One major frustration that makes every Japanese language learner burn out is its writing system. For some, it’s as easy as learning their native tongue like how other East Asians do, but most of us, it’s really a pain in the a$$. Learning Kanji the right way is subjective, but learning it the wrong way is common to almost everyone of us and we’ve most likely done it at least once in our language acquisition journey. We’ve probably at the pinnacle of learning it the wrong way from the very start and we’re just not aware of how very WRONG it is. Thus, here are some of the things that you can take note if you think you’re learning Kanji the way it shouldn’t be.

Onyomi and Kunyomi (before anything else)

Most people at beginner-level would probably fall into this black hole and some language schools would definitely teach this way of Kanji reading BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE. One of the reasons why this is one of the wrong ways of learning Kanji is that it creates a system of thought that makes all Kanji act just like letters with certain sounds in English, and that’s totally a weird type of thinking because all Kanji are used differently in all of the Japanese words and with that, learning onyomi and kunyomi will just be thrown into the trash once we started mining and acquiring vocabularies.

For beginners and even for intermediates, onyomi and kunyomi will not make sense at first because:

1. Kanji is not a letter,

2. Kanji reading depends on the word itself, and

3. The way Kanji is being used in Japanese is very different from the way it’s being used in Chinese group of languages.

In Chinese, each Kanji has a specific pronunciation (or maybe a couple of pronunciations) and that’s how it’s being used all throughout in sentences or conversations, but in Japanese, the Kanji readings will start to change depending on the vocabulary itself. Think of it as an emoji attached to our statements right after we typed something in a message or somewhere on the internet. The meaning of our word/s is associated with the emoji, but we don’t say what that emoji means, right? Or how it’s being called? It’s just there giving meaning, yet it totally depends on how the statement is being read. Same goes with Kanji. The way it’s being read depends on what the word is.

That’s why, to learn Kanji is to associate it with the vocabulary rather than basing our instincts with its on or kun readings. Exposing ourselves with on and kun readings right off the bat will definitely cause stress and frustrations because memorizing all of them would take years, compared to acquiring a couple of basic vocabularies right ahead which would just take months. On the other hand, to make use of these readings efficiently would be better when we’re at the phase of post-intermediate to advanced level since patterns have already been made in our tiny brains and these readings will now start to make sense at this point.

Vocabulary Mining by Lists

Another thing that gives migraine to almost all of us is learning vocabularies through lists. Some people would probably be alright with this but it will start to cause issues once we go into input-output transition. The reason why it isn’t as efficient as it seems is because there are words that have two (or more) different readings in Japanese. Now, how is it connected in learning Kanji? Well, we know already that Kanji reading depends on the word, right? If we take a look at how some of us learn Kanji, memorizing each of the associated words in that particular Kanji character is one of the common approaches that is being used.

Imagine you’ve encountered this word [入る]. There are two different readings of this one, [hairu] and [iru], and it depends on how you use this word in a sentence, but imagine you’ve known this word from a list you’ve memorized. Once you’ve encountered this word again elsewhere, you will probably have a hard time reading it in a paragraph or an essay because you just know that there are two readings but you don’t know which one to use, assuming majority of your input comes from vocab lists. Unfortunately, the context changes as well with cases such as this. On the other hand, there are tons of words that have similar cases with [入る], realistically speaking. To acquire Japanese vocabularies particularly knowing their associated Kanji is totally up to you, but if you want to learn it the wrong way, make a vocab list.

Immersing on Input that’s far from your level

Kanji is just a ton of emojis that can be used depending on what we mean and how it’s being read. Unfortunately, being immersed on Kanji that are too far from our level would definitely become a disadvantage rather than a benefit. Most of us would just jump right in to our favorite Japanese series or anime and immerse, but we all know that not all of its content is comprehensible, isn’t it? As a life-long learner (if that’s what you wish to be) of any language, especially Japanese, taking baby steps to our target language is crucial.

Most importantly, knowing which level you are currently at is a step towards your transition from one level to another. If you want to be immersed on Kanji that are far from what you’ve currently acquired, chances are, you’ll remember it but will not use it that much, thus forget about it later on, which is counter-productive since you immerse in order to remember and acquire the language, not forget it. Hence, if you want to know what level you are in, you can check yourself by JLPT level or by grade school level. Your choice, your life.

Conclusion

Learning another language that’s very far from your native tongue is a challenge that only few brave souls can achieve. Knowing the right way is not as common as the bad ones but for us to achieve our goals, there are best ways and right ways on how to do it. In Japanese, Kanji is not as hard as it seems, but knowing how to achieve mastery to it, well, it’s another story.

