Adrift in Japan

What Not to Buy

"Why you shouldn't buy a T-shirt in a language you don't understand."

which translates as "I'm a stupid American."

This same idea works nicely for other related things like "why you shouldn't get a tattoo in a language you don't understand."

I guess it would be funny to wear it if you do speak the language, but I'm not sure anyone would get the irony.

Paul Frank: a cool designer you shouldn't trust to not make you look really, really stupid.

Back to the Books

I've set myself a goal: to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, level 3, this December. I've started lessons again at a different language school, the
SIL Sapporo Nihongo Gakko.

I'm taking semi-private lessons right now with another American, a Baptist missionary named Steven (Stephen?) who is living in Kita-Hiroshima with his wife and their two children. Lessons are 3 days a week, roughly 9:30 to 11:50 am with 2 ten minute breaks during which the teacher usually gives us something to prepare for the next segment, or Steven and I talk a little, usually in English. I like the current class structure -- class every other day gives me time to do the homework as well as prepare for the next session.

We're working through Minna no Nihongo book 2. It's going better than I could have expected, and we get a lot of good conversation practice. If I was in the class just for fun, I would enjoy it a lot I think. But I feel some stress resulting from my desire to pass the certification exam; it means I need to spend a lot more time learning the vocabulary, including the vocab from the first book that I still don't know. I also have to review a lot of the grammatical structures that I did learn but haven't made it into my active, usable memory yet.

When July comes I think I will be in the their intensive course, which is a two week session with classes 4 hours 5 days a week. Aack! So this is really just a ramp up adjustment time for me to get used to Japanese again. I hope I can pack in not only all the things I'm learning right now but everything from book 1 that I need to refresh before July comes along!

How Not to Splash On Your Toes

The official part of my Japanese class at IAY is over (I'm doing an extra week soon to finish the text book). Now I can say things like, "I am going to Kyoto at Christmas by airplane because my husband has a conference there," and "On Saturday I did some knitting, played with my computer, and went to the store." My vocabulary still needs a lot of work, but I did manage to learn quite a bit in just a month. And not just how to speak Japanese. Spending so much time at IAY finally led me to learn the proper technique for using a Japanese toilet.

Avid readers may remember my early experience with the Japanese Super Toilet at Matt's lab. Since then, I've actually managed to successfully use the various buttons and knobs on the super toilet and even come to appreciate them. It's too bad they're not more widely available in the US - and it's too bad they're so expensive.

At any rate, the public bathrooms at IAY don't have super toilets. They have the simple squat toilet. If you haven't seen them, they look like urinals lying down on the ground, or like oblong ceramic pits. I've used them before, in other Asian countries. I've always gone into the stall, turned around to face front (as if using a normal toilet) and then bent down as if sitting on invisible seat, you know, as if a normal toilet were just behind me, but I wasn't touching it. But when I tried to use the bathroom at IAY... well, I'm embarrassed to say, I missed more than once. I, um, had to clean up with extra toilet paper.

It turns out my Japanese text book actually has a little stick-figure drawing of the proper way to use a Japanese squat toilet. It shows the little figure facing the back of the stall, crouched down low. And, by golly, it works.

Nihongo o benkyoshimasu

I know I've been absent from this blog for quite a while. That's because on October 27, I started my Japanese class at IAY. I of course started in the beginning class, although for some strange reason there was still a placement test on the first day, during which I spent most of the time staring straight ahead, reading a book I had brought with me, or just generally laughing at the whole situation. But, afterwards we got started in the first chapter of our book, and since then we've been moving along at the pace of about one chapter a day.

(This is a long entry - but you're not going to want to miss the funny story at the end - stick around.)

