I realized I haven't talked about Japanese tutoring in a while, so here's an update!

I had a rather long period in September when a variety of things, like my tutor being unexpectedly out of town, stomach trouble, and Yom Kippur kept me from meeting for a month, but since then I've gotten back into the groove. I mentioned to Aya-sensei in the ( Read more... )

Yesterday was the third class I had with Aya-sensei, and the first one where we managed to hold a conversation for basically the entire class without long pauses and me staring out the window. I realized that in a one-on-one situation with someone who knows English natively, there's nothing to be gained from me trying to remember a word for longer ( Read more... )

Yesterday was a team building day at work. As much as I complained about it, it was actually pretty well-run and inoffensive. No stupid trust fall exercises or silly games, the icebreaker was just "introduce yourself to a couple people you haven't met," and the majority of the day was talking about what it is exactly our department does--summary: ( Read more... )

And I didn't spontaneously combust or have any of my exaggerated worries come to pass! Overcoming my anxiety like:


( Read more... )

Shopping Center Thanks
Thanks was built back when the City University of New York had a branch in Chiyoda, and it managed to survive the closure of that university four years later by being the place where the surrounding even smaller towns, like Oasa or Geihoku, came to get goods. We went there a lot, because while it was primarily a grocery store ( Read more... )

Like the question says, really. I originally had the tags only in Japanese, and then I added the English translations later so that it'd be useful for most of my blog's readers, who don't speak Japanese (or don't speak it well). But are they still useful? It makes it harder for other people to find the tags, they aren't in alphabetical order or ( Read more... )

So, I had a student named Moeko when I taught at Suzugamine. She was kind of attentive, and at least listened when people talked and tried at her work, but she hung out with a lot of people who absolutely weren't interested in learning English at all ( Read more... )

This is dictated on my iPad so we'll see how well it works.

Last weekend, we had to go help my sister move in Madison. That wasn't so bad - after all my parents helped us move several times - but the problem was that my sister had about twice as much stuff as softlykarou and me combined. We took three car trips with my sister's and my father's cars and ( Read more... )

The first weekend in December was the JLPT/日本語能力試験, which was filled with just as much bullshit as I expected it to be. softlykarou and I took level 4, which we figured that living in Japan for three years would be able to prepare us for. And it...kind of was, in a sense. Our lack of formal schooling (well, mine, softlykarou did take some classes at university) was a ( Read more... )

Something a friend asked me this weekend made me think a bit. We were playing the Lannister Drinking Game[1], and the statement to me was that my interest in Japan began in my early teens. This was, however, completely wrong ( Read more... )