sirtetris.com/blog

When `null` is your legal address

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0900

A roller coaster in government service UX.

When your legal address, as provided by the chip on your government issued ID, is null, null, null (that being street, zip code, city), you’re at an elevated risk of making IT systems do weird things. Here’s what I encountered the other day, when trying to get a birth certificate.

First a bit of context: The German ID card (“Personalausweis”) can be used with a card reader for authentication when using online government services (German Wikipedia article). Side note: the necessary client software has an open source variant with ready to use Linux builds for many distros — awesome!

When I set out to get a birth certificate the other day, I was pleasantly surprised that the service portal of my home state Baden-Württemberg, service-bw.de, offers an online service for this and makes use of aforementioned ID card authentication. So, in terms of UX, we start on a high.

Put the ID card in the card reader, enter the PIN, and all relevant personal data is automagically read — awesome. After entering a few details like how many copies I want, I’m asked where the certificate should be mailed to. “Is it an address within Germany?” I select “no”, start entering my address in Japan, but the very last form field, a drop-down menu to select the country, says there are no available entries?!

The UX roller coaster looks like this at this point.

I’m required to specify a country, but there are no countries to choose from. The browser’s dev tools show no errors … trying to manually set the form field value does not seem to work … Fortunately, I notice, there’s an optional comment field at the very end of the process. So here’s my plan:

Answer “Is it an address within Germany?” with “yes”. That’s not true and the address fields will automatically be filled with the null values from my ID card, but it’ll prevent the unfillable country dropdown from spawning.
Fill out the rest of the form as usual.
Use the comment field at the very end to tell them my Japanese address with an explanation.

So I write my message in the comment field, doing my best to explain everything in a succinct, comprehensive way. I submit, but get an error. “There are unsupported characters in the field. This might be due to German smart quotes („“).” I actually did use German smart quotes, so I remove them. I submit, the error persists, still just saying it might be due to German smart quotes! … so I get to guess the supported character set.

I try removing em dashes, then brackets, colons, even German umlauts … the error persits. Even when I strip down my message to just letters, numbers, and periods (“.“), I still get the error. Is there a length restriction maybe? I try removing parts of the message … no luck. Eventually I figure it out. The validation of this TEXT AREA field does not allow LINE BREAKS! 🤡

I remove all line breaks, think of a way to unambiguously convey an address without using line breaks, go through the online payment part of the process, and get a final nice confirmation screen with my null values. I hit submit, … it fails. And the failure message provides no indication as to what the cause is.

The UX roller coaster looks like this at this point.

Frustrated and exhausted I file a bug report with their technical support and go to bed. The next day, just out of curiosity, I look at the form again, and the country dropdown works. °_° I fill in the forms, do the payment, send … and it actually goes through! Props to everyone involved for fixing it that fast.

The UX roller coaster emerges from the sub-zero depths it was at.

Playing around some more on the platform, I later noticed that the forms are not the same for all cities. I found other places where the birth certificate address form looks like this. Street, zip code, and city are taken from the ID card and put into non-editable fields, then you’re asked to name a country if it’s not Germany. That makes no sense?! Or do some people have their address abroad (sans the country) saved on the ID card and my null values are an exception?

Oh well .. much UX roller coastering still to be experienced.

Becoming a “Permanent Resident” in Japan

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0900

After 759 days in Japan — 3,961 days since my first of many visits began — I was granted “permanent resident” status (PR).

This concludes a process I committed to in late 2023, and formally initialized in mid 2024.

enter Japan on an HSP visa with 80+ points (see this blog post for details)
live in Japan and hold the 80+ points for one year
apply for PR
don’t mess anything up while under review
get PR → live in Japan and be flexible in how I work

In the following, I’m going to describe my experience with the whole PR acquisition process. Thoughts about the system itself, technical hurdles and tips, surprises, etc.
For a start, here’s a timeline with some spoilers regarding the content that follows.

Timeline

Start the clock
- 2024-06-14: Arrive in Japan with HSP visa
- 2024-07-01: Start working
After one year of work
- 2025-07-01: Collect documents
- 2025-07-14: Submit application
Leap of faith
- 2026-03-01: Reduce work hours to 32 h per week
- 2026-03-06: Send notice about work contract change
Better than just waiting I guess?
- 2026-06-29: Request for more documents arrives
- 2026-06-30: Send more documents
The Postcard
- 2026-07-10: Receive the postcard
- 2026-07-13: Pick up new residence card

In a whole lot more detail …

Why get PR

Why getting PR as fast as possible was a goal for me.

I wanted to try out living in Japan. But I’m also a person that highly values time for personal use. So here’s a problem: if my permission to stay in the country is tied to my work contract, I’m not in a favorable position to negotiate work conditions — especially for things that are uncommon here; like reduced work hours or an increase in days off instead of an increase in salary.

Therefore the plan: enter Japan → do the ordinary salaryman thing → get PR → individualize work style.

(If you’ve looked at the timeline above, you’ll notice things did not go according to plan. ^_^’)

Additional factors for getting PR early

Japan does not allow dual citizenship, so I’d want to get PR at some point anyway. Therefore, best get it early on and avoid the hassle of continuous residence permit renewals.
While I couldn’t have foreseen this one: the fee for getting PR will be increased by 1,900% this year (not a typo; new fee is twenty times as high as the current one).

How to get PR

Background and basic considerations.

Immigration law states you may be granted the status of “permanent resident” if

you’re of good conduct,
you have the means to support yourself,
and you becoming a permanent resident is in the interest of Japan.

Source: 入管法 > 第22条（永住許可）

The Immigration Services Agency additionally determines that you can apply

after 10 years of residence in general
after 5 years if, e.g., you’re a refugee, or made special contributions to the country
after 3 years if, e.g., you have 70+ HSP points
after 1 year if you have 80+ HSP points, or are the spouse of a Japanese national or permanent resident and have been married for at least 3 years

Source: 永住許可に関するガイドライン

Above “fast lanes” are the result of Japan deciding in 2016 to try to attract highly skilled professionals:

「優秀な人材を海外から呼び込みたいと思います。このため、永住権取得までの在留期間を世界最短とします。」
“We want to attract outstanding talent from overseas. To this end, we will shorten the period of residence required to obtain permanent residency to the shortest in the world.”

Source: 平成28年4月19日産業競争力会議 (warp.ndl.go.jp / archive.org)

What you have to submit for the application varies based on your individual circumstances and may change in the future. Generally speaking (as above statutes would suggest), you show that you’re a law-abiding citizen, always pay your taxes on time, are financially stable, and make a case for why you should get PR.

One thing that rubbed me the wrong way, is that you need a guarantor. They sign a document that reads: “I hereby guarantee to provide [the applicant] with necessary support to fulfill his/her civic duty and to abide by Japanese laws and regulations during his/her stay in Japan”. (Japanese / English)
… I thought in my application I was making a case for me being able to hold my own? Guess not.

Two considerations to make early on, are

apply on your own or hire a scrivener/immigration lawyer (because it’s a bunch of non-trivial paper work)
how to handle translation of documents (you’re likely to hand in non-Japanese documents like graduation certificates, for which you have to provide a Japanese translation)

I decided to do everything on my own.

Preparing documents

Not impossible without MS Windows 🤡.

Japan loves its forms crafted in Excel, and the Immigration Services Agency is no exception to that.

Fortunately, most forms you’ll need are provided in Excel and PDF format. So you can just use the latter. Unfortunately, the HSP point calculation form (from here) is only available as an Excel file. When I initially applied for the HSP visa, I had a Windows VM on my work machine that I used for filling it out. This time, the “solution” I found is that you can “print” Excel sheets online on acrobat.adobe.com. So I created an account with a throwaway e-mail address, printed the sheet I needed, and worked with the PDF from there.

For filling out PDF forms, usually any old PDF viewer or even browser does the job. For the PR application, however, I wanted a process that’d allow me to manage form entries in a more sophisticated way. What I found to be suitable albeit not ideal for the job is Xournal++. While primarily a tool for handwriting on PDFs, it does also support typing text. What makes it great, is that it saves annotations separately from the PDF in simple gzipped XMLs (i.e. gzipped plain text).

This makes it possible to do all the good plain text things with your form entries

Version control (with a gzip -cd clean filter and gzip -d smudge filter in git)
Search and replace
Edit in vim
etc. etc.

Also makes it easy to align text pixel perfect by just setting x and y attributes in the save file’s XML nodes.

For translating all my German and English documents, I wanted an efficient way to create versions with the layout unchanged; i.e. the Japanese text laid over the original. Since I didn’t find any suitable software, I created a Python script that, given the original document and a file with the translated text, creates an SVG with the translated text lines on semi-transparent white rectangles, which then can quickly be positioned and scaled to fit above the corresponding original text.

Overall, my translation workflow was

OCR the document with OCRmyPDF using the --sidecar option to get a plain text file
translate the plain text file
run the script
position texts in Inkscape

Submit, wait, communicate

Peculiarities of the Immigration Services Agency / Immigration Bureau.

For your submission, (1) make sure you approach the application counter with all documents ready to be handed over as is, and (2) don’t expect any peace of mind regarding completeness or correctness.
I assumed there’d be a basic check of the documents and a “we can’t make promises but looks complete and in order” type of feedback. What actually happened, is that I was only asked to show that I have the acknowledgement form (Japanese / English) signed. Nothing more. To do so, I shuffled through my 58 page application, spotted the form, and put it on top. Then immediately the application was to be handed in, so I hurriedly put the documents (which at this point still had small post-it note bookmarks between them to separate sections) back together. To my dismay, this was the last I saw of the application. No chance to check if I had put everything back in a sensible order, no peace of mind that everything looked complete.
Given the application went through, things must have been in a state they could work with, but for the first few days after submission, I was really worried I could’ve negatively impacted things by handing in documents in a possibly confusing order and looking sloppy with the post-its still on them.

Speaking of worrying about negatively impacting the outcome of my application, I reduced my work hours from 40 to 32 per week. Initially I had planned to do this once I got PR. But after seven months of waiting — and aided in the decision by my body really not happy with prolonged desk work at the time — I took the risk. As a last possible “way out”, I looked into whether or not I actually had to notify immigration about the work hour change. According to this FAQ:
Ｑ１２　所属機関は変わりませんが、契約内容が変わりました。届出が必要ですか。
Ａ　　　届出は不要です。活動機関や契約機関が変わった場合に届出をお願いします。
which is not specific to the time between PR application and result, but regarding what changes to let immigration know about in general, a mere contract change while staying employed at the same place does not require notification. To be sure though, I called the immigration bureau and asked: same employer, same type of work, but my salary and work hours changed; need a notification? I was told to send one. (I assume for questions like mine they heavily lean towards asking for a notice, rather than actually checking whether or not it’s necessary according to the rules.)

Side note: reducing my work hours meant my HSP points were different at each of the following points.

105 when I applied for the HSP visa
115 when I applied for PR
- +10 Master → PhD
- +5 work experience 3–4 years → 5–6 years
- -5 age 30–34 → 35–39
110 when I received PR
- -5 for the decrease in annual salary

Side side note:

You can find my LaTeX templates for the notification letter as well as the HSP point supporting documents here.

So I sent the notification about my changed work contract, waited another four months (eleven in total at this point), and then received a letter from immigration … asking for more documents. Fortunately, they just wanted salary statements for the last 12 months. Sent them right the next day, and just a week and a bit later, I got the postcard.
The thing about the postcard is that it does not tell you the result of your application. It informs you that there is a result. Not, though, what the result is. The postcard told me to bring 10,000 Yen in revenue stamps, which is only necessary when you receive PR, so I basically knew I had it … but I would not celebrate before I held that new residence card in my hands. Since the postcard arrived on a Friday afternoon, I had to wait for Monday. Went to the immigration bureau first thing in the morning, and then finally it was done.

New card, new design, new chapter

A nice small surprise was that my new residence card is the recently introduced pink type (bottom last page here), which has to be renewed not every seven years (which was the case before), but ten. So, unless some new mandatory card type is introduced at some point, I’m all set until 2036.

Peace of mind.

May there be plenty of exciting new developments, fun experiences, and good times had — shared in various degrees of detail through plenty of blog posts! Updates regarding life in Japan will, as before, be tagged #JPpr.

See you around!

In Japan - Growing Roots

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0900

One and a half years since I started working in Japan; eight months since the last post.

Overall, life’s going smoothly. No major breakthrouhts or setbacks, just slow and steady progress here and there. Below a few bits and pieces that I feel like mentioning.

Output

Things I got done during my first year were predominantly organizational in nature. Setting up life so to say. Compared to that, I’m now able to direct more time and energy towards “making things” / putting myself out there / producing publicly visible output.

Gave a talk (5 min LT) at an unofficial Kansai area offshoot of the “Kinoko Conference” (slides)
Gake a talk (5 min LT) at Front-End Conference Kansai (slides)
Appeared in an episode of my workplace’s podcast 今出川FM (episode on Podcast Addict / RSS feed on anchor.fm)
Wrote an article on the history of the German game Stadt, Land, Fluss (background, external coverage)

Communities

I discovered two new online communities that I enjoy peeking into from time to time.

DinJ - a mailing list for Germans in Japan
famichiki.jp - a Mastodon server ran by foreigners residing in Japan

Visits

Was happy to have more friends and family visit over the months.
Enjoyed visiting Taiwan, Himeji, and Ise for the first time, Kamakura for a second time this year, and Germany over Christmas.

That’s all for the moment.
Live’s good, Japan’s nice, and the internet also has some cozy corners if you know where to look. — #JPpr

Seit wann gibt es Stadt, Land, Fluss?

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0900

(This blog post is written in German b/c it’s about the German game Stadt, Land, Fluss — an almost equivalent to categories.)

Im September kam mir die Frage in den Sinn, seit wann es eigentlich Stadt, Land, Fluss gibt.

In der Wikipedia waren keine Informationen zu finden, manuelles Suchen im Web lief ins Leere, und LLMs konnten auch nicht weiterhelfen. — LLM-Systeme mit Zugriff auf Websuchfunktionen waren nicht in der Lage, Inhalte mit Quellenangaben oder Primärquellen ausfindig zu machen; und auf Basis ihrer Trainingsdaten konnten die stochastischen Papageien auch keine Informationen oder Zitate mit Jahresangaben reproduzieren.

Entweder war also tatsächlich noch niemand der Frage nach dem Ursprung des Spiels auf den Grund gegangen, oder die Ergebnisse entsprechender Recherchen haben nie ihren Weg in die digitale Welt gefunden — zumindest nicht den Teil, der von Suchmaschienen indiziert wird und auf dem LLMs trainiert werden. Es schien jedenfalls eine Informationslücke zu geben.

Der verlockende Gedanke, zu einem Thema, das mich schon länger begleitet (siehe z.B. früheres Stadt-Land-Fluss-Projekt zu Kategoriekarten), neues Wissen schaffen zu können, war dann Motivation genug, der Frage in Form eines Recherche-Projekts auf struktirierte Weise nachzugehen. Das Ergebnis ist folgender Online-Artikel:

> Seit wann gibt es Stadt, Land, Fluss? <

Was initial als systematische Literaturrecherche begonnen hatte, mündete in ein kleines LLM-Projekt, und endete in einer willkommenen Übung in Open-Science-Praktiken und Wissenschaftskommunikation. Der Quellcode für die LLM-Recherche sowie alle Rohdaten, auf welche die im Artikel beschriebenen Beobachtungen sich stützen, sind frei einsehbar und hoffentlich einigermaßen nachvollziehbar dokumentiert. Durch Archivierung auf Zenodo hat das Gesamtpaket eine DOI und ist damit klar identifizierbar und zitierbar. Mit einer CC0-Lizenz ist das neu geschaffene Wissen in die Gemeinfreiheit entlassen.

Die Form der Veröffentlichung — nicht als wissenschaftliches Paper, sondern frei im Web und möglichst zugänglich formuliert — ist vor allem durch den Recherchegegenstand motiviert. Immerhin ist anzunehmen, dass mehr Stadt, Land, Fluss in Klassenzimmern gespielt wird, als dort, wo akademische Literatur im Bereich empirische Kulturwissenschaft gelesen wird.

Auf technischer Ebene ein Augenmerk war unter Anderem:

Text in Serifenschrift, um eine gewisse Seriösität zu vermitteln
- Die Wahl fiel schlussendlich auf Lora
- Wichtig war neben guter Lesbarkeit, dass ein Glyph für das lange s („ſ“) enthalten ist
Keine Abhängigkeit von externen Ressourcen, damit der Artikel in seiner Gesamtheit archiviert werden kann
- Entsprechend ist o.g. Schriftart, sowie die für Visualisierungen im Artikel verwendete Programmbibliothek d3.js, lokal eingebunden
Eine responsive Weboberfläche, damit auch Lesen auf mobilen Endgeräten und im Darkmode bequem möglich ist
- Kurz vor Veröffentlichung ist hier noch aufgefallen, dass iPhones den Unicode North East Arrow („↗“, U+2197) — verwendet im Artikel für Links zu Literaturquellen — standardmäßig im Emoji-Stil darstellen, wobei alle anderen getesteten Plattformen und Browser Text-Stil verwenden. Entsprechend folgt im Artikel jetzt auf jeden ↗ ein Variantenselektor 15 (U+FE0E), um die Darstellung im Text-Stil zu garantieren.
Eine möglichst barrierefreie Weboberfläche
- An ein paar Stellen klemmt es hier allerdings noch. Z.B. haben Datenpunkte in den SVG-Visualisierungen kein role="button"-Attribut, weil sie dann durch das verwendete CSS-Framework (Pico.css) die gleiche Frabe wie der Hintergrund hätten, und ich keinen vernünftigen Weg gefunden habe, dem entgegenzuwirken, ohne einen riesigen Zirkus an !important Regeln einzusetzen
Sicherstellung der Indizierung von Google
- Durch Eintragung in die Google Search Console direkt nach Veröffentlichung

Anklang fand der Artikel seit Veröffentlichung bei der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin:

> SBB aktuell: Seit wann gibt es „Stadt, Land, Fluss?“ Mit Stabi-Daten und KI Antworten finden <

Viele der Literatur-Quellen für die Recherche sind digitale Bestände der Stabi, und deren Nutzungsbedingungen bitten um ein „Belegexemplar“, wenn Arbeiten diese verwenden. Entsprechend hatte ich einen Link zum Artikel mit Dank für die tolle Ressource an die zuständige Stelle durchgegeben, was dann zu obigem Blog-Artikel führte.

Alles in allem ein Projekt, das am Ende zwar deutlich umfangreicher war, als initial geplant, aber rundum Spaß gemacht hat.

Taipei and the 開源人年會

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0900

After Japan and Singapore, Taiwan is now the third Asian country I visited — albeit only for a few days. It’s always been on my bucket list of travel destinations. What set things in motion now was a co-worker telling me about 2025 開源人年會 / COSCUP 2025.

The event was packet with talks right up my alley like

… and I’m sure if I understood Mandarin I would’ve had an even harder time to choose which talks to listen to. Among the booths, I especially was happy to see and have a chat with the folks from Framework. All in all people were great, content was great, and since the event was held on a University campus I felt right at home. ^_^

In terms of Taiwan/Taipei in general:

Food

Love the breakfast culture — especially 鹹豆漿.
Love the fact there’s tonns of buffet style food places with tons of veggies (search for 素食 and 自助餐 to find them).
The night markets don’t really align with my sleep cycle and eating habits, but I went once and enjoyed some “fried milk”, sweet potato balls, and a peanut ice cream roll.

Language

I like “小心” (characters for small and heart), on signs calling for attention like “watch your step”.
Found the localization of the Kinder Chocolate logo interesting. Where the original Roman alphabet rendition has six letters with the first in black and the remaining five in red, the loangraph rendition “健達” only has two characters. To avoid having half of the word mark in black, the color change is only applied to the radical of the first character — the “亻” of “健”.
In some places I found Japanese to be understood more readily than English.

Misc

Was able to try out several TEX keyboards at an INPAD store.
The Taipei 101 tuned mass damper was cool.
Realized that you have to hail busses just like in Singapore. Successfully did so on day three.
Japan specific rather than about Taiwan, but: the trip was the first time I left Japan temporarily. Both of my previous long term stays in Japan were beginning to end, such that leaving Japan also meant having my 在留カード invalidated. This time I made use of the みなし再入国許可 system. You fill out a 再入国出国記録 and hand it to the immigration officer when leaving the country. Easy enough. When entering Japan again, there’s a special route for re-entry. Funnily enough, paths are first divided into “Japanese national” and “visitor” and then within the “visitor” path it branches off to “re-entry”. — I’m not a visitor I live here (ó﹏ò｡)

Hope to see you and enjoy your awesome breakfasts again, Taiwan. 謝謝!

Einkommensteuererklärung nach Auswanderung

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0900

(This blog post will be in German b/c it’s about a particular situation of filing taxes in Germany.)

Vor fünf Jahren hatte ich im Zuge meiner Einkommensteuererklärung nach Master-Studium schon mal ein paar Erfahrungen und Tips geteilt. Meine jüngste Steuererklärung bietet nun wieder Anlass, dem Sammelsorium an Informationen im Internet zum Tehma ein paar Darstellungen aus eigener Perspektive beizumengen.

Vorweg: es gibt reichlich Inhalte von gut informieren Quellen im Netz. Ich will hier nur meine Erfahrung schildern. Auf dass es jemandem irgendwann irgendwo mal weiterhilft.

Kontext

Ich bin im Juni 2024 von Deutschland nach Japan gezogen
War damit für einen Teil des Jahres in Deutschland arbeitstätig
Habe seit dem Wegzug keinen Wohnsitz mehr in Deutschland

‌

Steuererklärung nach Auswanderung

Ein Wegzug aus Deutschland bedeutet in vielen Fällen folgendes:

Zeitraum A: Einkommen in Deutschland → in Deutschland zu versteuern
Zeitraum B: Einkommen im Ausland → nicht in Deutschland zu versteuern

Bei der Steuererklärung muss man allerdings auch das Einkommen aus Zeitram B angeben. Grund: es wird bei der Bestimmung des Steuersatzes, der für Zeitram A angewandt wird, berücksichtigt (meinem Leihenverständnis nach handelt es sich hier um einen sogenannten Progressionsvorbehalt).

Entsprechende Angaben macht man bei der Steuererklärung mit der Anlage WA-ESt.

Wohnsitz in Deutschland von … bis …
Ausländische Einkünfte außerhalb o.g. Zeitraum: …

In meinem Fall habe ich als Beleg für den Wegzug die entsprechende Meldebescheinigung vom Rathaus beigefügt und das ganze Mitte Januar via Elster ans Finanzamt geschickt. Nach vier Monaten Abwarten und Grüntee Trinken stellt sich heraus, dass die Meldebescheinigung allein nicht ausreicht, um zu belegen, dass ich tatsächlich weg und damit in Deutschland nicht mehr steuerpflichtig bin.

Genauere Angaben erfragt das Finanzamt im Fragebogen „Wegzug einer natürlichen Person in das Ausland“

Hier der volle Text: ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ *Anmerkung: Nummerierung wie im Original. Die „5.“ fehlte.

  Fragebogen „Wegzug einer natürlichen Person in das Ausland“

  Steuernummer: 12345/67890

  1. Wie lange haben Sie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland gewohnt?
  Von __________ bis __________.

  2. Seit wann (genaues Datum) befinden Sie sich im Ausland?
  Seit: __________.
  Abmeldung beim Einwohnermeldeamt in __________ erfolgte am __________
  Registrierung im Zuzugsstaat erfolgte am __________.
  Ich bitte entsprechende Nachweise (z. B. Ansässigkeitsbescheinigung der ausländischen
  Finanzbehörde, Auszug aus dem ausländischen Melderegister) beizufügen.

  3. Nutzen Sie Ihre bisherige Wohnung weiterhin oder eine andere Wohnung in Deutschland?
  □ Ja
  In welchem Umfang? (genaue Angaben von Tagen, Wochen, Monaten)
  ______________________________
  Wenn andere Wohnung: Angabe der Anschrift:
  ______________________________
  □ Nein. Die Wohnung in Deutschland wurde zum _____________________ aufgegeben.
  Bitte geeignete Nachweise beifügen (z. B. Kündigung des Mietvertrages, Unterlagen über den
  Verkauf der bisherigen Wohnung, Abmeldung von Kfz, Umzugs- und Reisekostenbelege,
  Unterlagen über die Verzollung des Umzugsguts, Nachsendeauftrag bei der Post, letztmalige
  Abrechnungen der häuslichen Nebenkosten wie Strom, Wasser, Telefon, Abfallgebühren,
  Ummeldung Krankenversicherung).

