Day 34: Learning Japanese

Hey readers!

First I need to start off by saying that writing these blog posts for each day is getting quite difficult. Especially for the days where we more or less have a normal day. I do want to clarify that it's not because I'm bored or disappointed with anything as I don't think I've yet to have a bad day here in Japan. I'll try to keep these posts up as much as possible but sadly I may switch to writing weekly blog posts later on in the year once things become routine.

Never the less, today had a little something different to our usual days. Today was the first day we were to be given a Japanese lesson from a private tutor. Our tutor originally teaches English to native Japanese people (the tutor being Japanese herself) but she has offered to help me and my partner learn Japanese for one hour a week at the Sogo Center which is brilliant.

For my lesson, we started off identifying simple katakana vocabulary to see what my initial level was and having done Japanese for a year I didn't really have any difficulty with it. The hardest part was probably the American dialect which threw me off a few times. These days though I can slowly feel my English idioms slipping away and being replaced by American ones.

Once the Katakana was over, we began to look at some basic sentences, nothing I hadn't already learnt but it was very nice to have a chance to refresh my memory as I had forgotten quite a few things since it had been a long time since I learnt them originally. The final thing we focused on was listening and repeating the voice on the tapes which is extremely difficult, but I can't doubt it's usefulness as it has really helped my listening ability.

Overall, I enjoyed the lesson and I get on well with the tutor and despite the lesson being very simple and containing information I probably should've remembered (oops) it was a great chance to recap everything and learn what I need to work on more.

After the Japanese lesson we had our usual lunch in the Sogo Center but I should clarify that I have now found mini pizzas in the convenience store so I have a chance to reminisce about the food back home. (I do love Japanese food, I just like to have a taste of home, or rather Italy when I can.) So after a nice lunch we finished up any studying and headed over to the after school club.

The after school club was the usual running around after the children, playing dodgeball and watching the children suffer at the hands of homework. It's great fun and it's not too taxing which is nice as it's a good way to unwind after a long day of studying. The atmosphere is always very light and relaxed. I often find myself staying very late at the club, officially we finish at 16:30 but I'm pretty much always there until 18:00. My favorite game has to be dodge ball, they play it rather differently to back home but It's still fun regardless.

Sadly, that's all I can write about for today and I wish I had more but today was another standard day, still it is one that I will treasure for a long time to come. Thanks for reading and I hope to get some videos out soon.

Oyasuminasai!