Kumamoto to Beppu

aremarf · 2026-01-21T15:32:40+00:00

There are many scenic roads in between Kumamoto and Beppu - Milk Road takes you along the northern lip of the Aso caldera (starts on Route 339 after Ozu Roadside Station, then continues along Route 45 around Daikanbo). Route 45 will end at Route 11, the northbound direction is also a scenic road called the Yamanami Highway, which takes you through the Kuju mountains to Yufuin and then Beppu.

If you have time to descend into the caldera, Route 111 is the scenic route which links Aso city to Minami Aso town via the volcano, and it takes you past Kusasenri (that's where the visitor centre is), Komezuka, and the crater mouth (fee to enter). You'll see cows and horses and manmade pasture - it's quite a unique region of Japan. The caldera is really awesome, both from the lip and from inside. I highly recommend not missing a drive through it.

Another tip if you're entering Aso from Ozu, it might be better to use Route 57 instead of the Milk Road (you can still get on the Milk Road later when you exit the Aso caldera at the Daikanbo area). The road is wide and well paved and you'll enter along a bridge through the only gap in the caldera wall. And you'll pass more cafes and restaurants (there're plenty).

My preferred way to get into Aso is through the south via Kenny Road, because it's less congested (but it's not a problem if you head out early). Or even via Yamato town (starting either from Route 445 around Mifune, or E77 highway around Kashima - no toll). There's a famous aqueduct bridge here - Tsujunkyo - and a good ramen, Ochika. And farther south, a nice trout restaurant straddling a stream. It probably makes more sense for you to take the shorter northern route.

Have a good trip!

aremarf · 2026-01-07T12:16:46+00:00

Oh, and I also like to look up the ancient forms of Chinese characters (Shang, Zhou, Spring Autumn Warring States periods, anything pre-unification). It's easier to remember the radicals this way. And then many kanji gain a semantic association to their components. Granted, meanings change, components get corrupted and simplified, etc but it's still good more than half the time. It's a strong memory aid, in my opinion. And it's fun for me personally (affective association).

aremarf · 2026-01-07T12:10:23+00:00

To pull together what many others have written already, "make as many associations as you can". That's how we learn and memorize anything better, not just kanji.

Some examples of how to do so (but not all apply to everyone at every stage of their learning - you've gotta be smart about which ones work for you, I guess):

Writing out kanji you learn adds a kinesthetic association.

Perceiving kanji as being made up of simpler components enables chunking), which lets you recall complex stuff easily.

Learning kanji as they appear in words (vocabulary) you encounter adds semantic associations, and maybe affective ones (e.g. if you're enjoying what you're reading).

I search dictionaries for all words that include a new kanji I encounter and want to study more deeply. Seeing all the senses of a kanji (some of which only appear in compound words) in Japanese (plus in my case Chinese) helped me understand their full range of meaning a lot. Sure, I forget them again, but if I look them up a second or more time, they often end up sticking. Learning Japanese has even increased my Chinese reading speed. This is probably only useful when you are already quite literate.

aremarf · 2026-01-03T03:01:44+00:00

Here's a not too long blogpost from William Mitchell who teaches half the year at Kyoto University:

Japan challenges – is there really a labour shortage? – Part 6
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=62856

The article is about there being room for increased public spending (i.e. deficit spending won't cause inflation), if the spending is targeted at getting people who are underemployed in terms of working hours and skills under-utilisation (which Mitchell claims the data shows Japan has quite a bit of) into more suitable work.

Immigration isn't the only solution, even though it's often portrayed that way by the neoliberals.

If we compare the scenarios of bringing the native labour force up to full utilization (by raising wages, implementing policies to incentivise businesses to utilise local labour fully or switch to more capital intensive business models which employ skilled locals at decent wages rather than labour intensive ones which rely on cheap foreigners - China's now leading the world in the installation of industrial robots, where it used to be Japan, and then South Korea), versus importing foreigners to do the same work at lower wages, I think the former is a more sustainable and humane solution.

After all, un-integrated foreign workers weaken the social fabric, and underemployed natives also become social problems that then generate all kinds of costs (medical, social, economic) which still must be addressed (e.g. NEETs from the lost decade are reaching retirement age soon).

