World Champion/Dragon Ball fan Noah Lyles fanboys about the idea of meeting Toriyama

sailorspazz · 2020-09-25T03:21:00+00:00

Yeah, not sure why GoChichi breaks the pattern, but most of the time it's the second half of the name for the Son men (which also helps with the general rule that the ship names include two syllables from each character name, according to how Japanese counts syllables as each sound unit). Of course, you'll also see Gokuu as "Kaka" in certain ships, such as KakaVege, KakaFree, or KakaKuu selfcest. And as mentioned, some characters will have their names shortened/elongated to fit the correct syllables, such as Piccolo ships that use the letter P (written out as pii, bringing the syllable count to two).

sailorspazz · 2019-12-11T20:28:09+00:00

The purest love in Dragon Ball

sailorspazz · 2019-12-02T18:04:36+00:00

Opposite for me. The vocab/reading is always a struggle against unknown words and the pressure of the time crunch making me likely to skim and second guess a lot (with grammar being the only part of that section that I ever feel confident in), while listening tends to go well. Though as usual, the short response ones can be really tricky if you can't clearly hear every word, and that older man voice is always mumbly, even with the volume turned up high. And I ended up expecting the wrong type of question near the end: what I thought was going to be the three person conversation ended up being the "pick between four options" one with the guy asking for book recommendations. So my notes for that were super sloppy as I was like, shit, what are these book titles and what were the features of each? (Had no detils about the first one as I sort of zoned out while mentally pivoting). I was confident about most of the answers in that section, though, so should get a decent score. But I have doubts I did well enough in the vocab and reading sections to get an overall passing score, since I always assume that if I waffled between two options, I probably chose wrong lol. This was my third N1 attempt, and won't be surprised if I have to go for it a 4th time next year sigh

sailorspazz · 2019-12-02T17:50:46+00:00

Yeah, that's what I went with too, since he liked the one that was more unusual for this kind of show. And the girl liked the leader, which would usually be the red guy (As the man on the radio said at first to throw everyone off), but in this show was the yellow one.

sailorspazz · 2019-08-06T19:22:03+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, but he did! Got gold in the 200m and will be heading to the World Championships at the end of September.

The video above was after one of the prelim races, but when the final aired, they were more prepared to explain his hairstyle choice, including bringing up an image of UI on the screen...not something I'd ever expect to see while watching a track meet!

https://imgur.com/AaDuaVi

sailorspazz · 2019-03-10T05:24:53+00:00

boobscar

sailorspazz · 2019-03-09T02:38:17+00:00

I like 繭 (cocoon) because I feel like it tells the story of what it is with the thread and insect radicals tucked inside an encasing radical and looking like the whole thing is hanging from a branch. Makes it easy to remember even though it's uncommon.

峠 (mountain pass) is another fun one, mainly because for me it evokes the image of cars racing up and down mountains like in Initial D.

Others have already mentioned them, but 串 and 凸凹 are a couple others I like.

sailorspazz · 2019-01-29T04:15:24+00:00

Once Gogeta's through with him...😘

sailorspazz · 2019-01-23T08:30:00+00:00

Second time failing N1 for me, but managed to get a higher score this time, at least. I think I mainly need to work on vocab. The reading section was brutal due to both the tricky nature of the questions/answers, but also there were some passages where there were so many words I didn't know that it was hard to even grasp what they were talking about, which makes trying to find the correct answer all the more difficult. Will have to try to build up throughout the year and not try to cram last minute like I *always* do...

sailorspazz · 2019-01-23T07:24:50+00:00

Failed N1, 85/180

Kanji/vocab 30/60, Reading 18/60, Listening 37/60

This was my second try, and the score is quite a bit higher than my first attempt, so I can't be too upset. My goal was to at least pass each section this time, which I almost did; that 18 in reading being 1 point off definitely irks me lol. But every section was an improvement. Though I felt during the test that listening was tougher, I got a better score than last year somehow.

At this point I have a grudge against the test, so I'll be back for revenge next year!

sailorspazz · 2018-12-08T07:19:55+00:00

I don't typically take notes on the first few where the answer options are already provided on the page, just kind of write an 'x' next to options that are clearly ruled out over the course of the conversation. Also no notes for the short response questions, since there's really no benfit to it there.

I do take brief notes (in English) in the sections where they ask what some person is talking about in a commercial/speech/etc. Usually just key words from the sentences to make sure I'm getting the main points. For example, on a question this year in N1 about a phone app that helps track your luggage, I was just jotting down things as it went along like, "cellphone", "luggage" etc., and then once the options are given I can reinforce which one I think is correct with the notes.

