OBACHAN'S SCRIBBLES

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

STEVIA POWER?

A tabloid TV show this morning had a special feature on a new farming method that uses stevia. In the new method, you give plants "stevia extract." According to the TV program, and several Japanese internet sites I checked afterwards, stevia has a detoxifying effect that acts against harmful stuff like dioxin or nicotine. If you give stevia extract to vegetable plants, the extract detoxifies bad chemicals and activates useful microorganisms, thus improves the soil, they say. It is said to make the plants healthier by making them grow more hairy roots(?) to be able to absorb more calcium and phosphorous. And the fruits/vegetables grown this way will taste better, and stay fresh longer because of stevia's antioxidant effect, they say. Or, this is what I thought they said... I'm no science expert, so I might have misunderstood some points.

Sounds interesting. If this is not one of those wishy-washy stuff, I might give it a try someday for my herbs. I don't feel like jumping on it right now, but will stay tuned.
저는 인터넷을 좋아요. (I like the internet.)

우늘 자는 집에서 바나나 빵을 태욌어요. (Today, I baked banana bread at home. )
I decided to do so because the banana was going bad and the milk expired 2 days ago, and banana bread seemed to be the best solution. 정말 맛있었어요. (It was really delicious.)




posted by obachan, 8/04/2004 04:59:00 PM

4 Comments:

始めました。あなたのblogを見た。俺はアメリカ人日本語に自分を教えてつもる。I've also got some motivation to learn Korean, but I'm waiting on one of my friends to start teaching me. How similar is the grammar to Japanese (in contrast to english)?
commented by Blogger Andrew, 8/05/2004 10:27 AM  
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your comment -- the very 1st comment to my blog!! Wow!
Reg. the grammatical similarities: Well, I started learning Korean just a few months ago, so I still don't know much about that language, but let me give it a try from what I've learned so far.
A Japanese sentence has very different word order from English one, so you can't just pick one Japanese sentence and substitute each word with its English equivalent. Or sometimes there's no equivalent. And often you get confused about what should be the subject of the sentence, because the subject can be omitted in Japanese.
For example, if you were asked in Japanese what food you like, you can say, "Banana ga suki desu." It'll probably be "I love banana." in English. There you have to change the subject and wonder where "ga"and "desu"actually fit.
Between Japanese and Korean, in this example, the word order stays the same and you can just substitute each word. Even "ga" and "desu" have their Korean equivalents.
Hope your friend would start teaching you Korean. Are language schools very expensive over there? They're ridiculously expensive here in Japan.
commented by Blogger obachan, 8/05/2004 2:30 PM  
I'm sure a language school would be expensive here in the us. （アメリカに語学校は高いところと思います）
but to be honest I've never really looked and am not sure how many I could find. （しかし本当に探しなかった
がいつは知りない。)

俺の勉強は自分だけ日本語の習い本を読んで、友達と言いてする。後漫画を読んで始めした。

Korean will probably follow a different route. The Korean rules for 遠慮 make the japanese ones seem easy so far. verb endings of 하세오 and 니다...

But my grammar is horrible in japanese and I'm hoping not repeat that in korean.
commented by Blogger Andrew, 8/06/2004 11:04 AM  
Yeah, that honorific/humble stuff. It's a headache, isn't it? But don't call your Japanese grammar horrible. We all have areas that need improvement, but it doesn't mean what you're doing right now is totally horrible. I think you're doing a good job, esp. in choosing right Kanji (Chinese characters).

Now you mentioned about Manga (comics)! I've got some things I have to say about Japanese manga.
It's gonna be a bit too long to be a comment, so I'll make a new post in a few days.
commented by Blogger obachan, 8/06/2004 12:45 PM  

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