An update..?!

Sorry to do this again, but here’s a quick run through:

Mate came round to visit me here. We did lots of sightseeing in Tokyo, and also went to Kamakura. Order of things we’ve seen most of: Izakayas -> Trains -> Temples/Shrines -> Pizzas -> Baseballs.

Since then I’ve registered for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N2, and have been studying for it every day. Well, I say every day.. it took amazon two weeks to send my books. Word of advice for future test takers: don’t get neither Kanzen Master Vocab 1,2 nor Kanzen Master 2kyuu Kanji. They’re a waste of money. Grammar and Reading Comprehension, on the other hand, are good.

In between studying I’ve had a bit of baseball going on. We finished the league somewhere in the middle with 5 wins 5 losses. Two weeks later the Japanese Public University Baseball Tournament started. I missed the first game due to stomach ache. The baseball team is currently organizing a softball tournament within TUFS for everyone to join. Rita and I have made it our goal to put together a Ryuugakusei (foreign students) Team, and it’s looking good so far.

The other day I got a phone call from a friend in Germany who I haven’t seen/talked to in ages. She was in Tokyo for a few days so we met up the same evening in an izakaya. It was nice to see her again, we both missed out on a lot of things happening at home apparently.

Other than that I’m just wasting away in my room with Kat, studying for the upcoming exam and watching Green Wing and Black Books.

Baseball, Baseball, UNI, ..Baseball.

After my parents left for Germany, baseball has taken up pretty much all of my time. While classes still hadn’t started, we practiced almost every day. A couple of weeks ago, the Spring League started. From start to finish we have at least 1 game a week, every 3 weeks or so we have 2. The place the games are played is about 2.5 hours away from where I live and it costs me about 3000 yen every time I go. That aside, the whole experience is usually fun and well worth the effort/money. I’m still a noob, so I don’t even get to play in the games, but just being there and warming up with everyone, watching the game, helping out here and there, I feel I’m doing something great with my time.

We have had 3 games so far, one of which we’ve won and the other two we lost. Our last game was very frustrating, things just wouldn’t work out for us and we lost pretty badly in the end (called game). Even so, I was looking forward to yesterday’s game, but it was canceled due to bad field conditions because of the terrible weather here in Tokyo.

Oh yeah, classes started this week. I’m now in the 500 level at TUFS, and I can tell it’s a slight step up content wise. However, the workload is still meager in language class. But that’s okay, because I’ve got things to do for Manchester Uni on the side, so I’m still quite busy. I just can’t wait until it gets warm and sunny every day, so I can fit in a picnic or two every week with friends. Right now, days are just cold, wet and demoralising.

Mid-Term Exams

On Monday we had our mid-term exams in Integrated Japanese 401 and Kanji 902. I spent less days studying that originally planned, but in those two days of study I only stopped for food and bathroom. As a result, the exams went seemingly well. We received our results for 401 yesterday and I got 80%, which is 20% above passing and, obviously, 20% below aceing the exam. I’m not too sure whether this is considered a good result or not, but, relating it to the feeling I had when class first started and thought it was too difficult for me, I’m quite happy. The only depressing thing about the exam was that ONE page where I apparently failed hard: 1 out of 12 points, haha. OTL

902 results will be announced on Monday, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be around the same percentage.

Luxury Of Illness, Dr. Speedy Gonzalez

So I suddenly got ill Tuesday midnight 2 weeks ago. I’m not sure to this day what exactly it was. I suddenly felt really weak and left a gathering to go to bed. That whole night I had a high fever and started to develop symptoms I later found out perfectly match the flu. Now, with all this swine flu hype going on at the moment, my first reaction was obviously: “Oh no.” The next day I was sent to a clinic to get checked. It was a tiny clinic close to the university; maybe 5 minutes walk away. After signing up for clinic membership (yay in English!) and waiting a short while, my temperature was taken. 6 times. The first couple of times it displayed 39°C so the nurse thought that can’t be right, as I was clearly looking half-well and not dead. With a different thermometer it showed 35°C. Hrm. Two more times later it displayed I think 38°C so she thought that was appropriate enough for her liking. After this adventure, I got taken to the doctor, who checked my heart beat at about 15 different points at a rate of  0.5 seconds per place. After that he said something Japanese I didn’t understand which according to the the nurse translates into “not flu, cold”. 2500 yen later I was free to go home and rest.

