'We have heard the chimes at midnight'

[flemmings]

And thought things like this. Money quote:

You need to learn 500 more kanji. 500. FIVE-HUNDRED. On yomi, kun yomi, only-read-this-way-in-this-one-word-hah-hah-foolish-gaijin yomi, and all of the compounds it might be in (which probably range from "ritual suicide" to "kawaii").

BUT ENOUGH OF THIS WHEEDLING. MIYAMOTO MUSASHI COULD LEARN 500 KANJI BEFORE HIS OPPONENTS DREW THEIR SWORDS TO STRIKE. VICTORY OR DEATH!

Of course, what she doesn't say is you have to have all those kanji in your head and be able to visualise them in an instant without referents..

Which is why I never passed ikkyuu.

ETA: "Client error: This journal is temporarily in read-only mode. Try again in a couple minutes."

'A couple minutes.' Our new Russian overlords have a distinctly American turn of phrase.

Comments

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

Many people bitch about how these expressions are "never used anymore" but I would beg to differ - maybe not in daily speech, they're not, but in books they are. It's true, an overwhelming number of the 1-kyuu grammar points are "written expressions". In other words, they're too strong, emphatic, and absolute for use in conversation. If you're taking 1-kyuu because you have a deep abiding love of Morning Musume, yes, you're probably screwed.

Oh, snap.

And also something I would dispute--I surely don't read as much serious litrachur as I ought to, but がてら? あっての? I feel like it is possible to read quite a lot and never run into these, or be aware of running into them.

Nevertheless I managed 70% on writing/vocabulary and 90% on reading/grammar, so of the two it's the kanji that I wouldn't want to run into again in a dark alley.

Especially now that they're making ikkyuu harder.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Not that anyone gets to ikkyuu just through an abiding love of Morning Musume. By the time you get to ikkyuu you must have read something more thna lyrics. Or maybe just have a stunning memory.

Yeah, those formal expressions always stumped me because I never came across them in any kind of context that would reinforce them. I expect to find them in government white papers, and who's going to read white papers for fun?