A little about my class - it's five days a week, from 12:40 to 3:20 pm. I was hoping I might meet some other English speakers to hang out with, but actually it's just myself and Cui-san. She's a Chinese girl (from China) who is married to a Japanese man, and has been working her way through this book slowly over about 2 years. So, she's already looked through Chapter 15 (we're on Chapter 13), and of course has a much greater vocabulary because of living with her husband, It seems to me that she's simply in the class to brush up on her grammar and polish her knowledge of vocabulary. At any rate, the combination of her large vocabulary and her knowledge of Chinese characters means the class is pretty easy for her, I suspect. Meanwhile, I have to study a lot to keep up. To simply do the homework is not difficult, but to really absorb the material (which I'm afraid I could still do better at), endless hours of studying might be possible.

It's not that it's really that hard. In fact, I do find it significantly easier than Chinese, now that I can read the hiragana and katakana smoothly. It's the memorization. The grammar, while strange, is easy for me to pick up. I guess I've always liked grammar - maybe that's why I liked German so much. Pronunciation is also easy - I already sound better when I speak that Cui-san, for example. On the other hand, the vocabulary is another story. I just can't seem to learn all the vocabulary for one class in one day. I've even made flashcards with the Kanji, the hiragana/katakana, and the English translation, which is helpful, but there's a couple problems. One, there's only so much time one wants to put into memorization each day. And two, there's only so much I can cram into my mind in one day.

The class is fun and interesting, and I've certainly progressed to the point where I can say things like, "In December my parents are coming to Sapporo," and "Every day I eat eggs for breakfast." I'm even able to say more complex things like, "I'm sorry, I can't go to the movies because I have an appointment." I have hope that after the class is over, I'll be able to shore up a lot of my vocabulary and spend the next couple of months when I can't take class practicing my conversational skills. On the other hand, I also have this fear that all of the material will slip from my brain the way my limited Chinese language skills have, and I'll end up only being able to say, "Nihongo o dekimasen" (I can't speak Japanese).

At least funny things happen along the way. The other day, we were reading through some of the exercises together, and we came to one I did not understand. The question was, "Why do you use a word processor to write letters?" and I didn't know what the answer was, so I asked the teacher. She said, "By hand..." and then something that sounded to me like, "battery." I was baffled. I repeated several times back to her, "by hand battery?" and she was nodding. I kept thinking, that can't possibly be it, I must be misunderstanding; how would having a hand battery make you want to use a word processor? I pointed to the word in question again. "Battery," she repeated. This went on for some time, until... well, I'm not sure what happened, Maybe I used the translation book to look up the word, or maybe I just figured it out. Of course, she wasn't saying "battery" - she was actually saying, "badori" - or, in English, "badly." Ahh! Understanding dawned. "I use a word processor to write letters because my handwriting is bad." (or, "because I write badly by hand.")

This was, by far, my most up-close-and-personal encounter with the bizarre pronunciation problems sometimes encountered here. The fact that it was one of my supposedly somewhat-proficient-in-English Japanese teachers who was doing it made it even more confusing. She said it with such conviction I kept thing the word had to really be "battery." Of course, I have to keep in mind that as a beginning speaker of Japanese, I must be doing the same funny things on a daily basis - like the time Cui-san wanted to say she had bought persimmons, but actually said she had bought oysters.

The class ends officially next Friday, 5 chapters short of the end of the book. Either Cui-san and I will arrange for an extension, or I will have to take private lessons to finish the book so I can start with book 2 in March, which is the next time (and last time until June) I'll be able to take classes.

Nihongo Salon

I had visions of small groups of Japanese and foreign women clustered together sipping o-cha and nibbling on little Japanese cakes making small talk about the weather or other innocuous topics with occasional inquiries of “How do you say that in Japanese?” Described to me as a “women’s Japanese conversation class," it didn’t sound to me like a very structured way to learn Japanese, and I saw myself floundering as someone asked me, “Would you like another cup of tea?” as I stared blankly back. At least that was what I was expecting due to the use of the word “salon.” I knew it wasn’t a place to get my hair done – although it certainly would be convenient.