I informed the Foreign Affairs Office here at TUFS of what happened and they said to rest until I feel better, and that because it’s not swine flu, I’m not excused, so every day of rest is marked as absent. Great. Let’s see my attendance requirement to complete my Japanese language class is 80%, so 4 out of 5 days, I’ve been here almost 8 weeks, so I get to miss 8 days…… right, OK that’ll work out. Just can’t afford the luxury of being ill again.

In total I missed 5 days of class, so it wasn’t too bad. My tutor helped me during this time to think of ways to get those 5 days attendance loss back, including going to a different clinic, but that would have involved more time, effort, money and nerves lost. Sigh.

Japanese Communication Realizations

Before I came to Japan, I was aware of conversation procedures in a Japanese conversation. They’re not much different from what I’m used to, except for something called 相づち (Aizuchi). Performing Aizuchi basically means while someone else talks, you make gestures, say certain phrases or even just make sounds to make sure that the speaker knows you’re listening and appreciating what he’s saying. While this sort of behaviour can be found even in Germany or the USA, it’s by far not as strong and annoying as here in Japan.

I’m not saying that loudly agreeing with me while I speak or constant nodding is annoying, it’s just the fact that 80% of the time people do it because it’s the norm, and not because they mean it. If I feel close enough to a person to talk about things in Japanese, that feeling is destroyed by impersonal Aizuchi.

A second thing I realized about Japanese is intonation. Before this one fateful language class, I was 100% sure that with Japanese, intonation was not as important as it was in, say, China. However, in class we learned about the history of Kanji and how if it weren’t for them, written communication would be a mess. Japanese possesses many words that are spelled exactly the same, but are written in different Kanji to differentiate. However, this is obviously not possible to do in conversations, as Kanji are written and not spoken. Thus, these words with same spelling are pronounced the same. Up until recently, I thought it meant that I would have to understand the meaning of those words by context, but our teacher explained that words with same spelling have different intonations. However, there are also plenty words that don’t. Hrm. So this leaves me wondering if it’s worth learning the intonations along with vocabulary, or if learning it comes natural?

Example: These words are all pronounced ようじ (youji)

Farewell Formalities, Hello Daily Life

Thursday, two days ago, I finished all the formalities necessary to be legal in Japan and registered in TUFS. I registered for my language classes (Integrated Intermediate Japanese, Kanji) and ISEP classes (Speech and Communication I, Japanese Religions). On Wednesday, I finally got to pick up my alien registration card. My bills for water, electricity, health insurance and mobile phone all come in the mail. Here in Japan, you take those bills to your konbini of choice and hand over the money to them.

Now that all these formalities are done with, I finally have time to study without interruptions. This comes just at the right time, too, because preparation, homework and revision for Japanese language class turns out to be time consuming and quite intense. The textbook we work with is called ‘Tobira 5 – Pre-Advanced Japanese’ and so far features text about stress society and economical campaigns for poor areas in Japan and third world countries. This means goodbye to the Japan Times’ ‘Intermediate Japanese’ in which Jerry and Mr. Kumimoto talk about how many fish they caught that weekend and how nice the weather was.

We are expected to prepare for every lesson or we will slow the class down, and after every lesson we have to review what happened in class and make sure we know all the kanji and grammar for.. ever. Every new article/text we read brings with it a set of vocabulary that is supposed to cover ‘new words’, but basically covers about 25% of the new words, so 75% I have to look up myself and learn on my own. Additionally, we have the Tobira kanji book that accompanies our text book with 25 new kanji and their popular compounds each week, but as already mentioned, that only covers about 25% of the to me unknown kanji appearing in the text. However, grammar points are easy so far, meaning my study focus here in Japan will most likely be vocabulary/kanji, which is why I chose to have extra kanji class despite it not counting towards my credits.