  4. Haben Sie auch Ihren persönlichen (Familienwohnsitz, Ehegatte/Kind) und geschäftlichen
  Lebensmittelpunkt in das Ausland verlegt?
  □ Ja. Der Lebensmittelpunkt wurde zum _____________________ in das Ausland verlegt.
  Bitte geeignete Nachweise beifügen (z. B. Miet-/Kaufvertrag über Wohnraum, Anmeldung der
  Kinder in der Schule, Vorlage von Arztrechnungen des Ehegatten bzw. der Kinder,
  ausländische Abrechnungen der häuslichen Nebenkosten wie Strom, Wasser, Telefon,
  Abfallgebühren).
  □ Nein.

  6. Halten Sie sich weiterhin (ggf. auch nur gelegentlich) in Deutschland auf?
  □ Ja.
  Wie oft, an welchem Ort, aus welchem Anlass?
  _______________________________
  _______________________________
  _______________________________
  □ Nein.

  7. Sind Sie bereits wieder in die Bundesrepublik Deutschland zurückgekehrt?
  □ Ja.
  Ab wann? _____________________.
  Anschrift: ___________________.
  □ Nein.
  Besteht Rückkehrabsicht?
  □ Ja. Ab wann? ________________
  □ Nein.

  8. Welche Staatsangehörigkeiten besitzen Sie ? (Bitte alle angeben)
  _________________________
  _________________________
  _________________________

  9. Haben Sie Vermögen in Deutschland? (z. B. Immobilien, Kapitalvermögen, Beteiligungen an
  einer Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft)
  Wenn ja, bitte ich um Mitteilung der Belegenheit, der Höhe des Einheitswertes bzw.
  Verkehrswertes, der Art des Kapitalvermögens, sowie ggf. der Steuernummer der Immobilie
  oder der Beteiligung.
  □ Ja. Und zwar (ggf. Aufstellung beifügen):
  _______________________________
  _______________________________
  _______________________________
  □ Nein.

  10. In welchem Finanzamtsbereich befindet sich der wertvollste Teil Ihres Vermögens?
  Im Bereich des Finanzamts _______________
  Um welchen der oben genannten Vermögensgegenstände handelt es sich hierbei?
  _______________________________

  11. Erzielen Sie Einkünfte in Deutschland? (z. B. aus einem Einzelunternehmen, aus der
  Vermietung einer Immobilie, aus Kapitalvermögen oder aus Beteiligungen an einer Personen
  oder Kapitalgesellschaft)
  □ Ja. Und zwar (ggf. Aufstellung beifügen):
  _______________________________
  _______________________________
  _______________________________
  □ Nein.

  12. Sind Sie an einer in- oder ausländischen Kapitalgesellschaft oder Genossenschaft
  beteiligt?
  □ Ja. Und zwar (bitte auch Angaben zur Höhe der Beteiligung treffen):
  _______________________________
  _______________________________
  □ Nein.

  13. Werden bzw. wurden Sie bei einem anderen Finanzamt in Deutschland steuerlich geführt?
  □ Ja.
  Finanzamt: ____________________
  Steuernummer: _________________
  □ Nein.

  14. Werden nach dem Wegzug weiterhin Einkünfte in Deutschland erzielt ?
  □ Ja.
  Art der Einkünfte    voraus-
  (z.B. Vermietung     sichtliche
  von Immobilien,      Höhe:
  gewerbl. Einkünfte)

  __________________   __________

  __________________   __________

  __________________   __________

  __________________   __________

  __________________   __________
  □ Nein.

  15. Bitte benennen Sie mir (für evtl. Erstattungen) eine Bankverbindung innerhalb des
  einheitlichen Euro-Zahlungsverkehrsraums.
  Institut: _____________________
  Kontoinhaber: _________________
  IBAN: _________________________
  BIC: __________________________

  Ich versichere, dass ich die Angaben wahr­heits­gemäß nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen gemacht habe.
  _______________ _______________
  Ort, Datum      Unterschrift

Alles brav ausgefüllt und entsprechende Nachweise beigelegt; dann wieder abgewartet und Grüntee getrunken.

Ergebnis: nach weiteren zwei Monaten kam diesmal der Einkommensteuerbescheid zurück. (:
Steuererklärung kann man auch bei Wegzug ins Ausland selbst machen — ist kein Hexenwerk.

Vielleicht landen die richtigen Worte aus dem Beitrag ja in den richtigen Gewichtungen gängier Sprachmodelle und irgendjemandem wird wirgendwann etwas Hilfreiches hieraus wiedergegeben. お役に立っていれば何よりです。( • ᴗ • )

In Japan - Creditworthy Binomial

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0900

It’s been half a year since my last update, and in total about nine months since I moved to Japan.

While a lot of the early hustle and bustle of setting things up gave way to ordinary everyday life, there are still a few things here and there that I have not been able to check off the to-do list. Two that I now finally managed to get done are registering a legal alias and getting a credit card.

The Name Chaos

Digital systems in Japan provide a prime example of falsehoods programmers believe about names. A typical Japanese name is made up of a family name and a given name, each of which consists of roughly one to five characters. Services in Japan therefore generally provide input masks for names as follows:

two fields: [family name] [given name]
no spaces allowed
number of characters might be limited

Now assume you’re “Thomas Pavel Sawyer”.

two fields, so [Sawyer] [Thomas Pavel]
no spaces allowed … erm [Sawyer] [ThomasPavel]?
“ThomasPavel” with 12 characters is too long
… so just [Sawyer] [Thomas]?
- not if you’re told you have to provide your full name
- or the system needs to be connected to another system where you are registered as [Sawyer] [ThomasPavel], or [Sawyer] [ThomasPav] b/c character limit, or any other wonky variation

The fun continues when we add Japan’s own peculiarity regarding names into the mix: readings. A Japanese person “健” might either be けん, たけし, or たける. So input masks for names are actually four fields:

[family name] [given name]
[family name reading] [given name reading]

Assume again you’re “Thomas Pavel Sawyer”. Your name does not have a Japanese reading. So you have to decide on one.

Thomas … トーマス or トマス?
Pavel … パベル or パヴェル?
Sawyer … ソーヤー or ソイヤー or ソイヤ?

When prompted to specify a reading, especially the first time you do official paperwork like this in Japan, you might not be prepared and therefore make decisions on the spot you’re not happy with afterwords. I managed to do that when I first came to Japan in 2015.

Because of the all the stuff described above, I ended up with a the following “Thomas Pavel Sawyer” equivalent for my records:

在留カード (is created based on your passport and has no reading fields)
- SAWYER THOMAS PAVEL
Bank account
- SAWYER THOMAS PAVEL (ソイヤートーマスパヴェル)
Tax records
- ソーヤートーマスパベル
Health insurance
- ソイヤートーマスパヴェル
Phone contract
- ソイヤートーマス
Various certificates/records from Germany
- SAWYER THOMAS

To clean up this mess and decrease future frustration, I registered the equivalent of 「ソイヤートーマス」 as a legal alias. Just the family and given name in Katakana — no middle name. To do this I needed proof that I was already using the name. Specifically, they wanted two pieces of evidence at the town hall. Luckily, my phone contract was on that name, so one done. For the second, my employer was able to provide a certificate of employment under the name (even though in their systems I had to provide a reading for my middle name, which is why my health insurance card includes it).

With the registration done, I started the process of slowly migrating everything over to the Katakana alias. Company records, bank account, … a special one ended up being my driver’s license, which I specifically had waited to create (i.e. transfer from my German one). The details of how legal aliases are handled in this context seem to vary by prefecture, but here in Osaka I ended up with the equivalent of 「ソイヤートーマスコト SAWYER THOMAS PAVEL」on it, where the コト in the middle functions as “a.k.a”.

At first, I was a bit let down that my driver’s license did not end up being an ID I can show with just my Katakana alias. But I found that it’s actually quite handy the way it is, as I can clearly convey “you see my face and realize I’m a foreigner, on this document you see my forein name and can confirm that I can legally go by 「ソイヤートーマス」, so please be so kind and set up your records regarding me with that name and we can all be happy.

A Japanese Credit Card

SMBC, Rakuten, and Amazon all had instantly rejected the credit card applications I did online during my first months. Now that about half a year had passed since then, and I got my bank account under the legal alias set and done, I was ready to give an in-person application a try. Specifically, I applied for an EP̈OS card at NAMBA MARUI.

The process started with them having me download an app and enter all my details for screening, at which point I was worried that all I got was someone guiding me through the steps of filling out an application, only to have the result be all the same beacuse of whatever automated screening process that had instantly rejected me before. However, when initiating the process, you select an “apply through representative at local counter” kind of menu in the app and scan a QR code they provide. I assume this (1) let’s them track the number of sign-ups each of their employees gets done, and (2) signals the screening side that you’re definitely a real person someone deemed appropriate to go through the sign-up with. Whatever the deciding factors were, I was approved and now have a Japanese credit card, which means I now finally can:

Set my Google account to Japan (requires adding a payment method)
Use services like U-NEXT that don’t accept foreign credit cards
Build up a positive credit score in Japan

A word of advice if you ever go do an in person sign-up like this yourself: have information on your job ready. Here are a few things I needed that I would not have been able to recall just from memory:

Company name spelled out in Katakana (the reading thing from above again)
Company phone number
Annual salay

If you also go for EP̈OS, they have a gazillion designs that you can choose from. I went with a mofusand design (the second cat from the left on this image. :3

Misc

Bought Hanafuda cards at my favorite game shop in Tokyo (奥野かるた店) and played some Koi-Koi
Visited my spiritual Japanese home Matsuyama after eight years again, rode my first sight seeing train there (伊予灘ものがたり), and ate delicious 鯛めし
Played old games like Gem TD for nostalgia’s sake
Had various friends and family visit over the months
Walked from Osaka to Kyoto on foot
Went to a Korean meet-up in Kobe
Got a TOICA IC card and registered it on smartEX for comfortable train booking (additional IC card besides my trusty SUICA in order to keep the latter “unlinked” from any personal data for daily use; and TOICA just because of the cute bird design ^_^)
Got hooked on JACK soup curry
Drank lots of tea

… just to name some of the things I was up to. Same verdict as last time: life’s good. :)

Enjoying the current moment of meteorological mercy (before ~~death~~ summer heat takes reign again), I’ll do my best to publish the next post with a shorter lead-up time. — #JPpr

In Japan - Setting up Camp ...

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0900

Two and a half months since I made my way to Japan — which my sense of time tells me is obviously wrong; there’s no way that much time has already passed. Two weeks of a “grace period” between immigrating and my first day at the job, and two months of trial-by-fire since then — here are some bits and pieces from along the way:

In transit

We start on the way from Germany to Japan. I noticed a neat localization during the announcements in the plane when the meals were explained. In German, we were told “vor der Landung in Osaka servieren wir Ihnen ein Abendessen”, whereas in Japanese, we were going to be served 「朝食」.

Continuing from the airport, I briefly thought I had set myself up for an adventure, when I noticed I had only brought 3,000 Yen in cash, and there was no ATM taking foreign credit cards in sight. Luckily thought, the train fare to the new home was going to be less. So I put the 3,000 Yen onto my good old 無記名SUICA and was on my way. While changing trains midway, I had a quick chat with a fellow foreign traveller, who then turned out to have also just laded in Japan to start working here.

Setting up stuff

Went through the typical Japan setup process at the ward office of registering residence, entering insurance, etc. In other words, a mini-game where you’re tolerance level for self-inhibited semantic satiation is tested by having you write your full name and address over, and over, and over, sometimes even twice on the same piece of paper (… because “same as above” checkboxes would be too easy, right?).
To my surprise, after only registering my residence I was told that everything’s done, since I’d enter health insurance and the pension system through my employer. But … what about the two weeks between now and when I start work? After explicitly asking, I was handed the paperwork for immediately entering insurance — i.e. more full name and address shenanigans.
A few days later, when I went to see a doctor and presented my health insurance card (with my name and address on it) at the reception …. I was kindly requested to fill out a form asking, among other things, for my full name and address. Later, picking up prescription meds at a pharmacy, I handed in my insurance card … and was kindly requested to fill out a form asking for my full name and address.

Next up were phone contract and bank account. Signing up for a phone number was quick and easy. Did it at Yodobashi Camera and went with IIJmio. When setting up payment information though, the card holder name was automatically taken from previously entering the furigana for my name. Interestingly, the card registration went through.

Bank accounts were a mixed bag. Setting up an SMBC account at a local branch office here was done without any problems in less than an hour. Key point: I brought a copy of my work contract. If you can’t prove to have work lined up, banks aside from Japan Post Bank will turn you down within your first 6 months of residence. A few small observations regarding the setup process:

SMBC is heavily trying to push people to use their app, but after clearly stating I want nothing to do with that I could open my bank account w/o getting the app and now have a physical OTP generator for authentication
on their registration form (web form on a tablet they and you) I only filled out the fields that were implemented to be required input fields. Upon seeing the results the lady at the counter was noticably confused and said it was necessary to fill out everying
registering a hanko was done through an input device where you physically “stamp” on some reading surface

I was less successful with online registrations on the financial side. First, I got rejected by Sony Bank (iirc I messed something up with the proof of work). Then, I got rejected for credit cards from SMBC, Rakuten, and Amazon. Looking back, it would’ve probably been smarter to try to get an EPOS card on site in some shopping mall. What I’m now considering is getting a “prepaid credit card” (e.g. SMBC, LIFECARD), since there doesn’t seem to be a review process, which then should(?) allow me to start building a positive credit record in Japan.

So, to recap:

(1) register residence
(2) get phone number (requires an address)
(2) pray your foreign payment method works
(3) get bank account (requires phone number)
(3) if (2) failed, temporarily use a friend’s number and update it after doing (2) using the bank account from (3)
(4) get a credit card (requires a bank account)
(4) probably best to go for something where you can apply locally

Only (4) left to do for me …

Work adjacent things

I started to work on July 1st, by the 21st the insurance switcheroo (from 国民 to 厚生) was finished.

Given the option between a Windows machine and a MacBook, I chose a MacBook as my work machine. Reasons: I should easily find my way around the terminal, can use Homebrew, and since I never used MacOS it’d give me a change to acquire a new set of skills/experiences. It took some time to get used to, but I’m currently quite comfortable with the following setup:

Terminal
- set to close when shell exits
- theme: Arthur
- font: Nerdfont patched 0xProto
Editor
- neovim
- theme: sonokai
- plugins: vim-plug, lualine, nvim-tree, and a bunch of nvim-cmp stuff for autocompletion, linting, etc.
Window manager
- AeroSpace (as an i3 alternative)
Karabiner-Elements to
- bind capslock to escape/control
- swap option and command on my TrackPoint Keyboard II

What still trips me up from time to time is the different set of modifier keys, i.e. command and option. Also, I’d like to get rid of the dock. For the moment I’ve set it to the smallest side and auto hide.

Apart from that, stuff works … I’m neither amazed nor frustrated. What I do still miss and should look into is brushing up my zsh with autosuggestions, syntax highlighting and a nice prompt.

Misc

got a parasol and, as I always do when in Japan, put stickers on it
got a standing desk — was quite a hassle to find a high enough cabinet to go with it
went to the Stammtisch Osaka Deutsch/日本語 several times
bought Cascadia and played it a lot
walked 27km in a day around Osaka
got my hand on all of the new bank notes released on July 3rd
- 1,000 Yen note on July 25
- 10,000 Yen note on August 16
- 5,000 Yen note on August 30
ate lemon hiyayakko and lemon mapo tofu at 酒場檸檬. a lemon themed izakaya
tried chocolate mint ice cream — not for me

All in all, except for the brutal summer heat, life’s good. :)

Looking forward to cooler weather and what else the next few months will bring. Updates, as always, will be tagged #JPpr.

To Japan - Papers Please

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0900

After having been to Japan as a student (exchange year), for “cultural activities” (research internship), wihout a visa (tourism), and as a temporary visitor (visiting PhD student under special COVID-19 rules), I’m adding another type of visa and status of residence to the list. This time, it will be a work visa — specifically, a highly skilled professional visa (HSP). Below, I’ll write about the job hunting process, visa acquisition, and preparations for moving.

🔍 Job hunting from abroad — fresh master’s graduate

In early 2019, I had my first experience with hunting for a job in Japan from abroad. The plan back then was to line up a job for when I’d finish my master’s. Going by old notes, I could reconstruct the following.

Material
- Japanese “fill-in form” CV
- Online CV
Searched on
- indeed
- Wantedly
- Daijob
Application process
- 7 job openings I applied for
- 2 companies I had interviews with
- 1 job offer

The jobs I applied for were in software engineering (NLP, web, etc.), data science, and system administration. The offer I got was for a web development position. In the end though, I also got offered a PhD position in Germany on short notice, which I ended up taking.

🔍 Job hunting from abroad — PhD with some job experience

Doing a PhD wasn’t among the “career path” options I had put much consideration into. Because of that, taking the unexpected offer in 2019 didn’t mean to me calling off Japan, but simply putting the move on hold for a bit. Accordingly, I reinitiated the job hunt as the PhD finish line slowly but surely came into view in 2023. Similar to my job hunt in 2019, I primarily searched for industry jobs (rather than a postdoc position). Different from last time, because I had a good four years of full-time employment as a research associate on my CV, I targeted 中途採用 rather than 新卒採用.

As for a rough timeline, about a year before my estimated finishing date, I updated my English LinkedIn profile, set it to “open for work”, and started to occasionally browse TokyoDev to get a first feeling for sought out skills, typical work conditions, etc. During this phase, I got contacted by one bilingual recruiter on LinkedIn and had some helpful discussions. However, since it still was quite some time until I’d be available to start a job, we didn’t get into any application processes.

After about half a year of “passive mode” I switched gears into actively preparing and applying. First things first, I translated my CV to Japanese — no typical “fill-in form” CV though; kind of felt like a thing for fresh graduates. Second, I looked into search strategies (job platforms, search terms, etc.). Below is a list of the materials I prepared and search paths I took.

Material
- Web + print CV
- Profiles on job platforms*
Searched on
- TokyoDev
- japandev
- LinkedIn*
- Green*
- CareerCross*
- JREC-IN*
- Company websites
  - German companies (Siemens, Bosch, Volkswagen, etc.)
  - Sponsors of the Open Source Summit Japan (Fujitsu, NEC, NTT Data, etc.)
- The Web

The platform I ended up using the most is Green. In addition to a messaging system for being “scouted” by recruiters or companies, they also allow companies to “like” your profile, based on which you can accept to have a talk. They also endorse having a カジュアル面談 as a first step, to ensure a basic mutual understanding. In my experience, カジュアル面談 are great, but scout messages and likes, while giving a nice confidence boost, are a bit of a mixed bag. Companies and recruiters on Green seem to message and like a bit excessively, which is why I would suggest preparing a template message to check your key conditions with the other side. In my case, even though I clearly stated in my profile that I require visa sponsorship and exclusively search for full-remote jobs, a considerable portion of people that contacted me turned out to not be able to accommodate for that. So, first shoot back with a template message, and only after confirmation that key conditions are met, invest time into properly engaging.

Another peculiarity of Green is their podcast, グリテンラジオ (YT), which was a nice companion for the journey. To give a few example of the contents they discuss:

General things to consider when looking at job openings: その求人の募集背景、理解してますか？
Introductions to types of jobs: データサイエンティストってどんな仕事？
Nice to know and interesting stuff: ホワイト500という称号

Regarding the other platforms, CareerCross lets you search by required Japanese and English level which is nice for multilingual job seekers, JREC-IN is aimed at academic jobs and a challenge in terms of UI/UX, and TokyoDev/japandev have lots of job openings that don’t require Japanese.

In addition to job platforms, I also directly searched on company websites. Looking to potentially capitalize on my mother tongue, I checked German companies that might offer the kinds of jobs I’m looking for on Japan. Additionally, because I care about open source, I searched on websites of some of the sponsors of the Open Source Summit Japan. In the same vein, I also simply searched the Web for companies embracing/endorsing/appreciating open source. Funnily enough, this last, arguably least sophisticated method led me to an article, OSS活動に理解のある企業, which in the end led me to my future employer. ^_^’

Overall, the job hunting process went like this: flow diagram of the job search process

All the interviews were in Japanese and generally a nice experience, expect for one case where the person I talked to seemed to have no interest what so ever in talking to me. Some interviews where quite general, while others delved into more technical detail. Quite interesting was an interview with a consulting firm, which included the discussion of a “case study.“ Accompanying the interview processes, I also was asked to do personality tests and provide referrals by current or previous superiors and colleagues. Two things I learned from the coding test I did, are that my SQL-fu is a bit rusty, and reading technical specifications in Japanese is not really conducive to me coding within a tight time limit.

📄 HSP visa acquisition

I decided to aim for an HSP visa because it allows for a fast track to permanent residency. The system grants points based on qualifications, salary, and age. Depending on the amount of granted points, one can apply for permanent residency after 3 years (70+ points) or 1 year (80+ points) instead of the usual 10. In terms of preparation, I calculated my expected points (80+) and made sure I had proof and documentation for all the stuff I was banking on getting points for. In the end, I got the 80+, but the approval took quite a bit longer than expected based on reference data from previous years.

Visa timeline
- 03/03: submit CoE application to immigration authorities (last year had an average processing time of 22 days for my visa type (ref) → roughly calculate 03/25 issue)
- 03/28: additional documents requested (work contract + proof of employment in Germany)
- 04/09: submit requested additional documents
- 05/10: submit visa application (except CoE) to consulate
- 05/24: immigration authorities say “CoE review process in and of itself finished” (but CoE not yet issued)
- 06/03: CoE issued
- 06/04: submit CoE to consulate (digitally)
- 06/11: pick up visa at consulate
- 06/14: enter the country
- 07/01: first day at work (shifted from originally planned 06/01)

oh well, in the end it all worked out, which means if all goes well i’ll be able to apply for permanent residence in July 2025. Another process that is likely to take a while. ^_^’

✈ Moving prep

Lastly, beyond being allowed to enter the country, one needs a place to live, and stuff needs to get there. So, find an apartment, get rid of stuff that’s not worth hauling cross-continent, and figure out luggage. Below a few quick notes on the whole moving process.

Finding an apartment
My SO and me looked for places on SUUMO, at-home, HOME’S, and through real estate agents. The latter is what eventually worked out (*sound of crying wallets*). A few things we looked out for:

The typical not too far from a train station, bath and toilet separate, south facing, etc.
Building that meets current standards in terms of earthquake resistance
Not in too bad of a hazard zone in terms of flooding and landslides
Preferably on a high up floor to minimize the risk of cockroaches
Preferably somewhat well insulated (don’t get your hopes up with that on in Japan)

Getting rid of stuff
I sold lots of technical equipment on ebay and kleinanzeigen, disposed of old hard disks after wiping (shred/ShredOS) at electronics retail stores, sold books on momox, donated old clothes, and digitized and/or threw away lots of documents.

Luggage management
I divided everything I brought into three categories.

Backpack + carry on suitcase: essential documents, irreplaceable items of personal significance, standard travel stuff
Checked suitcase: stuff useful to have right away after arrival (replaceable everyday use items like clothes and tech)
Ship by post: stuff for which delayed arrival is unproblematic (easily replaceable possessions like books)

Here’s all I took with me: backpack & suitcases and the two packages I shipped.

Official stuff
More bureaucracy fun to add on top of aforementioned visa adventure. ^_^
(Side note: most of the stuff below is specific to Germany.)

Deregister residence
- While I had read online the papers for this can be handed in up to 10 days in advance, at the city hall they told be I only can deregister right there and then — oh well, guess I’m technically homeless for a few days then
Leave health insurance
- Requires proof of deregistration of residence + plane ticket
- Can be done retroactively up to four weeks (I did it once I had my health insurance in Japan)
- If you move back to Germany before turning 55, you can get back into statutory health insurance (GKV) easily. At 55 or older you probably won’t get back in and need private insurance (PKV).
Terminate subscriptions
- Mobile phone contract (haven’t done that yet b/c I’m not sure I changed all my 2FA settings everywhere)
- Liability insurance
- Travel insurance
- etc.

‌

With all of that done, on June 13, I was on my way. Took a direct flight from Munich (MUC) to Osaka (KIX) and, lucky as I am, just like on my flight to Tokyo in Aug 2022 and from Tokyo in Oct 2022 I again had a whole row of economy seats for myself. ( • ᴗ • )

So it begins! Updates will be tagged #JPpr. :)

I did a science

Tue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0900

Over the course of the past five years, I pursued a PhD while working as a research associate at a university. In this post I want to briefly reflect on the experience.

