“Oh yeah, I have a blog!”
I hate writing things like this. I haven’t updated in 3 weeks or so and I apologise. Writing these ‘catch up’ blog posts just remind me how much I have neglected you, my beautiful readers. To make amends, if you send just £5 / ¥1,000 / the deeds to a hectare of land in North America, I will send you a personalized Christmas message! (It will be in the form of a letter that you can’t see or touch and that only I have knowledge of).
Anyway. I’ve been playing a lot of racquetball with my new circle. They’re all lovely people and it’s a great chance to practice totally natural Japanese. It’s especially nice in that none of the members really know how to ‘gear’ their Japanese to a foreign learner. This isn’t easy mode, folks. This is the real, complicated deal. I have also learned that sport vocabulary is surprisingly simple. Things like ナイスショット (naisu shotto!) and ナイスカッチュ (naisu kacchi!) get banded around a lot. I tried saying ‘Nice Shot’ and ‘Nice Catch’ in natural British English and everyone got confused and thought I was summoning a devil or something. Nevermind!
The racquetball circle had their Christmas Party on the 5th of November (only 20 days early!) which was fun, although it was a little on the tame side. Still, next weekend the 3rd year students, who make up the bulk of the circle, are all leaving because they have to focus on job hunting. I’ve heard this upcoming party is going to be massive. They warned me ‘it might get a little crazy’. Frankly, I’d be offended if it didn’t.
The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of, and it feels great to write this, is improving in Japanese. Since I’ve got here I’ve sort of felt I’m on the ‘plateau’ that people talk about a lot – it just feels like it’s all going nowhere. But yesterday I watched most of a whole TV show and understood everything. It surprised me a lot as I couldn’t do that when I got here, and I don’t feel like I’ve been working much. It’s like a Christmas gift come early!
Speaking of Christmas, we have a few weeks off starting December 23rd (yaaay!) I’m going to be spending Christmas day in Tokyo, then soon after I hope to head off somewhere. Possibly to Hakone, I’m not decided just yet.
Other than that, not much to report on. Look forward to a video. I’m going to shoot some material on Thursday for something special, I’m not sure when the video will appear but it will. If it doesn’t you may throw anything you like at me.
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Or go try snowboarding in Japan. Preferably at Niseko, Hokkaido which is the best IMHO. Sometimes, the university/ or its circle do sometimes organize such trips and even give credit hours as well(mine does)! It’s also usually cheaper too.
I thought it was pretty funny that you tried speaking english and they thought you were crazy=P I love you blogs! Keep at em!
Ed: Totally slipped my mind. I might be heading down to Nagoya/Niigata in Feb with my circle for a few days. Going to shred it up!
Quint: They thought it was funny too, but only after staring at me like I was a murderer for about 30 seconds… ;)
=P that is so funny. I remember when I went to Japan, anything I did was sooo crazy to them. If I coughed they would be like, “Omg! you just coughed! We don’t do that! Your awesome!” haha. Can’t wait to go back, I’ll be going to Kansai Gaidai University next year!