The last two modules are ISEP classes, which basically seem to be pretty easy. In Speech and Communication I we have to do roughly 3 3-5 minute speeches in Japanese a semester. I weaseled my way out of the first one, because during the first lesson I was asked to do the model English speech for Japanese students in class. Japanese Religions seems easy, too, although we ‘wasted’ our first lesson introducing ourselves and watching a video about ancient Japanese art.

Japanese Class begins

I just came back from my first intermediate Japanese language class (401 group b). First thing I found out after entering the room is that about half the people in my class speak German because they’re from Switzerland or Germany, some others studying German on the side. Our class is a mix between Europeans and Asians, so pronounciation of Japanese varies greatly but all in all I think we understand each other well enough. What’s interesting is the difference of speech level compared to length of language study. Some people have studied Japanese for maybe 5 years but are at the same level as some that have studied it for 1 year only. Having studied Japanese for 2 years I don’t feel as bad anymore about not being able to do small talk at all.

With how class is structured and the topics we will cover, I think I will learn quite a lot right from the start. Another realization is that I need to brush up on grammatical topics such as passive form and.. that other one. See, can’t even remember the name of it or how to use it; though I guess at least I know it exists. Whatever it is.

Skype, Kanji and Misc

Being disappointed at mobile prices in Japan, it only occurred to me today to check out how much skyping mobiles costs. According to their website it’s only roughly 17 yen/min, while calling mobile to mobile in Japan will cost me 42 yen/min. This shows that, while technology is superior in Japan, companies try to extort those who want to use it on a daily basis. I’m not even going to go into how much “internet” on mobile phones costs a month.

While researching all this I also realised that there will be a significant time difference, making it an inconvenience to set up skype dates with family and friends. If my parents in Germany want to talk to me after they come home from work ~7pm their time, it will be 2am my time. If I want to talk to them while it’s their morning, it will be ~2pm my time so I have to hope I don’t have class. This basically means that skype calls will be limited to weekend afternoons. Skyping family in the USA is similar, I’m not going to go into anymore detail on that.

After writing my post on how I’m concerned about my kanji illiteracy, I have been doing a bit of studying at work. I’m surprised it’s going actually quite well. I still don’t remember what I did the day before, but it only takes a little bit of refreshing my mind to be able to use them again. Next week is my last week of work, and most likely the last stretch of studying kanji. I will be traveling the week after that, and the week after THAT it’s home time! I’m excited!

Update: Skype will double prices starting 6th of September, but it will still be 9 yen/min cheaper than using a mobile.

Reading concerns

Seeing as I only have around 3 weeks study time left, I thought it would be a good idea to actually start and open a book now. The problem is, though, that the only chances to study are at work, after work and during the week-end. I’m too tired after work, so that leaves me with during work time and the week-end. Week-ends, we sometimes have things planned, so it’s hard to be consistent and plan around my parents’ ..plans.  At work, I have to be careful not to be too obvious about not having any actual work and studying instead.

I am currently trying to get back into the Japanese language by reading Japanese Twitter updates, when I realised: I can’t read. If it wasn’t for a browser plug-in that translates hovered words, I wouldn’t be able to read anything in Japanese; there are just too many complicated kanji I don’t know. It makes me feel a bit stupid, not being able to read the simplest messages, and makes me wonder how pathetic I’ll feel walking down the streets of Tokyo trying to read signs, labels in konbinis or restaurant menus.

Until now my main concern has been grammar – I mean what good is it to have someone throw loads of vocabulary at you if you can’t make out what that person is trying to tell you? But now that I feel a bit more confident in smalltalk grammar, it’s time to shift study towards vocabulary and especially kanji. I’m not particularly fussed about learning new words, it’s the insanely difficult to memorise kanji that scare me most.