The Nihongo Salon turned out to be an actual class. I think there are multiple levels, and I got slotted into the (as they call it) “very basic” class. And, it’s definitely where I belong. Even though it’s a women’s Japanese conversation class, my group has 3 men along with the 6 women.

All the instructors are women. There’s one main instructor who leads, and then a plethora (one for each student?) of volunteers who sit around nodding and participate when necessary. The structure so far seems to be that the sensei teaches us a word or phrase which we all repeat together (Ohayogozaimasu!) and then we go around the class, each one saying it to the next student: “O-genki desu ka.” “Genki desu. O-genki desu ka.” etc. After that, we all stood up and went down the line of Japanese women introducing ourselves and saying, “How are you? I'm fine.” Then we practiced the hiragana, which most people seemed to know already (looks like some people are in the beginners class for the second or maybe even third time), chanting them outloud together and then doing flashcards. It looks like it’ll be a fun group, although I’m not sure how fast the language learning will go. The next chapter (Tuesday) is on “What country are you from?” among other things.

It’s going to be a small class, as the two Russian women are going away for the next three months and I’m going to be missing at least for a month to take a more intensive Japanese class at IAY. Since I’m here, the least I can do is leave with a decent conversational command of the language. My 5-days-a-week class starts Oct. 27.

Do we speak the same language?

No! In most cases, one would think that would lead one or both of the two parties to simplify what they are saying in order to communicate. In Japan this does not appear to be generally true.

Incident 1: Michelle and I went to Baskin Robbins after dinner on Saturday to get dessert. Crepes filled with ice cream, filling, and corn flakes are quite popular here. I think the corn flakes absorb any melted ice cream. But anyways, Michelle was trying to order her crepe by pointing at the picture on the menu. I am still not sure what the guy was trying to say after she ordered but I thought he was trying to tell her to choose the flavors of ice cream she wanted. She tried to do that – but he kept trying to tell us something in full speed Japanese. After multiple repetitions at full speed we finally figured out not by what he was saying but by process of elimination that the ice cream in the crepe was pre-specified. At no point was there any attempt to slow down, gestures, or use semi-fore to get his point across. We did get our desserts but at no point did we understand anything our server said.

Incident 2: On Sunday in search of cheap fruits and vegetables we had walked to an outdoor market. At the market there was mostly crabs (as it is crab season) but we were able to pick up some onions, corn and potatoes. While shopping we went into one of the stalls/stores and found some Hokkaido butter and cheese so we decided to buy some. The minute we tried to pay the woman in full speed Japanese tried to ask us something. We said we did not understand in Japanese but she just kept talking. She tried to ask another woman and then finally she figured out we spoke no Japanese or was able to dredge up the English words she was after. She then asked us if we lived here – and we said yes! I think she was concerned we were going to try to export or take home dairy products.

At least in one of the two incidents the proposition did hold but we find in many instances it is just full speed ahead regardless if we understand or not. Learning more Japanese will probably help alleviate this problem.

あいうえお

Over the past few days I've been working hard to learn the two phonetic alphabets in Japanese, hiragana and katakana. I have managed to memorize all the characters, and it's just the little additional symbols, such as the little circle, or the two small marks, that I have to master, but that's not much trouble. The real problem is vocabulary, which I don't have. I mean, it's fine to learn the alphabet, but just because you can read the alphabet doesn't mean you know what "Fahrvergnügen" means. Well, maybe you do, but that's only because you've seen it in advertising. I had to learn hiragana and katakana because although I originally was using the romanji (romanized) version of Japanese For Busy People, I heard from several sources it's best to go directly to the kana so as not to become dependent on the romanji. And, it's been my experience so far that basically all the signs are in hiragana and katakana with a smattering of kanji thrown in. So it makes sense to learn the kana. But, extending our analogy to English a little further, it's of limited use to know the alphabet if you open a menu and see "Turducken" but have no idea what that is. Now imagine that you see some letters you recognize, a few little doodles, and, to top it off, no spaces to indicate where one word ends and another begins, and you'll see how we feel when we try to order food. Or, for that matter, do anything else. Yes, even though I've learned my あいうえお and my アイウエオ, I've still got a long way to go. Next stop: Kinokuniya, to buy a book of common Kanji.