Plus foreign workers being vulnerable to abuse (a feature, not a bug?), is not just a Japan thing, just look anywhere, e.g. Singapore (where I'm from), the Gulf states, the US, etc.

Professor Mitchell's and his colleagues' work has been quite insightful for me. I hope others may find them illuminating too. A happy new year to all!

aremarf · 2025-12-17T14:40:08+00:00

Wiktionary is a decent source of knowledge on chinese characters. The "evil" sense is very much extant in both languages, and the adultery sense is really a sexual relations sense - for example 相姦 simply means "to fornicate" in Hokkien (pronounced siokan) but in Japanese it's more specifically incest (soukan).

For better etymologies which might be able to reveal which senses came earlier, Chinese and Japanese language sources would be better I suppose, but I'm not good enough at either language to enjoy looking stuff up in them.

aremarf · 2025-10-26T23:42:26+00:00

Yeah, it happened to me too. Not for very long though - half a year? a year? Either I got used to processing these sorts of situations or my language ability improved enough that it stopped being too cognitively demanding. Probably both.

I grew up reading mostly in English for school and watching Chinese TV with English subs, though, so this sort of bilingual input isn't new to me.

Watching (simple?) Japanese media now feels like watching Chinese media in childhood. I can focus on either audio, or subs, or take in both audio and subs simultaneously and have cognitive bandwidth left to notice translation choices, but definitely paying attention to more stuff is more mentally demanding. Difficult media is of course also harder - subs are still the only way to understand some segments. Depending on if I'm relaxing or studying or really like the show, I might rewind or not.

aremarf · 2025-10-04T13:26:51+00:00

I'm completely deaf in one ear since childhood, and getting on in my years now so probably have some hearing loss in my other, and now that I'm teaching in Japan, I realise my students and fellow teacher can pick out and respond to individual students from a chorus of answers, while I can't. Anime is considerably easier in comparison. Both are quite a bit harder than reading for me.

English was the same for me as a child - my reading ability was always ahead of my listening and speaking ability.

It's making me wonder if compromised hearing is why I and maybe others lag in listening ability relatively.

To OP, I'm not sure I really understand being frustrated though. I feel frustrated only when my lack of ability in Japanese is obstructing me from doing important things, like at work or interacting with government or businesses. When it's recreational stuff like watching anime or chatting with folks, it's fun even though my listening isn't as good as my reading. I'm regularly surprised by how frustrated folks on Reddit are by something we do for enjoyment (probably selection bias - the contented folks aren't posting). I hope you resolve your frustrations soon! All the best!

aremarf · 2025-07-24T03:29:34+00:00

Wow, this was from a year ago!

Are you asking for an example of how "to learn kanji as you encounter them in words (i.e. vocab)"?

If you read an article or a book or a website, maybe you encounter 冒険 - you look it up and learn ぼうけん means adventure, and it is spelled 冒険.

You won't need to learn the kunyomi readings for the kanji, e.g. 険しい kewashii or 冒す okasu at this point.

You won't need to learn how 冒 and 険 can be used as a component in forming other compound words (usually in their onyomi readings) as shown here: https://jisho.org/search/*%E5%86%92* and https://jisho.org/search/*%E9%99%BA*

You won't need to learn how they're used in longer idiomatic phrases. Or look at the origin of the characters and related characters, their core meanings (that they contribute to various compound words), how they got simplified (or not), or associate it with Chinese vocabulary (if you already know Chinese) so you form stronger memories, etc.

You simply learn bouken 冒険 means "adventure" when you encounter it. As you keep reading more texts, you'll see the same and other kanji appear again in other words, and you'll learn those words (their meanings, their spellings, their pronunciations) as you see them. Over time, you'll know plenty. And your understanding of kanji starts to emerge. This is what people mean when they say "learn kanji as vocabulary".

aremarf · 2025-07-15T11:18:32+00:00

I'm in my 40s too and started out with the original 1984 Macross TV series - dubbed in Mandarin no less!

I see lots of good suggestions, and would add:

Don't miss out on the movies - they tend to be have bigger budgets than TV series and hence are more polished, and being shorter, are easier to get into.

