A few random thoughts…

 Yesterday, I once again changed my phone into Japanese language mode (having just watched a couple of episodes of pretty princess precure with some friends, my brain just autocompleted/echoed “modo eleganto!” there… 🤦).  I wanted to switch back to google maps in Japanese and the only way to do that on iPhone is to switch the whole OS to Japanese…


I may have answered a question in that process differently than last time because everything is in Japanese now, including all the save menus etc. I don’t recall that from last time lol. Or wwww.


And I have been navigating things from memory of menus and picking up meaning from context (or a few places where I actually know the word AND the kanji (that pairing is suddenly really important lol), like 写真), but that doesn’t help with vocabulary gaining, so I’ve actually been starting to screenshot thing’s and bounce them over to Google translate so that I can grab the Kanji and drop them into shirabe jisho and actually learn them…. 


Anyway, I gained 完了 that way yesterday. I’d cheerfully been tapping on the ok/complete/close option and hadn’t bothered to check the kanji. Then完全 popped up in something today and I already had the stay Kanji and knew the end from安全 & 全然. Fun!


Anyway, my main thoughts here has been about how different Google maps is in Japanese versus American  I don’t think I used it in Japanese since summer 2023 although it might have been spring 2024  It seems to have had an upgrade since then  


The main thing is that it is much more polite in Japanese - it tells you “there is a left turn” rather than “turn left”.


I think I expected or remembered “welcome home” becoming おかえりなさい but what I don’t recall and hadn’t expected was to hear this on arriving at my destination… お疲れ様でした 😊

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The other thing is that I am just starting on my binge watch for my radio show of all 39 episodes and the movie of Revolutionary Girl Utena… and I texted this to a friend and then copied and pasted it here, so I am sorry if that messed the font up… but the benefits, drawbacks, whatever, of me having learned classical greek years ago, long before I ever learned any Japanese are the interesting cross connections my brain sometimes makes…



When I first watched utena and only got a few episodes in, I forget whether I watched the sub or the dub version. I do know that I wouldn’t have understood any of the Japanese if it were the sub. It is very different watching it and understanding even as little Japanese as I do. 


The honorific speech in the little breakout commentary pieces makes it feel very like a Greek chorus from classical plays to me now and I think it is the use of all the sama and gozonji that does that, rather than it just seeming like girls gossiping as a way to frame it and “incidentally” pass on background information.


It’s weird the way it changes it. 



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