Japanese, sort of.
This morning a woman came to my door selling magazines. I have to give her points, because instead of running in fear when a white person showed up at the door, she asked me if I could read Japanese and then tried to sell me some magazines. When I refused she gave me a free one and we had a nice little conversation about her daughter who lives in Manhattan.
My Japanese has gotten to the point where I still don't understand much, but I'm able to pick out which word(s) in a sentence are giving me trouble and then ask about them. When I do this there are two things that can happen. Either the person explains it to me in different words and I eventually get it or they say "nevermind" and the conversation is basically over. It's really nice when people take the time to explain things. I've learned the words for gravity and temperature in this way; there are more that have been explained to me but I don't remember them.
It's really humbling to have studied something for four years and still not be that great at it, but this whole experience has been a big ego boost, because I definitely know more than I did when I got here.
My Japanese has gotten to the point where I still don't understand much, but I'm able to pick out which word(s) in a sentence are giving me trouble and then ask about them. When I do this there are two things that can happen. Either the person explains it to me in different words and I eventually get it or they say "nevermind" and the conversation is basically over. It's really nice when people take the time to explain things. I've learned the words for gravity and temperature in this way; there are more that have been explained to me but I don't remember them.
It's really humbling to have studied something for four years and still not be that great at it, but this whole experience has been a big ego boost, because I definitely know more than I did when I got here.