Japan Is Doomed

After not recieving an essay homework last week, I felt as if I’d let you, the reader, down, as I know everyone loves nothing more than sitting down on a Sunday evening and reading about what insanity Mike has got himself into this week. To redeem myself, today’s essay has two whole seperate parts! This week we learned about the plain form, which is a more colloquial speaking manner, as well as a style of writing commonly found in diaries. Our task was to write a diary for two days, and I thought I’d do it in my usual insane fashion. Nothing too bizarre this week.

Before I begin, I have good news. I was worried about the midterm exam, but I managed toget 86%, which is a First (The top grade, I’m not sure what it’s called in the US). Hurrah!

木曜日 、

毎週木曜日 、私の日本語のクラスは11じにはじまる。たいてい、あるいて行くが、きのうかぞくのうちにとまったから、バスで行った。でも、私のめざましが1じ間おくれているから、私はおくれた。
8週間おくらないでクラスに行っている。でも、今週の木曜日に、 ながい先生のクラスを休んだ。12じ10分前にクラスについた。はずかしかったよ。私には木曜日のぶんぽうがとてもむずかしかったから、クラスの後でともだちにきいた。
それから、ともだち ときっさてんに行った。きっさてんにかわいい女の人がいた。かの女はかみが長くて、ちゃいろかった。かの女と話したかったが、かれしがいた。ざんねんね。
6じにパブに行った。パブでベンさんにあいた。パブはあまりにぎやかではなかったが、とてもうるさかったから、好きではない。でも、パブの食べ物はやすくて、おいしい。私たちはカレーをちゅうもんした。でも、午後7じの後で、たくさんちんぴらがとうちゃくしたから、カレーを食べないで、パブを出た。

Thursday,

Every Thursday, my Japanese class starts at 11. Usually, I go by foot, but last night I stayed at my parents house, so I went by bus. However, my alarm clock is an hour slow, so I was late.
For eight weeks I’ve come to class without being late. But on this Thursday, I missed Ms. Nagai’s class. I arrived at 10 to 12. It was really embarrasing! For me, Thursday’s grammar was very difficult, so after class I asked my friend (about it).
After that, I went with my friend to a coffee shop. In the coffee shop there was a cute girl. Her hair was long and brown. I wanted to talk with her, but her boyfriend was there. It’s a shame.
At 6 I went to the pub. I met Ben there. The pub isn’t very busy, but it is incredibly loud, so I don’t like it. But, the pub’s food is cheap and tasty. We ordered curry. However, after 7pm lots of hooligans came into the pub, so we left without eating the curry.

金曜日 、

今日のじゅぎょうが1じにおわる。それ後でインフォメーション・コモンズで一人でピンクのしゅくだいをした。きのうのじゅぎょうを休んだから、とてもむずかしかった。それ後で、ともだちとゆうめいなクラブに行くつもりだったから、フランクさんはねこがびょうきだったから、くすりを買ったから、フランクさんのうちに行った。うちでテレビを見た。おもしろかったが、クラブに行ったことがありません。来週行くつもりだ。
フランクさんはりょうりが上手だから、おいしいピザを食べたから、さらをあらった。
しゅうまつしゅくだいをしたり、プールでおよいだりするつもりだ。

Friday,

Today’s class finished at 1pm. After it I did the pink homework on my own at the Information Commons. Because I missed yesterday’s class, I was really difficult. After that, I planned to go to a famous club with my friends, but Franks’ cat was sick, so we bought some medicine and went to Frank’s house. At his house we watched TV. It was fun, but I have never been to that club. I plan to go next week.
Frank is good at cooking, so we had some tasty pizza, then we cleaned the dishes.
On the weekend, I plan to do things like do my homework and swim in a swimming pool.

Some what of a random ending there, but I like it. None of this is true, of course. If it was, I’d be too busy performing emergency cat surgery to write this update.

December 2nd: Wow, I made a lot of spelling mistakes on this… I changed the ones I could find.

Don’t you hate it when you finish an exam, hand in the paper, then get that crushing feeling you threw away some easy marks on stupid errors? Well over the last two days I sat three exams, and after all three I realized to my horror I’d made some incredibly stupid, obvious mistakes. I thought I’d run through them here, partly to get them off my chest and partly so future generations of Japanese students won’t make the same mistake. That’s not to say I’m going to post the exam online or anything. You future Sheffield Japanese students have to work too!

The first paper was the Listening Exam. To my knowledge I only made one mistake here. The question required us to write down what the speaker said, then finish the sentence. It started “私はおきて、歯をみがって、” (watashi wa okite, ha omigatte,) which means “I wake up, brush my teeth,” so a correct answer would have been something like “then eat breakfast” or something. The problem is I failed to realise that “ha o” were two words, and wasted a lot of time wondering what on earth a “hao” is. Curses. Thankfully that was the only dumb mistake I made as far as I could tell.

The second exam was the big, mean Midterm Exam, designed to test all parts of the course, and carries 10% of our final grade with it. The annoying mistake was simple - we were given the translation for はしります, to run, but in the test it appeared as はしらないで、which means “without running”. Sadly I only read the translation and somehow managed to gloss over the conjugation, leaving me with a rather bizarre “I left the restaurant with running”. Oh dear.

The final exam was today, and was the Kanji Exam. Two rediculously stupid mistakes here. The first was adding the reading for 八日, which is よっか. I wrote that. It was right. Then with about 10 seconds to go I thought it would be an awesome idea to change my correct answer to はつか, which means the 20th. I’ll never know why I did that and I will never do it again. Gah. The final mistake was writing the Kanji symbols for “ふるいもの” (furuimono) , which means “old things”. I forgot what ふるい (furui) meant. At first I thought it meant cold, even though I knew the word for that was さむい (samui), and ended up writing 長い物 (nagaimono), which means “long things”. The sentence ended up as “I like long things“. What will the lecturer think of me?!

So there you have it. I have no idea when I will get my results back, and I shall post them here when the time is right. I also have some rather exciting news reguarding the Japan society and their events thoughout the year, but I’ll leave you in suspense as it’s about time I knocked out a review of the book I was forced to read for my “understanding Japan” module.