Into something resembling a schedule, I think.
Took the placement test and more or less bombed. I expected as much, considering I've only taken a year's worth of Japanese and I'm rusty to boot, but with my pride as an intellectual at stake, to get 30% on any test felt painful. Anyway, there are only two actual levels we can take for the first eight weeks, and as expected, we got split pretty much along the "one-year/two-year" line (that is, those who have taken only one year of Japanese vs. those who have taken two). With the notable exception of Tae, who evidently did a lot of extra studying via tutors and Japanese friends, and so got bumped up a level. Well, that means I get stuck in the lower level ("Nihongo for bakas," as I tend to call it), which has just four students: me... and all three of the ladies. Hey, every cloud has a silver lining! :D
You start noticing a lot of little things, about both the language and the culture, in a hurry. I've picked up "on" and "off" quickly from various light switches, etc., and "stop" from various road signs. And after filling out ten billion forms on every subject imaginable (banking, apartment contracts, internet service... I probably signed away my soul at some point, considering I can barely read English legalese), I've got the kanji for "Yamanashi prefecture, city of Tsuru, Tahara district" pretty much memorized. Also, I noticed the kanji for "umbrella" (kasa) is made of four tiny hito kanji (which represent "person") under a covering, which I thought was kind of cute. On a note of etiquette, back on the first day in the hotel, there were instructions for various appliances in both Japanese in English, so I was occupying myself by finding the correspondence between words. I noticed, however, that the English would say something like "do this" (which is normal for English instructions), but then the Japanese would say "kore o shite kudasai" ("do this please"). Little bit of mandatory politeness that we don't often see in America.
I'm getting a feel for Tsuru from traveling around it so much (more on that later). It's basically a suburban/rural town surrounded largely by farmland and mountains (the latter are beautiful, with trees everywhere). Reminds me of Davis: sizable college in a farming town. Seems to be about the size of Campbell in area (and to have most of the same general services available: supermarkets, bookstores, government buildings, etc.), but a good 3 to 5% of it is taken up by rice patties and other patches of farmland at seemingly random intervals. Actually, the entire town is haphazard in layout. Zoning laws evidently don't exist in these areas of Japan; a lot of the buildings (and streets!) look like someone said, "Yeah, I think we can stuff another one in there." There's a definite downtown surrounding City Hall, but the area around my apartment and the daigaku has a little of everything.
Looking back, that last update was a little confusing about the names. My apologies; I've just been calling Mr. Kitai "Kitai-san" and everyone else "[first name]-san" (or "chan" in Yuki's case), so I referred to him as Kitai by accident. Anyway, he does have the best Japanese of the five, but Mrs. Kitai is learning fast because I spend more time talking to her (she's the social type). To clarify further, Ikuo and Akemi are the father and mother, respectively, Daisuke's the older brother (about nine), Kyouhei's the younger brother (seven), and Yuki's a so-adorable-it's-almost-disgusting little girl who's going to be four on the 28th.
I spent my first Saturday here with the Kitai family (would have mentioned it last update, but it was too lengthy as it was). Grabbed lunch (at a fast-food hamburger joint!), then spent a couple hours at their house talking... or at least faking it; we all did a lot of flipping through J-E dictionaries. I manged to communicate my age, my family size (need to bring the pictures next time), and after some serious thought, the distance between home in San Jose and college in Irvine. (The last factoid stunned them, which was understandable, since I think it's something like the entire length of Japan.) Then they took me out to meet what must have been their entire extended family. Mr. Kitai's parents live right with the family, though I didn't see much of them, but Mrs. Kitai's parents run what I understood to be an onsen-ryokan (hot springs inn) on the edge of town, and her aunt and uncle have a small farm (they gave me enough vegetables to last me a couple weeks). We also ran into a lot of their friends at random while we were out shopping for dinner supplies. Guess when there's not much out there beyond the town, you get to know everyone in it pretty quickly. Then we went to pick up Kyouhei from baseball practice, and there I REALLY became the center of attention: all the kids suddenly wanted to show off their knowledge of Eego (which consisted of "Hey-ro! Whatcha name!") I helped pack up the supplies, then we went back to the Kitai residence and I dueled Daisuke for a while at Super Smash Brothers Melee (which transcends all lingual and cultural boundaries! ^^) while Mrs. Kitai prepared dinner. Had a wide variety of sushi, and my first taste of sake, which was interesting but a little dry. Then there was a (harvest?) festival going on in Otsuki, about 10 kilometers away; so we hopped on the train there, watched a parade, explored the booths a bit, watched some hanabi (fireworks), and dragged ourselves back to Tsuru, exhausted, around 10pm. I wound up spending about eight hours with the Kitais, and I must say they are some of the most generous people I've met.
Visited again for dinner Thursday -- some sort of meatloaf this time -- set off some firecrackers of our own in the street, and did some more talking about how school was going and so forth (during which I forgot the word for "to buy" three times, to my embarrassment (it's kau if you were curious (nested parentheses, whee!)))
It seems the Nihonjin (Japanese people) will take any excuse to blow stuff up. I just mentioned the hanabi from both times I visited the Kitai clan, but there was also a ninety minute show on Monday at another town, and I passed up the chance to see a fourth show on Tuesday.
Justin's in hog's heaven. His two main passions are anime/manga and Bemani rhythm games (Dance Dance Revolution, etc.) He managed to complete his collection of Marmalade Boy at the local bookstore's HUGE manga section, and then he and Nathan went nuts at a nearby bowling alley's arcade on DDR, and then Beatmania, and a few others while he was at it, to the amusement of everyone who hadn't seen him in action before. Then he was so tired he had to head home early and take a long shower. Also very Justin. This place is feeling more familiar by the moment. ^^
You're never more self-conscious as an American in Japan than on Remembrance Day. I'd forgotten about that particular holiday, but when the lot of us went out on the town late Wednesday, just about every house had little paper flags up to remind us. No one gave us dirty looks or anything, but I have to wonder if they were thinking about it.