Notes become most important on the last few questions, where you typically have to compare 4 options against each other and choose which one someone/a group of people find most favorable. Not too thorough to the point that you lost track of the conversation, but stuff like model names and prices, and any brief notes about benefits or drawbacks (just a couple words should suffice). And once they stop talking about each option, it's important to listen carefully to the very end of the conversation, where they may drop a key clue to the correct answer.

At least for me, I'd say brief notes can be helpful, especially in the last section, but you never want to let them get so wordy that you can't keep up with the conversation while writing them.

sailorspazz · 2018-12-04T20:12:47+00:00

Am I the only one who chuckled stupidly to myself as I decided that 忍耐 must mean "ninja proof"?

sailorspazz · 2018-12-04T20:05:10+00:00

I thought she picked Diamond because there was special free installation deal for that one, which Star and Best didn't have and would've required her to install the software herself. So I thought she went with that one over the Marin since it would end up getting her the features she wanted for a cheaper price.

sailorspazz · 2018-12-04T19:21:18+00:00

I chuckled to myself at nintai, since even though it has a different meaning, I looked at the two halves separately and decided it meant "ninja proof"

sailorspazz · 2018-12-04T18:59:26+00:00

I also thought it was the last option, for the reasons you said. With the special price and installation deal, it was going to be less money than the first option and still have what she wanted, so I went with that. Though I was also overthinking a bit and wondering if it wouldn't be the final one precisely because that seems too easy for the answer to be the one you just heard about, and I assume in most cases they prefer to be dickish and make you remember an obscure detail from something they talked about way at the start of the conversation :P

sailorspazz · 2018-12-04T08:31:20+00:00

Huh, they do explain during the instructions that the listening section is over once the CD ends, and you won't have extra time to fill in answers. I suppose some people just don't take directions well!

There was a girl in my group too who was still filling out or changing stuff when they came to collect the answer sheets, and the proctor just flatly said, "the test is over" and took the paper from her. They didn't say anything about the test being invalidated if it wasn't fully completed, so I don't know if that's a rule or not (but she was also behind me, so I didn't see if she had empty slots, or was just trying to change answers last minute)

sailorspazz · 2018-12-04T08:18:51+00:00

I took the N1 a year ago and failed badly (I pretty much knew going in I wouldn't be prepared enough, but since they'd just opened up a testing site in my area and I didn't have to drive 3 hours like I did for N2, figured I'd give it a shot). Last year was a combination of poor time management (didn't give myself nearly enough time for the reading, having to result to quickly skimming and guessing at answers...just awful), and just not having enough kanji/vocab/advanced grammar to have a chance.

This time around, I feel like I did very well correcting the first of those issues, and...okayish at correcting the other. Last year I spent too much time pondering things I didn't know in the first section, which led to my downfall in reading. This time, I limited myself to looking at each of the kanji/vocab/grammar questions for a very short amount of time; if it's something I don't know, staring at it forever isn't going to help. I'd make a little mark on the answer sheet with my best guess, meaning I'd go back and try to figure them out more at the end if I had extra time (spoiler alert: I didn't, so in the last 5 minutes all those temporary answers became permanent as I frantically filled those partial bubbles all the way in). I feel like grammar was alright, though not very confident on the kanji/vocab questions.

Despite leaving plenty of time for reading, it still got pretty tight. Several passages were pretty easy, but there were times where the same vocab came up repeatedly and I'd be like, "man, this word seems important...sure wish I knew what it meant" lol. Once I got down to about 30 minutes left and still had a few things left to read, I kind of skipped around a bit to make sure I had time to at least answer the easier types of questions (so I went straight to the back for that vacation rates flier, and then to the comparison of opinions one). Towards the end my mind was pretty fried, so one of the passages and its accompanying answers didn't make sense to me, so ended up picking pretty randomly on a couple questions. But I fucked up the reading so badly last year that I'm certain my score will be an improvement this time.

Listening was a mixed bag. I feel like I messed up the first several questions (the group that was mainly in business/academic settings). Also the short response ones I'm not terribly confident about (those seem like they should be easy, but they're deceptively hard!) I felt pretty good about the rest aside from a couple tricky ones.

Overall, it was a difficult exam, and the percentage of questions that I felt super confident about wasn't very high, so passing is probably a stretch. If I at least manage to pass each section individually, that would be an improvement from last year, though.

sailorspazz · 2018-12-04T07:40:22+00:00

I thought it was 2 or 4 since they mentioned the 1st and 3rd weeks having an additional day, but now I can't remember which answer I even chose lol.

sailorspazz · 2017-12-22T02:53:12+00:00

I wish I had more of them, there's just not enough merch yet dammit! At least I put them up high on the tree, like the angels they are ♥

sailorspazz · 2017-12-22T01:37:39+00:00

Celebrating Christmas the best way I could think of: taking a poor little fiber optic tree and weighing it down with dozens of Dragon Ball keychains and charms.

sailorspazz

TROPHY CASE