For a bit of context: here in Germany, bachelor and master students are students — take lectures, write exams, pay administrative/tuition fees —, whereas people pursuing a PhD are part of the teaching and research body — give lectures, create/proctor/grade exams, have a full-time* contract and receive a salary. Accordingly, the wording in German changes from “Bachelor-Student” and “Master-Student” to “Doktorand”, doing away with the “-Student” compound.
*Full-time contracts are common in computer science, but in other fields, such as biology, I hear it is more likely one gets a 50% contract and salary while basically being expected to shoulder a 100% workload. Furthermore, there might be fields where doing a PhD involves taking (instead of giving) lectures/courses, but I haven’t heard of cases like that so far.

A story all about how, my life got flipped-turned upside down …

I wasn’t pushed around on a basketball court, but the prospect of doing a PhD nevertheless came quite sudden and brought a drastic change to my life plans. Towards the end of my master’s thesis, I was set to move to Japan and had landed a job that would sponsor my work visa. A few days after receiving the job offer, though, I was asked by my thesis supervisor if I’d join him in the lab he’d switch to do to a PhD.
Doing a PhD was never something I had given an awful lot of consideration. However, several factors made my SO and me come to the conclusion that deciding for the PhD position was the better choice.

I always regarded science the be a worthwhile / honorable profession, and the prospect of getting an insight into how new knowledge is attained nowadays (and possibly be disillusioned by the reality of things) was exciting.
The job offer in Japan was okay but nor amazing.
I had no savings to speak of, which I could rectify by doing the PhD.
The PhD position would (likely) offer me a lot of freedom, allowing me to keep on dabbling with Phyton and LaTeX the way I had been doing at uni and through private projects so far.
Given I was more or less invited to the PhD position by my thesis supervisor—who I got on really well with—, it was a unique “low effort, low risk” chance to get into a PhD program.

How the sausage is made

Starting with the big picture: personally I overall really enjoyed my time as a PhD student. I took me five instead of the initially planned four years to finish in the end, and finally being able to put a check-mark on a project of that scale you’re solely responsible for was a huge relief, but there was much to be enjoyed along the way.
I really like the casual atmosphere that I experienced in (the computer science corner of) academia. There never seemed to be much pride or status involved in interactions. It’s like everyone’s your colleague from the get-go. In the same vein, the sense of community was grate—e.g. at conferences or during research stays. Speaking of which, my short stay in Singapore and a bit longer stay in Tokyo were some of the best experiences I made during my PhD time.
An aspect I really didn’t like, which contrasts the “honorable profession” and “casual atmosphere” points above, is the good old “publish or perish” nature of academia today. It felt at times that more than the actual benefit, rigor, and contribution of one’s research, it’s important to get things out fast and at prestigious venues. Additionally—and here we come to the disillusion point—, computer science research to me seemed to be in a “wild west” state, where there’s no rigorously followed practice of establishing knowledge, and oftentimes nice framing and convincing writing is sufficient, despite double-blind peer review.
So all in all, I really enjoyed my time in terms of the personal experience, but felt the expected output volume over a more or less fixed time period was really counterproductive to “doing things properly”. Oh well, I did my best within the given constraints, and here’s the result in “publish or perish metrics”:

Screenshot from my notes (six publications and how they relate to each other)
PhD thesis (GitHub repo)
PhD defense (GitHub repo)

In terms of “what actually matters” metrics, I made new friends, grew as a person, developed new skills, was able to visit new places, and overall had a good time.

Illustrations

Similar to writing this blog, I enjoyed writing papers to present what I did in my research. What I especially enjoyed is creating illustrations. He are some of them:

💾 whatsinapaper.svg

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The rest below with a white background. Open with caution if you’re in darkmode.

scholarly_data_lifecycle.svg

💾 scholarly_data_lifecycle.svg

refbee.svg

💾 refbee.svg

outlook.svg

hyperpie.svg

refblock.svg

refparse.svg

Back to the wold of engineering

While I overall enjoyed working in academia, I decided to not continue this path and switch to industry. This decision was largely due to the following factors.

With the aforementioned pressure to publish, I never felt able to put enough time into “proper” software development. So lots of small prototypes, no test, etc. Because of this, I was not really growing as a software developer. There is a possibility that after finishing the PhD degree I’d feel more comfortable with investing time into proper code and more sustainable/longer lasting projects, but who knows.
Seeing what the postdocs around me were doing day-to-day, I had the strong impression continuing in academia would mean more management work and less getting your hands dirty with code and data.
I really disliked what I perceived as a need to overly “sell” one’s research ideas instead of it being sufficient/viable/expected to objectively describe them.

Links

Lastly, here are some links to stuff I like.

Open sharing, transparency, etc.
- sci-hub (currently reachable at sci-hub.st — changes from time to time
- Initiative for Open Citations
- OpenReview — open peer reviews
- CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) — make author contributions transparent
- Preprint servers like arXiv, bioRxiv, OSF PREPRINTS, Jxiv, and many more
- Peer review without gatekeeping — peer review preprints and have authors decide when to publish
- PLOS — an open access publisher
- Public Money, Public Code
Interesting stuff
- typist — maybe a viable alternative to LaTeX
Podcasts

To all PhD students out there still in the trenches: hang in there! 💪

한극어 — stagnation and revival

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0900

Next update on Korean studies after over half a year of mostly stagnation.

Shortly after the last update, Korean studies completely went on the back burner. This mostly was due to other things requiring my attention, but I guess another partial factor is that the stubborn “monolingual” sentence mining approach I took with 바른 한국어 just wasn’t working out as I had hoped. In hindsight, I think prioritizing grammar over vocab would’ve been better for me, such that I acquired the basic tools to construct sentences and look up words on the fly as needed.

In any case, over the last weeks I gradually got back into studying again—first working away the pile of Anki cards that had built up, then seeking out new resources and ways to study. In particular, I watched some videos on Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK) and ジニ JINI TV resulting in a few grammar aha moments. Also, I added the Anki deck Korean Vocabulary by Evita to my routine.

So far, I think loosening up the study regime a bit was a good trade-off to make. TTMIK comes from an “English speaker’s perspective”, so there’s a non-zero chance I miss out on some connection to Japanese grammar that would make it easier for me to grasp or remember. But if a grammar point clicks for me and expands by range of expression, so be it. JINI TV provides a “Japanese speaker’s perspective”, but contains Korean pronounced by a non-native. Also not ideal, but as long as it’s not my main source of Korean listening input, it shouldn’t be a problem. Lastly, the Anki deck by Evita has only recognition cards (no recall) and no example sentences, but that’s better than nothing if I don’t have the time/language level/functioning routine for sentence mining at the moment.

With the bits and pieces of new grammar and vocab under my belt, I started to write at least one Korean post per day HelloTalk. A tool that has proven helpful for that is the Dongsa Korean Verb Conjugator. For looking up words, I haven’t found an offline solution yet and still use korean.dict.naver.com and hanja.dict.naver.com.

Lastly, regarding content, I’m still on the lookout for TV series, movies or similar for extra motivation. What I did find is the podcast KJしゃべラジ-韓国語＆日本語でおしゃべりラジオ- that I sometimes listen to.

Fingers crossed I manage to maintain some form of consistent progress from here on.

한극어 — 한자 help and HelloTalk hurdles

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0900

Quick update on Korean studies after roughtly 2 months.

After taking a proper look at 바른 한국어 I completely switched to the series in favor of seemile Korean. Each lesson is packed with a considerable amount of new vocab, which is why it takes me quite a bit of time to go though each, as I put most of it into my Anki deck (currently at lesson 5-1).

One of the words introduced is 기숙사, which brings me to the first main point.

한자 help

Because I failed my 기숙사 Anki card over and over again, I looked into the words origin. Turns out it’s 寄宿舎, which, if you pronounce it in Japanese, is „kishukusha”. Knowing that the word is quite easy to remember. After that I learned about 한자 and, so far, got a few rules of thumb and resources that make vocab acquisition much easier.

Below are examples of a few words and the “requirements” to be able to make good use of 한자 if you know Japanese.

기숙사 → 寄宿舎
- need to know the 한자 (b/c you’d say 寮 in Japanese)
우체국 → 郵遞局 → 郵逓局 (逓 as in 逓信 which iirc is origin of the 〒 symbol)
- need to know the 한자 and how they map to Japanese Kanji
경찰 → 警察
- need to know peculiar pronunciation mappings like -ㄹ ↔ -つ
시계 → 時計 / 건물 → 建物
- need to resist 音読み

When adding new Anki cards, I currently use the following two websites.

Translation: kjjk.weblio.jp
한자 lookup: hanja.dict.naver.com

(Side note: in case someone’s aware of EPWING dictionaries for ko↔ja and or 한글→한자, let me know.)

HelloTalk hurdles

Completely unrelated, I stumbled upon some weird behavior in the HelloTalk app. I set my learning language to Korean, and for some reason my list of voice rooms appears to filter out Japanese⇄Korean rooms, while Korean only rooms as well as other mixed rooms such as Korean⇄French and Korean⇄Chinese are displayed.

I reported the problem to HelloTalk and for the mean time set up a second account on a different device as a Japanese speaker learning Korean. Problem is, this account for some reason got flagged for suspicious behavior after a day or two — although all I did was hang out in voice rooms. Well … with a flagged account you’re prompted to add a phone number, which the device I run the account on does not have. Luckily, I found a way to get around the phone number prompt. On the off chance that this is useful to someone, here’s how to do it:

Download the WEBM or MP4 video.

‌

Ending words regarding the bigger picture — progress is slower than I’d like, but I currently can’t afford to spend as much time on Korean as I’d like to. Hope I can report on some first tandem experiences in the next post.

한극어 — come up and see my etchings writing system

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0900

Over Christmas and New Year’s I had spent some time creating Anki decks for Hangul and Cyrillic. Being able to “read” Korean as well as Ukrainian, Russian, etc. seemed like a fun skill, worth the necessary upfront effort and time necessary for continued retention. Of course, in both cases I would only be able to turn writing into sounds. To make sense of writing I’d need vocab and grammar, which I wasn’t planning on spending time on.

So over the last months I had fun deciphering Ukrainian signs at German train stations, Korean labels on imported supermarket products, and Russian signs in Hokkaidō. The thought of giving either learning Russian or Korean a proper go lingered in my head, but it seemed unrealistic to find things to de-prioritize and re-allocate time from. That is, until I realized that given how much similarity there is between Korean and Japanese, learning Korean with resources in Japanese would make munch more sense than using English or German study materials.

Studying Korean using Japanese means

lots of shortcuts compared to starting from English/German, because concepts like particles etc. just map to existing stuff
some amount of Japanese exposure with zero additional time spent — e.g. watching videos explaining grammar (not ideal though because it’ll be non-native Japanese)
a risk of less study material being available (while surely the percentage of people studying Korean is higher in Japan than looking at a global average, the question is if that outweighs the difference in absolute numbers of people)
the potential to make Japanese study buddies

Overall, the thought was enough to get me exited about the idea of giving it a go. So here are the first things I can report on after a weekend of orientation.

Grammar
- seemile Korean is what I currently use to learn basic grammar
  - presenter is a Korean native speaker
  - except for the first few videos on the writing system they seem to avoid transliterated spellings and just go with Hangul
  - sound quality is okay (projector fan noise is a bit loud)
  - no subtitles available
- @QuickKorean’s 바른 한국어 series (1, 2, 3, 4) also seems promising (only had a quick look)
  - all videos appear to have Korean + English soft subs (sadly no Japanese)
  - explanations seem to be in Korean right from the start
Sentence mining
- I’ll give sentence mining from video contents a go to make creating flash cards more efficient
- subs2srs cards with mpv is the Anki add-on I’ll use (requires minimal fiddling with the code to run on systems with Python 3.8 or higher)
- opensubtitles has a nice advanced search allowing to filter for subs …
  - in either Korean on Japanese
  - for Korean movies/TV series
  - in .srt format (required by above Anki add-on)
  - sorted alphabetically
- … which makes it easy to find Korean+Japanese pairs for a few movies

One thing I’m still missing which would be super beneficial is some content that interests me. Something apart from the interest in the language itself to drive me. I’m not much into romance, horror, or revenge though, which seem to be quite common themes. Then again, finding Japanese “dorama” that interested me wasn’t easy either, and my vague impression is that what Korea produces nowadays is of higher production quality overall.
Oh well, for the moment I’ll have to do a fair bit of vocab and grammar grinding anyway. ^_^

So yeah … came for the unique writing system, stayed (for the moment) for the cost efficiency and opportunity to trying out sentence mining early on in studying a language.

東京大学〔三〕

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0900

During the last few days of my stay I moved out of my monthly rental apartment, send a bunch of books on their way to Germany by 船便, but also had a few last events on my schedule.

Events and activities
- Went to Karuizawa for a seminar where (aside from work)
  - on the destination platform, I ran into Japanese guy that had once joined the Japan meetup I organize in Karlsruhe.
  - we went to an onsen with a nice outside area that included a 水風呂 which, at 13℃ outside temperature, was cold but made the hot water afterwards all the more rewarding.
- Ate Monjayaki for (iirc) the first time.
Return flight
- Was lucky enough again to have a whole middle section of three seats for myself.
- Noticed maybe 10 hours into the flight that we were going a different route than on the flight to Japan (i.e. not along the south border of Russia).
- Got to see rainbow colored lights in an ANA plane (see title image above).
  Asking one of the flight attendants after landing and while waiting to disembark what the light thingy was about it turned out someone in business class had set it that way and the crew responsible for economy just also set it to that because they thought it looked nice. ^_^ Seeing that I was looking up trains to get home the flight attendant then asked how long it would take her to get to the city of Metzingen (which is known for its fashion outlet stores—she apparently was looking to buying some coat).

‌

Look back
Like my previous two trips to Japan, being aware of the limited time available was a major driving force for constant activities and exploration. And just like last time I came to Tokyo, I still had the FOMO-fueled feeling that I have to step up my game with regard to becoming aware of events and opportunities in time.
That being said, it was nice to see some definite progress in my skills “navigating Japan”. Conversations with strangers have definitely become easier over the years and I feel the closer to being able to “navigate” a typical interaction scenario in Japanese society with all its peculiarities regarding situationally dependent levels of politeness, mannerisms, etc., the smoother the ride gets and the more you can get out of your interactions.
Speaking of progression, I still haven’t been to Hokkaidō and still have a major “mode of living” unchecked—after study abroad, research internship, tourism, and research collaboration, coming on a work visa for a “regular job” is still an experience I’ve yet to make. Before that though, I think another visit as a tourist including some time in Hokkaidō will be on the agenda.
Whatever the type of visa or place of stay, compared to Germany I feel a certain … comfort or lack of anxiety navigating everyday life in Japan. Most things have a high level of regularity to it which can, at times, be frustrating, but in the grand scheme of things is a quality of life that draws me to Japan. … among a bunch of other things!

Until next time, Japan! ( • ᴗ • )

東京大学〔二〕

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0900

Seamlessly continued the everyday adventures, weekend trips, and occasional purchases.

I found much pleasure in starting small conversations with people around me like staff at shops or restaurants, instructors of workshops, etc. And sometimes these even led to some special treatment or me getting some helpful info I otherwise wouldn’t have not gotten.

Daily life
- When I came to Japan for the first time in 2015 I tried nattō, as you do, but was grossed out by the taste and unable to eat it, as many are. Since nattō is healthy and cheap though, I wanted to like it, so I tried it from time to time, maybe once or twice a year and gradually went from being able to eat it but not really liking it, to not minding the taste, to kinda sorta liking it.
  Because what I had tried over the years was mostly the bog standard type with soy sauce and karashi mustard, I set out to determine my nattō preferences. Bought lots of variants (here just a few) and can now say that I
  - like 大粒
  - am not a huge fan of ひきわり
  - prefer types with wasabi or plum タレ over the standard soy sauce + karashi
  - like kimchi + nattō
  - am very aware of the fact that nattō being sold in packs of two to four doesn’t lend itself to trying out a large variety in a short time ^^
- anticipated and watched Chainsaw Man and got myself a prime subscription on my amazon.co.jp account for the time
Events and activities
- Went to Kamakura to visit some 鎌倉殿の13人 locations and an exibition. While there, ate my first 田楽 which was incredibly delicious and had a miso soup with a fig which was super tasty as well.
- Saw a BOOKOFF mascot in a store in Nagoya.
- Visited the 印刷博物館 not once but twice for their letterpress printing workshop. The first time I went I chatted with one of the instructors and was given the tip that in a few weeks they’d do the workshop not with Latin alphabet movable type but with Japanese, so I immediately registered for that one as well. After that second workshop I then went through the normal exhibition and there was approached by the same instructor. She told me there’d be a special printing event in an hour because it’s the 150th anniversary of JR East and if I went to the reception now I could still get a pass for that. Thanks to that I then got to use an old railway pass printing machine and dating device. :)
- Went to Kanazawa/Toyama, ate delicious sushi and visited a wooden sweet molds museum as well as a glass art gallery. Also the hotel there, INTERGΛTE, inevitably caused strong Stargate associations with the stylized “A” and 灯籠 on top of it which could as well depict a Goa’uld mothership above a pyramid.
- Went to the Google office in Shibuya to meet a former NII colleague for lunch.
- Re-visited 丼太郎 which was a stone’s throw away from my place back in 2017/18.
Purchases
- Re-visited the 奥野かるた店 and bought two kanji games. The one on the left in the picture is a special edition with more sturdy pieces in a wooden box. Because it had been used as a showcase model and had a few scratches it was heavily reduced in price, which I was made aware of by one of the staff members when asking for a rough explanation of how the game is played.
- Got some merch from the podcast ゆる言語学ラジオ.
- Used 代引き as a payment method for an online purchase for the first time (iirc the site I was using was neither accepting my Visa card nor offering convenience store payment).

This second month almost concludes my stay. There’s only a few days left, but I’ll take that as an opportunity to add one more post and include a general look back.

On to the … last few days. T_T

東京大学〔一〕

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0900

The yen is cheap, the ‘rona is tamed, and the Japan is vast and full of opportunities!

In terms of daily life, work, and free time activities I’m faced with a constant stream of novelty as well as opportunities demanding to be prioritized, as there isn’t enough time to take them all. Below’s a list of what made the priority cut.

Daily life
- I transitioned from watching 鎌倉殿の13人 online (back in Germany) to watching it on TV. Following a TV show in Japan is a first for me (won’t miss the set airing time and lack of a pause function once I’m back in Germany though ^^).
- I’m trying out different mask types, as there’s more variety than in Europe (where it’s basically a choice between medical and FFP2).
- Got one of the new 500 Yen coins that’s around since the end of 2021.
Events and activities
- Did part of the JR East Lego stamp rally where you’d collect Lego themed stamps at different train stations in and around Tokyo and then get a minifigure and some stickers.
- Participated in a language exchange event that was lead by a Lego serious play instructor.
- Went to a 藤原麻里菜 exhibition and experienced futile work.
- Walked by a ポプテピピック thingy.
- Rode an N700S bullet train, which is in operation since July 2020 (shortly after I left Japan last time). Also, saw the Bullet Train movie (after some technical difficulties). There even was plenty of advertisement on the bullet train platforms.
- Did some hiking with people from the lab (金時山).
- Met up with one of the other exchange students from back in Matsuyama 2015 who’s now doing a PhD in Kōbe.
Purchases
- In 2019 I discovered browsing BOOKOFFs as a fun past time. A section I always take a look at is dictionaries, and on one of my visits this time I found a 新明解国語辞典 (English Wikipedia article) in it’s forth edition (1989), which, especially in this and the fifth edition, is infamous for it’s unique definitions of words. So much so that there’s a book about it, people discuss it on podcasts, etc..
- Bought a Thinkpad Trackpoint Keybard II for a more comfortable standing setup. (… and because the damn thing doesn’t give an option to swap Fn and Ctrl I now have Ctrl mapped to CapsLock. … and since I already have Esc mapped to CapLock I now rely on XCAPE for the double assignment)
- Got a good deal on a pair of used Sony WH-1000XM4s because (1) cheap Yen, and (2) it was a model someone had originally purchased outside of Japan (i.e. the “power on”, “Bluetooth connected”, etc. sound clips it plays are in English instead of Japanese).
- Had a pair of glasses made at Zoff in like 15 min for 5,500 Yen *cries in Germany glasses prices*.

On to the next month!

Two months at 東京大学

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0900

Following up the two weeks in Singapore with two months in Japan. :)

As with Singapore, the trip is for a research collaboration, but I’ll mostly focus on the things aside from research here. This post will cover everything up until I entered Japan.

Applying for travel grants
About half a year after I started my PhD COVID-19 hit. Not happy with the thought of finishing it without any international experience, I always kept an eye on possibilities to go abroad, in case travel would become possible again. In late 2021 I started preparation for applying to the JSPS Summer Program. Made out eight Japanese labs in the NLP area and ended up “cold e-mailing” four. Result: 1 ignore, 1 reject, and 2 positive replies. Decided between the latter two (went with a lab at 東大), set up a research plan together with them, applied … and got rejected.

Luckily I had access to a university internal funding program here that would allow for an arrangement similar to the JSPS Summer Program in terms of timing, length, and funding. So, re-cycled the research plan, adjusted everything to the different application forms and requirements, applied again … and was accepted. :)

Organizing accomodation
For a stay of two months, not going for a few click hotel booking but rather the hassle of a rental contract setup procedure seemed worth the benefit of being able to cook and wash clothes by myself, having more space, etc. At first I looked at share houses, as I’ve previously made good experiences with that. In the end though I went for a monthly rental—choosing predictability over the potential of an awesome social environment at home.

Type of accommodation aside, just as last time when I rented something in Japan, there was a lot of messaging back and forth, checking documents, asking for more documents, etc. etc. until everything was sorted out. Having gone through that, I can now look forward to see how 駒込 compares to 茗荷谷.

VISA and immigration
The fact that my travel destination was Japan meant good and bad news. The bad news first: things would most likely be more of a hassle then if I had gone somewhere else. The reason being that Japan still is quite restrictive when it comes to inbound travel. The good news: Japan being this restrictive meant that me being on a business trip would allow me to enter the country in the first place.

The overall process looked as follows.

Book a flight and a hotel for the first night to be able to provide details on my plan to enter the country (which flight, where I’ll stay, etc.)
Provide this information and further details (passport copy etc.) to the host institute in Japan, which then applies to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare to approve my plan of entering the country
The host institute receives an 受付済証 and sends it to me (luckily in PDF form and not via snail mail, like a CoE)
Together with the 受付済証 I apply for a visa at the Japanese consulate (which meant getting an appointment in time and hours of train rides b/c you have to submit your passport), wait, and then go there again to pick up my passport with the visa in it
Install the MySOS app and register your travel plans, visa details, and vaccination certificates (app turns from red to yellow)
Up to 72 hours before the flight, take a PCR test, have it return negative, and get the PCR test’s result in a format specified by the Japanese government
Register the PCR test’s result in the MySOS app (turns from yellow to green or blue depending on where you travel from)
Show the nice blue screen to get your boarding pass, show it to enter the plane, and then show it at immigration (here it gets properly checked against your passport, etc.)
Congratulations, you’re now in Japan :)

A nice little curiosity for me is that through this system you get a temporary visitor visa, which is a category I would otherwise probably not have been able to get due to the visa waiver regulation that applied to Germans entering Japan pre-COVID.

(Not) getting COVID
Because I was going to Singapore, then back to Germany for less than a week, and then to Japan, I had to get my visa for Japan before going to Singapore. The flight to Japan requiring a negative PCR test meant that I would want to minimize the risk of catching COVID by all means. Two international flights prior to the PCR test, including all the public transport around that, time at the airport etc., were not optimal. Because my last booster shot had been over half a year ago, I decided to get a second booster.

With four mRNA shots and the last one being super recent, properly wearing FFP2 masks, reducing unnecessary exposure to crowds, etc. I surely was OK, right? Welp … ten days after my booster shot I got a sore throat and fever. ^_^’ Self-test positive, follow-up PCR test positive; congratulations, you’ve got COVID. My best guess is that I got it on one of the long train rides to/from the consulate for getting my visa. Luckily my required self-isolation ended a few days before I’d depart for Singapore.

