http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/rss akitainu's latest journal entries Lang-8 Inc. Tue May 29 15:59:26 UTC 2012 Tue May 29 15:59:26 UTC 2012 Lang-8 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Lang-8 The more I work on it, the more I come to notice its difficulty.
I thought about the reason over and over why I feel differently unlike most Japanese feel.
Now I have reached to one conclusion. That is, I do not understand Japanese well. This must be the core of my problem.
I am a native speaker of Japanese and I have even worked as a staff member of correcting essays for high school students who were trying to pass college entrance exams.
However, I have never paid attention to what I say in Japanese and there is no knowing how Japanese is composed of.
That is what native speakers must be. The same could be said to other native language speakers.
Therefore, I decided to pay more attention to and become more conscious of the usage of Japanese in order to improve my Korean.

Posted at Mon Aug 24 14:34:43 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/220339 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/220339 akitainu Mon Aug 24 14:34:43 UTC 2009 I know they are such small things and there is nothing to worry about.
I have this friend who loves sweets among all things, while her husband does not.
She often orders sweets over the Internet. This month, she ordered some pudding.
She ordered twice as much as she had actually ordered.
She might have mistakenly filled in the form.
Anyway, thanks to her mistake, I got some of them from her.
Unfortunately, I am allergic to milk, so I cannot eat pudding, but I could give it to my son.
I told her the truth that I have an allergy to milk that I could not eat it but my son really loved it.
Then she responded without a break, '' My husband doesn't have an allergy to it, but he hates sweets. But this pudding is the only sweets he can eat. He doesn't like it, though, he can eat it.''
Here is one of my seven wonders.
Why does a person try to eat something he/she does not like ?
If it is something that will do you good for your health, like vegetables, then it will be worth trying some.
But what if it is something that is meaningless for your health, is it still worth trying it ?
Thinking about silly things like this is a lot of fun because it is meaningless !


Posted at Thu Aug 13 06:04:54 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/212479 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/212479 akitainu Thu Aug 13 06:04:54 UTC 2009 We usually take days off during the season, which are usually for about a week to go back home and visit the graves of our ancestors'.
We went camping to the sea this summer with our relatives.
It was extremely hot. I always cannot stand the heat.
I like cold. Winter is my season.
I have always wondered why we take days off in the middle of August.
That is nothing but torture for someone who hates summer like me.
We rented a small lodge to sleep in the night.
Even in the night, still was it hot . I tried to sleep, but I kept crawlling on the floor to search for a cooler spot of the floor to cool my body.
I was lying on the spot for a couple of minutes, but as soon as the floor got warm because of my body temperature, then I moved to the cooler spot right away.
I was doing it on and on all night long.
I told myself '' I could rather sleep on the ice''.
I miss winter...




Posted at Wed Aug 12 11:07:14 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/211959 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/211959 akitainu Wed Aug 12 11:07:14 UTC 2009 I have a five year old son who is going to elementary school next year.
One day, I dropped into my friend's house to give her muffins I had made for her mother's coming back from the hospital. Becuase she loves sweets.
In return, she gave me a lot of hand-me-downs of her son's.
He is older and bigger than my son.
I came back home and showed them to my son, saying '' these are from Tomoya'', looking forward to seeing how he would react.
He was looking so happy with all those hand-me-downs as I had expected.
Everytime he gets hand-me-downs from someone, he never fails to try them on. But somehow, that time, he did not.
Maybe he did not want to stop reading a book....
Right after he took a look at the clothes, he said '' please say hi to Tomoya and tell him that I look great in all these clothes''.
'' But you haven't tried them yet'', I said.
'' I know, mom, but please tell him so. '', he said.
I said ''o.k.'' hesitatingly.
I thought about it later why he was saying like that.
I finally noticed that he has been learning to tell white lies to avoid offending other's feelings.
Aside from it is good or bad, it may be a process of growing up.
I

Posted at Mon Aug 10 03:22:46 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/210313 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/210313 akitainu Mon Aug 10 03:22:46 UTC 2009 Personally, I do not use pc words often, not because I am not polite, but because I prefer using simple words.
If you have to describe a thing politely, you usually have to beat around the bush and the sentences are likely to be longer than the original.
Well, I am vertically challenged. I sometimes use pc words like this when I want to make myself a laughing stock to relax people.
These days, ''dekichatta kekkonn'' (shotgun marriage) has been replaced to '' sazukari kon''. ''Sazukaru'' is a very polite way of saying '' being blessed with a child''.
I like this expression, because it sounds devine and beautiful.
But what is wrong about '' dekichatta kekkon'' ? There is nothing that you have to feel ashamed of.
The more you try to hide the thing you think it is undesirable, the more others will try to pick on its fault.
That is quite ironical....

