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:

Two Useful Tidbits of Japanese

Here are two really useful tidbits of Japanese that I didn't really know until yesterday. You'd be surprised how often they come up in conversation and how useful they can be:

1. 結構（な） kekkou (na). Kekkou is a Na-adjective that means good, decent, enough, or sufficient depending on the situation. The best use, and I can't believe I didn't know this until recently, is as "no, thank you" to either that third bowl of rice or watching Harry Potter 5 for the fourth time. Just say kekkou desu and all your problems will go away. Speaking of Harry Potter 5, it also has the word kekkou in the translated version. It occurs when Umbridge asks Professor Trelawney to predict something, and all she manages to come up with is to say Umbridge is in great danger. Umbridge replies with "kekkou" meaning "That will suffice," which also has the connotations that it's just decent, and not great. I've watched Harry Potter 5 twice in the past two days, once in English with Japanese subtitles and once in Japanese with no subs. It was ok not having English subs for the Japanese dub because I was so familiar with the movie, but I recommend using subtitles if you are watching for the first time. That being said, watching in Japanese is way more effective than reading Japanese subtitles to improve your language skills. No one wants to read more than they have to, so trying to figure out what they're saying is much more fun than trying to guess what the Kanji for transfiguration is. Watch the characters mouths and ask for explanations if you get lost. Japanese people are nice, and they get excited about foreigners learning their language. Help will be easy to come by.

2. -っぽい　(-ppoi). This one is tough because it's not really a word and you won't be able to find it in a dictionary. Also, because it's a more colloquial suffix, you probably will have a tough time finding a textbook containing it. It's basically a suffix that is the English equivalent of "-esque," "-like," or "-ish." For example, if you saw a man walking down the street wearing a pink shirt and make-up, and carrying a purse, you might say that he is feminine, or in Japanese, onnappoi. Another example, let's say your friend Jim always wears plaid button-down shirts. If you were in a store and saw a plaid button-down shirt, you might say it was jimuppoi or Jim-esque. A third example, let's say your friend Anna always has at least 3 bowls of rice at every meal. One night, you eat 5 bowls of rice and your friends call your mammoth apetite annappoi, or anna-like. You get the idea. It's a really useful phrase and now that I know it, I hear it often in everyday conversation. Feel free to come up with creative uses for it and post them here. I admit my knowledge is limited.

Oh yeah, remember when I said you would't be able to find -ppoi in a text book. Well I did. It's called 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese by Giles Murray. This book basically kicks ass. Each secret has it's own chapter and they range from manga translation, to children's word games, to detailed explanations and histories for some of the more interesting loan words. The chapters I found most useful were the chapter containing 41 prefixes and suffixes you probably won't find in textbooks (like -ppoi), and the synonym generator chapter, which teaches you four other ways of replacing a word you don't know, so your conversations can go more fluidly without a dictionary. I have started applying these secrets in conversation and my Japanese has gotten noticeably better. This book is an excellent supplement to any highschool or college level class. I highly recommend.

Well, that was a very educational post. Now take a break with this heartwarming video of one of Japan's top ranked sumo wrestlers not taking shit from children:

Skiing in Japan: A Struggle

Speaking a foreign language is tiring, so I usually indulge in 10-11 hours of sleep a night, but this morning a mustered my willpower and got out of my fleece-blanketed futon at 9 AM. This gave me enough time to eat one of my host mom's ridiculously large breakfasts: 2 bowls of rice with konbu (kelp), 2 bowls of miso soup, salad, sausages, tamago-yaki (an extra-delicious variant of scrambled eggs), ham, boiled vegetables, and an-pan (bread filled with red bean paste= DELICIOUS!!!). For another take on Japanese breakfast, check this out (Warning: Excessive Profanity).

From there it was off to the slopes with my dad for my first time skiing in 9 years. Because we rented all our skiing equipment earlier, we just had to head straight up to the mountain we chose to ski on. Now being the super-hip-hop cool dude that I am, I decided that it would be SUPERFLY to bring my camera along to take some RIGHTEOUS photos without the help of my MEMORY CARD which I left in the COMPUTER! Yeah, that's why I don't have any photos. Face Todd, face. But, my dad took some killer shots of me learning how to sky, which brings me to our ski-jou (place to ski), Yakebitai-yama (yama means mountain if you aren't familiar with the go).

