How to Japanese – Old Edo Great Beer Pub Crawl from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

00:27 This movie was definitely inspired by the song, Van Morrison’s version of “There Stands the Glass.” It pretty much sums up the content of the video – glasses of beer on bar counters.

This is the first video I made with my wide-angle lens. I picked up the lens in Akihabara, had a sandwich at Subway, and then went on a pub crawl. Not a bad night! I think the results are clear – everything would have looked terrible without wide-angle conversion, especially the indoor footage. I use it all the time now.

00:42 I love Dry Dock. The big secret is that although it looks rectangular, it’s actually more triangular in shape on the inside. I’m interested to get a better look inside the kitchen (er, I should say “galley”) to see how much farther it goes back.

00:48 I had my expectations for this beer way too high after reading that Michael Jackson labeled it the best American dry stout. It’s good. Maybe I need to try it again. Dry Dock has a great blog. Sato-san, the master, posts pretty frequently about what they have on tap, different events, magazine articles he’s written/appeared in, and Motocross races. They are pretty intense with the way they clean and care for glassware at Dry Dock. Respect.

01:08 Organic Saison Dupont – nothing noticeably different from the regular Saison Dupont. I have a giant crush on the Houblon lady.

01:26 Another beer I’d like to try again, but I don’t think it would beat Green Flash’s Le Freak, which has to be the pinnacle of Belgian IPAs. I left the case for my new lens on the counter. Right behind the bottle. Doh!

01:40 If you haven’t been to Towers, you are missing out. Especially if you can speak some Japanese. The master is a really funny guy.

02:04 I haven’t been to Bacchus for a while now. Really should make an effort to go. They brew quite a few original beers. I’ve only had this one, but it was solid.

Original post here.

I’m heading home to New Orleans for the first time in two years on Wednesday, so How to Japonese will be on hold until after Golden Week. I’m hoping to make at least one video while home, so check back at some point to see what’s new. Enjoy the 連休! How many days do you have off this year?

Welcome to How to Japonese! Last week I was racked by the sudden fear of a(n unlikely) Blogsome crash, which would leave me with nothing but Word backups of my data, so I went out and got hosting and a domain. Unfortunately the standard spelling of “How to Japanese” is already registered by someone selling a somewhat fishy-looking “CD-ROM”. [Christ, when was the last time you said "CD-ROM" out loud? The person running that site is clearly way old! I especially love the "Tanoshin de kudasai" on this page. ] The only thing I could think up on short notice was to substitute one vowel. Meh. At least the current spelling emphasizes the “po” aspects of the site – I’m not making any cash off this. At least not yet.

Aside from basic layout changes, most everything about the site should be the same. The one thing I’ve added is a twitter badge in the sidebar (under Insta-Hows) for the new How to Japonese twitter account (which is @howtojapanese, with an ‘a’…made it before buying the domain). I plan to post random language info as well as up-to-the-pint information about my drinking plans so that anyone can come and drink along.

今後ともよろしくお願いします！

I’m off this week showing some family and friends around Japan. I thought I’d have time to write, and I actually have prepared some posts, but I want to wait and check them over again before they go up, and there are two small kids that are in the group I’m showing around – I should be getting paid for this (oh wait, I am!). How to Japanese will continue as regularly scheduled next week. Look forward to next week (especially Wednesday).

While I managed to hike 10 kilometers of the actual Great Wall, I was unable to overcome the Great Firewall of China, and therefore unable to update How to Japanese over the past week. As an apology, I’ll try to do a post a day for this week starting shortly after this post.

A few quick notes:

- Barring grievous bodily injury, this blog will be a 月火水 affair.

- I’m importing this blog into facebook, so I may take the freedom to cross-post comments that are helpful. The url if you’re interested and reading on facebook is http://howtojaponese.com .

- This blog grew out of two articles I wrote for the FUJET newsletter. I re-published these articles as the first four entries, hence all the mentioning of "monthly" and homework and whatnot.

- Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to read about. 

I dedicate this blog to two people.

The first is my 6th grade Spanish teacher, Senorita Quimbay. When I started 6th grade I couldn’t speak a word, and she drilled Spanish into my brain. I loved the class. I loved copying my test mistakes twice to earn points. I loved conjugating Spanish verbs. I loved filling in the blanks in our textbook. She was the ruler by which I measured all future language teachers, and only a handful ever equaled her.

The other person is the 12-year-old me who miraculously absorbed Spanish. He always did Spanish homework first. If there was a vocabulary word he didn’t know on a test, he could sit there and, by concentrating, force the word to materialize. Maybe he never really learned to speak it that well, but he did love learning it.

I wish I could’ve started studying Japanese when I was 12, but unfortunately it had to wait until I was 19. By that time my brain had already partially calcified and become unable to learn Japanese to the extent that I could have learned Spanish. No longer able to quickly memorize lists of words or force vocab to appear, I am reduced to hard work and clever thinking. This blog is my thoughts on the Japanese language and learning Japanese.