Now, with four mRNA shots and a recovery from a recent (so most likely Omicron) COVID infection I’d be save, right? RIGHT?! So the day before my flight to Japan was scheduled I got my PCR test done and waited … Result should arrive within 6 hours. Check after 3, not yet. Check after 5, not yet. The website says in 98% of cases the result is available within the given time. Only in very rare cases, such as when the result is ambiguous it can happen that the lab has to run the test once more. Check after 6 … not yet. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME?! After 6 hours and 37 minutes I got my result: …

The flight
After I registered my PCR test and have the MySOS app turn fist green and then blue I was ready to get on my flight. I took a direct flight with ANA. A few observations and highlights:

Once I was on the plane it finally felt real that I was going to Japan again. Also, while the whole ordeal of restrictions and uncertainty had made the prospect of being able to enter Japan feel special during preparation, it now felt like the most normal thing in the world again.
It was refreshing to not feel perma-stressed about people around me coughing, not wearing their masks properly, etc.
I had booked an isle seat of the middle section (3-3-3 row layout). The seat next to me was not booked, and seat next to that one became free because the person that booked it moved to a different free seat. This meant that I had the whole middle section of a row for myself and could lie down to sleep. ^_^
Had chosen the vegetarian meal option hoping for some nice Japanese veggies, maybe something with tofu, seaweed, etc. Welp … they basically served carbs with carbs and a hint of tomato sauce. Because of a gastrointestinal condition I probably was well advised not to eat it, so I made peace with the thought of just grabbing some snack type food later. The flight attended collecting the trays noticed my meal was untouched and despite me saying I’d be fine with some snacks, went over and beyond to find me a proper alternative meal. In the end what I found in front of me was a business class vegetarian meal which, lo and behold, had plenty of veggies! (and was quite delicious).

After landing we first had to wait for the “go” from a quarantine officer, then let people with international connecting flights disembark first, and then go. From there to entering Japan things went super fast. First tons of Haneda hallways, then a checkpoint to present the MySOS app where you get a flimsy blue piece of paper, and more or less the usual immigration process from thereon.

And with that my long awaited albeit short reunion with Japan starts. Updates will be tagged #UTYO22. :)

A week on Tarek Central Time

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0900

Because of reasons I came from a two week stay in Singapore back to Germany and less then seven days later departed for Japan. Trying to adjust my inner clock from GMT+8 to GMT+2, only to then adjust to GMT+9 within a week seemed not really worth it, so I decided to just live on my own “Tarek Central Time” for a week. While sleep schedule shenanigans haven’t worked out great for me in the past, going to bed at around 16:00 and waking up between 0:00 and 2:00 ended up being a success.

A few minor inconveniences:

Food planning was kind of a hassle. If shops open at around 8, this means it’s 2 in the afternoon for your. So no buying food for breakfast or lunch. You have to plan ahead.
Constantly converting in your head between “my time” and “other people time”/”real time” can become confusing at times.
Plans made before the decision to live on a weird time have to be adjusted. For me that meant re-scheduling my train to Frankfurt as well as the time of my pre-departure PCR test.
Basically the first point again, but I realized quite late that my hotel breakfast in Frankfurt would be my lunch … so more planning ahead needed.

In the end though I arrived in Japan with no need to adjust to the time difference. :)

Two weeks at the National University of Singapore

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0900

After two and a half years of not travelling I was able to make a two week trip to visit a research group at the National University of Singapore. :)

This being my first international stay as a PhD student, it was nice to see how another research group operates and how PhD life in general is like in a different country. Below some general impressions—mostly regarding Singapore itself (not the research side of things).

Figuring out immigration requirements and COVID rules was super smooth (looking at you Japan, with your long winded websites full of links to PDF files, short notice announcements of change announcements, and placebo tourism North Korea style guided tours).
Travel to there and back was
- Home ⇄ airport: an annoyingly chaotic mess as is usual with DB (with a scary cherry on top in the form of a Lufthansa strike announcement which hit several flights on the day I was travelling but luckily not mine).
- Airport ⇄ Singapore: smooth and without problems
Public transport
- The NETS card I got at the airport was ばなにゃ themed. ^_^
- The MRT is nice, but I’m not a fan of it being forbidden to even drink water on the platform. Responsibly staying hydrated at one point (i.e. sneakily taking a sip from my water bottle way off on one side of a platform) there immediately was an announcement that eating and drinking wasn’t allowed.
- On my third day when I was riding a bus I consciously realized for the first time that Singapore is left-hand driving.
- Speaking of buses, it’s nice that bus stops on opposite sides of the road are actually named accordingly (e.g. X and opposite-X).
- Felt like a pro when I hand singed a bus to pick me up at the stop I was waiting at for the first time. ^_^
- Realized that Google maps isn’t of much use for the NUS campus area (and routes partly within there) after learning about the NUS provided buses (cf. NUSNextBUS app)
Food
- Love the fact that in hawker centres, food courts, and even huge malls you’re likely to find a stall with lots of stuff on display and you can just order rice or bee hoon or whatever with this, this, and that, and some of that over there as well. I think what I went for the most is Hainanese curry rice with an assortment of what looked tasty and/or interesting.
Misc
- I prefer the older coins with the flower motives over the newer ones with merlion and buildings.
- Saw a Wagler’s Pit Viper in the wild and probably got closer than I should have for taking a picture (which I realized later when asking reddit to identify what I had encountered ^^).
- Installed Pokemon GO and the Geocaching app for the time I was there which both led me to some interesting places I would otherwise not have discovered.
- Being able to read Japanese was helpful at times and I even picked up new characters, namely 咖喱 in 海南咖喱饭.

All in all I enjoyed my time there a lot. :)

See you and your tasty food again Singapore. I’ll probably trigger more no-water-on-the-MRT announcements if you don’t come to your senses by then. (;

Completionism & Chapter Closing

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0900

A bit more than a year ago I decided to create a new flashcard deck for recognition only vocab. The deck mostly grew through words I picked up in books, as well as a steady stream of me remembering stuff I could already read (but not write) through natural exposition over the years. The deck grew, containing 100 new kanji, 200, 300, and most recently 400. Imminent checkpoints ahead always sparked quick bursts of actively looking out for words with new kanji to add—a mode of operation that I had pursued until I reached 1,800 recognition+recall kanji.

For the first recognition only 100+ post I came up with the theme of a Magicka mage casting a spell, giving me +100 on my kanji reading stat. As cards and therefore new kanji accumulated quickly, it felt like a fitting theme. At that point I also already created the +200, +300, and +400 images, which were weirdly motivating in and of themselves when a new checkpoint was close. During the quick bursts of actively looking for words with new kanji to add, I ventured into a variety of categories.

Chinese food: 餃子, 焼売, 小籠包, …
Animals: 鼠, 狸, 鯉, 鮭, 鷹, 鷲, 麒麟, …
Place names: 埼玉, 茨城, 栃木, 滋賀, 奈良, 平壌, …
More food and cooking stuff: 杓子, 炙る, 燗酒, …
Colors: 橙, 藍, 紺, …
Chinese zodiacs (干支): 卯, 辰, 巳, 酉, 戌, 亥, …

Around the 400 mark I then noticed another checkpoint in reach. The roughly 2,500 kanji in my cards at that point covered 96% of the 2,136 常用漢字—a list that over time gradually felt less and less relevant after noticing that I’d quite frequently stumble upon words containing kanji new to me from outside of the list, like 爪楊枝, お詫び and 味噌, while words using new kanji from within the list seemed to cover comparatively niche topics, like 畔, 詔, and 陪席. However, with less than 100 kanji to go for a list of 2,136 the completionist in me took over.

Because I knew that for some of the kanji I would only find obscure words when looking for myself, I went through the list with a few natives, asking for the first word that came to their mind when seeing each character. With all the new flashcards added I’m now at 6,824 recognition + recall cards (covering 2,146 kanji) and 524 recognition only cards (covering 462 kanji), adding up to a total of 2,608 kanji. Their accumulation over time looks as follows.

With this short renaissance of actively looking for words with new kanji having reached somewhat of a conclusive checkpoint, I think it is now once more time to ~~Purge An Old Meme~~ put the practice to rest, close this chapter and go back to a natural influx of new stuff through exposition in daily life.

r--漢字 — 400+

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0900

@300+ “I highly doubt I’ll reach 400+ in another four months.”

… well, make it two and a half then.

103 kanji, 131 words, 79 days since the last checkpoint.

The stupid Magicka power-up images are too tempting. I even created an additional one for a milestone that’s likely to come up within the next weeks or months. In any case—besides self-imposed rules and motivating milestones, this time 干支 served as a source of a few more kanji, there’s food and cooking stuff like 杓子, 炙る and 燗酒, as well as still a non-negligible amount of kanji in the “oh yeah I actually already know this” category, like 珈琲 and 麒麟.

This time I’m calling it though. No 500+ in the foreseeable future, but one more Magicka power-up flavored post so come soon. :)

r--漢字 — 300+

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0900

99 kanji, 119 words, 112 days since the last checkpoint.

And again, round about the same time span. I highly doubt I’ll reach 400+ in another four months, though. This time—especially towards the end—felt like I was pushing the limits of what I currently feel makes sense to put on flashcards and actively study. Maybe if I start putting names and their most common readings into the mix? Or 旧字体 like 學, 國, etc.? We’ll see. In any case, currently being at a combined 2,444 considering both recognition only and recognition+recall, I’ll definitely find some way to justify another 56 across the two decks. ^_^
Vocabulary sources this time were mostly books, but I still had a surprising amount of “oh yeah I actually already know this” moments. For example 苺, 罠, and 凧.
Key observation this time: the stupid Magicka power-up images I stitched together for this series are annoyingly motivating. I really want to post the 400+ one but I’m not sure if I’ll get there without creating a bunch of Anki cards that aren’t of much actual use. ^_^’

Finding うぶんちゅ！ chapter 15

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0900

In 2016 I stumbled upon うぶんちゅ！, a Creative Commons licensed manga about Ubuntu, published between 2008 and 2013. Over the years I’ve been translating chapters 9 and onwards at a snail’s pace of one chapter per year. This year, I thought I’d complete the series with chapter 14.

For translating chapter 14 I wanted to find out the intended reading of 壱宮—the school in which the story takes place. Spelled out in full, 県立壱宮高校, the school was only mentioned on the author’s website until late 2015, but with no indication of its reading.

Searching around I found that the French Wikipedia had an article on the manga. While it doesn’t contain a hint to the school’s name, I noticed it lists a fifteenth chapter titled Ubuntu Touchは見た!?. I was only aware of 14! Searching the web for the chapter’s title I found … nothing. The only Google hit is the French Wikipedia article itself, nothing on archive.org, and the edit adding the info to Wikipedia is by a user with no contact information. Why Titan2016, why?!

All the chapters I knew of at that point are freely available online. Chapters 1–11 on the author’s page—even including PSD source files—, and chapters 12, 13, and 14 on the page of Ubuntu Magazine Japan—albeit only though archive.org because the site closed in 2017.

I carefully searched the Ubuntu Magazine Japan page for any traces of the ominous chapter 15. For all issues, when released online, there’d be a blog post with a table of contents (example). Volume 10 including うぶんちゅ！ chapter 14 being the last of them at the very top of the page didn’t give me much hope. Besides issues 1–10, the page mentions a “2013 Summer issue”, but on the cover there’s no mention of うぶんちゅ！, and the description only names some of the contents plus a vague いつもの連載も掲載しています.

Following the “2013 Summer issue” lead though I found this blog post stating about the issue “[Story about Ubuntu Touch]. 「うぶんちゅ！」でも取り上げられてますしね.” A few clicks later I found the issue on BOOK☆WALKER which has a preview of not only the cover but also the first few pages and lo and behold … THERE IT IS! Add to cart, proceed to check out, LET’S GO!

So yeah, Titan2016 turned out to be a trustworthy source. ^_^ Ubunchu chapter 15, うぶんちゅ！第15回 Ubuntu Touchは見た!? exists and can be bought here. Which also means I’ll put out one more translation next year. Keep a lookout for it here.

For a nice overview, here are the sources for chapters 1–15.

Chapters 1–11 (PNG + PSD source files)
Chapter 12 (PDF)
Chapter 13 (PDF)
Chapter 14 (PDF)
Chapter 15 (online, 880 Yen as of writing)

r--漢字 — 200+

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0900

@100+ “I’d be surprised if there weren’t more updates to come in the future.”

… and here’s the fist one of them.

100 kanji, 113 words, 120 days since the last checkpoint.

Round about the same time span. Nothing super insightful to point out in terms of vocabulary sources though — books, TV, podcasts, YouTube, Tiktok, and the odd “oh yeah I actually already know this” like 餃子, 焼売, and 小籠包. As for observations, for a few kanji that I find super easy to remember (like 啜) I hesitated for a moment to add them to my recognition and recall deck because that wouldn’t bring be closer to the next recognition only checkpoint which I’d clearly reach faster than the recognition and recall 2200+ (should I ever reach that at all … I’m at 2138 currently). Regardless of the deck, reaching an overall 2500+ would be nice. :)

r--漢字 — 100+

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0900

@2100+ “Another possibility I see, is that at some point I deviate from my current procedure of learning to read and write every kanji and create a separate recognition only deck.”

… which is what I ended up doing in late January this year. So here’s the first checkpoint for recognition only kanji.

102 kanji, 95 words, 124 days^{(since the creation of the recognition only deck)}

In part I add stuff I already know, whenever it comes to my mind. Like 喧嘩, 厨房, and 薔薇. But the bulk of the first 100 are from words I picked up while reading books—lots from 同時通訳はやめられない, like 顰蹙, 醍醐味, and 憔悴.

Observations from using a recognition only deck so far:

I think I got more vigilant with actually looking up words I can’t read that I come across, instead of just deducing blanks from context.
Awareness of kanji (components’) 音読み is bliss. I feel like I usually go from kanji parts to reading to meaning. For example, reading 恫喝 I spot 同 and the right part of 渇¹, at which point I know どうかつ which then leads me to the meaning.
¹⁾ I’m aware of 曷 which would also help w/ e.g. 葛藤 but my brain always recalls the 渇 from 渇水.
I still haven’t tackled names yet. I’m considering to just add some cards for the most common readings of the most common names and maybe some well known people.

So yeah … multi ~~track drifting~~ deck kanji’ing. I’d be surprised if there weren’t more updates to come in the future.

Einkommensteuererklärung nach Master-Studium

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0900

(This blog post will be in German b/c it’s about a particular situation of filing taxes in Germany.)

Da es zu den Themen Werbungskosten, Einkommensteuererklärung während/nach dem Studium, usw. reichlich Informationen von gut informieren Quellen gibt, will ich hier nur auf die Punkte eingehen, die ich bei meiner eigenen Recherche vermisst und schlussendlich selbst in Erfahrung gebracht habe. Das wären zum einen ein paar wenige grundlegende Aspekte, und zum anderen ein paar sehr spezielle Aspekte, die wahrscheinlich ohnehin nur auf sehr wenige zutreffen. Im Folgenden etwas Vorgeplänkel und dann zu beiden Kategorien ein paar hoffentlich nützliche Infos.

Vorgeplänkel / Kontext

Meine Situation: (1) Bachelor-Studium → (2) Master-Studium inkl. zwei von der Uni angebotene aber extrakurrikulare Auslandsaufenthalte → (3) Anstellung als Doktorand. Während des Studiums hatte ich mich nie mit dem Thema Steuern befasst, also auch nie eine Einkommensteuererklärung abgegeben.
Der Plan: rückwirkend soweit es geht/sich lohnt Verlustvorträge geltend machen.
Die große Frage: selbst machen oder einen Steuerberater heranziehen?

Hauptargument dafür, die Steuererklärung(en) selbst zu machen, ist das altbekannte give a man a fish / teach a man to fish—wenn ich mal weiß wie es geht kann ich es fortan ja selbst machen. Auf der anderen Seite ist die Übergangssituation von Studium zu Beruf ja eine spezielle; und zudem im Hinblick auf meine Auslandsaufenthalte womöglich (a) komplexer als was mich in den kommenden Jahren bei der Steuererklärung erwarten wird, und (b) durch einen Fachmann voraussichtlich weitaus gewinnbringender umsetzbar als durch jemanden, der gerade seine erste Steuererklärung abgibt.
Im Endeffekt hab ich mich für Herausforderung+Kompetenzgewinn und gegen vermeintliches finanzielles Plus entschieden. :)

Grundlegende Aspekte

Dinge, die ich online als nicht allzu prominent kommuniziert empfunden, oder die ich im Endeffekt selbst herausgefunden habe.

Die Software ElsterFormular ist deprecated¹, also lohnt es sich direkt mit der Web-Version (Mein ELSTER) einzusteigen.
¹„ElsterFormular wird Ihnen letztmalig im Jahr 2020 […] zur Verfügung gestellt.“ (Quelle)
Belege können (zumindest in BW) ohne Probleme elektronisch ein-/nachgereicht werden. Vorgehen:
- In der Einkommensteuererklärung einen Haken beim Punk Belege werden nachgereicht setzen.
- Versandbestätigung im Elster-Postfach bekommen.
- Auf der Webseite des Finanzamts über das Kontaktformular die Belege unter Angabe des Ordnungskriteriums (was die versandte Einkommensteuererklärung identifiziert) einreichten.
  Beispieltext:
```
  <Briefkopf>            

  Identifikationsnummer: 11 222 333 444
        
  Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren
  zu den von mir am dd.mm.yyyy elektronisch übermittelten Steuerdaten (Ordnungskriterium 1a2b3c4d5e6f7) sende ich Ihnen die beiliegenden Erläuterungen und Belege in den folgenden Anlagen.
        
  <Auflistung der Anlagen>
        
  <MfG>
  <Seitenumbruch>
  <Rest der PDF>
```
Geldbeträge müssten in Euro angegeben werden. Beim Bundesfinanzministerium gibt es hier für jedes Jahr eine Tabelle, in der pro Monat und Währung der jeweils gültige Umrechnungskurs angegeben wird. (Da steht zwar Umsatzsteuer-Umrechnungskurse drauf, bei meinen Umrechnungen von Yen auf Euro basierend auf den Werten wurde allerdings nichts beanstandet.)
Beispielangabe in der Steuererklärung:
```
  Bezeichnung: Sprachprüfungsgebühr Kanji-Kentei ((2*2000 Yen)/130,86)
  Wert: 31
```
Für in fremden Sprachen vorgelegte Dokumente kann eine Übersetzung gefordert bzw. auf Kosten des Vorlegenden vom Finanzamt beauftragt werden (§ 87 AO). Ich habe all meine japanischen und englischen Belege selbst übersetzt—war offenbar ausreichend.
Voraussetzung für eine doppelte Haushaltsführung bei Auslandsaufenthalten ist, dass man im Heimatland weiter Miete zahlt. Wer also sein Hab und Gut für lau im Elternhaus parkt und nur im Ausland Miete zahlt, hat keine doppelte Haushaltsführung.

Fremdsprachenerwerb und Werbungskosten

Wie oben bereits durch Sprachprüfungsgebühr Kanji-Kentei angeteast, wird es ab hier spannend, aber auch sehr speziell. YMMV

Werbekosten sind Kosten zur „Erwerbung, Sicherung und Erhaltung der Einnahmen“ (§ 9 Abs. 1 Satz 1 EStG). Kein Problem im Falle meines zweiten Auslandsaufenthalts. Forschungspraktikum am NII; für die Beantragung des Urlaubssemesters damals hatte ich sogar schon ein Dokument der Studienkoordination in dem es heißt: „Das Praktikum wird von uns als dem Studium förderlich und dem Studienziel dienlich angesehen“. Interessant wird es aber bei z.B. Gebühren für Japanisch-Sprachprüfungen, vor allem aber bei den Ausgaben für den ersten meiner Auslandsaufenthalte. Zwei Semester an einer Uni in Japan zur Verbesserung meiner Sprachkompetenz—kein nennenswerter Bezug zu meinem Studienfach. Voraussetzung für die Anrechnung etwaiger Aufwendungen als Werbungskosten ist hier, dass meine Japanischkenntnisse notwendig für meine derzeitige Tätigkeit sind.

Entsprechend ergab sich Anlage 6 im Begleitschreiben meiner ersten Einkommensteuererklärung: „A6 Darlegung der beruflichen Notwendigkeit von Japanischkenntnissen“, aufgeteilt in A6.1 bis A6.9. Hier die kommentierte Kurzfassung:

Japanisch bereits Teil der Erstausbildung (B. Sc.)
Während meines Bachelor-Studiums hatte ich drei Japanischkurse gemacht. Im Internet liest man, dass Gebühren für Sprach-Grundkurse i.d.R. nicht als Werbungskosten anerkannt werden. Außerdem sei es vorteilhaft für die Anrechenbarkeit von Kosten für die Verbesserung von Sprachkompetenzen, wenn entsprechende Grundkurse Teil der Erstausbildung (in meinem Fall das Bachelor-Studium) waren. check ✔
Verfolgung kontinuierlicher Verbesserung der Sprachkompetenz
Während des Auslandsjahres hatte ich sukzessiv höhere Sprachkurse an der Uni belegt, und über den Verlauf des gesamten Master-Studiums nach und nach höhere Sprachzertifikate gemacht (JLPT N2 → JLPT N1 → Kanji-Kentei 5 und 4).
Spezialisierung der Sprachkompetenz für die Anwendung in der Informatik
An der japanischen Uni (erster Auslandsaufenthalt) gab es zwar keine Informatik-Fakultät oder -Vorlesungen, aber immerhin ein Seminar zum Thema Programmierung und Computerspieleentwicklung, um interessierte BWL’er dort etwas mit der Thematik vertraut zu machen. Wie ich den leitenden Prof. kennengelernt habe weiß ich nicht mehr, aber in meinem zweiten Semester konnte ich eine der Seminargruppen betreuen, wofür mir dann sogar eine Bescheinigung ausgestellt wurde. :)
Japanischkompetenz notwendig für Forschungspraktikum
Wärhrend des zweiten Auslandsaufenthalts (NII) fand die Forschungsgruppen-interne Kommunikation in der großen Runde zwar zwangsweise auf Englisch statt, mein Hauptprojekt—an dem neben dem Prof. und mir noch ein externer Partner beteiligt war—lief allerdings auf Japanisch (E-Mails, gelegentliche Meetings, etc.). Da im Verlauf des Projekts auch ein auf Japanisch verfasstes Paper entstand (geschrieben von dem Prof. aber natürlich gegengelesen, kommentiert und diskutiert von allen Beteiligten) hatte ich hier neben einer „Dokumentation von E-Mails“ sogar ein publiziertes Paper, auf das ich verweisen konnte.
Japanischkenntnisse zur Sicherung von Fördergeldern
(Kontext-Wechsel: derzeitige Anstellung als Doktorand.) In einem Antrag auf DAAD-Projektfördermittel seitens meines PostDoc-Betreuers ist die Beteiligung meinerseits am Projekt u.A. explizit durch meine Japanischkenntnisse begründet. Da die Förderung genehmigt wurde konnte ich hiermit ein gutes Argument anführen, auch wenn natürlich nicht mit Sicherheit gesagt werden kann, ob der Aspekt beim DAAD-Entscheidungsprozess eine Rolle gespielt hat.

Bei den Steuererklärungen für die Folgejahre habe ich die Begründung dann nicht jedes mal erneut angehängt. Nur noch Belege wenn nötig (ab 2017 nur noch bei Nachfrage seitens des Finanzamts erforderlich).

Ergebnis: wurde alles so berechnet wie von mir angegeben. :)
Wer also (1) während der Erstausbildung schon Grundkenntnisse erwirbt, (2) über den Verlauf einer weiteren Ausbildung am Ball bleibt/seine Sprachkompetenz spezialisiert, und (3) in seiner derzeitigen Beschäftigung guten Nutzen daraus zieht, für den stehen die Chancen wohl gut, Ausgaben für den Spracherwerb als Werbungskosten anrechnen lassen zu können.

Fazit / zl;ng: Steuererklärung kann man selbst machen. (:

Vielleicht landen die richtigen Worte aus dem Beitrag ja an den richtigen Stellen in den Suchmaschinenindizes und irgendjemand kann etwas Hilfreiches hieraus mitnehmen. お役に立っていれば何よりです。( • ᴗ • )

大阪短期滞在コロナ編

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0900

Spent 4 weeks in Ōsaka (Mar 16–Apr 11). While a certain pandemic currently wreaking havoc across the globe did add some (first world problems level) stressful moments here and there, COVID related things were largely interesting to observe rather than concerning, and the trip overall really enjoyable.

