stuff
so lately i'm on a mad rush to memorize ALL the words in the 3rd semester textbook before that 3rd semester begins, because having memorized words ahead has helped me SO much this semester. there's 15 chapters, with about 200 things to memorize each chapter (only 100 individual words/phrases, but i have to memorize both the kanji and pronunciation so it ends up as 200). 3rd semester begins in the second week of january, so i have 5-6 weeks to get it all done.... in the past few days i've actually ended up memorizing 1 chapter in just 1-2 days each time, so if i keep this up i'll have memorized all the vocabulary in that book in just one month (and before december's even over!).
i don't know what they use in 4th semester, if there's any textbook at all. so i'll have to ask... otherwise i'll just read -real japanese- and grab words from there. anyway, i can't recommend studying ahead enough. just ask the teacher what textbook will be used in such-and-such classes and go for it.
i've also started making mental lists of things i want to do when i get to go to japan.... the problem is, i really just want to -be in japan-. it's not like i have anything REALLY specific in mind because i'll just take anything i can get. so i'm trying to think like, okay, i want to hear some live koto music or something but all my ideas seem so... small. i'll probably hear live koto music on ACCIDENT, you know?
anyway, i'm feeling pretty warm inside... school's going way better than i thought it could possibly go while living in this house, and i'm just thinking like, maybe when i go to japan the guys there will be shocked "what? you've only been studying for x years? but so-and-so has been studying twice as long as you and is worse!" and i'll make a good name for our school here in sweden... lol. i think it would be great if more advanced students could have skype sessions with advanced english learners from japan, as extracurricular conversation sessions, because right now it's like, okay, i'm speaking bad japanese with a bunch of other people who don't even know how to correct me... at the same time it would be pretty scary.
OH YEAH!!!! i looked up the financial stuff for when going to japan. turns out they really don't give a shit, as long as you claim you have someone who'll pay for you if things go wrong they'll let you in. and they don't even care about the bank balance of that person (they just -probably- have to prove that they have jobs), and they never ask you about it again past the first time. so people are saying if you apply for a 6-month VISA for school and prove you have the money at that time, when you go to renew the visa for the second half of the year you don't have to prove anything! so i'm relieved now, we can just get the student loan and claim my wife's parents will help us (which they can't possibly, actually, but y'know). before i was worried that BOTH me and my wife would have to be getting like 13,000 USD in the bank to prove we could pay for the year or something.