Comments | expatsjapan: typos im sure.

suga_bay_bee in expatsjapan

typos im sure.

Sep 13, 2006 22:54

im currently a rotary exchange student living in fukuchiyama kyoto. i`ve only been here about a month... but i have questions:

1. my host mother spent a very long time trying to get the message across of saying "unzari"/"taikutsu(?)" ..is ok at home... but with other people.. i shouldn`t say it. i was confused as to what to say instead.. ( ( Read more... )

learning japanese, exchange programs, culture shock

Comments 27

(The comment has been removed)

Re: A couple of suggestions... suga_bay_bee September 13 2006, 14:44:46 UTC

....
the english teachers are helpful.. sorta. ((the ones in the club.. not the ones that teach in my class. english 2 teacher ignores me... writing teacher does actually ask me questions and if i have any comments about sentences and if the meanings are the same...etc. basically im like the 2nd in command. XD ))

i don`t mind that teaching method... but when i said.. ignore... they don`t even talk to me. minus.. like.. 2-3 sensei. no asking if i understand , or trying to make it a bit easier to grasp with the language barrier.

jynnantonnyx28 September 13 2006, 14:40:45 UTC

Wow, big post. Where to start ( ... )

jynnantonnyx28 September 13 2006, 14:41:06 UTC

ran out of room!!

s long as you make sure it's okay with your host family, exploring is a great idea. I did it a lot in Tokyo. I just had a Lonely Planet guide and I'd look around places. Normally I wouldn't stray too far from the train stations so I'd know I wouldn't get lost.

Wow! I'm impressed that you chose to go to Japan with no formal language experience :P I was lucky - I'd graduated from high school before I left so I had a fairly solid Japanese level, I could basically communicate stuff I had to - but not well. I saw others who didn't have this kind of experience suffer a lot. japanese is a great site for general Japanese question and generally everyone is really nice. And the plain form of "to have" is MOTSU, the past is MOTTA, and the present (as in I have something) is MOTTEIRU ( ... )

suga_bay_bee September 13 2006, 14:49:03 UTC

have a ketai?

email? XD

galaxiegalaxy@ezweb.ne.jp

suga_bay_bee September 13 2006, 14:52:42 UTC

and "unzari" was what i found in my compact (book, not electronic) dictionary... which i thought meant `boring`

on the electronic one here... it looks like it`s alot more offensive... o.O perhaps?

Thread 10

ohayosanantonio September 13 2006, 15:03:09 UTC

Since everyone else seems to have fielded your questions, I thought I'd throw in that moiteru becomes motte. If you currently have it (having, kinda), it's "motte iru." Unsure of spelling, but not having is "mottainai." This is a very useful verb indeed -sagenod-

Good luck :)

suga_bay_bee September 13 2006, 15:08:18 UTC

is there some sort of chart form of all this?
ive gotten confused.

suga_bay_bee September 13 2006, 15:08:41 UTC

*of the verb ...moiteru

jynnantonnyx28 September 13 2006, 15:34:53 UTC

yeah, but the best way is getting a text book in my opinion. Basically there are three types of verbs. Each different type is conjugated differently. It's easy once you recognise the pattern :P Try googling for "japanese verbs". I learnt the different verb names as "group 1, group 2 and group 3" but they're also referred to as "ichi-dan", "ni-dan" and "san-dan" (they're the Japanese words for the verbs)

Thread 9

murasaki_kaze September 13 2006, 15:31:18 UTC

You've gotten some really good advice so far about everything you've asked about, but here's a little more. XD ( ... )

evilbluecat September 13 2006, 16:09:09 UTC

Hello. Everyone has pretty much answered all of your questions but when I was in japan I hung out a lot with other exchange students. There was one other at my school and another in a different one. It was nice to be able to talk to people who were in the same situation. Do you know anyone else from rotary near your school? I also went to the English club after schoool. I met a lot of cool people there who were willing to help me out. Also if you bring cool American stuff to class the students love looking at them ( ... )

saikou_dani September 13 2006, 22:20:50 UTC

When I was there as an exchange student there weren't any other English-speakers in my school (besides ALTs who were there through JET to teach) and so I spent a lot of my first few months feeling lonely and bored. I didn't speak Japanese at all so it was hard for me to make friends. Eventually I started picking it up a little - mostly by trying to talk to my host mom while using a dictionary that I couldn't read because I bought it in Japan so there were lots of kanji. Once I could converse in Japanese I started going out more (karaoke, purikura, etc) and that's how I made friendships that I still maintain now, five years later ( ... )