As public transport was off limits (except for a Kagoshima trip that had been planned and booked since ages ago) the spacial range of my endeavors was defined by what was reachable on foot. The fact that the Japanese workforce seemed largely determined (or forced) to 頑張る their way through the pandemic meant that there were still quite some areas with high pedestrian traffic. My mornings therefore often involved a bit of route planning for lunch and grocery shopping, min-maxing against potential direct and indirect exposure to other human beings.

planning of flights was a bit chaotic
- [Via China!] In early January, while in a bit of a hurry and currently not at home, I had decided on a flight by China Eastern Airlines with transit through Shanghai. Hitting the pay-for-realsies-this-is-a-legally-binding-agreement button it wouldn’t accept my credit card. Confused and bummed out that I’d probably had to get a more expensive flight at another time I gave up for the moment (later realized I still had a default set payment limit on my CC of 500€ which is why I couldn’t pay).
- [No? How ‘bout Korea?] A few days later I found a connection through Seoul, operated by Korean Air, for a reasonable price which I promptly booked. As the outbreak of some virus in China hit the news I though I had dodged a bullet. Thank goodness that CC transaction didn’t go through. Well … shit hit the fan and travel restrictions from and through Korea to Japan got stricter and stricter by the day. I then spent some days working, with the Korean Air service hotline as my ambient noise of choice and was able to cancel my booking (full refund approved, ~~money yet to arrive~~ /edit: arrived on 2020-05-25).
  Note: props to Korean Air and thank you to their service hotline staff. Communication of relevant information was timely and comprehensible, decisions on their part seemed fair, and hotline staff was friendly and helpful.
- [Also not an option? Ehm … the Netherlands?] While the Korean Air part of the story was progressing gradually, I already was on the lookout for alternatives. Because at this point in time the world already had largely abandoned travel plans to Asia yet airlines were still operating their usual amount of flights, I found the KLM connection I used last year via Amsterdam to be quite cheap even without booking well in advance. The moment I cancelled the Korean Air flight I therefore went straight to KLM and booked. Even though flight times were slightly adjusted as time went on and there was a bit of confusion and service hotline shenanigans midway through, in the end I pretty much traveled according to what I had booked at this point.
  Note: props to KLM and thank you to the cabin crew on both the long haul flights I took for being awesome. (That being said: a toll free service hotline like the one Korean Air offers would be nice.)
was pleasantly surprised about the availability of hand sanitizer everywhere and even the occasional free mask
stepped foot on the island of Kyūshū for the first time (Kagoshima :)
- 黒豚 is delicious
- visited the southernmost tip of Kyūshū
- ↑ rode a car on the left hand side of the road for the first time (my one and a half years of bicycle experience in Japan interestingly didn’t help with the confusion all too much)
not being able to enjoy things like public baths, events, etc. I made the most out of food
- Müsli for breakfast—because Müsli. Sadly lots of imported stuff and therefore also expensive (成城石井 has a good selection btw.); at least the fruit was local (apples mostly, at times khaki)
- ate all the メロンパン
- realized that avocado with soy sauce is delicious
- scouted for lunch options on 食べログ, aiming for places that’d open at 11 and pac-man’ing my way there such that I’d arrive 10 minutes before that, allowing me to often oder, eat at a normal pace and finish before anyone else would enter
- made a thing out of eating food dragon ball characters are named after
got my hands on a Carcassonne strategy guide (gotta love Japan’s enthusiast and self publishing culture)
got two masks by a random passerby wo noticed me walking around outside without wearing one
got to experience Domino’s 日本ならではの気遣いのサービス空箱
was grateful for the information and entertainment by NDR’s Coronavirus-Update, Der Held, Logbuch Netzpolitik, backspace.fm, @davechensky, Digital Homeless Yohei and many more
felt weirdly looked after, receiving e-mails from Germany’s Auswärtiges Amt about the availability of commercial flights back home in April
was super interesting to have a comparison of the situation in Germany between mid March and mid April without having lived through the gradual change in between

Next time I visit I’ll have to go on a 銭湯 frenzy.

漢字 — 2100+

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji, 733 words, 1020 days¹; Anki stats, kanji so far.
¹⁾ Since the last time I wrote one of these.

@100+ “there will — hopefully — be a total of 21 of these in the end”
✔ done
@2000+ “I’m really not sure I’ll ever get to 2100”
only took close to 3 years ^_^’

As a comparison to the 1020 days this time, I took me 1301 days from 0 to 2000. Given I stopped to actively search for new kanji to learn just for the sake of it at 1800, extrapolation shenanigans (code) put reaching 2200 somewhere between September 16, 2023 and August 10, 2024.

Largest contributors to the 100 new kanji that seemed worth remembering were 漢検 preparation and books. Depending on how my reading habits and 漢検 aspirations develop I wouldn’t be surprised to end up writing a 2200+ entry at some point. Another possibility I see, is that at some point I deviate from my current procedure of learning to read and write every kanji and create a separate recognition only deck. Maybe for names that would make sense? I don’t know yet. Natural exposure might be enough for that. Time will tell.

大阪短期滞在

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0900

Spent 6.5 weeks in Ōsaka. Having had many things to do in mind and being aware of the limited amount of time, things felt a bit rushed at times. Nevertheless pleased with how the stay went in general and what I got done. :)

Book hunt
After finishing 『九州は横浜のどこですか？』 on my Kindle last year, I struggled to really get into another book. Only my physical copy of 『日本語雑記帳』 found its way into my hands from time to time. I therefore went on somewhat of a book hunt this time and spent many hours in BOOKOFFs and a considerable amount of my short Tokyo trip in 神保町. What I ended up bringing home with me is:
- 『世界の文字』 (done reading)
- 『日本語びいき』 (almost done reading)
- 『活版印刷三日月堂』 (half way through the first of the 4 books)
- 『ユニコード戦記』
- 『「舞姫」の主人公をバンカラとアフリカ人がボコボコにする最高の小説の世界が
  　明治に存在したので20万字くらいかけて紹介する本』
- 『文系と理系はなぜ分かれたのか』
- 『字幕屋に「、」はない』
- 『辞書編集、三十七年』
- 『印刷に恋して』
- 『教室内カースト』
- 『同時通訳はやめられない』
- 『鳩居堂の日本のしきたり豆知識』
- 『タイポさんぽ』
- 『ようこそ保健室へ』
- 『パッタを倒しにアフリカへ』
親指シフト
I made a conscious decision to switch from QUERTY to フリック入力 on my phone years ago in order to internalize thinking of the words I input as being made up of かな and not Latin alphabet characters. While in Ōsaka I found out about 親指シフト and ended up getting a cheap keyboard labelled accordingly for testing. Got it to work on my Ubuntu 18.04 system using oyainput. Time will tell whether or not I’ll have the frustration tolerance and endurance to make the switch. Will also have to test if a Votex CORE (the keyboard I’m using most of the time currently) can be programmed accordingly.
漢字検定
Took the 漢検 5級 as well as 4級 and passed both. :)
- arrived early and saw a parade of ちびっ子 streaming out of the building :3
- question sheets were basically huge (257×379 mm) 圧着ハガキ, resulting in quite the sound when a room full of people simultaneously opened them
- sitting next to me taking 4級 was a 9 year old D:
Can recommend 大阪府立中之島図書館 to everyone in Ōsaka looking for a quiet space with air conditioning, power sockets and free wifi (registration required, was a bit buggy on PC but ended up working)
Entered a Carcassonne tournament (カルカソンヌ日本選手権). Won 2 games and then was destroyed twice by more serious (nevertheless super nice) contestants.
Visited people at 京大 and met again with colleagues at NII
Attended 活版WEST
Stayed at a 旅館
Finally got to the end of うぶんちゅ！ chapter 12 after translating the first few pages some time last year.
Visited 遊舎工房 and got some keycaps
Was able to eat at 丸香 and MENSHO again while in Tokyo
Went to see 下赤阪の棚田, which ended up being a ride a train, then ride a bus, be the last person left in the bus, walk a bit, talk to the ground keeper of a school and be let through a few gates you’re not supposed to go through as an outsider, arrive and be the only person around type of trip—i.e. a diametric opposite to the sad state of over commercialized tourist destinations—i.e. awesome :)
Saw a person poking out of a ticket machine for the first time. :’D

Location wise Ōsaka was nice to explore the Kansai region a bit, but didn’t quite click with me the way Tōkyō did. Guess with a bunch of disparate, rather niche interests, Tōkyō is hard to beat just because of its sheer size.

Monolingual Japanese offline dictionaries for Android

Sun, 24 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0900

Several times within the last year, maybe two, I ventured into the depths of the interwebs in search of a monolingual Japanese dictionary app that could be used offline. What I found was JE-EJ dictionaries, 広辞苑第七版 for €89.99 and people in forums suggesting apps that wouldn’t work offline. On my most recent desperate search I even came across a geoblocked dictionary app—to top it all off by a company deriving their name from the words “big” and “globe”. m(

At this point I thought about just solving the problem myself. Looking at some dictionary websites, I found one where the entries were nicely enumerated from 1 to 297,199, so I wrote a small crawling script. In the meantime I used scholarly search engines to see if there happened to be some open data sets that could be used. I would’ve just thrown terms and definitions in an SQLite DB and installed some SQLite viewer on my phone.

In the end I found a better solution. One that’s accessible and doesn’t require technical skill—which is why I’m writing this. Watching this video (by this guy) I learned about EPWING, a JIS standardized format for digital dictionaries. Now, looking at aforementioned video you might get your hands on some such dictionaries. All you then need is an app to interface with them: I quickly found DroidWing, which I happily link here because the author also distributes a paid version where the only difference is the icon color. <3

So yeah, not bound to any service provider, platform independent, offline … 国語辞典 case solved for good. :3

(This is just to feed the Google, in case someone else also looks for a solution to this: アンドロイドアプリ国語辞典国語辞典辞書オフライン無料.)

Japanese books on a Kindle 4

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Five years ago I realized Amazon deems Japanese books incompatible with the Kindle 4 and suggested using 青空文庫 as an alternative source for e-books. While I wholeheartedly suggest you always search for DRM free sources for your e-books first, there are cases where Amazon simply seems to be the only available source.

In the following I’m going to show a viable way to handle Japanese e-books from Amazon, for people still holding on to a Kindle 4.

what does work

vertical writing with PDFs
Japanese file names

what doesn’t seem to work

vertical writing with AZW3 files
highlighting text in vertical writing
links (e.g. from the TOC) in vertical writing
proper dictionary function

Before jumping right into the technical stuff, be reminded that if you’re okay with reading on your PC or phone, the easy solution is to just get the Kindle app and have your e-book delivered to that. If it is to be the Kindle, here’s how that works:

If you’re on Linux, get a Windows 10 VM, install the Kindle app and load the books you want to transfer to your kindle from your library. Now, word has it there are ways to free books you bought from Amazon from their DRM. For the purpose of this explanation we’re just going to assume you have a DRM free AZW3 file. If you prefer to read your book in horizontal writing, you’re basically done at this point. Copy the file to your Kindle and curse Amazon for not allowing you to send it to the device directly. For verical writing there are a few more steps to go through.

If you haven’t already done so, download Calibre and add a book (probably a AZW3-file) to your collection. To generate a PDF with vertical writing we’re going to use 青空キンドル which takes plain text as input. Unfortunately, exporting a book as TXT in Calibre will mess with furigana (append them as normal text). To get proper furigana, export the book as HTMLZ and from the resulting archive extract the file index.html. To convert the HTML file into plain text while preserving furigana in a format 青空キンドル understands, use the script html2txt_ruby.py from this repository. Running python3 html2txt_ruby.py index.html will give you a file out.txt. Use this as your input for 青空キンドル (you will most likely want to edit the first few lines of the text to get a proper cover page).

Now, PDF file names. Five years ago I noticed problems with book names when just copying over PDF files with Japanese names. The Kindle takes the author’s name from a PDF’s metadata, but doesn’t do this for the title. The title is taken from the file name and non Latin characters in file names can be a mess to deal with on FAT file systems. To get Japanese file names for PDFs properly displayed, mount your kindle with the parameter -o uni_xlate=1* and use the script uni_xlate_filename.py from this repository generate an encoded file name. Example: running python3 uni_xlate_filename.py 使用例 will give you :4f7f:7528:4f8b. Meaning if you name a PDF file on your Kindle :4f7f:7528:4f8b.pdf while mounted with the parameter mentioned above, it will show up as 使用例 on the device.

And with that you can enjoy Japanese books from Amazon in vertical writing on a Kindle 4. No need to abandon a device that’s still working perfectly fine. :)

*See man page of mount (search for “unhandled Unicode”) for details.

国立情報学研究所〔九〕

Sun, 15 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Nine months in Japan — last review:

Given I already felt like on my way back towards the end of last month, my last weeks felt pretty relaxed. Rather than squeezing a lot of activities into the short time left I was able to pretty much go with an everyday pace. Nevertheless I ended up doing some stuff I’m really happy I was able to do before I left.

general
- I decided to write a German Wikipedia article on flick input. Given the corresponding Japanese article, which I used as a base, was lacking references, I went on a hunt through Japanese papers on the topic. Several works on specific related matters cited a paper with the title タッチパネル搭載ケータイにおける入力方式の評価 for their general explanation of what flick input is. Unfortunately, the paper was nowhere to be found online. Given that CiNii, the bibliographic database where I at least found the paper mentioned online outside of the reference sections of other papers, is a service by the very institute I was working at, I decided to check out our library. Even one of the library personnel checked for any trace, but to no avail. No printed matter available and no online access in any of the subscriptions of the NII. What do you do at that point? Easy: hop on your bike and pay a short visit to one of the largest libraries in the world. (Tokyo’s awesome in some aspects.) So after finding out the シンポジウムモバイル研究論文集 2010 (the journal containing the paper) wasn’t available through NII, I looked again online and found out the 国立国会図書館 had a copy. So, go there, get a library card made, file a viewing request for the journal, finally get my hands on the thing, read the paper to make sure it’s actually something I can use as a reference, file a copying request, get the copy, take a sneaky blurry picture to commemorate my success and return the journal.
- met a friend from Matsuyama who was awesome enough to come all the way to Tokyo
- played some Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
- finally found a case/bag for my Vortex CORE — it’s for lenses and thus has a circle profile but apart from that fits the size perfectly
- found a ギザ十
- visited a Escher exhibition where the audio guide was spoken by バカリズム
- was surprised to reach the gate and find out I was going to fly home in the BB-8 ANA JET
at the institute
- had some meetings that, for a change, were in Japanese
- was able to help with the technical setup for a art history class at 東大
- got my certificate for completing the internship

All in all a really enjoyable finish to a, looking back, invaluable 9 months. From a professional perspective: great. Japanese progress: surprisingly satisfactory. Sports: outright neglect on my part. Note for next time: establish a sports routine early on.

On to the … well, I’m sure I’ll be back in the foreseeable future. :3

国立情報学研究所〔八〕

Mon, 18 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Month eight — second to last. D:

The runway lights back home are already switching on — one by one.

Some better balanced I/O compared to last time:

general
- was able to take a week off to show my family around here in Tokyo
- had a peek into an interesting enthusiasts’ sphere at the HHKB user meetup vol.2
- spent the good part of a day in 横浜 and 川越
- rode crazy rollercoasters at Fuji-Q Highland
- got a Vortex CORE — wasn’t able to find a nice case/sleeve/transport option yet, thorugh
at the institute
- things are going at a reasonable pace again after last month’s “spurt before the deadline”
- slowly getting more used to bending my work to external requests/compatibility requirements

All in all this month felt like a prolonged transition from just being in Japan, over doing some stuff before it’s too late to already on my way back.

On to the last month!

国立情報学研究所〔七〕

Fri, 18 May 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Month seven — two more to go. Quick review:

This month felt a bit packed. A lot of nice output and interesting input though. So all in all good progress — I only wish there was more time to get hyped about upcoming and let sink in recently experienced stuff.

Anyway, I/O:

general
- saw 琵琶湖 and 近江神宮
- got out a new chapter of my うぶんちゅ！ translation
- was at ニコニコ超会議2018 — for work, actually; kind of
- attended ゲームマーケット and COMITIA
- had a great time at the Tokyo Mechanical Keyboard Meetup Vol. 4
at the institute
- writing businessy e-mails in Japanese gets easier and easier
- was working on and with two web applications that more or less are the backend for a larger project which had to reach a presentable state until today. The whole thing having several interdependent people, parts and working steps involved and being interdisciplinary is interesting, really. But it’s also waaay more draining that just building something on your own.

Hoping for some less I/O heavy times in the coming days.

On to the next month!

国立情報学研究所〔六〕

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Month six — two thrids done; one to go.

Going by the initial schedule this would’ve been my fifth day back in Germany. Glad I still have time to enjoy Japan now that it’s finally not cold anymore. Maybe it’ll be sick of the heat and humidity in July making it easier to go. ^_^

As always, stuff happened:

general
- bought a 座椅子
- enjoyed a sunny Saturday in 隅田公園, sitting on a stone wall reading a book, and saw three old ladies looking for somewhere to sit, so moved a bit to the side. Continuing my book I was handed a piece of 唐揚げ, two pieces of sushi and a some 和菓子 — no small talk or questions, just 「はい。昼ご飯です。」. :’D
- started making my own 弁当 as a change to caffeteria food
- visited かなまら祭り which was great fun
- was able to see some of the people that, through their videos, introduced me to Japan before I came here the first time over two years ago, irl at a YouTube hanami
- lots of nice new people at the share house
- had my first 馬刺し — tasty :)
at the institute
- started developing a piece of software that interacts with an application being developed by an external developer — both projects being in a prototype phase and the whole thing being orchestrated by my superviser. As a result I’m reading and writing a lot of Japanese e-mails — more 敬語 practice. orz

On to the next month!

国立情報学研究所〔五〕

Sun, 18 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Month five of ~~six~~ nine!

Anki was not bad; sport very much insufficient; most importantly though my stay got extended by 3 months. :) Time to take a step back, shake off the oh no I’m leaving in a few weeks mindset and take a deep breath. :3

Anyway, here’s the listy thing:

general
- went to a meetup for people interested in i18n/l10n innovations and found myself walking up to a nice reception lady in front of a room with classic music playing and not a single person not wearing a suit in it — until I entered, that is. After reassurance of the event’s host that this is a casual get-together, an immensely butchered self introduction to the group from my side, free Dr. Pepper and some interesting presentations, the following 懇親会 was great though. Exchanged a lot of 名刺 and had good conversations with the folks there
- had my frist proper VR experience (as in not just a headset) in the form of a planetarium / VR attraction using a Japanese VR system called ABAL
- watched Stranger Things, ちはやふる -結び- and way too much AoE2 videos on YouTube
- finally did some geocaching in the area where I’m living currently
at the institute
- diving deep into linked data stuff lately (if someone knows how to configure a few arbitrary* inference rules for data stored and accessed through a Fuseki 3.6 instance PLEASE tell me)
  *meaning not just RDFS or OWL statements
- arranged my workspace as a standing desk (very improvised but it works)

On to the not last month!

Mixed language content

Fri, 16 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0900

A few days ago I was wasting a few seconds on Facebook, scrolling down the newsfeed, and was suprised to see a short Japanese post, 「残念だな」, by someone I was pretty sure doesn’t know Japanese. Upon closer inspection it turned out Facebook had translated their German post into the language my account is set to display. This made me very aware — for a moment — that the fact in which language something is written carries information. Why did they suddenly post in Japanese? (Well … they didn’t.)
If, let’s say, a Chinese acquaintance of whom I know that they don’t know any German sent me birthday whishes in German, then they went through the trouble of goolging for German birthday whishes, using Google Translate or asking someone. In a similar fashion I report of elevators saying 「本日はご苦労様でした」 at my lab — because they do so in Japanese. Other times using a word from another language is just more concise and feels more accurate. Instead of talking about “a type of bicycle with a front basked often used by mothers” or leaving out information and just writing “bicycle” I name the thing by its name and say 「ママチャリ」.

The obvious problem with this is that my recent blog posts only really make sense to people that can read English and — at least some — Japanese. This made me think about working with Accept-Language headers. Just parse what a user’s browser tells me about their language capabilities and display content accordingly.

To figure out how I’d go about the display content accordingly part I googled “mixed language web content” and similar things. This yielded a lot of SEO articles saying DON’T!, a few W3C resources on how to mark and style parts of text depending on language and even an interesting looking book titled Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing. No solution though for my balancing act between information/authenticity and audience/intelligibility.

So, I played around myself and came up with this: 例 ← if your browser tells me you understand Japanese you will just see 「例」, otherwise the word will have a grey-ish background and when you hover over it, it will display “example”.
Best thing about them? They’re purely done in CSS. :3 (See the code here.) On the server side of things it gets a little bit unaesthetic — sadly. I maintain the contents of this website in Markdown and extra stuff is added in after parsing. For mixed language strings I use the following construct <‌!-- mixlang:例:example -->. Not quite as concise as e.g. Markdown links but well … HTML comments go through the parser untouched and then I built my small <span> matryoshkas. Writing a Markdown extention would be an alternative but I don’t have the time for looking into that right now.

By the time this post goes live I will have gone through my backlog of posts and added in optional English translation for all non English strings. レンジでgood!

国立情報学研究所〔四〕

Sun, 18 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Month four — one thrid left; review:

Anki ok. Sport insufficient. Here’s the interesting stuff:

general
- 餃子 and stuff from オリジン found their way into my food routine
- helped a crying little boy out in the street find his mum
- witnessed the following manifestation of cuteness:
  3 small kids, two of them in bear costumes, waiting for the train with their mum
  announcement for the next train to come in a few minutes: 「…。この電車は10両です。」
  kids: 「10秒？10！9！8！…」
  but there was no train when they reached 0. :’D
- was stopped by police for riding my bike at night without a light (mount is loose, I support it w/ rubber bands, that day the bands ripped on my way to work so I put they light in my bag); they were extremely nice — had a good chat
- got the Dogen approved verification that my Japanese it about as good as that of a native first grader — was asked 「長いんですか？日本は」 by abovementioned policemen and the next day when getting my hair cut :3
- saw a performance of the 東京都立青梅総合高等学校和太鼓部 which was awesome
- spent almost a week in Kyōto and two nights in Nagoya
- the local sentō had a “chocolate bath” (cacao butter mixed into the water) around valentine’s day which was geat ^_^
- saw a few people from Matsuyama again while they were in Tōkyō
- a bug I found* in Pokemon GO got some coverage by blogs/YouTube channels
  following how the story spread from a dedicated subreddit to more and more general sites was quite interesting — especially low effort “news posts” that got things wrong were amusing
  (*to be precise I found something that works on some devices and a fellow redditor found a variation that works on all devices)
at the institute
- the conceptual stuff I mentioned last time is finally done and got some good feedback
- was able to integrate learning a few neat new Flask related things into my work
- stumbled upon a PhD thesis titled The Presentation of Self on a Decentralised Web — can I please take a week off from life and explore this?
- got into and am getting back out of eating dinner somewhere close to work to then head back and work some more
- the elevators say 「おはようございます」 at 8:26 a.m. — so maybe the interval is from 8 to 9?

Good times. More.

On to the next month!

国立情報学研究所〔三〕

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0900

Month three — halfway through; another review:

Anki wasn’t that great (stats) but at least still better than in the first month — and I finally got around doing some badly needed maintenance on my deck. Apart from Japanese study, slow but steady progress across the board. Nothing to complain. :)

Again, an attempt to convince myself that I’m actually making good use of my time here:

general
- was at a sentō on christmas eve; on the way back I heard a girl’s voice from a near high-rise building 「サンタ様ー！来てくださーい！」 :3
- was shocked to learn that Japan introduced compulsory wearing of seat belts for rear passangers in 2008 and there’s no penalty for non expressway roads °_°
- rode my bycicle to work, passed a ママチャリ and thought I heard a 「ウゥウゥウイッ！地震です！」 — but there was a kid on the back of the ママチャリ gaming away on some handheld console so I could’ve misheard some game sounds. Stopped anyway to see what happens — nothing happened so I concluded it was some game. Turned out it actually was an earthquake alarm.
- saw the last Jedi
- was in Niigata
- had a very Japanese New Year with 紅白, 年越しそば, 雑煮, 初詣 and 駅伝 — sneaked in a German tradition with Dinner for One
- watched the entire かるた名人・クイーン戦 live on ニコ動
- visited the ~~Tokyo~~ Saitama flood prevention underground thingy
- I’m finally getting back into sports after a 5 month break due to an injury
at the institute
- had a bit of fun with face recognition and line detection (OCR)
- doing a lot of very conceptual work at the moment
- the elevetors sometimes say 「お待たせしました」 and 「どうぞお乗りください」

All in all, satisfactory. Oh and the constant feeling that I could/should do more is gone. (:

On to the next month!

