In the morning I have a test in Speaking class over chapters 22 and 23 of our Genki textbook. These are the last chapters. I have completed elementary Japanese. Yay!
Yay? There’s still so far to go, so much I don’t know! There are many things that Genki doesn’t include, and I certainly don’t know the Genki content nearly as well as I should. I’ve just scratched the surface, and it was, sometimes, a halfhearted scratch at that.
Sometimes I wonder if I want to keep studying Japanese or not. It’s a beautiful language, but it’s really, really hard. I think about how well I could communicate in Spanish by the end of high school, and this seems really pointless. I can’t even read simple children’s books in Japanese; I just don’t have the vocabulary to understand them. Why should I spend so much time on a language when I’ll probably never even be able to read a newspaper article? It’s frustrating. And having been here and used what skills I have, it would be lovely to go home and never utter another te-form verb again.
Of course I won’t quit. I really, really love Imai-sensei’s class. It makes me work and makes me think in fun new ways, Sensei is brilliant, and the people in it are so much fun. Kanji is so much fun to practice, too. I could sit down with a nice gel pen and paper in front of a movie and practice kanji for hours. And the sociological applications of the language are cool beyond cool.
I think I’m just a bit burned out from the whole Japan thing. It’s occupied so much of my life for the last two and a half years, since I started at Witt. Now I’m here in Japan, surrounded by Japanese people, taking five classes about Japan, using Japanese toilets, watching Japanese TV, eating Japanese food, and going to an hour of Japanese conversation practice every morning. It’s overkill. It’s been great, but I’m totally ready to go back to being an American in America. Dang it, I want my Taco Bell and South Park.
In other news, I have been sleeping a lot better lately, though I’m still having some weird dreams. Last night I dreamt that I was supposed to take Erin to school at AHS, except that we were on Witt’s campus. We were about to leave when the Isings arrived to drive us there, just like when they would take me to school. Except Mr. Ising was driving this car that was kind of like a hayride wagon and kind of like the Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro. Very strange.
Now I’m a bit chilly and tired, so I think I’ll be off to bed early tonight. Maybe I’ll dream about the Cat Bus again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Japanese. Mmhmm... That's a hard won battle and even when you see the people who've reached complete literacy, mostly you just want to punch them in the face. At least, that's how I feel sometimes. Actually, all the times when I struggle with understanding (all the time, honestly).
But what helps with the reading IS reading. First time I was forced to read a 300pg German novel, I nearly cried - so many words and I can never seem to know EXACTLY what's being said. But after the weight of that book, the small texts seemed like nothing. So I'm trying to do the same in Japanese. I found this "Read Real Japanese" book at BarnesNoble full of short stories. It goes page by page - one page original Japanese text and the facing page is a break down of the difficult grammar - not everything, but enough so that you get it. And it came with an audio CD! :D It still takes me nearly 40minutes a page. But it's real stuff, right? Not kid stories or cereal box advertisements. For me, it's grand incentive. Think about it! And good luck! My advise: bury your Japanese text book for the Christmas holiday, watch the clay-mation version of Rudoplh the Rednosed Reindeer, and eat homemade cookies. ;)
Happy Blogcentennial! I know it's taken a lot of time and effort to create this written record of your experiences, but it has been much more important than you realize in helping those of us left behin (okay, I'm really talking about myself) manage being so far away from you. Rest assured, you are not the only one counting down the 33 days until your return.
I know you are about Japanese immersioned-out by now, but I'm glad your not planning on throwing the 赤ん坊の out with the 浴室 水. (I hope the internet translators got those words right :-p) Once you get home and can get back into studying it the way you are used to, I suspect the excitement will return.
Love and miss you,
Dad
Ooh, that book and CD sound great! Hmm, maybe I'll have to look into that. Sounds like those No Fear Shakespeare books everyone used in high school. Thanks for the tip!
Dad, I'm not quite sure what exactly you typed in Japanese, but I'm pretty certain it's not the correct way of saying that. Are you sure you cut and pasted correctly? Because "baby" is 赤ちゃん, so what gives?
Hahaha, I like the use of the term "Blogcentennial."
Slightly necroposted, but yeah. I understand your frustrations with not understanding. After two years of Chinese, I know roughly 300 characters, or 1/10 of what I need to know to read a newspaper.
And I've (heaven forbid!) begun to mix Chinese and French, something I never thought I'd do.
But if you can keep it up, it's such an amazing skill to have. I figure once you've got the basics, it's an uphill battle, eh?
Post a Comment