You start noticing a lot of little things, about both the language and the culture, in a hurry. I've picked up "on" and "off" quickly from various light switches, etc., and "stop" from various road signs. And after filling out ten billion forms on every subject imaginable (banking, apartment contracts, internet service... I probably signed away my soul at some point, considering I can barely read English legalese), I've got the kanji for "Yamanashi prefecture, city of Tsuru, Tahara district" pretty much memorized. Also, I noticed the kanji for "umbrella" (kasa) is made of four tiny hito kanji (which represent "person") under a covering, which I thought was kind of cute. On a note of etiquette, back on the first day in the hotel, there were instructions for various appliances in both Japanese in English, so I was occupying myself by finding the correspondence between words. I noticed, however, that the English would say something like "do this" (which is normal for English instructions), but then the Japanese would say "kore o shite kudasai" ("do this please"). Little bit of mandatory politeness that we don't often see in America.
I'm getting a feel for Tsuru from traveling around it so much (more on that later). It's basically a suburban/rural town surrounded largely by farmland and mountains (the latter are beautiful, with trees everywhere). Reminds me of Davis: sizable college in a farming town. Seems to be about the size of Campbell in area (and to have most of the same general services available: supermarkets, bookstores, government buildings, etc.), but a good 3 to 5% of it is taken up by rice patties and other patches of farmland at seemingly random intervals. Actually, the entire town is haphazard in layout. Zoning laws evidently don't exist in these areas of Japan; a lot of the buildings (and streets!) look like someone said, "Yeah, I think we can stuff another one in there." There's a definite downtown surrounding City Hall, but the area around my apartment and the daigaku has a little of everything.
Looking back, that last update was a little confusing about the names. My apologies; I've just been calling Mr. Kitai "Kitai-san" and everyone else "[first name]-san" (or "chan" in Yuki's case), so I referred to him as Kitai by accident. Anyway, he does have the best Japanese of the five, but Mrs. Kitai is learning fast because I spend more time talking to her (she's the social type). To clarify further, Ikuo and Akemi are the father and mother, respectively, Daisuke's the older brother (about nine), Kyouhei's the younger brother (seven), and Yuki's a so-adorable-it's-almost-disgusting little girl who's going to be four on the 28th.
I spent my first Saturday here with the Kitai family (would have mentioned it last update, but it was too lengthy as it was). Grabbed lunch (at a fast-food hamburger joint!), then spent a couple hours at their house talking... or at least faking it; we all did a lot of flipping through J-E dictionaries. I manged to communicate my age, my family size (need to bring the pictures next time), and after some serious thought, the distance between home in San Jose and college in Irvine. (The last factoid stunned them, which was understandable, since I think it's something like the entire length of Japan.) Then they took me out to meet what must have been their entire extended family. Mr. Kitai's parents live right with the family, though I didn't see much of them, but Mrs. Kitai's parents run what I understood to be an onsen-ryokan (hot springs inn) on the edge of town, and her aunt and uncle have a small farm (they gave me enough vegetables to last me a couple weeks). We also ran into a lot of their friends at random while we were out shopping for dinner supplies. Guess when there's not much out there beyond the town, you get to know everyone in it pretty quickly. Then we went to pick up Kyouhei from baseball practice, and there I REALLY became the center of attention: all the kids suddenly wanted to show off their knowledge of Eego (which consisted of "Hey-ro! Whatcha name!") I helped pack up the supplies, then we went back to the Kitai residence and I dueled Daisuke for a while at Super Smash Brothers Melee (which transcends all lingual and cultural boundaries! ^^) while Mrs. Kitai prepared dinner. Had a wide variety of sushi, and my first taste of sake, which was interesting but a little dry. Then there was a (harvest?) festival going on in Otsuki, about 10 kilometers away; so we hopped on the train there, watched a parade, explored the booths a bit, watched some hanabi (fireworks), and dragged ourselves back to Tsuru, exhausted, around 10pm. I wound up spending about eight hours with the Kitais, and I must say they are some of the most generous people I've met.
Visited again for dinner Thursday -- some sort of meatloaf this time -- set off some firecrackers of our own in the street, and did some more talking about how school was going and so forth (during which I forgot the word for "to buy" three times, to my embarrassment (it's kau if you were curious (nested parentheses, whee!)))
It seems the Nihonjin (Japanese people) will take any excuse to blow stuff up. I just mentioned the hanabi from both times I visited the Kitai clan, but there was also a ninety minute show on Monday at another town, and I passed up the chance to see a fourth show on Tuesday.
Justin's in hog's heaven. His two main passions are anime/manga and Bemani rhythm games (Dance Dance Revolution, etc.) He managed to complete his collection of Marmalade Boy at the local bookstore's HUGE manga section, and then he and Nathan went nuts at a nearby bowling alley's arcade on DDR, and then Beatmania, and a few others while he was at it, to the amusement of everyone who hadn't seen him in action before. Then he was so tired he had to head home early and take a long shower. Also very Justin. This place is feeling more familiar by the moment. ^^
You're never more self-conscious as an American in Japan than on Remembrance Day. I'd forgotten about that particular holiday, but when the lot of us went out on the town late Wednesday, just about every house had little paper flags up to remind us. No one gave us dirty looks or anything, but I have to wonder if they were thinking about it.