My Last Night in Japan

Well, it's finally here. My last night in Japan. It's gonna be tough going back to America, but i do sort of miss everyone. Anyways, here's some stuff I've learned/done over the past few days.

I bought a DS and some Kanji learning software. You can buy software here. Sorry that it's in Japanese, but the games are too. The game I got is called ２５０万人の漢検　or Kanji Practice for 2 million 500 thousand people. Again, one of those words that's much more efficient in Japanese. I haven't played it much yet, but it seems real fun. You can find a review here. I'll post my own review as I get used to the game. But right now, I'm pretty excited.

Other news, a revelation I had earlier this weekend, speaking a lot is important. I study Japanese a lot, but always vocab, grammar, listening, and kanji, never speaking. So i know a lot of words, even some my buddy Alex who has been here for the past 8 months doesn't know, but I'm just garbage at speaking. I mean, I can have a conversation and usually understand what's going on, but it takes me a while to say what I want to say, which makes it a real burden to have a conversation with me. So, what you can do, is find someone who is fluent in Japanese, and talk to them about anything. BUT, try to convey what you want to say as quickly as possible. Try to eliminate any time where you're just sitting there thinking or saying "uhhhh." You're going to make mistakes, so practicing with your Sensei is probably sub-ideal (unless your sensei is real cool), but you're ability to say what you want to quickly will greatly improve. Think about it like this: if you want to get in shape to run a marathon, you don't do it by walking 26.3 miles every day and then gradually picking up speed. You start out running short distances and then build up to the full distance, all the while improving your form. It's the same in languages, you need to force your brain run or it won't get in shape. I find that slow and awkward speaking a major flaw in most language education, and especially the way Japan teaches English. For example, my host sister Natsumi in Nagano has a huge vocabulary because college entrance exams judge you on how many words you know. However, she struggles in even simple conversations, so we always talk in Japanese even though her vocabulary is way bigger than mine. It's fucked up.

Back to the point, the way you use language in real life isn't like a test, you don't get to take your time or come back to something. You have about a two-second window to find exactly what you want to say and say it correctly. Japanese people will tell you to take your time, but inside they're thinking of all the useful things they could be doing rather than waiting for you to say what you want to say. This goes for looking things up in a dictionary as well, try to use other ways of saying what you want to say, or describe the word in question until the other person knows what you're saying. That's what you'd do if you didn't know a word in English, so that's what you should do in Japanese as well. For example, if you didn't know the word eki-in (train station attendent) and also didn't know the word eki (station), you could say 電車が着く所で働く人、densha ga tsuku tokoro de hataraku hito, the person who works at the place where trains arrive. I know it's long and awkward, but so is the 45-second gap in conversation while you pull out your dictionary and look it up. Any time spent speaking Japanese is infinetely more productive than not speaking Japanese. As a general rule. Learn to live without the jisho.

Well, that concludes my rant. I'll finish up my post with some pictures I took at a shrine-temple complex near Toyokawa. Really what trip to Japan would be complete without a good temple-visit. Sayonara suckaz: