I hate getting up this early. 6 AM, jesus.
Yesterday was the first day of Japanese class. Last week was just review, so I’m not really counting that. After class I was a little scared; we’re using a textbook which is entirely in Japanese. I’m scared that the book will use grammar, vocabulary and kanji that I haven’t learned yet in order to teach us whatever it’s going to teach. I put it out of my head, thinking that things will work out.
The adventure of the day was going to a giant flea market which is held every 21st of the month at Toji temple. I went with a couple other people, but didn’t really interact with them much, hmm. The temple is a 10 minute walk from kujo station on the Karasuma subway line, which was awful with the humidity what it was. I swear yesterday was the most humid day since we got there. Luckily it wasn’t the hottest, because otherwise it would have been unbearable.
The flea market is…big. Pretty much every square foot of temple ground that isn’t occupied by a building or a shrine is occupied by stands. There were many food stands selling things like yakisoba, the Japanese version of snow cones (they’re more or less the same), and takoyaki! I finally tried takoyaki and it’s strange. Definitely not what I was expecting. I’ll try it a couple more times, but it was very fishy. I cough that up to all the things they sprinkled on top of the actual takoyaki.
In addition to the food stands there are stands selling groceries, a couple selling spices, some selling fish, packed goods, etc. For the most part it was a proper flea market with people selling trinkets, clothes, and random crap. I ignored the clothes for the most part, because I hate clothes shopping plus I wouldn’t know how to differentiate a nice yukata from a nice-looking but cheaply made yukata.
My major find at the flea market, and my only purchase, was a pink Gameboy Color with a copy of Pokemon Silver already inside, and it works. Awesome, right! I mean, it’s more for the antique value for me than the play value, because the odds that I’ll find old Gameboy and Gameboy Color games that I’ll want to play are low, but it’s a cool antique.
Unfortunately I could only stay at the flea market for an hour or so since I had to get back to Imadegawa for a presentation on Japanese Dance. The presentation was hosted by a trained Japanese Dancer (I don’t know the school that she practiced when growing up) and consisted of a little bit of background, a 45 minute video with clips of different dance schools performing the same basic story (during which apparently almost all of us nearly fell asleep). It’s not that it was boring, it was just very static most of the time. Strangely, the presentation was all translated into English, and while it was presented as part of our Japanese language practicum, I’m pretty sure it was just to try and get us interested in Japanese dance so we would take classes from this dancer. don’t get me wrong, she’s a prolific dancer, and I’m sure the presentation was all in good faith, it just didn’t feel like language practicum.
Anyway, after that, I had to go straight to my next class, which was pretty interesting (I’m glad I decided to take Visual Arts; my teacher has lived in Kyoto for 14 years, as I’m sure I’ve told you, and I really want to get some recommendations from her as to places to go, eat, etc.).
My time at Imadegawa was ended by yet another fabulous purchase. If you’ve forgotten, last week some of us went to Book Off, which is a used book, game, dvd, cd store. At this particular Book Off they were selling a Famicon/NES for 950 yen. Yesterday I went back and I bought it. As with the Gameboy Color, the probability of wanting to play games on it are very low; it’s more for the antique value than anything else, especially since the hookups it uses don’t exist anymore, I’m pretty sure. Oh, and the day’s antique gaming system purchases? The Gameboy Color and Famicon added up to less than $20.
Very satisfied with my purchases, I headed home. That night I attempted some conversation, and I was able to respond at my usual level of proficiency, but for some reason it just got me a little angry and depressed. I think I was just tired of simplifying what I wanted to say to something simple that I knew how to say and angry that I hadn’t made any grammatical progress in the past two weeks.
After dinner I made up my mind and went up to my room. I brought Genki 2 to Japan so I could review lessons that I had learned in the past, but I’ve only learned two lessons in Genki 2 so far. Last night I decided that I wasn’t going to wait until I got homework for Japanese, nor was I only going to learn the stuff in class. I love Genki because it makes things easy to understand and it makes you learn useful vocabulary (most of the time) and kanji. So in conjunction with whatever we do in Japanese class, I will be studying new Genki lessons. I made up my mind that one lesson a week, probably studied on the weekends, would be a good pace.
I started last night, with lesson 15. There’s nothing quite like having suspicions confirmed. It’s a satisfying feeling to know that you were right about something, no matter how trivial or small a matter. While I wouldn’t call these suspicions, the feeling was similar when I started learning new vocabulary and grammar and piecing together things I had heard before and finally confirming what they meant.
I feel like this is the right thing to do; to study on my own in conjunction with what we do in class. It just feels like this way, if I have trouble in class, I can still keep advancing my knowledge of the language in some way. It just feels so good to be learning new things that I can actually use when I speak, and it increases my options as to what I can do with the language. I’m just rambling now, but I think this is the best thing to do.
After studying the lesson in Genki I felt much better and more confident so I went downstairs and had some Osaka cheesecake that okaasan had somehow gotten her hands on.
My biggest fear is not making significant strides with the language while I’m here. I’m terrified to think that I’ll spend 8 months here, struggling with the language the whole time and ultimately make as much progress as I would have back in Oberlin. Dumb, I know; I’ve already learned stuff I probably wouldn’t have learned back in Oberlin, like the kanji for ~line, like the “Karasuma line.”
It’s like I can kind of see the beginning of the uphill climb ahead of me and I’m not sure I can make it as far up Mt. Fuji (appropriate for this particular metaphor, don’t you think?) as I thought I would. Only one way to find out.
~Shimon