Posted at Sun Aug 09 07:30:14 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/209785 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/209785 akitainu Sun Aug 09 07:30:14 UTC 2009
I have been learning English from an American teacher for two years. But can say ''I am learning English from an American teacher for two years'' too?
If not, can I say ''I am learning English from an American teacher once a week'' ?

When I want to say that I want to cancell the next English lesson, what should I say, except for using the word '' cancell'' ?
I always say to the teacher '' May I cancell the next lesson?'' .
But I want to know other expressions.
I thought about using '' absent'', '' taking a day off'', etc....
But those sound a little strange to me.... I don't know why, though...
Could you help me find out appropriate usage of this kind ?

I have one more question related to the one above.
If I cannot go to the lesson on the day I am supposed to come, but I don't want to cancel the lesson, I just want to shift the day or hours to another time, what should I say?
I always say, '' May I ask you to change the hours of the lesson to ○○? ''
Is this correct ?
Could you tell me more expressions which you think are better?

Thank you for your help, in advance.


Posted at Sat Aug 08 04:11:06 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/209118 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/209118 akitainu Sat Aug 08 04:11:06 UTC 2009 Her husband was arrested first for possessing illegal drugs.
The police investigation finally led to her, which resulted in illegal use.
The police are said to have found a small amout of drugs in her house.
The image of an ideal mother exceeded her real figure.
I wonder where she is now.
There is one thing that I thought was good.
That is, her child was found safe and being looked after by her friend.
What a misfortune for that poor little kid !
He might lose his parents at one time.
I really feel sorry for that boy.


Posted at Fri Aug 07 06:02:37 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/208541 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/208541 akitainu Fri Aug 07 06:02:37 UTC 2009 Would you explain thse sentences below?

1-I can't start the computer. You must have to know a paassword.

This sentence means that a password is necessary. That's what is written in the textbook.
But do you usually say like this above? Like ''you must have to know~''. Is it the same as ''you have to know a password'' ?

2-We might have seen each other before.

Would you change this sentence to an interrogative form?
Is ''Could we have seen each other before?'' o.k. or not ?
"Might we have seen~""sounds strange to me and never heard of it.
But I'm not sure about the sentence I made is correct or not either.

Would you help?


Posted at Thu Aug 06 14:06:56 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/208104 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/208104 akitainu Thu Aug 06 14:06:56 UTC 2009
1-Your nose is bleeding. HAS anybody HIT you?

2-She hasn't been able to play tennis since she BROKE her arm.

Why is it o.k. to use the form of ''have ＋verb'' in the first sentence, but not o.k in the next sentence ?
To me, it looks the same. It is about a matter of time when you did it, right? I can rather understand the second sentence. This one is simple. But is it not o.k. to say ''Your nose is bleeding. Did anybody hit you?''
Would you tell me?

Posted at Thu Aug 06 04:29:00 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/207747 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/207747 akitainu Thu Aug 06 04:29:00 UTC 2009 Tanabata is the day where Orihime and Hikoboshi are believed to meet on the milkyway only once a year.
It is a myth came from China.
There is not enough space to write it all on here.
In short, we make a wish and write it down on a small piece of paper called ''tanzaku'' on that day.
I am not sure what my son made a wish. Maybe he wished that he wanted a lot of toys.
My mother never cared about any celebration days including our birthdays when I was little, so I decided to be sensitive to special days for my son.
I want him to make a lot of childhood memories.

Posted at Tue Aug 04 13:42:46 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/206550 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/206550 akitainu Tue Aug 04 13:42:46 UTC 2009
''The blockbuster pinkiller Bextra was YANKED OFF the market.''

Does the italicized phrase mean ''off the shelf''? I tried to to look it up in the dictionary, but I couldn't find the meaning of it.

I have one more question. This is the one I also found in the Internet.

''If you find your friend making offensive comments at a dinner party, you should absolutely say something. But keep it on the short and sweet side.''

Would you describe the second phrase, '' keep it on the short and sweet side''?

Does it mean that you have to politely and quietly persuade that stupid friend into not making offensive comments anymore? Or any other?

Please help!

Posted at Mon Aug 03 03:10:33 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/205497 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/205497 akitainu Mon Aug 03 03:10:33 UTC 2009 I promised my son to go out and pick some insects in the neighboring little mountain this weekend.
But it's raining. We have had rain three weekends in a row.
I remember that we had little rain last year and I needed to water the plants in our garden.
Things often don't get settled in the middle. Last year, we had hardly rain, but this year, too much.
We want to go out!

Posted at Sun Aug 02 06:45:14 UTC 2009
]]> http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/204916 http://www.lang-8.com/66663/journals/204916 akitainu Sun Aug 02 06:45:14 UTC 2009