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setraJust in case some of you really didn't believe me before:
My japanese classes are like another world. One where I'm back to two years ago: I understand maybe a third of what the teacher says, and then when asked a question I stumble vaguely over something between english and japanese for long enough that she asks someone else... or looks at me with 'What on earth are you doing in this class again?' written all over her face and waits for something intelligible to come out.
That's my spoken teacher. My Reading teacher is too nice and so she just smiles and looks at me with pity.
So... my last test grade in Spoken? 65%. Yep. A nice strong D. And that's up from the 35% I got on the quiz before that.
I'll tell you... I feel the pain of all those people who have trouble with Beecken-sensei's tests. I think it takes the falling to understand what it means to be here. It stings.
My speech today was barely half of the allowed length, I read unsteadily from the sheet and I could /hear/ how badly I was slurring some of the words... it was bad.
And it's all the worse knowing that if I drop a level, I'll lose all respect in Beecken-sensei's eyes. So I study. Hours a day. I make flash cards and write journal entries and try desperately to use and create a frame of reference for the vocab. And the lessons race forward, rapidly consuming all the random kanji that I thought I knew and moving on to vitally useful kanji-compounds like 'liquid crystal display' and 'portable-type computer'.
Which works perfectly with the twenty-odd different personality-related words we just learned in spoken. I don't dare look forward, and longingly gaze at my kanji-nikki and the Yookoso workbook. Back when units had words that made sense...
And on a completely different but vaguely related rant:
As usual, music is my sanity. My first, fastest and most accessible diversion from reality. For the moment, my favorite escape if Weiss. Something about their music can sooth me when nothing else can. The slow progression from "Mercy" and "No Surrender" to "Kitto Wasurenai" and "Tomorrow" was the story of my afternoon.
I look over Amazon pages and realize that I want the Glühen dramatic albums and the 'Stone Roses' single more than almost anything else available to me in Japan. My love/hate obsession with Koyasu Takehito (Aya/Olivie) has dissolved into a deep love of Miki Shin-ichirou (Yohji, etc.) and an odd obsession with the girlish-fluff that is Yuuki Hiro (Omi/Marcel), but the interest remains. Even thinking about Weiss makes me happy... can't remember the Japanese sentence structure for that... hn.
And an actually vaguely useful rant on recent events:
So... last night Kat and I studied in the kitchen/dining room rather than our room. And we met Gackt-guy Noah once again. He is awesome. And he agreed to watch Saiyuki with us when we start renting the tapes. He also has two of Gackts most recent albums, and let us listen to most of the 'Crescent' album. ^_^ He's the same one that was amused by the X game and interested to see more of FF8 in Japanese or see what Angelique was like.
Yep, so Kat wrote her speech and I worked on kanji flash cards, and conversed with Gackt-guy.
Today I dropped by Body Communication class (it was very centered on sign language). And bought both the text books that I still needed. Kat and I picked up her birthday gift and flowers (which her parents shipped from the states or organized through Japanese companies). And then I stayed in the dorm and played Angelique Duet (as Rosalia) for several hours. After which I felt thoroughly fluffy until I remembered my classes. And Kat's... which are more worrying. When Kat got back from Film, we went out for dinner (okonomiyaki and yakisoba... so good. *swoon*). And then sat about in our room until we decided to go check some things on the computer. And here I've been for quite a while. o_O I got no studying done after this morning...
But at least we have no classes tomorrow. It's Japan's National Foundation Day. Yay!
Anyway. I'm off to bed, or something. Probably more kanji with the way my brain is right now.
じゃ、お休み！ みんな、元気になってね？
美少年： 三木眞一郎や石田彰
My japanese classes are like another world. One where I'm back to two years ago: I understand maybe a third of what the teacher says, and then when asked a question I stumble vaguely over something between english and japanese for long enough that she asks someone else... or looks at me with 'What on earth are you doing in this class again?' written all over her face and waits for something intelligible to come out.
That's my spoken teacher. My Reading teacher is too nice and so she just smiles and looks at me with pity.
So... my last test grade in Spoken? 65%. Yep. A nice strong D. And that's up from the 35% I got on the quiz before that.
I'll tell you... I feel the pain of all those people who have trouble with Beecken-sensei's tests. I think it takes the falling to understand what it means to be here. It stings.
My speech today was barely half of the allowed length, I read unsteadily from the sheet and I could /hear/ how badly I was slurring some of the words... it was bad.
And it's all the worse knowing that if I drop a level, I'll lose all respect in Beecken-sensei's eyes. So I study. Hours a day. I make flash cards and write journal entries and try desperately to use and create a frame of reference for the vocab. And the lessons race forward, rapidly consuming all the random kanji that I thought I knew and moving on to vitally useful kanji-compounds like 'liquid crystal display' and 'portable-type computer'.
Which works perfectly with the twenty-odd different personality-related words we just learned in spoken. I don't dare look forward, and longingly gaze at my kanji-nikki and the Yookoso workbook. Back when units had words that made sense...
And on a completely different but vaguely related rant:
As usual, music is my sanity. My first, fastest and most accessible diversion from reality. For the moment, my favorite escape if Weiss. Something about their music can sooth me when nothing else can. The slow progression from "Mercy" and "No Surrender" to "Kitto Wasurenai" and "Tomorrow" was the story of my afternoon.
I look over Amazon pages and realize that I want the Glühen dramatic albums and the 'Stone Roses' single more than almost anything else available to me in Japan. My love/hate obsession with Koyasu Takehito (Aya/Olivie) has dissolved into a deep love of Miki Shin-ichirou (Yohji, etc.) and an odd obsession with the girlish-fluff that is Yuuki Hiro (Omi/Marcel), but the interest remains. Even thinking about Weiss makes me happy... can't remember the Japanese sentence structure for that... hn.
And an actually vaguely useful rant on recent events:
So... last night Kat and I studied in the kitchen/dining room rather than our room. And we met Gackt-guy Noah once again. He is awesome. And he agreed to watch Saiyuki with us when we start renting the tapes. He also has two of Gackts most recent albums, and let us listen to most of the 'Crescent' album. ^_^ He's the same one that was amused by the X game and interested to see more of FF8 in Japanese or see what Angelique was like.
Yep, so Kat wrote her speech and I worked on kanji flash cards, and conversed with Gackt-guy.
Today I dropped by Body Communication class (it was very centered on sign language). And bought both the text books that I still needed. Kat and I picked up her birthday gift and flowers (which her parents shipped from the states or organized through Japanese companies). And then I stayed in the dorm and played Angelique Duet (as Rosalia) for several hours. After which I felt thoroughly fluffy until I remembered my classes. And Kat's... which are more worrying. When Kat got back from Film, we went out for dinner (okonomiyaki and yakisoba... so good. *swoon*). And then sat about in our room until we decided to go check some things on the computer. And here I've been for quite a while. o_O I got no studying done after this morning...
But at least we have no classes tomorrow. It's Japan's National Foundation Day. Yay!
Anyway. I'm off to bed, or something. Probably more kanji with the way my brain is right now.
じゃ、お休み！ みんな、元気になってね？
美少年： 三木眞一郎や石田彰
