Japanese should be romanized.

Smith   Monday, February 23, 2004, 20:54 GMT
''it sounds''.
Shogo   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 03:11 GMT
Smith,
I've recorded a sample...
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Outdoors/8576/iwent.wav

Or maybe I should record something in Japanese with an r sound?
Smith   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 03:35 GMT
Oh, I heard your sample. It's just that I once heard this comody thing on television where some Japanese guy was saying, My clock is blinking and it sound like ''my crock is brinking''.
Smith   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 03:51 GMT
It seems like in that Japanese comedy that it was mainly the ''l'' blends that I was hearing that sounded kind of like ''rs''. What about this sentence? ''I blinked my eye, drank a glass of soda, got a bottle of blue glue that blew away as the bird flew away and then I was angry because I wanted to glue a sign on the light switch so I could remember to turn on the right light.''
Shogo   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 04:23 GMT
Here's the sample of the sentence... it was kind of hard because I'm not used to reading out a long sentence like this.

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Outdoors/8576/iblinked.mp3
Smith   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 04:34 GMT
Sorry for such a long sentence, it was just I was curious about the ''l'' blends like ''bl'' ''fl'' ''gl'' ''pl'' etc.
Smith   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 04:39 GMT
Shogo, It seems like you did a good job on distinguishing ''right'' from ''light''. They sounded differently to me.
Smith   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 04:41 GMT
I heard you pronounce ''sign'' and it sounded kind of like ''sahn'' to me.
Smith   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 04:48 GMT
It seems like your actually kind of good at distinguishing your r's and your l's from each other. I don't think that Japanese comedy guy was that good at that.
Shogo   Tuesday, February 24, 2004, 05:37 GMT
Yeah in fact I think those people in comedies tend to exaggerate their peculiar accents... while it's true distinguishing r's and l's is quite hard for many Japanese speakers.
Thanks for your advice! Some dipthongs like /ai/ and /ei/ often causes me trouble, and because of that I'm sometimes misunderstood. Please tell me if there's anything else you've noticed about my pronunciation.

To my ear, a Japanese r in the beginning of a word sounds like an English L. And when it's in the middle of the word, it sounds rather like an English R or D. For example, I think a lot of people tend to say "light" instead of "right," but they also tend to say "brend" instead of blend, because in the word blend, l is not in the beginning of the word.
Jhf   Wednesday, February 25, 2004, 00:07 GMT
Lava lamps are so cool, aren't they? I'm afraid we're going to have to talk about them. They're just so cool.