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JOY (with bonus Shininess!)
Jun. 25th, 2005 08:28 pmToday I marched my ass down to Joshin Pitstop 1 and walked away with a gorgeous, sexy, shiny new electronic dictionary. Introducing the gorgeous, sexy, shiny Canon Wordtank G50: 
I love it to death already. Nevertheless, I feel no small amount of guilt over the fact that I possess a very much still working Canon IDF-3000,
(The real reason for the new purchase? My vocabulary has progressed to the point that 98% of all the words I look up have no Japanese-English definitions in the 3000. Of course, my vocabulary has also progressed to the point where I can easily handle a Japanese-Japanese dictionary, but I'm lazy. I want those definitions in English, dammit! And anyway, the G50 has J-E example sentences while the 3000's J-J entries do not.)
But still, I am heartily apologetic to my 3000. It has been my faithful companion these long years.
And now, let me talk about what wonderful dictionaries Canon makes for English language learners of Japanese. Their products are unparalleled. Here I was all ready to branch out into a different brand - all my fellow ALTs seem to have Sharps or Casios. Their dictionaries are sleek, sexy, and above all novel to a die-hard Canon user such as myself. But they just don't live up to their promise.
Here's how I know - I made a big old list of all the words I had to look up in the J-J dictionary, then plugged those into every dictionary on display in the electronics stores I visited. All the dictionaries contained said words, but beyond that, they differed mightily. An example: I searched the gitaigo でれでれ in each dictionary.
Every single one of the Casio, Sharp, and S-II dictionaries had this entry:
'Spoony.' What the fuck does that mean? Absolutely useless. Canon, the love of my Japanese-addicted life, had this entry:
Casio et. al. can't even hold a candle to Canon.
In other news, I managed to sign myself up for my very first credit card while paying for the dictionary - I, who swore that I'd go my entire life without ever owning one of the things. But then again, my mother also swears up and down that I'll need one of the things sooner rather than later, and I figured that Japan, where one can sign up for a card without handing out such information such as one's SSN and bank account information, would be the place to get one.
And my moment of glory: having filled out all the paperwork, the cashier told me to please sign in the circle. At which point I was like, "Hell no, bitch! I have my hanko!" And I hankoed the crap outta that mother, to the amazement of the entire counter staff. Truly, these are the days.
That will be all.
I love it to death already. Nevertheless, I feel no small amount of guilt over the fact that I possess a very much still working Canon IDF-3000,
(The real reason for the new purchase? My vocabulary has progressed to the point that 98% of all the words I look up have no Japanese-English definitions in the 3000. Of course, my vocabulary has also progressed to the point where I can easily handle a Japanese-Japanese dictionary, but I'm lazy. I want those definitions in English, dammit! And anyway, the G50 has J-E example sentences while the 3000's J-J entries do not.)
But still, I am heartily apologetic to my 3000. It has been my faithful companion these long years.
And now, let me talk about what wonderful dictionaries Canon makes for English language learners of Japanese. Their products are unparalleled. Here I was all ready to branch out into a different brand - all my fellow ALTs seem to have Sharps or Casios. Their dictionaries are sleek, sexy, and above all novel to a die-hard Canon user such as myself. But they just don't live up to their promise.
Here's how I know - I made a big old list of all the words I had to look up in the J-J dictionary, then plugged those into every dictionary on display in the electronics stores I visited. All the dictionaries contained said words, but beyond that, they differed mightily. An example: I searched the gitaigo でれでれ in each dictionary.
Every single one of the Casio, Sharp, and S-II dictionaries had this entry:
でれでれ
spoony
'Spoony.' What the fuck does that mean? Absolutely useless. Canon, the love of my Japanese-addicted life, had this entry:
でれでれ
* ＜だらしない＞ be slovenly; behave lackadaisically; <女性に> be moonstruck; behave like a moonstruck calf; {英口語} be squishy [soft] <>
* でれでれしたかっこうで通りを歩く
slouch [mooch] along the street; walk down the street in a slovenly fashion
<例文>
* 若い女性ならだれにでもでれでれすうたちだ。
He'll flirt with any young woman he meets.
Casio et. al. can't even hold a candle to Canon.
In other news, I managed to sign myself up for my very first credit card while paying for the dictionary - I, who swore that I'd go my entire life without ever owning one of the things. But then again, my mother also swears up and down that I'll need one of the things sooner rather than later, and I figured that Japan, where one can sign up for a card without handing out such information such as one's SSN and bank account information, would be the place to get one.
And my moment of glory: having filled out all the paperwork, the cashier told me to please sign in the circle. At which point I was like, "Hell no, bitch! I have my hanko!" And I hankoed the crap outta that mother, to the amazement of the entire counter staff. Truly, these are the days.
That will be all.
