what good is this advice when you're already given up on believing? If you've given up on your dreams due to some silly notion that you'll never be able to achieve them, please keep reading. Before I created this blog I already had a few big dreams. Wanting to go to Japan is a huge one, as many people are just hoping to find a job in the future that provides them with decent pay. Yet for me, living the simple life wasn't enough. I wanted more from life than money and a basic job, I wanted to go to the place that had everything I loved.  So what did I do? I began researching and desperately trying to learn Japanese, but I never got really far. It was hard for me to lea...

Hello everyone! We've finally reached number #10 in spotlights, so for this post I want to do a collaboration of ten awesome Japanese songs! Enjoy!

Learning Japanese Hello everyone! I've been learning Japanese for a good amount of time now and have made little progress. Before I thought learning focused on memorization of certain words and phrases, but I realized that's not the case. I've been doing some reading, looking up a lot of Japanese learning sites, and it's hard to get much guidance on where to start. So many places to learn, but are they really teaching you the right thing? I just took Japanese wherever I could get it. The site might be shady or fan made, but I desperately wanted to learn. Yeah, that obviously wasn't a good idea. I didn't learn much, and the few things I did learn were either rough phrases or incorrect. If you're stuck in an area like mine, there aren't many opportunities to study Japanese under an instructor. Most of the things I learned have been through anime or my own teaching. Visiting the local Barnes and Noble was also pretty useful. Yet with all...