Japanese and Studying
I just need to praise a sensei at my school. Maemura Sensei is just amazing when I am studying Japanese; she always takes time out of whatever she is doing to help me out and I really appreciate it. She doesn’t always have the time to explain the answer to me but she makes sure that I have the right one and that I have someone who will explain it to me later.
Today, I was doing my homework for my Japanese Class on Sunday and I had no idea what I was doing. So she saw I was getting frustrated and just asked if she could help. She helped me with the answers and the vocabulary that I didn’t know. She didn’t have time to explain the reasons behind the answers but she was able to give me the correct translations. I have class tonight will Matt and I am going to bring the assignment in and have him help me with it and explain basically everything.
For those of you who don’t know…my Japanese stinks…it is horrible. I haven’t improved at all in the year that I have been here. Ok, to be honest, my listening comprehension has improved a great deal. At Beloit I couldn’t hear the language to save my life. However, as far as having a conversation goes…I couldn’t talk my way out of box.
I am finally taking the steps to fix this. I will now have three Japanese classes a week. I have one at interTalk on Friday nights, one at the community center on Sunday, and another class with Hiromi on Sundays. I am hoping that this gives me time to practice my speaking. On top of that my goal is to study Japanese for at least six hours a week on my own. I have the time at work so now I just need to buckle down and do it.
If I really want to achieve one of my goals in life I need to start studying Japanese seriously. I want to get a PhD in Japanese History sometime in my life and to do this I am going to need to know Japanese. Thus the reason for me coming over here. However, I think I just became overwhelmed by the complexity of the language and convinced myself that I couldn’t do it.
However, I have seen how much Jana has learned in the five months that she has been here and how much Kevin is now able to speak and I admire their ability and dedication to studying. So I am going to attempt the studying seriously and see how it goes; even if I don’t become fluent (or as close as a non-native speaker can get to fluent) I want to be able to look back on my time here and say “Geez, I did learn a lot of Japanese.”