The Happenings of Me

If you stumbled across this post, I'm guessing you know that there is currently no kindle store at Amazon Japan, so there are very limited options of getting Japanese books on your Kindle. Most Japanese books available for download are in .pdf format, which is nice that they are available at all, but reading .pdf files on a Kindle can be a pain, and not as seamless as a "native" ebook.

A great resource I have found is Aozora Bunka. This website has over 10,000 public domain books, or books that the authors have allowed to be distributed online for free. You can search by author or title, and all of these books can be saved as .xhtml, or as a plain text file. With a single tool that many Kindle owners may already have, you can now have "native" Japanese ebooks on your Kindle! If you are looking specifically for children's books, check out a collection of them at Fanta Jikan and click the ">>青空文庫テキストへ" then follow the steps from step 5.

Here are the steps:

1) Download the ebook manager Calibre
2) Go to Aozora Bunka and find your desired ebook.
3) Scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see a .zip, .html, or maybe .ebk file
4) Click the ".html" link.
5) Right click in the webpage and save as an .html file to your computer
6) Open Calibre and click and drag the downloaded file into your Calibre Library
7) Right click the newly added ebook and add to device (make sure your Kindle is connected) and it will auto convert it into a file usable by your Kindle.

You now have a flawlessly working Japanese ebook!

Things to note:
- Of Amazon's devices, only Kindle Keyboards (aka Kindle 3) and higher are able to display Japanese fonts
- Furigana is displayed in either << >> or ( ) after the kanji in question
- There is no text-to-speech option for Japanese text
- You cannot lookup words in a dictionary
- Text is displayed horizontally

ALTERNATIVELY

This method is much easier and produces .pdf files optimized for the Kindle's screen. The file produced is made to be read in a traditional vertical manner. It also preserves the furigana and properly displays it next to the kanji in question. If you don't highlight passages and make notes, this option provides a very clean alternative.

Steps:

1) Go to Aozora Bunka and find your desired ebook. For example, here is Hell Screen by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
2) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and copy the link of the .zip file
3) Go to the Aozora to Kindle website and paste the link into the space provided.
4) Click PDF化 and the file will be saved to your computer.

That should produce the .pdf file, now add to your kindle!

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we're floating in space
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize
Do You Realize - that everyone you know
Someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize

I had a dream last night that actually made me sad when I woke up. I haven't had one of those in a long time. I don't like it!

You can download these files for from their website at http://summerandstarlight.bandcamp.com/ but it kind of makes it a hassel so I decided to post direct download links here. If you go to their website you can also choose to pay for each song, some songs, or none of them depending on your budget and how much you like the band

I think my favorite off of this little EP is either Goodbye Blue or It Snows in April.

1. This Time
2. Goodbye Blue
3. It Snows in April
4. Washed Up
5. Too Much
6. Mess of Me
7. Apologize

Yesterday I had to wake up at 7 in the morning (on a Friday!) to drive my mom to the hospital for a surgery, and then drive my sister to work. My mom was scheduled to spend the whole day and spend the night at the hospital and my sister works at an adult care home and she stays the whole weekend there without coming home. My niece was at her dad's place during the day on Friday, but she was dropped off back here around 7:30 in the evening. Since then I've been babysitting her. It's nice to have time with her so we can bond - I don't see her very often since I'm going to school a couple hours away. Yesterday, we drew pictures for a couple hours actually and she named a few of her pictures some pretty ridiculous things. One thing she drew she named a "plonkerdabe" and another she called a "flatterby." It was pretty funny.

After drawing I told her we had to brush our teeth, and then we could watch a movie and go to bed. She chose The Lion King even though she had just watched it the other day. We lied in bed watching the movie on my computer and i dozed off a few times but she would wake me up because it froze a couple times. After the movie, I told her it was time for bed, so as we were lying there, she kept trying to stay awake by asking questions and making conversations. I told her it was time to sleep so we had to be quiet, so she kept talking, but whispering... haha - she said, "Uncle Nathan, I'm thirsty..." so I got up, told her since she is drinking now, she shouldn't need another drink until the morning and that I couldn't answer her questions anymore because I would be asleep. She kept talking and humming to herself until she finally fell asleep. At about 4:30 in the morning I woke up to her sleeping sideways on the bed with her feet in my face. I grabbed her legs, spun her around back to normal, and luckily didn't wake her.

Today I gave her her medicine, we had breakfast, and drew a bit more. After that I took her to the park and we went on the slide and swings. She fell once and started to cry but I toughened her up a little bit and told her going down the slide would make her feel better. Phew! Got out of that one - I didn't want to deal with her being in a bad mood, she'd been so good so far. We collected some acorns and started walking back home because it was quite cold. I mad her some lunch and actually got her to eat a pretty balanced meal, with a little bit of coaxing. While we were at the park she asked for hot cocoa when we got home and I told her if I could find it, she could have some if she promised to eat lunch with me. She agreed and I made her some, just as I promised. I made her some vegetarian chicken nuggets that had some sort of spicy breading on it that she didn't want so I had to scrape it off for her. I was eating a whole grain cracker and told her it was really good so she should try one. She did and didn't like it, so I ate the rest of it, but then she grabbed another out of the box and broke it all apart saying, "It's a snack for the cats." I told her not to do that and now that she wasted a cracker she had to eat some of it. She did with a frown, but she dipped it into ketchup and really liked it. So much so that she actually got another cracker to dip in the ketchup again. Afterwards I told her she had to drink some orange juice but she said no. I reminded her that she promised to eat lunch with me if I made her hot cocoa, and the orange juice was part of lunch, so she honored her promise and drank it. Guilt tripping little kids doesn't always work, but I guess it did this time

Now that lunch is done, I kind of don't want to do anything so I plopped her down in front of the computer and put on Dora the Explorer. She had started to get on my nerves sometime between the park and lunch when she kept saying over and over again, "I'm working on my ROAR!" (from The Lion King) and kept asking me if she scared me. Yeah, sounds cute, and it was for the first 5 or so times... then it got annoying. Anyway, now she's watching Dora the Explorer (thank you, Netflix!) and she seems quite entertained.

I know this hasn't been a particularly entertaining post, but you know what? Most blogs are boring. Here are some pictures of her drawings to spice things up a little bit.

This was the flatterby


And this was the plonkerdabe