Chapter 1
Audio Files
Dialogs: 1-1 1-2 1-3 1-4 1-5
Vocabulary: 1-1 1-2 1-3 1-4 1-5
Mail Messages: 1-1 1-2 1-3 1-4 1-5
Additional vocabulary to help you understand things your teacher might say:
字 (Characters)
Kanji
Download Intermediate Japanese Kanji flashcards here. For great results, print them out on punch-out business card paper or card stock.
Web Activities
1-1 地図: Use his map.
1-2 Practice Time: Here is a link for JR 北海道. Click on a departure city and then a destination city to begin. Then choose your date and time of departure. After clicking on the button on the right below the box, several train options will be displayed.
1-5 Small Group Practice 2: Verb flash cards dictionary form 〜ます form combination
Techno Time:
文化 (Culture
石川啄木 - writing samples
石川啄木＜たくぼく＞ was born on February 20, 1886, as Ishikawa Hajime, in Iwate Prefecture. He used the pen name 啄木＜たくぼく＞for the first time in 1903. His first published collection of tanka, 一握＜あく＞の砂 [A Handful of Sand] came out in 1910. These tanka (five-line poems) are well-loved in Japan and considered quite lyrical and romantic. After his death in 1912, however, a friend and fellow poet Toki Aika published a posthumous collected entitled 悲＜かな＞しき玩具＜がんぐ＞ [Sad Toys], a title inspired by the last line of Takuboku’s essay 歌のいろいろ。Here are the last two lines of that essay: 目を移＜うつ＞して、死んだものゝやうに疊＜たたみ＞の上に投＜な＞げ出されてある人形＜にんぎょう＞を見た。歌は私の悲＜かな＞しい玩具＜がんぐ＞である [I moved my eyes, and saw a doll, cast away onto the tatami as through it had died. Tanka is my sad toy.] In this collection, the tanka are darker, dealing with topics not normally handled in poetry, such as social problems and death.
Web information: (in Japanese) (in English)
For more poems by 石川啄木, see his “Poems to eat,” (translated by Sanford Goldstein and Shinoda Seishi in Romaji Diary and Sad Toys, Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1985)地図
天気
テクノの時間
石川啄木 lived in many places during his short life. Print out a blank map of Japan, research and pinpoint where he had lived.