(By the way, isn't it cool how my Mac can handle these characters natively? If you can't see the Japanese characters, I'm sorry.)

Bringing English Along

We suspect we aren't going to have any TV to watch while we're in Japan. First, we're not sure whether we'll have a TV. Second, if we have a TV, we definitely are not going to have cable, so watching TV will be more like an experiment in checking to see how much Japanese we've picked up wandering around Sapporo. And amusing ourselves with Japanese games shows that you can follow even without actually knowing what they're saying. It's okay; we should probably watch less TV anyway. Less TV, more DVDs is what we say. Yesterday we got our DVD order delivered from Amazon. Color me surprised it got here so fast via USPS. Shipped on the 5th, delivered on the 6th. That never happened before.

Here's the list of the DVDs we got to keep us busy:

• 24 - Season One - A full 24 hours of DVD goodness we'll be watching while everyone else is watching Season Three
• Animatrix Gift Set with CD Soundtrack - But we won't be buying a console game system just to play Enter the Matrix. Or will we?
• Miyazaki 3 Pack with Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky and Kiki's Delivery Service - The English versions, although perhaps someday we'll be able to watch them in japanese
• Waking Life - Hmm, does this count as an animated or a live-action movie?

Rosetta Stone

Last night we went to the Stonestown Mall and picked up The Rosetta Stone Japanese Level 1 & 2. At first we thought buying at Amazon might be the best deal: buying Level 1 separately from Level 2 is cheaper ($164.99) from Amazon than at the Rosetta Stone website ($195). But apparently the set is priced differently. We found the combo pack listed at Amazon for $339.99 and at the Rosetta Stone website for $329. It was only $295 at the Language Success kiosk. It pays to shop around. I had seen a comment in an Amazon review that said that although the software was compatible with the Mac, it was not designed for OSX. I called RosettaStone yesterday to find out -- and they said that they had come out with a new version that worked with OSX. Yay! I must say, from the sales person and tech support person I talked to at Rosetta Stone and the two people I interacted with at the Language Success Kiosk (one on the phone, one in person), they have the nicest people working there!

Matt and I experimented with it a little last night and this morning. It's fun although somewhat challenging. You hear a word or phrase (such as "otokonoko") and click on the picture that corresponds to the words. It starts out easily in the first lesson, introducing words such as "dog" (inu) and "girl" (onanoko) and then moves along to phrases like "man and boy" and "table is over boy" (or is it "boy is under table"? I'm not sure.) So far I have worked my way through the first lesson in both the Reading & Listening Comprehension and just Listening Comprehension modes. I'm going to move on to Lesson 2 Reading & Listening while still working on Lesson 1 for reading, speaking and writing. I'm enjoying it; the big questions for me are how good retention is going to be, how much practice I will get with speaking, and whether I'll continue to make the time to sit down to work with the program. Given that we're moving to Japan so soon, we're going to have to make it a priority! Next step: buy a headset with a microphone so we can talk into our Mac!
-- Michelle

Learning Japanese

As Michelle alluded to in her blurb about Association for Japanese-Language: Japanese for Busy People (Volume 1) we both had good intentions of learning Japanese over the past year but have failed miserably. While we can take classes in Japan when we get there our newest solution to our lack of motivation is to buy a computer program. We are thinking of getting the Rosetta Stone Japanese Level I CD-ROM. The neat part about it is that it can actually help you improve your pronunciation by analyzing the wave form of your speech. We are still debating though whether to buy web-based access or the actual CD-ROMs. Check back for progress once we buy it.
-Matthew