We proceeded to strap on our gear and head to the Gondola lift. This lift is a Swiss-Made capsule lift, meaning that the cold can't get into your little bubble of warmth, which was pretty nice, I have to say. My dad knows somebody at the lift station, so we were able to "borrow" (Japanese for not pay for) some lift passes for the day. Once we got in the lift we started heading up the mountain. Having only been on a bunny hill before, I began to grow increasingly frightened when the lift kept going higher and higher with no sign of the other lift station. To banish my fear, my dad took some pictures (his camera makes a gunshot noise whenever he takes a picture, it's hilarious). The results were something like this:




When we finally left the lift at the highest point on the mountain, neither of us realized quite how long it would be before we saw the lift again. Now I wouldn't say I was bad at skiing, oh wait, yes I would, I was shit awful. After spending the obligatory 10 minutes to put my skies on, I proceeded to lose control of my speed and fly into a snow embankment on the very first...it wasn't steep enough to call it a hill or a slope, yeah, we'll just say I bit it on the very first inclined plane. From there , it didn't get much better. If I had to describe my skiing style, I'd call it a constant effort to reach the fetal position, but being thwarted by the rigid plastic of my boots. My dad kept trying to get me to put my weight back and keep my back straight but fuck that, I fetal-ed my way down the first half of that mountain and my skies only came off three times. Hell Yeah. This should give you a rough idea:

After that, we came upon a slope that we (successfully) determined was much too dangerous. Which brings me to an undiscovered event I plan to submit to the Winter Olympics, Boot Skiing. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It's just like skiing except without the skees, danger, and potential for FUN:

Unrelated. I know. But there wasn't the actual clip from the show on YouTube, and this is way funnier than any picture montage. But Boot Skiing. Was actually the most fun I had on the first run, because many of the same principle as skiing apply, it's just easier, slower, and falling down is fun rather than a pain in the ass. When we reached the bottom the steep slope, I put on my skees and 15 minutes later I was back to my earlier inadequacy. We had some lunch (Chicken Curry) at the lodge when we reached the bottom, and you know what it tasted like? It tasted like failure:

Yeah, well I don't like failure. So after lunch I insisted we go and do the same slope again. This time I TOOK NO PRISONERS RAWRGGHHRA:




You can almost taste the improvement. But really, I did get a lot better, and we even went a third time. It started to be really fun once I figured out how to slow down and turn at the same time (the key is lowering your shoulder). It ended up being a lot of fun, and I'm really excited to go again this weekend. When we got back home, we were both really pooped, but I had the energy to get my SD from the computer and take this epic picture of my dad sleeping like a rock star:


Laterz.

Renting Skis: An Exercise in Humility

Man, the word 'skis' looks really weird. It looks like it should rhyme with piss rather than cheese. I'm all for changing it to 'skies'. I know, I know, this is what you're thinking: "But Todd, how on Earth will I express more than one of that thing that clouds are in without completely confusing my friends and family?" I know it's hard to trust someone other than you to know what you're saying, but you have to have faith in context. Which brings me to today's story and the word that made me look foolish: mukashi (むかし）.

After a successful morning of watching Japanese dramas to improve my Japanese, I left the house with my host dad to track down some skees (yeah, that's better) for me to use this weekend. We went into a store, which was also the house of the family that ran the place, and I sat down to let my dad do the talking. The last time I went skeeing I was 10, and I never made it past the bunny hill, so renting skees and skeeing equipment would be difficult for me in America. In Japan, knowing none of the relevant vocabulary, I was helpless. I'm normally pretty good at understanding what my dad is saying, but today I just had no idea. They kept talking about something mukashi as well as other things I couldn't understand. I was so bewildered that it took me a while to process simple things the proprietor said to me such as kitemite (着てみて） and kutsu o nuide kudasai (靴を脱いでください）、 meaning "try this on" and "take off your shoes please" respectively. All in all, I performed way under my ability, and I think I embarrassed my dad a bit. I later discovered that mukashi means old, which I've heard before, but in skeeing it refers to the older, picket-fence shaped skees, while the newer ones are more of a figure 8 shape, wider at the ends for ease in turning. My dad later explained to me that the skees he owns are mukashi and therefore, dame (no good).

The lesson you should learn from this is that before you go to buy or rent something, make sure you know all the relevant vocabulary so you can get what you really want. For example, I've been needing a haircut for a little while and I came upon I nice looking hair salon when I was walking around town, but I realized I didn't know important words and phrases like "fade," "comb," and "most stylish boys haircut in Japan right now." I didn't even really know the word for haircut, so I would've gone in asking for a kamikiri (lit: hair cutting) and probably confused everyone. Point is, know your goal and come in prepared, like with this awesome article on how to get a haircut in Japan.

From there we went for a drive up into the Shiga Kogen Heights, to check out the places we'll be skeeing over the weekend. It looks kinda like this:

It's really weird. It snowed a lot yesterday. But the sun was out today so all the snow lower down the mountains where I live is gone. But after a 10 minute drive, it's winter wonderland again. Good one, Japan.