Perhaps most memorable, however, was a revelation. For the past three weeks or so, there's been a slightly shifting and changing group of ichinensei (newcomers to the club, basically), which I've been a part of. Maybe around eight or ten of us on any given day, and twenty altogether (at least, at the shinkan konpai). But... It turns out that two of them were actually third-year veterans of the kenyuukai, sent to infiltrate us/try to get us to join. XFD. One of them I'd never really talked to much, and actually didn't know who he was. But the other, Yamauchi, I'd talked to quite a decent amount. It was especially interesting for me, though. All the other ichinensei expressed a great deal of shock when they found out, and made him drink and such (as is, along with the infiltrating itself, apparently tradition of the club). But, though I certainly wasn't aware he was actually a 3rd year, I knew he wasn't a normal ichinensei, and wasn't very surprised at all at the revelation. My theory about this is that the strategies I've developed in my ~7 months in Japan so far for dealing with the language barrier allowed me to see through his facade to some extent. Since I can't understand what's being said, I rely much more than other people around me on learning things about what's going on at any given time by watching and observing in non-verbal ways. In this case, perhaps I was actually not blinded by his words the way the others were. ...Of course, this means that, in some way, I want to come to be able to deceived by the words as they were... XD Anyway, it was pretty funny.
(And then, perhaps I just wasn't as shocked because my poor Japanese leads me to talk pretty much the same way to anyone who isn't a teacher, so there was no "zomg I've been using such casual language with my senpai!")
Got kinda sick. Just in time for the start of Golden Week fuuuuuuuuuuuuu--
But, although I slept, liek, 18 hours on Thursday, I felt 90% normal yesterday and today, so maybe it's already mainly blown over. Because I still can't breath too intensely without starting to cough terribly, I decided that I needed to go to neither the Chabashira Oni Gokko game nor Kenyuukai practice today. Bawww, I wanted to go.
I registered for the JLPT (日本語能力試験), 2kyuu, for July. So, I've decided to start using the JLPT tango list again (which I was doing for a while, then quit). But, I'll use it with the AJATT sentence method, which will surely take a lot longer to input into SRS, but result in better learning. よし！絶対合格から！
I had my presentation for Kage-sensei's class (Aspects of Japanese Society - about pretty much that, social issues) today. Every student has to present over the course of the semester, and I just happened to be early on, so now I'm fairly in the clear.That class is, I think, da new bomb. Fascinating and satisfyingly academically meaty (some courses this semester I took because they promised to leave me with a lot of time to work on Japanese, and they do, so far, do that satisfactorily, but they are just not that stimulating).
Oh yeah, and on Monday I went to a circle (the name of which I still don't know) that discusses... World issues? I've actually been once before, when Zhemin randomly grabbed me (that time the topic was the movement of labor force in Asia). That first time I met a guy, whose name I also don't know (he's Chinese, so I can't even guess from the Kanji on my contacts list>_>), who invited me to this second one, on Monday, particularly because the topic was about US-China-Japan relations, and I'm, well, from the US. I couldn't actively participate much, but I understood pretty well, and it was pretty interesting. I may start attending these regularly, partly because it's all in Japanese, and partly because they have been so interesting.
Also related to pursuing topics of interests while working on Japanese, I bought a gardening magazine the other day. I am such a middle-aged auntie at heart, the way my heart melts at vegetative propagation of ornamental plants. It's surprisingly easy to read, so far. Actually, though the Japanese is at that perfect level that's just a little challenging, a lot of the actual content is, dare I say, a bit below my level? Maybe because I come from a place where things don't actually grow for half the year, or maybe because I'm a student and it's how I often approach things, I've spent perhaps as many hours reading about plants and their maintenance/upbringing as actually working with them. So maybe I've already covered too much ground for my own good. Anyway, I've learned lots of useful words from it, as well as Japanese plant names, which now enable me to talk about this hobby in Japanese much better.
(And then, perhaps I just wasn't as shocked because my poor Japanese leads me to talk pretty much the same way to anyone who isn't a teacher, so there was no "zomg I've been using such casual language with my senpai!")
Got kinda sick. Just in time for the start of Golden Week fuuuuuuuuuuuuu--
But, although I slept, liek, 18 hours on Thursday, I felt 90% normal yesterday and today, so maybe it's already mainly blown over. Because I still can't breath too intensely without starting to cough terribly, I decided that I needed to go to neither the Chabashira Oni Gokko game nor Kenyuukai practice today. Bawww, I wanted to go.
I registered for the JLPT (日本語能力試験), 2kyuu, for July. So, I've decided to start using the JLPT tango list again (which I was doing for a while, then quit). But, I'll use it with the AJATT sentence method, which will surely take a lot longer to input into SRS, but result in better learning. よし！絶対合格から！
I had my presentation for Kage-sensei's class (Aspects of Japanese Society - about pretty much that, social issues) today. Every student has to present over the course of the semester, and I just happened to be early on, so now I'm fairly in the clear.That class is, I think, da new bomb. Fascinating and satisfyingly academically meaty (some courses this semester I took because they promised to leave me with a lot of time to work on Japanese, and they do, so far, do that satisfactorily, but they are just not that stimulating).
Oh yeah, and on Monday I went to a circle (the name of which I still don't know) that discusses... World issues? I've actually been once before, when Zhemin randomly grabbed me (that time the topic was the movement of labor force in Asia). That first time I met a guy, whose name I also don't know (he's Chinese, so I can't even guess from the Kanji on my contacts list>_>), who invited me to this second one, on Monday, particularly because the topic was about US-China-Japan relations, and I'm, well, from the US. I couldn't actively participate much, but I understood pretty well, and it was pretty interesting. I may start attending these regularly, partly because it's all in Japanese, and partly because they have been so interesting.
Also related to pursuing topics of interests while working on Japanese, I bought a gardening magazine the other day. I am such a middle-aged auntie at heart, the way my heart melts at vegetative propagation of ornamental plants. It's surprisingly easy to read, so far. Actually, though the Japanese is at that perfect level that's just a little challenging, a lot of the actual content is, dare I say, a bit below my level? Maybe because I come from a place where things don't actually grow for half the year, or maybe because I'm a student and it's how I often approach things, I've spent perhaps as many hours reading about plants and their maintenance/upbringing as actually working with them. So maybe I've already covered too much ground for my own good. Anyway, I've learned lots of useful words from it, as well as Japanese plant names, which now enable me to talk about this hobby in Japanese much better.
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