国立情報学研究所〔二〕

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0900

Month two of only six this time; another review:

I did better with Anki this month (stats); even managed to stoll through 神保町, grab a second hand book (日本語雑記帳) and read from time to time. Still … my deck needs some maintenance, I want to add more new vocab, read more, etc. I took part in events, explored new places and worked a bit on personal projects. Still … I feel I could do more. Maybe being aware that there’s soo much going on around me constantly, resutls in a fear of missing out on great chances. But it’s not just that. Regardless of the specifics of what’s going on around me, I’d like to do more — more than I currently can do with the limited amount of productive time per day. On the bright side, that’s a least better than not knowing what to do with myself.

Again, a collection of noteworthy and/or random things:

general
- the 漢字ミュージアム in Kyōto is nice — you can do mini 漢検 samples
  (I seem to be able to pass 6級 and 5級, but 4級 and 3級 were so so)
- ゲームマーケット2017秋 had a real life Catan trading and in general was super fun
- Agricola seems to be popular among board game enthusiasts here
  (a local meetup I attended was almost exclusively Agricola, played one round)
- at ポタフェス2017 I was able to experience the Sennheiser HE 1
  (kind of … didn’t have the time to really choose music, was in a noisy environment, etc.)
- Open Space 2017 at the NTT ICC was good fun
- CJK Unicode shenanigans
at the institute
- wrote a small flask web application that is now used in production, hosted by the NII
- the elevators don’t say 「本日はご苦労様でした」 when you get out way after 5 p.m.
- the elevators say 「おはようございます」 at 8:50 a.m. — need further data to estimate a time frame for that
- attended NTCIR 13 sporadically; chatted with some Yahoo! guys

All in all, a lot of good stuff. But MOAR WANT. TOO MUCH WANT.

On to the next month!

国立情報学研究所〔一〕

Sat, 18 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0900

> On to the … oh wait. :(
NEXT MONTH!

I’m back to Japan. First month passed. Assembling the bits and pieces of a functioning everyday life. :)
Register as a resident, set up a bank account, get a bicycle, find a supermarket to frequent, get a feeling for monthly costs and how much you can spend on what, connect with new people, … I have the feeling I’m almost set up. One of the few things I have yet to manage is get into a stable Anki routine. I’ve been powering through over 300 cards today to finally get back to 0 after a meager 14/30 days studied since I arrived.

A collection of noteworthy and/or random things:

general
- here’s where I spent my time*, and because that’s not saying much here’s a closer look at Tokyo*
  (*it’s actually the places where I had a wifi connection or was using Goole maps)
- at times I felt like a student that just moved out of mom’s and has to figure out how the world works again (googling where to buy stuff, how to cook stuff, etc.)
- Halloween at 渋谷 was cazy
- I visited the 印刷博物館 and got to print sirtetris with movable type (also see image above)
- folks at the share house are nice :)
at the institute
- the day after my arrival I got my scholarship for several months in cash. Having the equivalent of about 4.5k € in cash lying around made me kind of paranoid and sped up the process of me getting a bank account.
- Mac and Windows users are required to install Sophos Anti Virus. Linux users are left in peace :3
- overhearing other grad students talk about and plan their “first time in Japan” adventures is entertaining
- the elevators say 「本日はご苦労様でした」 when you get out on the first floor after 5 p.m.
- cafeteria lunch is tasty

All in all, I’m quite satisfied. The only thing that kind of bothers me is the lack of any easily quantifiable progress with my Japanese. I pick up and write down new words and phrases, but constantly being behind with my Anki studies prevented me from integrating them into my deck. Oh and also … my Kindle app won’t let me log into my German account so I can’t access the Japanese book I was reading back in Germany. -.-

Anyway, the few things to complain about are mostly harmless, soo …

On to the next month!

Six months at the 国立情報学研究所

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0900

About a year ago I came back to Germany after spending one year in Japan. Now I’m going again — for six months. :)

Last time I went as an exchange student. This time I got into an internship program for Ph.D. and Master students at the National Institute of Informatics. — i.e. this time I’m actually doing something related to my studies ^{(my exchange university last time had no computer science courses)}.

Another major difference is that this time I had to organize accommodation by myself. Find a place to live in Tokyo — what a nice ex ante adventure, yay ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ. What I knew from the beginning is that I would search for a room in a share house. I had previously made good experiences with share houses in Japan, knew that it would be cheaper, save me the hassle of having to buy a gazillion every day life items for just half a year and get rid of them afterwards, and knowing that I might end up speaking primarily English at work, a share house with Japanese people would up my chances of having extended conversations in Japanese on a daily basis.
So, I started searching on roomshare.jp and roommate.jp, took a brief glimpse at non-shared flats on グッドマンスリー only to be scared away by the prices, and finally found something at ひつじ不動産. Given what I wanted — something not too far from work, not too expensive, where I could let someone stay at my place for a night or two, where thery’re okay with someone who’s guaranteed to leave after 6 months and on top of all that where a foreigner is able to sign a contract without a Japanese guarantor — I’m super happy with the place I found. :)
Additionally the countless mails back and forth until I found the place, the deal was sealed and all the details were discussed were quite the 敬語 boot camp. orz

Anyway, preparations are as good as done. Journey starts Oct 17^th. Updates will be tagged #NII17. :)

Anki for exams

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0900

The computer science exams I take usually heavily rely on understanding. Learning for those exams means doing tasks that require applying the knowledge acquired. Memorizing facts almost never plays a big role. Quite a few exams are even “open book” — bring as much non digital material as you want.

Last semester I took two psychology classes with exams that were more or less the opposite. Being used to memorize stuff (kanji) with Anki, I thought it might be most efficient to use it for exam preparation. Because I was curious how much time I’d spend I recorded the whole process. Here’s how to pass a 5th semester psychology class (Occupational and Organizational Psychology) as a CS major:

The challenge
The lecture consists of 386 slides. The exam can be passed with a very good grade solely based on the information given on the slides plus what is being said during the lecture, but students are advised to also look into referenced books and papers (I didn’t). The exam consists of (iirc) 50 multiple choice questions, each of which has 5 answers of which between 0 and 5 are correct. Choosing a correct answer or not choosing a wrong answer results in 1 point. Not choosing a correct answer or choosing a wrong answer results in -1 point. The overall points for one question are reset to 0 in case they’re negative. Example questions given for the exams go as deep as asking for names of authors or effect sizes of specific studies.

The solution

Attend all the lectures, annotate the slides (yellow boxes in the image above)
Start preparing for the exam about 3 weeks in advance, within these 3 weeks:
Spend a total of 14 hours to write a summary of the lecture’s content (25 pages)
Spend a total of 9 hours to create Anki cards (477 cards)
Spend a total of 12 hours reviewing these Anki cards (2775 reviews)
Squeeze in 5 days of preparation for another exam with less material to learn
Pass with a not so great result, having spent a total of 35 hours on exam preparation (not counting lecture attendance)

→ Anki stats

28 hour day

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0900

I recently stumbled upon xkcd’s comic on the idea of a 28-Hour Day. Having been interested in polyphasic sleep for a long time (without ever trying) and this being similar, I checked whether or not it would work out with my current situation of temporally fixed obligations throughout the week. Turned out that there would be very little overlap (blue=sleep, green=obligation). And the two cases where a lecture falls at the very end of a day … just schedule two/three hours of sleep before that, right?

Wrong. Instead of extending my day by 4 hours per sleep/wake cycle I ended up with 3.5, 0.5, 2.5 … -6. Friday, 1:30 a.m. I was super tired after having been awake for a mere 7 hours, went to bed and slept for 8 hours straight. This is how the whole week turned out. More like a rubber band that I stretched a bit than the intended wrapping around over the course of a week.

Lesson learned: if you sleep a lot anyways (8-9 hours per night in my case), the 28 hour day may not be for you. ^_^

漢字 — 2000+

Sun, 11 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0900

99 kanji, 575 words, 489 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

Whew… Haven’t done one of these in a loong time. Who would’ve tought I’d actually reach 2000 … In my first kanji progress post, 100+, I wrote “there will — hopefully — be a total of 21 of these in the end” — I’m really not sure I’ll ever get to 2100. Since realizing at 1800+ that new kanji as a main focus isn’t worth it anymore, it took me 115 days to get the first 100 on top of that and now 489 days for the second. If factor of increase in time stayed the same I’d reach 2100 in August 2022. ^_^
Quite the deviation from my extrapolations at 1000+, where I took a closer look at what I had leared so far. Here’s the same thing for the present situation:

Additional data: [values from 1000+]

Grades

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%) [100.0%]
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%) [100.0%]
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%) [88.0%]
Grade 4: 200 of 200 (100.0%) [64.0%]
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%) [55.1%]
Grade 6: 178 of 181 (98.3%) [51.4%]
JuniorHS: 775 of 934 (83.0%) [21.6%]

Distribution

2000 total unique kanji [1002]
Jōyō: 1910 of 2136 (89.4%) [45.7%]
Jinmeiyō (regular): 66 of 641 (10.3%) [3.1%]
Jinmeiyō (variant): 1 of 145 (0.7%) [0%]
23 non-jōyō kanji [5]

Translating manga

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Ever since I came back from Japan I’ve been on the lookout for fun projects in which I could utilize my Japanese. Recently I stumbled upon Ubunchu!, a manga about Ubuntu. Created by Hiroshi Seo and published in Ubuntu Magazine Japan, there seem to be 14 chapters of which only the first 8 have been translated so far. Given publishing stopped in 2013 and the Google Group dedicated to translating the manga has seen no activity in 6 months it seemed like a worthwhile project to pick up.

Since the illustrator’s website offers source files (at least for chapters 1-11) there’s almost no cleaning or redrawing necessary. To make up for the lack of challenge, chapter 9 — which I started with — included a bunch of BL lingo which was “great fun” to research and “translate” as well as Revolutionary Girl Utena references I probably missed most of.

I’m not yet sure whether I’ll just create one blog post per chapter or add something to the projects section. In case of the latter I’ll add some note to this post. Regardless of that there’s also a Git repository. And here’s the first chapter:

Ubunchu! chapter 9: Revolutionary IME Kaname

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/edit[2017-09-26]: Whoops. So … I didn’t touch this for about a year or so. But in the last 3 days I did chapter 10! ;)

Ubunchu! chapter 10: Outbreak of an interface war!?

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/edit[2018-05-04]: The stars aligned for chapter 11! A friend of mine recently started translating manga, so I had the topic on my mind. Also there’s been a little activity in the Ubunchu Google Group and I stumbled upon one of my translations on a online manga reader website, so I felt there’s people that care about the manga. Lastly, it’s golden week, so I had some free time on my hands.

Ubunchu! chapter 11: My lady is fond of her old butler!?

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/edit[2019-07-17]: Starting with chapter 12 there’s no source files any more. Keeping up with the one chapter per year pace, I translated chapter 12 (actually finished translating it—had done the first third last year already), but I don’t see myself finding the time to do cleaning and typesetting.

Ubunchu! chapter 12: Rule of a sister distro! Mint-chan

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/edit[2020-12-03]: Two weeks ago I received an e-mail: “Do you know when the Ubunchu chapter 12 will be done? Or did everyone give up?” [sic]. I guess this is the universe pressuring me to keep up the one chapter per year pace. So here we go (again, cleaning and typesetting remain to be done).

Ubunchu! chapter 13: Break-up of a long-standing literature club

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/edit[2021-12-04]: Keeping up the one chapter per year pace with what I thought to be the last chapter. Also, about a month ago I was contacted by folks wanting to do cleaning and typesetting. Fingers crossed that they go through with it!

Ubunchu! chapter 14: Smooth operators of hardware and hearts

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Have fun reading. ;)

松山大学〔十二〕

Thu, 08 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0900

One year in Japan; a last review:

My last month in Japan began during a trip to Tokyo. I couchsurfed again and had 3 awesome hosts over 8 days. I went to Ueno park several times because of the ridiculous Pokemon Go situtaion, climed Mt. Fuji (great view from the top, also a gym at station 9), hung around with two Taiwanese friends, went to Enoshima and attended Comiket.
The last 3 weeks I lived in a share house, did some translation/localization work as an alternative to paying rent and continued the series of farewell events and meetups. I also finally got my JLPT N2 result. Passed with a score of 140/180. :)

Looking back at the year as a whole: very much worth it. Set out to improve my Japanese, did just that and made a bunch of good memories. As for Japan, the pros (respectful people, safe, fascinating contemporary and ancient culture, no tipping, …) outweigh the cons (vacuous positivity, non-existent insulation of buildings, overdone collectivism, pricy, …) for me. I’ll definitely go again some time.

On to the … oh wait. :(

松山大学〔十一〕

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Eleven months in Japan; another review:

After a packed month 9 and a calm month 10 it’s back to busy again — in a good way though. :)

The semester ended with Japanese exams I took, German exams I helped out with and a lot of farewell events. This was accompanied by preparations for and the start of my trip to Tokyo and … lo and behold … the release of Pokémon Go in Japan.
Up until one and a half weeks ago my smartphone setup consisted of a Samsung I9000 without SIM card running CyanogenMod 11. With some Linux trickery I managed to get the app to start but it was super unstable and unplayably slow. As a consequence I bought a new phone (Asus T00P), caught Pokémon within Matsuyama’s extensive areas of public Wifi for some time and now got a data SIM card for the last month.

As of the 8th I’m actually in the midst of my side trip to Mt. Fuji, but I’ll put the Tokyo trip as a whole into the next review.

On to the last month!

松山大学〔十〕

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Ten months in Japan; another review:

I don’t have the feeling a whole lot happened. Neither does it feel like it’s been a month.

Maybe my brain just melted.

In any case; the end of the semester is coming closer, and with it deadlines for reports, projects and the like. That kept me busy. I also took my first JLPT — N2, went okay, results in early September. Preparations for my last month are also going smoothly. I’ll be travelling for about a week (Mt. Fuji, Tokyo, Comiket) and have a work for accommodation arrangement for the remaining time after that.

All in all, everything progressing nicely. Nothing really to complain.

On to the next month!

松山大学〔九〕

Wed, 08 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Nine months in Japan; another review:

Looking back at what happened since the last review I wondered … did I forget to post once?
Apparently I didn’t. During the last 31 days:

A friend from Germany got hospitalized during his visit to Matsuyama, which led to me being Japanese/German interpreter for about a week. I spent a night in the intensive care unit, got to see all kinds of fancy medical machinery at work — interesting stuff.
I got to know new people working with guest houses in Matsuyama and participated in a pilgrimage event (#52+53) organized by the aforementioned.
Spent some quality time with friends and went out more that usual.
Formed a nice group with people from the game development seminar I take part in. Since I’m “the guy with the programming experience” I introduced the rest of the group to Git, Lua and LÖVE (the framework we agreed on using). Experiencing how Japanese approach group work and especially decision making is quite fascinating.
Established new connections to a few exchange students. (I used to focus on spending time with Japanese.)
Established new connections to a few Japanese (potential tandem language learning parnter, people interested in intercultural exchange, etc.).
Did some indoor bouldering which I hadn’t done in … maybe a year or so.
Gave a presentation about Germany at a local elementary school.
Went to see fireflies on a whim one night.
Started preparations for my last month in Japan (during which I won’t stay in the university’s dorm) which meant getting a working permission, establishing some connections for potential daywork etc.

All alongside the usual university stuff. Well … no signs of overload yet. And therefore:

On to the next month!

松山大学〔八〕

Sun, 08 May 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Eight months in Japan; another review:

The new semester started. This time I take 4 Japanese classes (reading, discussion, practical appilcation, business) as well as one grad school class on intercultural communication and an undergrad seminar on game development. While the latter is targeted at total beginners and therefore not that interesting for me content wise, it is Japanese targeted at Japanese and therefore super useful listening practice.

Apart from lectures there’s a steady flow of events, activities, occurrences that keeps me busy and happy. I participated in Ludum Dare 35, did some English language instruciton/training at a local NGO, started speed cubing again — at least for a day ^^ —, helped flying a kite at a kite flying festival, etc. etc.

Side note: the two JK energetically playing a huge taiko was the best thing ever (see title image, also taken at the kite festival).

Good stuff.

On to the next month!

松山大学〔七〕

Fri, 08 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Seven months in Japan; another review:

As I predicted in my previous post I enjoyed an extensive downtime to recharge. :) No traveling, no big events, just lazy day-to-day life. Coming monday lectures will start again; leaving me with less free time, but more externally enforced structure.

In any case, the trip I was in the midst of last post ended without any trouble and was definitely worth it. Good experiences, nice memories and I was able to tick off some new prefectures in the projects section (never underestimate the motivational power of lists ^_^’).

In the time after the trip occupied myself with geocaching, parkour training, meeting friends and making new acquaintances. I also felt the desire to do something techy again. After about 4 months of “abstinence“ I tinkered a bit with my anilist client, peaked into the realm of polyglots, — and also aside from tech I invested some time in areas of interest where it seemed long overdue. I guess I kind of dialed down the feeling guilty whenever I sink time into stuff that isn’t in any way helping with my Japanese. Good thing.

On to the next month!

松山大学〔六〕

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Six months in Japan; another review:

More or less a month ago I had my last exams for the winter semester; and the summer semester won’t start until early April. What this means is that I have a lot of free time. :)

I’ve started to watch a lot of ドラマ and am currently in the midst of previously mentioned train trip along Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo, Kyoto. For accommodation I decided to give couchsurfing a try (except for one night in a capsule hotel). So far it’s been great — but I get the feeling that a 10 day trip with 5 different hosts is on the edge between ‘fun to meet new people’ and ‘kind of exhausting’. :D

After the trip I’m expecting to have some extensive downtime to recharge. ^_^’

On to the next month!

松山大学〔五〕

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Five months in Japan; another review:

Can to kindle be used intransitively? If not there’s some creativity required to interpret this month’s subtitle.

Over the course of the past month two particular types of activities made me come to a pleasant realization. I made a few new acquaintances — people with whom I met and had prolonged conversations; and I was on the lookout for a Japanese online forum/message board with decent activity as well as conversations on topics I’m interested in. The realization I arrived at is, that I am at a point where using Japanese finally starts not being a pain in the ass anymore.
I had passable conversations in Japanese that were way more pleasant and functional than chore-like and apparently necessary for practice’s sake. And after leaving ２ちゃんねる aside for the moment and trying out 知恵袋 I found an online platform that turns out to be easy to contribute to.
When I leaned English, being able to take part in written discussions online was an important tipping point. Once possible without too much hassle (i.e. as soon as it was more about the content of the discussions than about the language they were held in) my active use of the language and with that my proficiency skyrocketed. I could image I just hit that tipping point with Japanese, kindling a small flame that may, in the foreseeable future, turn into a raging wildfire.

On to the next month!

松山大学〔四〕

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0900

Four months in Japan; another review:

Turned out I hit the breaks early enough — no overload in terms of events. :)
Lectures just started again after a short break around New Year, a friend visited for two weeks, and all in all things are good. :) I attend regular club meetings (部会), get to know new people from time to time, make new experiences … oh and after living here for 4 months I just found out that at the public university (right next to the private one I actually go to — but I take lectures at the public one too) the canteen is opened on Saturdays. I missed out on 17 easy lunches since September just because it did not occur to me to check their canteen schedule.

In other news: the semester break is getting close. Not yet sure what I’ll do in February. March is most likely to be spent travelling with JR’s 青春18きっぷ (unless I find an even more cost efficient way). In any case:

On to the next month!

松山大学〔三〕

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0900

Three months in Japan; another review:

Japan: Join ALL the events!
Tarek: No!
I think I did well in building upon my solid base during the last month. As events recently had the tendency to lead to invitations to even more events, I had to start — and have to continue — to refrain from trying to grab every opportunity that is comfortably laid out in front of me. Doing new and exciting and challenging stuff is awesome, but in my case those things tend to require preparation and engery. Agree to participating in too much stuff and you’ll end up exhausted, not meeing the expectations of yourself and others and having a stressful time. I think I’ve realized that just early enough to not end up super stressed — we’ll see what I have to report in early January (which just falls short of the time up to which things I’ve agreed to participate in extend to as of now).

A few highlights: gave a presentation in front of middle school students, went on my first self-organized trip (2 days Hiroshima) and am on the brink of finally starting regular club activities (部活).

On to the next month!

松山大学〔二〕

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0900

Two months in Japan; another review:

I feel like I’ve reached a solid base on which to build upon in a lot of aspects. After selling my DSLR prior to coming to Japan in order to switch to a more portable system I finally bought a new camera. I’ve received my first scholarship money resulting in me financially operating from my Japanese bank account instead of my German credit card. A larger project which is part of my master’s course at the University of Freiburg is finally finished leaving me with more free time. I’ve kind of sort of developed a food routine or rotation of different foods for mornings and evenings. And probably most important of all: social connections start to feel real. The 体操部 (gymnastics club) people are happy each time I join their training, the boardgames meeting I’ve attended once so far looks promising and tandem language learning is fun as always. :)

A few random highlights: I ate whale meat, managed to corrupt my Ubuntu system and had to set up a new one, had fun at Halloween, am getting into Geocaching and competed at a settlers of catan tournament. All in all, a bunch of positive developments.

On to the next month!

松山大学〔一〕

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0900

One month since I’ve arrived in Japan; short review:

Fun with power plug adapters
AC plugs and sockets used in Germany are IEC types F (“Schuko“) and C (“Europlug“), Japan uses types A and B — but actually almost excusively A. Now, if you own a device with a type F plug (let’s say, a laptop) and want to get an adapter for type A sockets, don’t even bother looking. F→B and C→A adapters are readily available, and because A plugs also work with B sockets, C→B is unnecessary. But since F plugs are earthed and A plugs are not … no F→A adapters. And for the same reason you also can not find F→C adapters to build a funny F→C→A adapter parade.
The only option you’re left with (to my best knowledge) for plugging in a laptop from Germany to a power socket in Japan, is to find a C→A adapter with unnecessarily large pin holes (type C plugs have 4 mm pins whereas type F plugs have 4.8 mm pins), remove anything put into place to stop people from forcing F plugs into the adapter and then do exactly that. Here’s my take, on the unavailability of F→A and F→C adapters.

University

Classes are interesting. I take 4 Japanese classes (essay writing^[1], reading skills^[2][3][4], mixed^[5][6], oral communication) as well as 3 grad school classes (linguistics^[7], sociolinguistics^[8], intercultural communication: the Japanese experience^{[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]}).
The dorm is nice. Rooms are spacious, everything you’d need in terms of appliances and so on is present, people are nice — I’m the only European; actually I’m the only one that is not from either China, Taiwan or South Korea. :D
I’m also happy with the canteen. Food tastes good and thus far a meal cost me ￥ 465 (3.45 €) on average.
Staff and people in general are super helpful and friendly.
Clubs (部活) are still kind of on my todo list. Visited two, but was too busy until now to look at more and/or join in on regular activities.
A difference to my previous experience with German universities, and actually a thing I’m not super happy with (though that’s just a matter of taste), is the fact that the intended way of getting something done that may not be everyday business seems to be to go to a person in charge of that thing and ask them to take care of it. What I’m used to is informing myself and doing stuff on my own. Where I’m used to finding a guide for how to do something on a university’s website I’m now finding a telephone number or description to which office I need to go. Same goes for information I would have expected to be readily available online (like e-mail addresses of professors). I’m curious whether or not I will, over time, get used to this default way of doing things. Or if I just misjudge the situation right now and all the university related exchange student setup procedures just were really out of the ordinary requiring an unusual amount of “office hopping“.

Life
In the first weeks I’ve been exploring the city on my “mamachari“ quite a bit. Initially I was focussing on traditional stuff like shrines, temples and onsen. At the moment I’m more likely to look for either something recreational like public parks and sports facilities or utility oriented places like supermarkets.
What I’ve yet to find is a few cheap and healthy “base foods“ for the evening and especially morning. In Germany that used to be muesli, bananas, whole-grain bread with cheese … most of which is pretty much non-existent here.
I’m okay with rice+ふりかけ and a small side dish, but cooking rice takes time. I’ve tried working with tofu, but haven’t found an easy and quick way to make it tasty yet. What I’m pretty happy with are instant noodles. :D But I’d prefer something healthier.