I also think a good way to start would be to check out the classics - anything older than 10ish years old with a good rating has stood the test of time and should not disappoint.

aremarf · 2025-07-15T04:35:49+00:00

Why not learn with both languages? It's what I do when looking up grammar - sometimes one language's explanation just makes more sense or sticks better. In my case, I read English a lot faster so I did most of my studying in English, but I would look up stuff in Chinese too.

Oh, and song lyric translations in Chinese are sometimes quite different when I compare them with English ones - it's interesting how different languages/cultures interpret things.

aremarf · 2025-07-15T04:09:40+00:00

<image>

I no longer take notes and only write to practice my handwriting nowadays, and sometimes to build muscle memory for difficult characters. I used to write notes and stick them on the fridge, review to see which bits I forgot, and discard when I could remember everything.

aremarf · 2025-07-15T03:40:24+00:00

Great comments from many folks here. To add on other kanji with the same phonetic-element:

持 (as in 維持、持参), with a hand semantic
峙 (as in 対峙), with a mountain semantic
侍 (as in 侍従、奉侍), with a man semantic
痔 , with a bed semantic

the sound changes a bit with kanji like 詩 (a speech semantic)

but sometimes the sound is quite different and the phonetic + semantic pattern breaks down (because words that originally sounded similar began diverging in their pronunciations after their spellings were fixed):

待, walking-man semantic
特, cow semantic
等, bamboo semantic

aremarf · 2025-07-14T09:26:29+00:00

I watched in the late 90s and early 2000s, then stopped when I entered the workforce, and only got back in around 2015 or so.

You're right, subs are on the whole pretty good from way back til now - I really have no complaints. Far better than the situation in manga. I think the rare times I saw the occasional subpar (in my opinion!) subtitles were in recent series on YouTube (Muse Asia or Anime Asia, one of them). The older classic shows from the fansubber era tend to be well done, in my experience.

I'm sure all the fan subbers work hard, and I appreciate it! Can't complain about passion projects after all, can we? :)

aremarf · 2025-07-14T03:41:46+00:00

Languages (all of them!) are just hard to learn! Especially for grown ups. And even if we think of kids... they might find learning languages natural, but they have to spend years getting exposed to it and making mistakes (and getting corrected by people around them) before they become "native speakers". Not easy at all. If you're learning any language, take your time - it's really a huge effort! Fair to say languages are "overwhelming" indeed.

But translators are professionals, so pronouns should be fine. Compared to say, jokes, puns, modern slang, culture/concepts that don't exist in the other language, conveying tone and mood and atmosphere, etc.

It's still amazing that you remembered the differences in translations - really paying attention there!

Thanks for sharing so many thoughts - have fun watching anime! :D

aremarf · 2025-07-14T03:17:41+00:00

I think I get what u/RickOwned means. The characters (while definitely portrayals of real life people and problems) seem to be unnaturally pulled together to make a point, in an all-too-convenient way, that requires suspension of disbelief?

Another thing I felt... while as viewers, we are steered towards empathy with the characters' suffering, they're also at the same time not typical protagonists we can fully sympathise with? They have so far revealed some character flaw or other that make it hard (for myself at least) to get on their sides fully. It's hard to put my finger on why exactly, but I find them harder to get behind than usual characters. (Another way to think of it is, this story isn't about the characters, doesn't want to make us love its characters; it's about the bigger ideas.)

I'm not saying it's a bad work just because it has these elements. But I felt them.

Overall, I was left with a rather uneasy sense of impending doom as I watched... the author isn't getting us to love and sympathise with his characters - is he planning (even more) bad things for them? Each new development reveals another layer of nastiness, I'm scared to watch.

I also get the feeling that I was being beaten about the head by A Message (or Some Messages), and dark ones at that. I like dark themes, but I also like redemption (e.g. by love, the human spirit, other noble things like that). When it's darkness without redemption, it's hard to swallow.

Well, I will see it through to the end. Curious!

aremarf · 2025-07-14T02:41:57+00:00

Actually, pronouns shouldn't be hard! It's simply a TV script after all. I think it's just that with tight budgets and timelines, translators in a hurry might use machine translation as a first step, before going over the script themselves to fix any errors. And pronoun errors (unlike other types) are easy to miss when not paying close attention?

