I don't understand the lyrics completely but it's enough to get a general meaning of the lyrics most of the time, thanks to Japanese class. Now that I understand the words that they're actually saying, I'm starting to like them more and more. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons as to why I'm taking Japanese is so that I can understand Japanese lyrics.

"kamisama yori, kimi wo shinjiru..."

Totally, understanding a piece of work definitely makes it more enjoyable. I've been thinking bout taking Japanese next year after I relearn Korean .

I agree, as my knowledge of japanese increases, and with it my comprehension, songs that I've heard countless times become new again - which is pretty bloody awsome. And of course its great practice :ロ]

Yep, music is quite good for practice. I often try to learn all the vocabulary in a song, or study the structures they use and such.

Song structures are strange though due to frequently throwing grammar out the window for metre or effect.

Snigwel, you should take a stab at translating stuff for us here. I'm sure by now your Japanese is far better than mine. XD

But I totally agree that I enjoy the pillows more when I understand what it is that he's singing about.

[quote="Marekenshin"]Snigwel, you should take a stab at translating stuff for us here. I'm sure by now your Japanese is far better than mine. XD[/quote]
Oh no, my Japanese is still pretty trashy. I've improved a lot (especially with spending that time in Japan) but that's just compared to the previous worse-still me. My skills are still pretty lowly, and certainly no better than yours (which have improved at a quite impressive rate:0)

Anyhow, if I manage to get past finals I would like to try translating stuff for practice, though I think I might focus more on the Sparta Locals 'cause they hardly have anything translated to English (that I'm aware of), and they deserve to.

I'm really not good yet, and I'm pretty sure you've learned a lot more Japanese than I have by now, since I taught myself for two years and then took first year at college so far.

[quote="Marekenshin"]I'm really not good yet, and I'm pretty sure you've learned a lot more Japanese than I have by now, since I taught myself for two years and then took first year at college so far.[/quote]
I dunno, I may have taken more courses, but I've really found personal independent studying to be far more beneficial than most of my courses (it seems to have worked for you to :0). Unfortunately, its only been relatively recently that I've been really motivated to study hard and consistently - not that I didn't study before, I still did decent in class and all, but my Japanese has only recently started to become ingrained in my mind in a usable way, and this because of really avidly working to absorb as much as I can from books about and in Japanese, talking to Japanese friends on skype and that sort of stuff. I am pleased that my Japanese has at last reached a communicative level where I feel like I can truthfully answer 'yes, a bit' if people ask me if I can speak Japanese (it sort of frustrates me when people consider themselves to be able to speak a language when they really only know a few phrases or something).

Which reminds me, I think I'll make a thread soon (too tired at the moment :ロ/ ) for posting reccommended studying aids and such. I feel that I've managed to find a good deal of really helpful books and applications and such, and I'm sure you and others have too, and, well, sharing rarely hurts (well, I suppose sharing blood can hurt a bit, but that can fit in the aforementioned 'rarely' catagory).

To be honest, I hardly use any sort of study aid. I just practice the stuff I learn, listen to lots of Japanese music, and translate songs every now and then. I hardly ever crack open my textbook, but occasionally look up grammar points that I don't know, and I use a dictionary to look up words I don't know when I see them. Romanizing songs also did a lot for my vocabulary and reading skills, I had to look up the kanji and would see the meaning along with how it was read, so I'd learn that way.

Well aside from books (though there are some excellent ones) there are some really useful things (that you may or may not already know of) like the rikai-chan/perapera-kun firefox plugins which allow you to simply mouse over japanese text to view the kanji-compounds dictionary info. It's really good for practicing as you can try to read as much as you can of an article on a website or something, and then very easily "look up" any hard kanji or vocab. And then there's the 漢字そのまま楽引辞典 ds software, which I find myself using many times pretty much every day (it basically allows you to draw kanji on the ds to look them up, as well as having a few しおり files to save words you're working on memorizing, and a number of other great features (not to mention some game & watch games as easter eggs (the mention of which makes me really want to go play smash bros)).

I have no DS, but I recently got the rikai-chan plugin, which is a hell of a lot easier than looking up kanji from a physical dictionary.