Oct 25

Took a morning walk (or maybe not, I have no idea) at our place’s roof deck a few minutes ago to take a better look of the hills near where I currently reside, and I realized that this place feels foreign yet familiar, a mixture of both opposites. It didn’t feel like I’ve been living (or wasting) most of my life in this place, and I’m assuming it’s because I did not spend it in Poblacion (here) since I live in a barangay near the northern-most periphery of this town. Nevertheless, I would just like to dump my ramblings of this town now, for I might never return once I get out of it here again.

The Good

Boljoon has been named by UNESCO (or was it?) as Cebu’s “Last Heritage Frontier” due to its well-preserved heritage sites, watch towers, ancestral houses, pre-colonial artifacts (they say pre-Hispanic Boljoanons are nepo babies due to the town’s abundance of gold), and the infamous church, the Nuestra Señora Patrocinio de Maria Santissima. It is proclaimed “last” because there’s nothing left in Cebu’s colonial heritage complexes other than this place, and if you would want to visit here, you might feel the eeriness and laidback life garnished with some old bahay na bato here and there, a premature Vigan I should say.

The good thing about Boljoon is that the air quality is top-tier clean and the silence is often deafening (no wonder why my girlfriend likes it here so much), and the only sound you might hear are the newly-built residential and commercial apartments being welded for newcomers and locals alike. The town is a personified old man sleeping in his siestas for hundreds of years peacefully.

The Bad

You might think that this town is a good spot for tourism because of, well, it’s the “Last Heritage Frontier”, but no. Aside from the heritage stunt, there’s nothing else you could do, and even if there are a few waterfalls and some mountain peaks you can visit, the lack of support from the local government might disappoint tourists for its absence of funding for further developments. The town is dying; that’s what I often tell people when they ask me where I come from, and it’s pretty obvious that it’s true because those people didn’t even know Boljoon existed ‘til I say right after that “It’s a town right next to Oslob where the whale sharks are”.

I used to come by to the town proper when I was a kid to observe how lively it is compared to where I grew up in the outskirts of the northern most part of the town, but even then, I didn’t realize how far its energy is compared to the city, or even to the capital. The town is perhaps a home for people who are about to settle, to retire, or for old people who are about to die.

Also, take a look at this.

Almost half of the population in this town are considered poor after the pandemic. However, I should say that this data is skewed because the working class are not residents of this place and are also victims of migration to the provincial capital (just like me). Meaning to say, the only residents left are 1) old people dying of old age or metabolic diseases like heart disease and diabetes, and 2) farmers and fisherfolks living below the minimum wages. Nevertheless, it’s awful. I am more and more convinced that this town is about to collapse because of the lack of skilled labor force and thriving commerce, ergo, the decline of economic progress would go downhill. Is there still hope, though? Or let’s put it this way, should we still hope for this dying place?

The Ugly

What’s interesting about this brain dump that I’m currently doing is that it reminded me of some research paper I’ve done a few years ago for a Local Politics course in the university:

1.      Based on the data you have collected, what patterns in local politics can be observed?

The most evident pattern in the local politics of Boljoon that I have observed is the obvious political dynasty dominating the town with ease.  It is clear that up until now in Cebu, particularly in local government units like ours, dynastic politics is apparent (Lande, 1968). Furthermore, patron-client alliance system, as exemplified in the partisanship of our local barangay officials, can be noticed, which is a particular element in a Filipino’s political psychology (Montiel & Chiongbian, 1991).

The ugly thing about this place is that, only the rich can benefit from the laidback and vacation-like lifestyle because they might never (ever) suffer from poverty. They are, in fact, the reason why the place is poorly developed, and they like it that way. I don’t think we might ever see the town’s full potential just yet, but if I might, I hope the political dynasty would end because not only would it ruin the town, it would also ruin its people.

Different boundary models are used to distinguish various biogeographical and geopolitical aspects of a particular land mass, maritime zone, or political territory. Countries in land-locked areas have this and so are those states located in archipelagos. Continents are no exemption.

The only problem is, continental boundaries are unclear because they often overlap due to their proximity, palaeogeographical records (a map of a particular geographic features’ past distribution), and biodiversity, resulting in misinterpretations. From the day when Alfred Wegener presented his “continental displacement” lecture about how continents were once clumped and drifted apart, up to this day, continental boundaries were tied up to numerous models governed by evolution, leaving behind territorial disputes and socio-cultural factors such as colonialism.