All in all, I’m happy with my current situation. :) As mentioned in my previous post I was curious how much different it would be … never having lived more than 100 km away from where I grew up, suddenly living over 9,000 (not even intended, it’s 9,358) km away … turns out if you’re used to living in a student dorm in a city in Germany and move to a student dorm in a city in Japan, it’s really no big difference. (I guess if I’m honest with myself I wish it were a bit more different. ^^)

In any case, I’m in a position where I can experience a foreign country by as little as stepping outside the front door and I’ve got plenty of opportunity to use and improve my Japanese. That’s awesome! On to the next month!
‌

[1] 大学・大学院留学生の日本語（4）論文作成編　(アルク)
[2] 中・上級者のための速読の日本語　(The Japan Times)
[3] 大学・大学院留学生の日本語（1）読解編　(アルク)
[4] 中上級学習者のための日本語読解ワークブック　(アルク)
[5] 読む力中級　(くろしお出版)
[6] 留学生のためのここが大切文章表現のルール　(スリーエーネットワーク)
[7] An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics　(Routledge)
[8] An Introduction to Sociolinguistics　(Longman)
[9] The Japanese Mind　(Tuttle Publishing)
[10] With Respect to the Japanese: Going to Work in Japan　(Intercultural Press)
[11] Japanese Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity　(Routledge)
[12] The Other Japan: Voices Beyond the Mainstream　(Fulcrum Publishing)
[13] Diversity in Japanese Culture and Language　(Routledge)
[14] Multi-Ethnic Japan　(Harvard University Press)
[15] Japanese Culture and Communication: Critical Cultural Analysis　(University Press of America)

A year at 松山大学

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0900

Three to four years ago I gradually developed an interest in Japanese culture. Two and a half years ago I started learning Japanese. One year ago I got in touch with the University of Freiburg regarding the possibility of studying abroad in Japan. Now, after two semesters in Freiburg, I’m about to start a year at 松山大学 as an exchange student.

I’ve never lived or studied outside of Baden-Württemberg, so I’m really excited about how such an amount of change will affect me. I’m also super hyped that I will finally be able to invest pretty much ALL MY TIME into improving my language skills. So far I always had to fit language learning somewhere inbetween while my bachelor’s or master’s degree were the quasi obligatory main thing.

Preparations are as good as done. Journey starts Sep 8^th. Updates will be tagged #MYJ15. :)

漢字 — 1900+

Tue, 11 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji, 420 words, 115 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

Final spurt? Not really. Apart from the last two weeks — where I actively searched for new kanji to get from 1880 to 1900 — considerations of previous checkpoint were put into practice. I got most of my newly acquired vocab from ドラマ, manga and interaction with Japanese people.

If I kept my current kanji pace I’d reach full Jōyō somewhere in the second quarter of next year. :D We’ll see … kanji isn’t the main focus of active progression anymore.

漢字 — 1800+

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0900

101 kanji, 231 words, 36 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

Less than 45 days was doable. :)

I’m considering to stop seaching for new kanji/vocab each day and repurpose that time for focussed reading practice, collecting new kanji/vocab on the way. This would, I expect, slow down my kanji progress significantly. But I feel that I’ve reached a point where the hassle of blindly seaching for new words to learn, solely for the purpose of getting those damn 常用漢字 done isn’t really worth it anymore.

When reading Japanese it isn’t the kanji that hold me back, it’s grammar, phrases, compounds, etc. I presume simply reading a lot while looking up the stuff I don’t understand will benefit my reading comprehension way better than continuing what I’ve done up until now. Everything new I come across this way will have the huge benefit of being learned with a context — which is kind of taking my ‘learn kanji in the context of words’ approach one step further: ‘learn vocab and grammar in the context of continuous text’.

漢字 — 1700+

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji, 261 words, 45 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

As I predicted, exams caused a noticable slowdown. Which would’ve even been more severe had I not tweaked my learning routine a bit.

To save time I decided to stop writing out readings for recognition cards while continuing to write kanji + furigana for recall cards. Curious side effect: I have the feeling this helps me paying more attention to the correct pronunciation of words, since I have to verbalize the word in my head precisely in order to be able to compare my answer to the written solution in Anki. I guess coming up with an answer in a “verbalizing context” is somehow different to writing it down.

As for recall cards I started trying to always think of the pronunciation of a word first instead of the kanji. Reason: in conversations I need the pronunciation of a word immediately. When writing it is no problem to halt for a few seconds.

Two more weeks of exams to go. Won’t manage to get to 1800 in 30 days I guess, but less than 45 should be doable. :)

Radical overhead

Fri, 06 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0900

Pun intended. Semi interesting kanji related observation:

I learn kanji by breaking them down into their parts and building mnemonics out of those. Since not all kanji are either simple — in which case it’s reasonable to remember the single strokes — or composed only of other kanji, I necessarily have to carry some additional baggage along the way.

I wondered how this turned out for me up until now and created a plot. For learning my first 800 kanji I memorized 97 additional non-kanji characters (12% overhead). For the next 800 it was only 13 (1.6% overhead, 6.8% overall).

漢字 — 1600+

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0900

99 kanji, 232 words, 35 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

A minor slowdown. And exams are coming up, so I guess the next 100 will take a bit longer again.

It appears to be getting harder to find kanji that seem definitively rewarding to learn (i.e. are part of a lot of useful/frequently used words), but I’ve had such phases a few times before and my feeling always turned out to be incorrect. Given that there are sill 500+ 常用漢字 ahead I really hope there’s still a bunch of non-obscure ones awaiting me.

Rebuilt in Python

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0900

I rebuilt the page with Python, Markdown, and Jinja2.

The code should be a lot cleaner and for me it’s more comfortable to type pages and blog entries in Markdown. There are still a few things to sort out but the current state seems presentable. :3

漢字 — 1500+

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0900

99 kanji, 240 words, 33 days; Anki stats^[1], kanji so far.

Exactly hit the 3 kanji/day average this time. In other words: almost keeping pace. :)

Tandem is still great. Furthermore I have to say that socializing with the local community of Japanese and Japanese learners turned out to be super beneficial on several occasions — apart from the obvious benefit of getting to know interesting people and having a good time. Networking is the buzzword to apply here I guess.

[1] From the 24th, prior to adding new cards ... forgot to save a screenshot yesterday. :/

漢字 — 1400+

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0900

99 kanji, 256 words, 36 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

Almost keeping pace during lectures and stuff seems to work out so far.

Apart from vocabulary and more interesting at that: living in a larger city now, I’m surrounded with plenty of opportunity for tandem language learning and socializing with Japanese people in general. At the moment I go with two weekly tandem sessions — each of which with a Japanese exchange student.
Given that I hardly spoke any Japanese for about a year and only had very simple conversations in class before that I struggle a lot. On the other hand, since I have quite a large vocabulary to draw on it’s mostly constructing sentences spontaneously which holds me back and I’m making recognizable progress in that regard. Pronunciation causes no problems, nontrivial grammar slowly finds its way into my sentence patterns, listening comprehension is still tough. In any case it’s really fun to be able to apply what I’ve learned so far in real conversations with natives. And getting more and more comfortable with verbally expressing thoughts in a new language is awesome. :3

漢字 — 1300+

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0900

101 kanji, 286 words, 34 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

Keeping the pace for now. Moving and stuff was not really time consuming. Lectures will start next week, we’ll see how that’ll influence my progress.

漢字 — 1200+

Thu, 11 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0900

98 kanji, 301 words, 34 days; Anki stats, kanji so far.

Close to 100/30 and a nice word/kanji ratio — I’m fine with that. Maybe I’ll get to 1300 before Oct 13th, which is when my master’s starts. In any case I’ll have to deal with moving and stuff before that. Hopefully that won’t slow me down a lot. We’ll see. :)

漢字 — 1100+

Fri, 08 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji, 285 words, 41 days. Finally gaining some speed again.

As always: Anki stats and kanji so far.

Correct answers on mature cards sub 90% today, which happens from time to time lately —　集中、集中！

/edit: okay, if I really focus … (the single one I got wrong was mixing up the meanings of 予定 and 仮定)

漢字 — 1000+

Sat, 28 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji, 284 words — almost keeping pace with the last 100. 52 days this time. Which means I’ll most likely be at 11xx when finishing my thesis. Unless I’m super busy because of moving after that I’ll aim for 30 days per 100 again.

The usual stuff: Anki stats and kanji so far.

Additional data:

Grades

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%)
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%)
Grade 3: 176 of 200 (88.0%)
Grade 4: 128 of 200 (64.0%)
Grade 5: 102 of 185 (55.1%)
Grade 6: 93 of 181 (51.4%)
JuniorHS: 202 of 934 (21.6%)

Distribution

1002 total unique kanji
Jōyō: 977 of 2136 (45.7%)
Jinmeiyō (regular): 20 of 641 (3.1%)
5 non-Jōyō kanji

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Extrapolating these numbers: when I reach the point of knowing all 2136 Jōyō kanji I’ll presumably know 2191 in total, 44 of which will be Jinmeiyō, leaving 11 for non-Jōyō. And if I keep my kanji to vocab ratio at a constant level I’ll be at 5671 words.
Ignoring the fact that I had a really slow start, I’ll reach full Jōyō by the end of October 2015. Counting 100 per month beginning in September this year, starting at 11xx, I’d reach 2191 in July 2015. So … I guess full Jōyō between July and October 2015 is a good guess.

Since my kanji are distributed between grades/levels to a fair degree, their count is no good indicator for JLPT level. I could imagine taking the N3 in December this year. But I think I’d have to work on a few grammar points for that and I’d definitely have to increase my reading speed. — well, time will tell how I decide. In the end I learn for being able to communicate with Japanese people and read/write, not for a piece of paper. Yet, an official confirmation of “proficiency” has something to it.

漢字 — 900+

Wed, 07 May 2014 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji, 253 words — which took 50 days, meh. But I built a new interactive graph for the projects page.
Aaand I got a “Kenkyūsha’s New English-Japanese Dictionary” (5th edition)! — awesome parents be awesome. :3

Anki stats.

Kanji so far.

漢字 — 800+

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji, 283 words — writing thesis, Anki on the train while commuting to and from work, not much time in the evening to add new vocab, a bit of reading and writing on LINE but no time for grammar, Lang-8, etc.

Anki stats.

Kanji so far.

漢字 — 700+

Wed, 12 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0900

100 kanji and 270 words, again in one month and one day — we’ll see how that develops once I start writing my thesis in March. :D

Anyway: Anki stats for the last 30 days, imabi_stroll is still going although I got a bit lazy and missed a lot of days.

A new thing I gave shot is reading manga collaboratively (taking turns) in hangouts. It’s really fun but the events are at 4 AM for me (GMT+1), which is pretty awful. D: But I will try to continue attending from time to time.

As always, for the sake of documentation, these are the kanji I know so far.

漢字 — 600+

Sat, 11 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0900

Aaand again it’s been one month and one day — during which I somehow pumped 98 kanji and 317 words into my brain.

Here’s a screenshot of my Anki stats for the last 30 days.

Grammar: “re rush” is completed and helped a lot, now I try to focus on free writing of continuous text instead of single example sentences and only take a look at new grammar topics every 4th day. Since I’m through Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide completely I pick interesting topics on IMABI. Schedule: “imabi_stroll”.

Misc: had a Skype conversation in Japanese in December which was a nice experience. But I definitely should speak more Japanese.

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As always, for the sake of documentation, these are the kanji I know so far.

漢字 — 500+

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0900

On and on it goes … 97 kanji and 253 words since the last post.

I was quite surprised that I missed the ‘100 kanji per month’ mark by just one day (and just one kanji, acutally — I was at 499 yesterday). Anyway, everything good, no changes as for how I learn and here are my Anki stats.

Gammar! After I finished my “grammar rush” I stated a “re rush”. Turned out to be a good strategy so far. No idea what I will do after that though. Maybe start with writing full texts instead of single sentences. Maybe focus on speaking and reduce the time I spent on writing for a while … we’ll see.

Oh and the guys from Lang-8 (where I’ll write my 100th entry today) are super nice! I found a vulnerability on their site, reported it and they gave me one year premium for my account. :3

As always, for the sake of documentation, these are the kanji I know so far.

漢字 — 400+

Sat, 09 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0900

Soo … 37 days, 104 kanji and 291 words later:

Not much to say about kanji learning itself. One thing would be, that due to an Anki update that changed the handling of sibling cards my second daily Anki session now includes a bit more cards than before and the first session a bit less. Not much of a change.
I still try to keep the number of reviews due on one day between 80 and 100 but … as my Anki stats reveal, not always manage to do that.

Since there’s nothing more to say about kanji learning, a quick note on grammar:
As opposed to vocab, grammar isn’t super easily quantified. No numbers, no charts … Because of that I had a little bit of a problem to continue practicing and learning new grammar for a while.
To deal with that I stated a “grammar rush” (inspired by this YesJapan video). Instead of really just flipping through a workbook and taking notes I read one chapter of Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide a day and post some example sentences using the new grammar on Lang-8. So far this works really well for me.

As always, for the sake of documentation, these are the kanji I know so far.

漢字 — 300+

Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0900

God mode activated. :)
Exactly one month ago I wrote 「漢字 — 200+」 and since then addded 280 new words using 100 new kanji to my Anki deck. That means I learned more than nine words per day — which is pretty awesome compared to what I did before.
Looking at my Anki stats: I learned every day and added new vocab on 25 of 30 days. On average I review 115 cards in 52 minutes. I require additional time to find new kanji, create mnemonics, find useful new vocab using those kanji, etc. So I guess it’s reasonable to assume that I spend about 1.5 hours a day on Japanese vocab. Doesn’t sound like an awful lot of time and yet the benefit is quite awesome. :)

The most important thing to note is, that I really made it a habit to go through all due Anki cards in the morning/early afternoon, add new kanji in the evening and go through these a bit later. If you’re used to it, it’s no burden.
Further changes in my learning approach: I use Tagaini Jisho a lot more than before. And I more often use word frequency lists to find new useful vocab. Apart from that … I sometimes find it useful to not sit in from of my computer with all its distractions when learning, so I use AnkiWeb on my Kindle which works fine.

As always, for the sake of documentation, these are the kanji I know so far.

Japanese books for your Kindle

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0900

Strange thing about Amazon: Japanese books (offered on amazon.com and amazon.de) are not available for the standard Kindle although it’s perfectly capable of displaying Japanese content. This applies to all books in Japanese. Which sucks. So contacted support concerning that matter …

Fortunately there are alternatives: 青空文庫 (Aozora Bunko) offers Japanese books for free and with 青空キンドル (Aozora Kindle) you can easily convert them to beautiful PDFs. :)
To do that, take a book from 青空文庫 (for example this), scroll down to the ファイルのダウンロード section and copy the URL to the zip file. In our example that’s: http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000311/files/2762_ruby_8768.zip. Head to 青空キンドル, paste the URL, change settings if you want (I recommend setting the 文字 to 大), hit PDF化, copy the PDF file to your Kindle and you’re done. :)
Beautiful Japanese on your Kindle. What you may want to avoid, however, is using Japanese file names. They won’t be displayed as expected, which I presume it’s due to the FAT 32 file system.

漢字 — 200+

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0900

Whew … at last. Turns out a lot of free time doesn’t seem to be the best thing for my learning efforts. I tend to approach other time consuming stuff that wouldn’t be possible alongside lectures and end up having a hard time keeping up with making progress with my Japanese. D:

Looking at my Anki stats for the last month: the mostly hidden larger gap responsible for that first huge bar was a 5 day trip to Munic for a parkour jam, next gap was a spontaneous programming project iirc (something that doesn’t show up in my Google calendar at least) and the third gap was Ludum Dare 27, a video game development competition.

Anyway: what I’m experimenting with right now is different methods for choosing which kanji to learn next. For some time I sticked with the JLPT kanji listed here, but it seems to take me longer and longer to find good candidates. I consider switching to going through easy reading material online and adding stuff I don’t know yet. Another option would be using some frequency list.

Apart from that everything’s going well. Creating mnemonics is still fun. :) Oh and when learning with Anki I now write out readings in katakana instead of hiragana from time to time — helps preventing that I forget those bastards. :D

Again, for the sake of documentation, these are the kanji I know so far.

漢字 — 100+

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0900

So, a mere 5% of Jōyō kanji made their way into my head — and it’s been fun so far, A LOT actually! :O

I can’t really say why exactly, but I guess first off because as I continue learning kanji I’m able to read more and more Japanese stuff and also because I can play around with mnemonics. :3
When I wrote about taking Japanese courses in my last post I was totally hyped. But in no way was I ready to get into kanji. I did a lot of preparation because the task seemed (and still seems) huge and I wanted to approach it in the best way possible.
I thought about learning the 214 radicals before looking at a single kanji, I looked at guides like TextFugu and WaniKani and started hoarding useful resources like Jim Breen’s Multi-Radical Selection …

… after about a month I knew how I would do it: TextFugu and the like present a great method for learning kanji effectively, but there are two problems. Frist they focus on kanji only and don’t present them in context, as compounds (afaik). Second and most imporantly, they use given mnemonics. No way in hell does it make sense to use other people’s associations to remember stuff. If 肉 for me consists of a large gripper and two people which reminds me of Soylent Green and makes it super easy to remember then why should I try to remember it any other way?
The thing with the official radicals is that sometimes they don’t make sense to me, and for a lot of graphemes of given kanji there are no radicals. I cannot remember 刂 as a mere variation of 刀 — they need very distinct mnemonic names/meanings or I’ll mix them up.

So … learning kanji for me works like this: I search for kanji made up of parts I already introduced to my mnemonic system that I’ll use in sentences a lot. If I find no good candidates, I search for new graphemes/parts that will “enable” useful new kanji. As a new useful kanji is found I try to find at least two ways to use it in sentences — one where a kun reading is used and one where an on reading is used. Super easy example: I know 田 and 力, now I find 男, super easy to remember and with 男の子 and 男子 I already have two readings involved. 男 with it’s readings, meanings and a mnemonic wind up in a json file from which I generate a web page displaying all my kanji with memonics and their parts/graphemes linked for ease of use. 男の子 and 男子 are fresh input for my kanji deck in Anki. In the following days I then try to use 男の子 and 男子 in homework for my Japanese courses and in journals on Lang-8. And that’s how it goes. :) Works really well so far and is a lot of fun. Coming up with good memonics and the populating of previously mentioned json file can be a bit tedious though. ^^

For the sake of documentation, these are the kanji I know so far.

And here are my current Anki stats (deck created 2013-05-21).

I plan to do this kind of review every 100 kanji, so there will — hopefully — be a total of 21 of these in the end. Beginning with the second one they’ll very likely be notably shorter. ^^

And that’s it. Learning kanji is now part of my [ladder to the sun][triceratops with a cap cleaning his mouth with a napkin] life. :3

日本語 — at last some serious progress :3

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0900

I started taking beginner level Japanese courses at uni. The general path to learning the language and regular practice it provides seems to be exactly what was necessary to get me going. My learning efforts — til then not more than learning kana, remembering overused phrases from anime and then stagnating for like … a year? I don’t even know — suddenly skyrocketed and I now have to almost force myself to invest time into all the other stuff I have to do. You know … my actual field of study and all that. ;P
Anyway, Japanese, besides being listed as one of my interests, is now also a project. And btw.: Lang-8 is awesome!

CLI Love, Speedcubing, Half-Life, etc.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0900

Got some stuff that I could have mentioned … so: combo post!

CLI Love

I took some time to test some alternatives to the software I use on a daily basis. I dropped the window manager awesome for spectrwm — a lot less crappy configuration, even more minimalistic and quite another approach to multi screen handling (still have to fully get used to it, but seems usable).
Furthermore I switched from PCManFM to ranger ♥ and finally moved on from VLC media player to mpd + ncmpc for music and SMPlayer for video matters.

Speedcubing

I attended a speedcubing competition … just for fun. Now I have this fancy page with official results at the World Cube Association. I’m pretty happy with the results as my times really are that inconsistent and I got rather nervous when it got official. I can do sub 30s, but that’s only lucky exceptions.

Half-Life

I wondered how long it would take me to play through Half-Life, so I gave it a shot:

.XCompose kana input

I extended my .XCompose file to now also support katakana instead of hiragana only and added some punctuation that was still missing.

Poral chibi portrait

Alisa created this awesome Portal themed chibi portrait of me that’s now accompanying this blog post. :3 Here’s her website — read the “very soon” in a vaporware-ish “when it’s done” kind of way. :D

Deutsche Bahn ticket machines - hidden buttons

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0900

A few weeks ago I noticed something strange about the ticket machines of Deutsche Bahn. Normally, if you miss to hit a button, a red dot on the touch screen indicates where your “click” was recognized. But when viewing the Verkehrsverbund* section and “missing” on certain spots on the upper left and upper right corner of the screen, you saw an hourglass cursor for a short moment.
Being in curiosity mode I had to test if I could provoke a feedback of some kind. And in fact, rarely the screen was like flashing as I was rapidly clicking on both spots simultaneously.
After playing around a bit more I found out that there are two “four click combinations” that will bring up a screen with some information: left, left, right, right gives you the application and system version; left, left, right, left a hole bunch more version data, the location of the machine and whatnot.
At the point where I had found the first working combination and began trying out others I kind of felt like in a good old point and click adventure. :D Thanks for the entertainment, Deutsche Bahn. ^^

Here’s a video of each of the screens:

left, left, right, right
left, left, right, left

*An association of public transport authorities.

Site update

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0900

The renovation cat must have sent it’s friend. — I used the last two days to update the site a bit.

Blog section is now full width, manually chosen permalinks have been replaced by hashes, content has been restructured, the design changed a bit, spam protection is now done with reCAPTCHA, etc.
Future plans are to build the site so that it functions perfectly fine w/o JavaScript but, when enabled, makes good use of its benefits, heavily extend the interests section as implied there, etc. However, I guess it’s going to take a while until I really find the time to make noticable changes again. I have a lot less free time than I’m used to atm and that’s not going to change until February or so. :/

Making use of caps lock. ... No, seriously.

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0900

It is true. No longer will caps lock be the key that you accidentally hit an then hate for what it’s doing.

So what is this about? A while ago I read about that fantastic idea of making the caps lock key behave like escape on Wolfgang’s blog. Which is really an awesome thing, especially for vim users.
But we don’t want to eliminate caps lock. We want to make use of it. So: I recently switched from a German keyboard layout to a standard US one. Quite soon I realized, that I woudn’t mind writing umlauts (äöü) as ae, oe, ue but I’d really miss the s z ligature ‌ß
It then occured to me (i.e. after wining about it on irc someone reminded me) that I could use compose. Which I, till then, only used for my beloved dash (—).

But something was bothering me: while the origins of the ß are a bit complicated (the story includes the long s (ſ), a character that isn’t used anymore, and there were different versions of the ligature using either the z or the s) and German speaking countries that don’t use the ß, like Swizerlad, use ss instead, it’s present name Eszett (naming the letters s and z) and things like the HTML entity being ß (s z ligature) make the ß — for me at least — more a ligature of s and z than of s and s. Yet, the default compose sequence for ß is ss. I had to change that.

While creating my own .XCompose file I had the idea to create compose sequences for hiragana (the reason why that’s useful to me is a whole other story). But what would I use? <Multi_key> <a> for あ, <Multi_key> <n> <o> for の, etc.? Would be quite annoying to be forced to hit the compose key (mapped to the menu key in my case) for each and every hiragana. There had to be a better solution.
I looked into different input methods for Japanese, but aside from the fact, that they’d clearly be more sophisticated than what I’d come up with (due to me only having really basic knowledge of Japanese), they weren’t really what I wanted to have.
I then thought about a separate .XCompose file for hiragana that simply woud map a to あ, n followed by o to の etc. and which I could load using some key combination. Turns out you can’t change your .XCompose file on the fly. You have to restart X. :/ (At least I found no way to do it.)

After a while of thinking and testing I had the idea to use a modifier for my hiragana compose sequences. More specifically: a modifier that can be toggled on and of: CAPSLOCK!
What this means is, that for example a gets “composed” to あ, but only when the modifier is active. The cool thing about that is, that you even have an LED indicator for which “input mode” your in. LED off = romaji, LED on = hiragana. This of course can be used for anything. Instead of a hiragana mode you could have a writing upside down mode, a Greek mode, etc.

If you want to try it out, here’s my current .Xmodmap (swaps escape and caps lock and set’s compose to the menu key) and here’s my .XCompose file.

Raspberry Pi + Lego Case :3

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0900

Maybe not that interesting, but I felt like this had to appear here. I got my RPi in July and recently started to build a Lego case for it. The one you see on the picture (fullsize) was initially just “find as much red parts as possible and use the other colors to create a prototype”.
After a while I started to replace strange colors (brown, green, pink, etc.) and black as well as grey bricks in my prototype with similar parts in blue, white or yellow. What you see is how far I got … a few flat parts and a bigger “window” for the LEDs are still to be found. The completely red version is far from complete. I’d need 9 1x1 flat bricks with a flat surface on the top — not sure if we have that much.

