{"id":777,"date":"2008-09-02T11:02:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T15:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=777"},"modified":"2008-09-02T11:02:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T15:02:00","slug":"why-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=777","title":{"rendered":"Why Japanese?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It started with, of all things, Rock Band<\/a>. As my efficacy at the drums improved, I considered practicing. Twenty minutes a day, say. Keep that up, and I’d be rocking on Expert all the time.<\/p>\n

After spending the briefest of moments entertaining this clack-and-roll fantasy, reason stamped it out. What a waste of time! Twenty minutes a day, and to what end? Better fake rocking? I might as well learn an actual <\/span>instrument.<\/p>\n

Hey, wait <\/span>a second…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Thus began the next stage: an ephemeral question of whether or not I should take up an instrument. I played the baritone horn in high school to little effect, so at least I can read music. I can spare twenty minutes a day, certainly. The violin? Perhaps the ocarina<\/a>?<\/p>\n

This concept went fairly quickly by the wayside. Not to worry though — I found another way to spend this hitherto unused twenty minutes. (No, it’s not exercise.)
\"\"<\/a>
I heard this <\/a>story on NPR, and the phrasing of a certain sentence caught my ear. Jefferson r<\/span>ead <\/span>several languages. Now there’s a thought. The guy probably didn’t speak German all that well, but he could read it.<\/p>\n

This baked for a while until it combined with the previous thoughts and came out of the oven something new: time to learn a language.<\/p>\n

Now being both a videogame geek and a lingustics geek, Japanese was the only choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It started with, of all things, Rock Band. As my efficacy at the drums improved, I considered practicing. Twenty minutes a day, say. Keep that up, and I’d be rocking on Expert all the time. After spending the briefest of moments entertaining this clack-and-roll fantasy, reason stamped it out. What a waste of time! Twenty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}