One good example of such dilemma, for this matter, would be the variations between the boundaries of Asia and Australia. Hence, let’s take a look at how boundary models between these two continents began and how these models give us an idea about where we can draw the line that separates the two.

Continental Boundaries: Asia and Australia

Boundaries in the Asia-Pacific started when paleocontinent Sunda shelf of the Southeast Asian archipelago was reported by G. W. Earl in 1845, followed by his report on the same year of the existence of another paleocontinent in the mainland Australia’s extension called the Sahul shelf.

These shelves were once part of bigger continents (Asia and Australia, respectively) before the Ice Age but were submerged when the ice caps melted at the end of that period. In the middle of these shelves lies a region that would became a subject of debate regarding paleogeography and biodiversity for decades, the Wallacea region.

Wallacea Region: The Wallace’s and Weber’s Lines

Wallacea region, or simply Wallacea, is a biogeographical zone and a group of Indonesian islands (including East Timor) right in the middle of the Sunda shelf to the west and Sahul shelf to the east. It spans 347,000 km² of area and encompasses the islands of Sulawesi, Sumbawa, Halmahera, Buru, state of East Timor, and other minor islands.

The Wallacea region was named in 1919 by a zoologist and biogeographer Max Carl Wilhem Weber after the well-known naturalist and also biogeographer Alfred Russel Wallace, who observed the differences of faunal composition between the birds and mammals of Sumatra and Borneo in comparison to that of the existence of marsupials in Lombok, Buru and other islands facing northern Australasia. This region is subject of discussion for a variety of reasons, including its credibility and how different it was from the two shelves or why it was not connected with either of them. This region is also isolated from the two paleocontinental shelves (Sunda and Sahul) due to their deep waters and distinct number of species which are not similar from that of New Guinea nor from Java and Borneo.

This observation eventually gave birth to two boundary lines governed by the differences of their faunal distribution, the Wallace’s line (named after Wallace) that pertains to the line that separates the islands closely related to Indonesian archipelago, and the Weber’s line (named after Weber) that connects the islands that are closely related to mainland New Guinea. All of these boundaries are widely accepted as key factors in separating continental boundaries based on their biodiversity, thus, providing additional information on how the islands in Wallacea were formed. However, there are still things that need to be addressed when it comes to these lines, particularly from a paleogeographical point of view.

Australia-New Guinea Region: The Lydekker’s Line

Since the biodiversity in Australia, including New Guinea, became unique from that of Asia because of their isolation after the Ice Age, several boundary lines were built to divide the two main continents. But before Wallace and Weber established the two biogeographical boundary lines in Wallacea, a boundary was already created based from paleocontinents (Sunda and Sahul shelves) that were theorized to exist. It was Richard Lydekker who created an imaginary line that separated the island of New Guinea from the Indonesian archipelago, known as the Lydekker line. It trailed the edge of the Sahul shelf and including the islands of Aru to the shallow waters of mainland New Guinea. For Lydekker, the Australia-New Guinea region, including Western Papua and Aru islands, is separated from Wallacea.

The Lydekker line also demarcates the extent of Asian species to its west and the dominance of Australian species to the east. It would be the boundary line that’s been used for decades, not until an international political border was created due to several colonial partitions to the island of New Guinea, making it a little bit more complicated.

Colonial Partitions: The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Border Line

When the Netherlands colonized and established the Dutch East Indies in 17^th century Indonesia, the Dutch began moving eastwards and claimed the western side of the island of New Guinea, particularly the sultanate of Tidore. Two decades after that, a Dutch decree was released in order to extend the territory from Tanjung Djar up to Teluk Jos Sudarso, all encompassing a straight anthropologic boundary line in the 141^st meridian east.

One century later, the north-eastern side of the island was colonized by Germany, followed by the annexation led by the British government in 1888 after the First World War. In 1905, however, another decree was made on the eastern side of mainland New Guinea. From a colony known as “British New Guinea”, it became “Territory of Papua” and was then given to Australia the following year. Moreover, it was fairly recent that the Territory of Papua became independent from Australia on 1975, and is now called as “Papua New Guinea”, also being separated from the western side by a boundary now  known as “Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Border”.

