(Image credit)

(Image credit)

(Image credit)

(Image credit)

Oh god, this is the most amazing thing I have seen in a little while. These larvae uses things around them to build their cocoons, and Hubert Duprat gave them gold and pearls and other gorgeous materials, and the larvae spun their cocoons using the material he gave them. Isn’t that amazing. You can read more about it here.

“Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnett syndrome — when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations. He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon.”

“At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.”

I am not sure if I am completely in agreement with this talk – especially the point about how adults can not learn new languages fluently – basically this video builds up under the view that it is impossible to learn new languages as an adult. However, I have met several people who have become incredibly good at new languages they started to learn as adults. Especially people who learn English – they become immersed in English, probably because English influence is all around them, and they end up sounding next to native (at least to my ears).

At the same time I am thinking about the Norwegian language, I have not yet met a single person who came to Norway when they were older than maybe 12 – 14 years old who sound completely Norwegian. Their grammar and vocabulary might be fabulous and flawless, but you can still hear that there is this slight something (accent? naturalness?) which gives them away. Somebody prove me wrong here, please. I would really love to be wrong about this.

I am assuming that Paticia Kuhl is talking about true multilingualism in her talk above, and not the ability to make yourself understood in another language (using great grammar and vocabulary). She is saying that it is only infants up to age 10 months who can truly learn to distinguish different sounds from different languages. At the same time, after just spending a year in Japan – my Japanese is far from good, it is not even decent – but I can hear a much clearer difference between different Japanese sounds than what I did when I first moved to Japan. On that note, I know quite a few Japanese people that have made a huge improvement and can actually distinguish between English r and l, even if they did not learn this as an infant.

All in all, I thought this talk had some interesting points, but I get a bit sad thinking that I am basically in the middle of mission impossible here, trying to learn Japanese. That being said, my goal is not multilingualism, my goal is to have a decent conversation in Japanese and be able to express my option without having to directly translate every word in my head. And I think this is possible for most adults, and maybe we have to leave the perfect sounds up to the infants who can not utter a single word yet.

New makeup! Chanel set + Bobbi Brown  shimmer block.

I hardly ever eat Norwegian style tacos, but all of a sudden that was what was for dinner yesterday. It was far better than I remember it being. I still miss real tacos, the small round ones with lots of cilantro, but that will have to wait until I can find a shop that actually sells cilantro and the small wheat tacos. This is good enough for now, it cured my craving for familiar food. 美味しかったですよ！

I mentioned in my previous post that I saw this amazing house today. I am speechless. I went through a back alley in my neighborhood, and look what I found! I found – wait for it – “Nostalgic Country House”! It is apparently a private residence, the cars look normal, but the exterior of this house is just… I have no words. I love that about Japan, that behind every corner there is something new and crazy.

I think they like bikes.

It looks like organized hording.

A lot of creative things, the little things around the fan are actually small plastic eggs you can get from vending machines with a little toy inside.

Painted helmets and more eggs.

And a very creative use of anti-hangover-drink-bottles.

And look! Sato-chan! There was actually two of these pink/orange elephants, one on each side of the house.

And the sign, saying it is a Nostalgic Country House, even though I am not sure what that means. But isn’t it amazing?

Hello Sandwich had a great little post about potted gardens in Tokyo, and today I spotted some of them myself. I also saw an absolutely unbelievable house, but it was so amazing it will have to get it’s own post after I am done posting these pictures. So for now, the rest of the pictures from today, and I will follow up with a post of the most amazing house in a post right after this.

Almost felt like I was in England when I saw this house, how cute.

This is katakana and translates to “araifu” – “a life”. Turns out it was a funeral agency.

And then we went to 井の頭恩賜公園 (Inokashira Park), a really pretty park.

Some really pretty birds hiding in the branches.

And someone is having a cozy time. I am not sure why I get super-excited every time I see a fat bird. Other people go “aww” when they see babies or puppies or kittens, I go “aww” whenever I see a fat fluffy bird.

Look at how cute that thing is! He is snuggling up with himself. Aww.

I think I should start a new category on the blog called “Engrish”. Before I ever came to Japan, I thought that Engrish was a myth, and that there were not so many quirky things written everywhere in English – but turns out that Engrish is not a myth, and I see strange English written all over the place.