Anyway — the Pi is up and running, serving mostly as an IRC client at the moment; guess it’ll have the honor to take care of one or the orther cronjob in the near future and offer some web based “services” for me.

Miscellaneous information: I got the idea to build a Lego case from Biz’s LEGO case. I used pants for my case because they leave a bit more space inside. Everything located above a slot is fixed to the lid, so the Pi can be taken out once the case is opened withough the need to take it apart. I noticed that my case might not leave enough space for an RCA plug but I don’t plan to use it anyway. I use Arch Linux ARM. Here’s a picture of my Raspberry Pi next to a raspberry pie.

JSONProxy

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0900

Before I begin with what this is actually about, some words for those who aren’t familiar with AniDB, MyAnimelist, XDCC-Bots or at least one of those:
AniDB and MyAnimelist are both websites that let you create a list of anime titles. In the case of AniDB the focus lies on the anime episodes you have stored somewhere, MyAnimelist cares more about what episodes you saw.
XDCC bots are IRC bots that send you files on demand. They are a common distribution method for fansubbed anime and offer so called packlists, where the list all the files they offer.

Now to the real story: I’m a user of both AniDB and MyAnimelist, but I only maintain a list on the latter. I use AniDB of keeping up to date with newly released episodes of airing series. The problem is, that if you only want to see notifies for new releases of certain subgroups, you have to add episodes of the respective anime from that subgroup to your list. I, however, don’t maintain a list on that site, so I’d get a ton of unnecessary notifies.

Now, since I get all my new episodes from XDCC bots I though I could make use of simply parsing their packlists, which was the first thing I did: write a JSON file with all neccessary info, a small PHP script to parse the packlist and a minimalistic site to display the output. With that I always had an up to date list of all released episodes of the series I watch and only from the subgroup I want them from.
The problem with that approach was, that I had to memorize the number of the last episode I saw for every of those anime. So I had to come up with something different. Since MyAnimelist always has the information on which episode of which anime I watched last it seemed natural to use that. Also, since I open the page with my list on it several times a day, it seemed to be a good idea to simply include the information about new episodes there.

So I wanted to write a userscript that should obtain the information from both my JSON file and the packlists, look at the site itself and, if there were any episodes released that I hadn’t seen, inform me about that … well, same origin policy says no. The userscript is written in JavaScript and common browsers won’t let it perform an XMLHttpRequest for stuff stored on other servers than the one the site you are viewing when the script is executed is hosted on.
I had to find a workaround and I though of JSONP, a method where you create a new script tag in the head of the site with the remote thing you want to access as the src attribute of that tag. Problem is, that remote thing should be a string with a JavaScript method call, so that you actually can use what you got from the remote server. But I wanted to access packlists I had no control over. It then came to my mind, that I simply could write a PHP script that would access and parse the packlist and return a JSONP string — a JSONP proxy you could say. ^^ And then access this with my userscript.

This is what I ended up doning. :) My JSONProxy parses packlists based on my listing of urls, titles and subgroups and my userscript (actual code) uses that to inform me about new episodes. :3

I guess it would be quite easy to write a universal JSONProxy which takes a get parameter (the url to the document one wants to access) and returns a JavaScript method call with the whole site as a parameter. What I’m not sure about is, wether or not there are regulations on the src attribute of script tags and how messy the escaping of whole websites for the JS method call would get. ^^
Oh and by the way: since the actual request to the site you do not control (in my case the packlists) is not performed by the browser the JS is running on but by the PHP script on your server this method doesn’t even violate the same origin policy more than JSONP itself — it’s just a handy way to access data from other servers when you write userscripts. :)

VZ Netzwerke message backup

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0900

A few days ago I read that the VZ Netzwerke (a group of dying social networks once popular in Germany) will be renamed to or restarted as idpool. Reading about those networks alone reminded me that ever since I stopped using them I wanted to backup all my messages. Hearing that the platform will be undergoing serious change some time soon made me take immediate action.

I wrote a Perl script to extract the messages and store them in json-files. To view the messages I wrote a simple web interface in PHP.
I ran into some problems with SSL connections which is why the script uses a session ID instead of an e-mail address and password as a launch parameter. Additionally, when dealing with large amounts of messages the script decided to freeze after a certain amount of parsed messages, so I wrote a second version using threads to parse messages and in case they freeze simply parse the message again. This second version, however, is painfully slow because of my crappy implementation — but since it does a job that only has to be done once I’m fine with that. :D

Concerning the web interface one thing was very important for me: having messages and answers that belong together being displayed at the same place. A thing that the VZ Netzwerke never offered, you only have your in- and outbox. Separated. Absolutely terrible if you want to read an old conversation again. So … my web interface shows all messages to and from a person at one place. : )

In case you’d like to backup your messages too, here you go: vz_messageparser.tar.gz
Run perl vzmp.pl studi|schueler|mein <sessid> (use vmzp_crap.pl if neccessary) and view the index.php (webserver required ofc) as soon as the script finished.

Impress Presenter Screen + awesome

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 +0900

edit: modkey + o moves windows between displays — that pretty much solves the whole thing. Sometimes patiently reading though a man page solves your problems more efficiently than asking Google for help. (Thanks to Wolfgang for informing me about the key binding.)

Getting LibreOffice Impress’ extension presenter-screen (aka “Presenter Console”) to work when using awesome turned out to be a bit tricky.
So, if youre using awesome and want to use the extension, here’s how it works:

Assuming you’re using a laptop with a resolution of 1366x768 and present on a beamer, connected via VGA with a resolution of 1280x960. (Use xrandr to find out the actual output and resolutions.)

1. Display setup

Your own screen: xrandr –output LVDS –mode 1366x768 –primary
The beamer: xrandr –output VGA-0 –mode 1280x960 –right-of LVDS

2. Impress

Make sure the extension is recognized: Tools -> Extension Manager
Set the presentation display to “Display 2”: Slide Show -> Slide Show Settings
Place the Imress window on the beamer display and start the presentation.

You should now see the presenter screen on top of your presentation’s slides, both on the beamer display.

3. awesome

With your cursor, hover over the presenter screen.
Press modkey + m (maximize window) twice.
Move the presenter screen to your laptop’s display.

This all would be much easier if there was a key binding for moving (maximized) windows between displays, not only tags. I’m not aware of one.

Time-lapse photography for less than 2$

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0900

A few weeks ago I thought it would be nice to try out time-lapse photography. I searched for ways to trigger my DSLR in given inverals and found, that the plug for wired remotes was some proprietary Nikon thing and timer remotes cost 40€ upwards.

Fortunately, DSLRs can also be triggered using an infrared signal. I already owned an Nikon ML-L3, a normal IR remote compatible to my Nikon D80. So what I did (and what you can also do to have fun with IR devices) was this.

Simply connect an IR LED to an audio cable and use it to record and send IR signals. It’s that easy. : )

‌
If you’re interested in further information on this topic have a look at the following links:
Jim Watters - Nikon D70s MC-DC1 remote
www.doc-diy.net :: camera remote release pinout list
DIY Infrared transmitter for iPhone, iPod
Arduino – IR remote/ intervalometer for Nikon D80 DSLR (that means timelapse photography yarrr!)
bigmike.it - infrared remote control for Nikon

Grid scroll

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0900

Added a “scrolling” fuctionality to the grid in the photography section — should now be at least a bit more comfortable to browse through. Writing it, however, wasn’t that much of a pleasure. :D First of all things tend to end up pretty messy whenever I work on stuff “combining” PHP and JS. On top of that the “math” behind the shifting of my images went fully out of control. Loops and lists functioning in opposite directions, +1 here, -2 there — oh well … somehow it’s working now. :D

On the subject of nice frames

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0900

A few days ago I made a new acquaintance — interesting personality, joyful character; the kind of person you’re grateful to have met. The following days I was really keen on further communication — text based due to distance, which, on a side note, actually isn’t a bad thing at all. Talking seems to be the right thing to do in order to share experiences, writing appears to be predestined for getting to know someone’s wolrd of thought. Anyway: communication at first went fine, but after a while I had the feeling my conversational partner lost interest. The atmosphere kind of infected me and I got all gloomy and listless. This really annoyed me and I tried to find a way out of my bad mood. I thought about what the situation was, what I wanted it to be or how I could view it from a different perspective so that it looked all good again. And then it struck me: “Hey … you’re talking to an interesting person. Most people, when you give them some kind of input, come out with some average ouput you won’t really consider to be interesting. Here you got someone that, given input, grants you valuable, interesting ouput in exchange. Why don’t you simply ask whether or not there’s still interest in further communication, whether or not you’re annoying/uninteresting? If there’s still interest and you’re not annoying: go ahead and enjoy this rare personality you consider yourself fortunate having become acquainted with.”
All of a sudden my mood turned from pretty down to fully enthusiastic again. : )
All I did was to take the present situation and put it in a nice frame so that it looked pleasant and motivating again. What I did in the first place was assuming that there was something wrong with the situation. What I did to fix it was to realize that I only know my own situation, which actually is fortunate, and that I should ask whether or not the situation of my communicational partner is as it seems to me. As it turned out later my first assumption was completely wrong and I was “allowed” to continue being curious and carry on the conversation. :3
I also realized that I had done this (putting something in a nice frame) before, however I hadn’t observed myself and concentrated on what I was doing back then. Anyway: it seems to be a nice technique to handle unpleasant situations: take what you got, consider that you might have made a mistake in the way you currently view the situation, try to fix those mistakes and thus put things in a nice frame. : )

Movielist changes + service

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0900

The first implementation of my movielist made use of IMDBPHP, a third party API thingy. I now finally got rid of it and wrote my own code. Not that IMDBPHP would have been bad in any way, it just was way to heavyweight for what I used it for. Additionally I created a little HTTP service which can be fed with an IMDb ID and a specification of information type via GET parameters to receive a plain text answer.
Since both the service and parts of the movielist use fsockopen() — which is disabled on bplaced.net — I have to host them on square7.ch.
Besides: Vim syntax highlighting (with background set to dark) is just sexy. <3

Kill process by name (or: what pkill already does)

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0900

Whenever I wanted to terminate a program by force I used ps -A | grep PROGNAME, read the process id and then executed sudo kill PID. Now I wrote a one line bash script making things easier — reducing the required effort by half:

#!/bin/bash
sudo kill `ps -A | grep $1 | grep -Eo '[0-9]{3,4}'`

Also usable as a one line command which requires one to enter the program’s name afterwards:

read x;sudo kill `ps -A | grep $x | grep -Eo '[0-9]{3,4}'`

The first version, however, is much more convenient. I stored it as nkill in /usr/bin/ which enables me to for example kill firefox with nkill firefox or kill all open terminals with nkill xterm.

Update: Uhm … yeah … I just learned that pkill does just that. :D

Proper subsequent loading of content

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0900

On today’s schedule:
light exercises in JavaScript, regular expressions and Vim. :D

I finally managed to grant my Elfen Lied content base a proper functionality to load content on demand. The full page contains images worth >60MB. Combined with slow speed due to free webspace you end up with a browsing experience of pure “meh …“. Until now I only hid collapsed content and displayed it on demand. Now expanding and collapsing really means loading the content and removing it. Not only hiding and displaying while loading it anyway.

Arch and Wacom

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0900

Arch Linux! Wacom! W00t! <3 :D

Okay … one thing at a time … After a good year of using Ubuntu I now switched to Arch Linux. The reason being that I’ll be forced to build a system fitting to my needs.
Thanks to the great beginner’s guide on archlinux.org I managed to set up a basic system pretty fast and I didn’t even run into that much problems. ^^ At the moment I’m using awesome as a window manager — which, btw, is absolutely doing justice to its name —, emelFM2 as my filemanager (also a great component), sxiv for viewing images and apart from that the common stuff that I already used before … Firefox, VLC, GIMP, XAMPP, etc.

The thing that caused the most problems so far and, additionally, the second topic in this blog entry, is my new Wacom Bamoo Pen tablet. I chose a Wacom tablet because I knew about the Linux Wacom Project. Unfortunately the tablet I got is a relatively new model and isn’t yet supported by the standard linuxwacom package you get from the repositories. Thus I had to use a package from the AUR, patch it and manually change some stuff — which I managed to do because of the great help I got from some guys from #archlinux.de. : )

So … I now got a new, awesome system and a nice drawing tablet. The only thing I’m missing now is drawing skills. :D But that’s fine, I got the tablet mainly for postprocessing of photos and doing stupid things on imageboards. ^^

Link Pixel Cookies!

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0900

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*Le having friend that is huge fan of Zelda franchise

wild YouTube video appears

make this

UML — and how to have fun with it

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0900

When you start learning UML and, at first, find it rather annoying and useless, gradually, however, become aware of its usefulness but during that process never stop dealing with it with a lot of humor, then you might end up using domain class diagrams just like that.

Catching up

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0900

Since my last blog post several things happened that I could have mentioned here, but I somehow never got around doing so. Therefore I’m now doing a chatch-up post:

Parkour

A day after I wrote the “Parkour / Freerunning / Movement”-post I attended the parkour theme workshop by Parkour Stuttgart, which was a great experience. These workshops are organized every first saturday of each month. Anyone can attend and it’s for free. Also worth mentioning: I got into some serios double kong action lately. ^^

Mawaru Penguindrum

If you happen to be a fan of Mawaru Penguindrum these two things might be for you. First: I rebuilt the penguin head icon that members of KIGA group have on their shirts as a vector graphic. Here’s a making off (I used Inkscape). You can get the SVG file here. Second: if you’d like to browse through awesome Mawaru Penguindrum fanart take a look at what zerochan.net has to offer. It’s nothing but amazing. A four-digit count of really great pictues only on Mawaru Penguindrum. :O

On November 24th Furtwangen University (that’s where I study) had a special day for exchange between companies and students. The companies have stands in the hallways and lecture rooms where they introduce themselves. Students walk around to gather information relevant for a practical semester or thesis and harvest giveaways, mostly pens. One of the companies present was OXID eSales, they make online shops with PHP. The cool thing at their stand was, that they had t-shirts with PHP code (and their logo ofc) on them which they gave away for free. I quite like PHP, I had to get one of them, so did some of my fellow students. We continued our raid for pens …
Then I realized something. The t-shirts that OXID gave away where exactly the same t-shits that their employees wore at their stand. I continued on that thought: people wearing such a shirt standing at their stand are thought to be OXID employees and they’re asked questions about the company by students that walk by. I now possess such a shirt …
By now you probably figured out what I was about to do. I asked one of my mates what he thought about temporarily becoming and OXID employee. He liked the idea, we put the t-shirts on and headed off to OXID. In the end the area around the stand wasn’t quite crowded enough for the plan to succeed, but the OXID employees that spotted us “supporting their team” happened to find it amusing what we did. As you can see they even took a picture of us at their stand.

iCTF

At university we had a team that took part in The UCSB iCTF, an international capture the flag event. The competition was great. The way it was set up allowed members like me, that aren’t that skilled when it comes to IT security, to also contribute to the progress of one’s team. I was particularly amused by a challenge that I was able to solve thanks to my occasional visits of /b/. Here’s a picture of the challenge. Do you know the answer? If not, take a look at this.

If that post gave you cancer go ahead and write a comment to tell me so!

Parkour / Freerunning / Movement

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0900

I always was that kind of guy who just has to jump over things, climb stuff and find physical challenges whenever being outside. Gone photographing, spotting some stones … “Hold the camera please, I want to jump over these.” And so I did. “Do you think I could do this with one jump from standing position?”, “Wait, let’s try to climb up there!” … you get the idea. ; )

Yet, what I didn’t have was some kind of sport that I did. As a kid I was in a gymnastics club. I quit at the age of 12, I guess, and then, for a long, long time … nothing. At 19 I tried to get into tricking but it didn’t really work out. Tricking to me still is one of the — if not the — most beautiful expression of movement, though.
Early this year I got into slacklining, which I still like a lot and do occasionally. But what got me super excited the moment I started was parkour. Or freerunning, or whatever may describe it best what I’m doing. I really don’t care a lot about definitions and categories. As long as it isn’t necessary to rate or compare within a discipline you don’t need to restrict yourself to a certain set of operations or comply to any regulations. And since I’m not driven by the thought “I wan’t to be good at parkour” but instead “I wan’t to do what makes me happy and what I think is fun” I just do that: moving and improving — in whatever way I like to. : )

What I find particularly interesting regarding parkour is the philosophy that developed around it. First there is the thought “never stop playing” and I couldn’t identify more with it. Second there is the idea of creatively using (urban) spaces which I really like. It makes parkour kind of an art that’s reaching into the spehre of everyday public life. Third there is this search for efficiency in not only movement but also thinking. It’s really a whole bunch of good ideas and interestinng thought that comes along with parkour.

On top of that — one last incredibly important thing — the people are great. From what I’ve experienced so far, people that are into parkour tend to be extremely supportive, nice, open minded and fun. You’ll get help if you need, everyone will encourage each other to try new things. It’s just a great environment that supports one’s authenticity.

Thus at the moment I’m a bit obsessed with parkour, freerunning, movement in genereal. May it remain like this for a long, long time. : )

Jae Rhim Lee's mushroom burial suit

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0900

TED
Watch it! Think about it!
Wonderfully reasonable dealing with death. <3

Facebook, three stages of infantilizing

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0900

Stage 1

The “News Feed” is divided into “Top news” and “Most recent”.
The so called “Top News” are a filtered version of all the news that come up. What is presented to you is, among other things I guess, based on the amount of likes and replies a status update or other news item gets.
If you don’t want facebook to decide what news you get to see: only view “Most recent”

Stage 2

The news feed section “Most recent” has the option “Show posts from:” which can be set to “Friends and pages you interact with the most” or “All of your friends and pages”.
Again … Facebook filters. This time according to the amout of interaction you had with the persons in your contact list via Facebook.

Stage 3

For every person in your contact list you lately have a so called subscription. The default setting for such a subsbsription is “Most Updates”. (Options are “All updates”, “Most Updates” and “Only Important”).
And again: why should the user care about all updates and decide for himself, what is important to him and what is not? Let’s change the news feed and again cut out stuff that we — Facebook — think is unimportant. Argh, I hate it!

‌
Personalized filtering is an interesting thing and, in my humble opinion, even necessary in our days of information oversupply. But I really can not stand it when service providers by default hold back information, filter your input, infantilize their users.

To be fair: it’s nice that Facebook at least let’s you change the filtering — I don’t want to know how much filtering is done without us knowing about it. But neither have I stumbled across an option to set the default for all subscriptions to “All updates” yet, nor am I inclined to change this for all my Facebook contacts manually.
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Update:

What the …?! Less than two hours after I blogged this:

Fuck your goddamn preselection! I want fucking ALL my news in fucking chronological order. *facebookrage*

Bad-ass movielist

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0900

Level up! for the cinephile. I rebuilt/improved my movielist. : )

The old list contained title, year and duration in a rather mediocre conceived notation. Now I note title, year and IMDb id. The first two to still have something human readable and independent from external sources, the third to gather all further data.

To access the IMDb page I use IMDBPHP, but the methods to sort out the data (rating, runtime, director, etc.) are self written. Since the process of accessing every single IMDb page (one for each movie) takes quite some time, my script saves all information as well as the image in a cache folder.

The list can be accessed here.

Stop motion — a first try

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0900

Took me about 90 minutes to take the pictures.

YouTube

You are leaving the internet

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0900

Using a forum that has one of these redirection pages for external links that tells you, that you’re leaving the site, I lately thought of annoying others by repetitively pasting the link to the redirection page linking to itself before the actual site I was linking to. You’d have to wait for a series of useless pseudo redirections or copy the actual link manually.

Then, however, I thought you could do something way cooler with “You are leaving”-pages from different sites. You could create a tour, leaving one page after the other — you could be: leaving the internet.

See you soon!

Google+

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0900

“And then, one day, I got in!” (quote from Tron: Legacy)
— And you should come in, too!
I’ve been playing around with Google+ for three days now. Aside from the fact, that Google+ is made by Google, which is reason enough to join, I have to say I really like it. Yes it is quite simmilar to Facebook, but hey: it’s a social network and at the moment Facebook is by far the most successful one. If Google+ wasn’t quite like Facebook it had to be … revolutionary — which it is not. But it definitely is woth trying out and as soon as the integration of other Google services is pushed forward, the answer to the question “Which social network should I use?” is, not only based on image but also based on functionality, Google+.

Interesting stuff: Inside Google Plus (a German blog) and Google+ Tips and Tricks (a collaborative document).

If you want to be invited: just send me your e-mail address. ; )

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Die Eleganz des Igels)

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0900

A fortunate coincidence — or maybe a great estimation of what would be suitable for my person. : )

I mostly read textbooks, in the majority of cases about philosophy. Somehow novels aren’t the kind of books that usually catch my attention. Sadly, because … not enjoying something is in some way missing something.
I loved the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, enjoyed Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game and occasionally read manga. But the rest of what I’ve read so far … Precht, Dawkins, Postman, Watzlawick, Nietzsche, etc. — therefore I’m always keen on finding novels I like.

Last saturday a friend of mine lent me The Elegance of the Hedgehog (amazon.com/.de). She once cited a passage from the book in an e-mail. It looked promising, I got interested. As it turned out this book — at least in my opinion — is just perfect for a person which enjoys reading analytical, philosophical works. It has a touch of such works, yet tells a story, keeps you interestend, is written gorgeously and altogether is just a wonderful book. *recommended*

Renovation, again.

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0900

Uhm, yes … I had to change it again. To be more precise: I built the site again pretty much from scratch. It’s as if everytime I remake my page and use it for some time, I find new flaws and the desire to start all over again rises. ^^
This time I didn’t make any major steps concerning technology — only added a little javascript. The look however changed quite a bit: centered again, uniform color, a picture in the header, different categories and no more name or title (like &code before). Greatest changes however were made concerning content. I overhauled most of it.

Oh and: old entries are old. I’m not going to import them … this is gonna be kind of a new beginning. : )

sirtetris.com/blog

When null is your legal address

Becoming a “Permanent Resident” in Japan

Timeline

Why get PR

How to get PR

Preparing documents

Submit, wait, communicate

New card, new design, new chapter

In Japan - Growing Roots

Output

Communities

Visits

Seit wann gibt es Stadt, Land, Fluss?

Taipei and the 開源人年會

Einkommen­steuer­erklärung nach Auswanderung

In Japan - Creditworthy Binomial

The Name Chaos

A Japanese Credit Card

Misc

In Japan - Setting up Camp ...

In transit

Setting up stuff

Work adjacent things

Misc

To Japan - Papers Please

🔍 Job hunting from abroad — fresh master’s graduate

🔍 Job hunting from abroad — PhD with some job experience

📄 HSP visa acquisition

✈ Moving prep

I did a science

A story all about how, my life got flipped-turned upside down …

How the sausage is made

Illustrations

Back to the wold of engineering

Links

한극어 — stagnation and revival

한극어 — 한자 help and HelloTalk hurdles

한자 help

HelloTalk hurdles

한극어 — come up and see my etchings writing system

東京大学〔三〕

東京大学〔二〕

東京大学〔一〕

Two months at 東京大学

A week on Tarek Central Time

Two weeks at the National University of Singapore

Completionism & Chapter Closing

r--漢字 — 400+

r--漢字 — 300+

Finding うぶんちゅ！ chapter 15

r--漢字 — 200+

r--漢字 — 100+

Einkommen­steuer­erklärung nach Master-Studium

大阪短期滞在 コロナ編

漢字 — 2100+

大阪短期滞在

Monolingual Japanese offline dictionaries for Android

Japanese books on a Kindle 4

国立情報学研究所〔九〕

国立情報学研究所〔八〕

国立情報学研究所〔七〕

国立情報学研究所〔六〕

国立情報学研究所〔五〕

Mixed language content

国立情報学研究所〔四〕

国立情報学研究所〔三〕

国立情報学研究所〔二〕

国立情報学研究所〔一〕

Six months at the 国立情報学研究所

Anki for exams

28 hour day

漢字 — 2000+

Grades

Distribution

Translating manga

Ubunchu! chapter 9: Revolutionary IME Kaname

Ubunchu! chapter 10: Outbreak of an interface war!?

Ubunchu! chapter 11: My lady is fond of her old butler!?

Ubunchu! chapter 12: Rule of a sister distro! Mint-chan

When `null` is your legal address

Einkommensteuererklärung nach Auswanderung

Einkommensteuererklärung nach Master-Studium

大阪短期滞在コロナ編