Summary

These are the various boundary models being used to distiguish Asia from Australia throughout the history of time. From theories of continental drift, biodiversity, paleogeography, to politics, these boundary models are made to provide integrity from different territories. The Wallace’s and Weber’s lines are used primarily for faunal boundaries, while the Lydekker line is used to separate the Australian continental shelf from the rest of Wallacea. Additionally, the Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Border, the most recent establishment of the Asian-Australian boundary, is the conventional and the most widely accepted boundary model among the rest due to its novelty and its practical use primarily in geopolitics. Hence, these boundary models provided us answers into how continental boundaries overlap and intertwine with each other, giving us more understandings into how they were developed, why they evolved, and what they are now in this modern age.

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It has been weeks already since we have heard the echoes in the streets surrounding Bamban mayor Alice Guo and her questionable identity, her origins, and what makes her illegible for the position that she is currently holding. It could be something that we could have taken lightly, from the memes that we share on social media regarding her body language during interviews, or from the inconsistencies of her answers during senate hearings.

We have been surrounded, albeit saturated, with mayor Alice Guo’s case and what would probably happen should we let this case go or toss them in the ghetto. Yet, what could set this case apart from the matters that we are currently facing over the last few months of 2024, is the idea that there is a budding turmoil within our fellow kababayan’s hearts, a doubt that stems from fear, or should I say, an increasing racism towards the Chinese community. Is she a special case of geopolitical espionage? Is it true that she is indeed pretending to be one of us? Or is it justifiable to hate a race because we are afraid of their existence and what they could have done to a third-world country like ours? Should we let this conflicting feeling subside until her case is closed?

Our Bonds to the Great Wall

It is already difficult to point out when our ties to China have begun, from pre-colonial times until now, but we were in good terms with them in general, or so it seems, not until we started fighting with our blood, sweat, and tears against them in the territorial disputes to the West Philippine Sea. Overall, we are diplomatically in good terms, but we have been complacent with our actions toward them geopolitically speaking. In terms of commerce, their investments toward Filipino’s labor force and logistics (I see you Shenzhen Sorting Centre) are somewhat a mutual benefit between the both of us, but nonetheless in favor of the other than both. We have been good friends with them since time immemorial, but when Duterte administration started, things might have been stirred a little bit, somewhat in favor of them rather than to us, and that caused a problem, an issue that could be linked towards Alice Guo’s disputed case.

When Doubts Start to Generate Fear

Alice Guo’s case is a unique case, I should say, since it falls under two categories of doubt: one, her identity is questionable, and two, what is an alleged full-blooded Chinese doing here and holding a political position in the country? Things that only the speculative and curious people like me and the Ombudsman would wonder. Will this doubt dissipate in the months to come? For me, though, it has always been there, and it was just amplified by her case. Xenophobic remarks toward people of different origin are existing already, common but not common enough to be highlighted in 2024. Chinese community, particularly POGOs, are the target of this hatred, but it has been there since then.

The question now is, what could go wrong with this hatred? Will this be an on-going issue between two different states with historical friendship or will this be disregarded anyway? I think there is a common problem between these two opposing ideas between hating and not hating POGOs and of Alice Guo’s undefined family tree; why are we hating on something we do not understand fully? Or should I say, why are we allowing them to exploit our resources easily and without doubt just because our relationship with their state has always been there since our ancestors first negotiated with their price of porcelain plates?

This is why, it is important to discuss and be aware of the senate hearings that is currently going on, but to what extent are we lending our ears to these doubts? I am fully aware that we are in no place to question our relationship between our state to theirs, but if proven right that Bamban’s mayor is indeed not Filipino, that could only amplify the doubt that has been boiling since then, that our national security is compromised already, and we just do not know since when. The fact that our office of the Vice President is also situated in a building that has been alleged to be a home of POGOs is another seasoning to our boiling hotpot: that our country is compromised, and that our hatred towards their race can be justified. For someone like me, who has always been speculative with everything around me, we could only hope for the best, not for the worst.

Two Sides of the Coin: Doubts or Certainties

The increasing loath towards the Chinese community can be seen into two sides or perspectives: the plot thickens when it comes to them and their ulterior motives towards us, or we are just overthinking things and we are in no place to doubt what a Chinese is doing and is holding a high position in Bamban, Tarlac. We are suspicious, that is for sure, but to put hatred and mockery towards East Asians, particularly Chinese, is indeed a discussion to be talked about in the next few months to come. We are uncertain about Alice Guo and her ambiguous and inconsistent remarks, but that does not justify our hatred towards a race. Social media has amplified our doubts and fears, but we are still in a limbo, a place we ourselves are dipping our toes. I just hope this case is indeed an isolated case, for in uncertainties stems fear, and in fear comes doubts.