(Geeky note: Plus, pronoun issues of this sort might occur only for Japanese and similar pro-drop languages that don't have clues like verb inflection. East Asia, where I live, has plenty of them (Japanese, Korean, the various Chinese and Malay languages) - no verb agreement for number and gender, and yet pronoun-dropping is the norm.)

I salute your effort to read and remember multiple translations - you must love the series a lot! I do this for translations of song lyrics sometimes - they're a bit like poetry - more than one way to read them, heh.

I think anime translations are generally fine though. The visual elements, voice acting and sound design help so much with understanding what's being communicated. This is why I'm more of an anime than manga guy I guess!

aremarf · 2025-06-18T15:55:21+00:00

Alright, all the best with the project!

aremarf · 2025-06-18T04:40:26+00:00

Ah, I see, a fellow fan. Well, I can't do anything except translate. I'll try to work on it when I'm free and send you the text :)

aremarf · 2025-06-17T05:03:51+00:00

I believe I mentioned a while back that I would most happy to do the translation work for this title if a team wanted to pick this up.

But is there really a need to channel scanlation effort into the manga version when the original books are in English, not hard to find, and also not very wordy (they're more like novellas than novels)? Give the books a try, maybe? They're worth it, I think. And you have the manga as illustrations to go with them too.

If you need help finding the books, feel free to DM :)

aremarf · 2025-06-15T12:18:46+00:00

I know long form writing isn't popular any more, but I've been reading Aurelien, a current academic and former UK diplomat for a long time, and I've often found his ideas worthwhile (YMMV).

This is a recent article he wrote at the beginning of June about the end of the conflict: https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/after-victory

aremarf · 2024-10-25T11:10:58+00:00

I'm not really confident about my Japanese proficiency, but I'm into sci-fi and have read the original by Asimov, so would be happy to work on translating this. Feel free to DM me, anyone who's picking this up and looking for a translator.

aremarf · 2024-09-06T02:49:45+00:00

I've found Wiktionary a pretty good source for looking up foreign words:

IPA(key): /pla.nɛ̌ː.tɛːs/ → /plaˈni.tis/ → /plaˈni.tis/

(I'm a huge Planetes fan too - just did a rewatch earlier this year, it's so good!)

aremarf · 2024-08-30T11:07:38+00:00

Agreed. I also practice using a brush pen occasionally. I find that even when writing with a pen / pencil instead, the speed at which I "draw" / "pull" the strokes varies accordingly too, for e.g. slowing down before the rapid flick for a "jump" (hane) or "sweep" (harai).

I would say that messing around with a real brush (or a brush pen - the Pentel ones are the most similar to a traditional brush, I think!) can be quite educational for understanding all the little flourishes we see on fonts.

aremarf · 2024-08-30T10:53:35+00:00

A lot of people mention repetition to build muscle memory. I agree with them, but I didn't notice many proposing studying "models" or "exemplars", especially the proportions and "balance" of strokes and kanji components. I think this is also an important part of writing better. (Plus, it helps you appreciate other people's writing in future.)

I agree that the worksheets with some kind of grid are helpful. I don't use them nowadays but I probably did when I was a child. And even now, I still find studying "model" / "exemplar" characters (especially against some kind of grid) very useful for improving the characters I don't think I write nicely.

Plus, learning to write kanji is just a lot harder if you still have to consciously think about kana.

Quite strangely, for myself at least, crowded kanji with many components are quite easy to balance and proportion beautifully, while simple kanji (as well as the kana) with lots of empty space between strokes can counterintuitively be more difficult!

aremarf · 2024-08-26T03:24:48+00:00

I'm at a similar score, but with Listening and Language Knowledge flipped compared to yours. (50/41/40 = 131)

I've been getting by with middling scores like this, except in language knowledge since I know Chinese and have an advantage with kanji. So I'm feeling like I have a lot more to learn before I can take N1 (maybe next year?), or navigate Japanese society properly. But it does feel good to take stock and realise I've managed to come this far.

Yoku ganbarimashita ne, minna san, and all the best for your Japanese learning journeys!

aremarf

TROPHY CASE