IrishOboe

I’ve also finally had a bit of time at work to work through the JET language course. By itself it’s not so good, but because of my other studies I can get something out of it. I got really behind (today I just finished the book that was due Jan. 28^th), but I’ve been madly racing through the books to catch up. It’s not so hard since I’ve familiar with much of the material. I get so excited when I have conversations. Just the other day I finally had a conversation with the owner of the local produce shop. He had tried the first few weeks I was here but I couldn’t understand anything so we hadn’t spoken in months and months besides “Welcome” and “Thank you.” This time I plucked up the courage to comment on the warm weather we’d had that day and he started asking questions. I could understand almost everything he said! I was so excited! Sure, it was all basic stuff, but it was thrilling none the less, especially since I’d done so terribly with him before. I’m not so encouraged when I talk to students. They have little patience for slow and incorrect Japanese, which is funny, since I have to put up with even slower and worse English, but it’s okay. Someday they’ll learn that I understand a little Japanese and if they just slow down a little and speak clearly I might have a chance. On the other hand, the fact that they never help me out in that way is good because it means if I can actually catch a word or two I can understand natural conversation. I will mention here that I’ve noticed students are more willing to make English conversation outside of class than they have been. It took me a while to realize, because if they say something we didn’t learn in OC (my class) it’s usually just a word or two and doesn’t seem like much of an attempt to communicate. Boy, I wish I could get inside their heads! They seem so bored in class, then they see me outside of class and yell to me and tell me they love me and take my pictures with their cell phones. They say they hate English, but then say I’m their favorite teacher. Eh? わかりませんWakarimasen!!!! (I don’t understand) But I’m way off topic. I pulled out the Hippo tapes (a different set of language tapes) tonight for the first time in a number of months. I cannot believe how much I can understand! Sure, I know the story and context helps a lot, but it’s still hard to follow a long story that’s totally in another language. Not only can I follow the story but I understand a number of complete sentences and a lot of detail that occurs in the story. That’s exciting, but what’s really exciting to me now is that the Hippo tapes use casual Japanese! This was frustrating to me at first because when I tried to use a word or phrase I learned from Hippo I was told that wasn’t right or it wasn’t polite or that people don’t say that. I was disappointed, but now I see that people don’t use those words in a business setting, but students use them all the time! There’s my personal favorite (すげ suge – the ‘g’ is hard and you have to say it like a teenage boy. It’s a boys word for ‘bad’ or ‘rad’ or whatever is cool these days), かっこいいkakoi (cool) and many others. Even better is that they use the ‘te’ form for verbs rather than the more formal ‘imasu’ form that the Pimsleur tapes teach me. I can use ‘imasu’ verbs with teachers and important people, which is good to know, of course, and I can use them with students (though they laugh at me for being so polite), but it means I can’t understand students when they speak to each other because the verbs are often quite different. Since Hippo uses this casual way of speaking I now have some way of getting used to understanding ‘te’ verbs. Yippee! Of course, now I have to find time to listen to them . . .