Alright, so now you have an idea of the challenges faced when one starts to learn Japanese.
Next, lets look at the first syllabary, hiragana. I keep wanting to call it an alphabet, but it isn’t really because apart from the vowels, everything comes in twos. For example, か、き、く、け、こ (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko). So the vowel pattern is always the same (あ、い、う、え、お、ah, ee, uw, eh, ooh) and the first letter changes (k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r). Notice no ‘f’ sound, no ‘th’, no ‘l’, and no ‘ch’. This is one of the reasons Japanese people find English so difficult to learn.
Personally, I find the biggest difference when speaking is the use of the tongue. With English, you are almost constantly moving your tongue, whereas in Japanese, the tongue doesn’t move that much.
Try saying ‘yoroshiku’ (difficult to translate but basically means thank you, think well of me, do me a favour, nice to meet you, ….). Apart from ‘shi’, the tongue doesn’t move. Now try explaining this to elementary school students who can’t understand a word you’re saying.
One of the biggest challenges with teaching English here is getting the pronunciation right. It is a fight to get teachers to do phonics, and no matter how much we tell them, they don’t seem to grasp how important phonics is!! Sorry, gone off on a tangent there. Just one of my pet hates rearing its ugly head.
Anyway, back to hiragana: There is also a proper way of writing each hiragana, and if people see you doing it wrong, they don’t hesitate to correct you. Trust me, I’ve had complete strangers stop me writing and demonstrate the right way to write! Grrrr!!
For example, あ (a). I think most Westerners would draw the vertical bar first, like a t, then the cross bar and last the curly bit. WRONG!! First is the cross bar, then the down stroke and then the curly bit. Makes sense, right??
And then there is せ (se). My way: long down stroke, cross bar, small down stroke. ‘Proper’ way: cross bar, small down stroke, long down stroke. WTF??
Here are some others:
さ な ま き う お と ほ も
Enjoy!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Japanese Lesson 1
Oh the joys of learning Japanese! First of all, learning all the syllabaries. The Japanese use romaji (the roman alphabet); katakana, which is only for foreign words, names, etc.; and hiragana, which is for normal Japanese writing. And then there is kanji. You know, the symbols and pictures. Kind of like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but Japanese people hate it when you compare kanji to hieroglyphs!
So, before you can even start to study the language, you have to learn hiragana and katakana! There are over 10,000 kanji characters, so it is ok to let them slide a little for the time being. It is actually surprising how many you pick up without realizing it!
Anyway, here is an example:
Kanji Hiragana Katakana Romaji
萩 はぎ ハギ Hagi
Believe it or not, these are all the same thing. Ok, so you don’t usually see Hagi in katakana, but you get what I mean.
Oh, and did I mention that every kanji has at least two ways of reading it. For example, 山 can be read as either ‘yama’ or ‘san’ and means either mountain or is an honorific. It all depends on the context. Except when it comes to Mt. Fuji, which is referred to as ‘Fuji-san’ instead of ‘Fuji-yama’ for various reasons.
Place names are kind of cool, though. My ken (state) is yamaguchi (山口), which translates as ‘mouth of the mountains’ because we live right by the sea, and are surrounded by mountains. Cool, huh?
Anyway, I’m sure this is riveting stuff for you guys, so I’ll leave it there.
じゃね！
So, before you can even start to study the language, you have to learn hiragana and katakana! There are over 10,000 kanji characters, so it is ok to let them slide a little for the time being. It is actually surprising how many you pick up without realizing it!
Anyway, here is an example:
Kanji Hiragana Katakana Romaji
萩 はぎ ハギ Hagi
Believe it or not, these are all the same thing. Ok, so you don’t usually see Hagi in katakana, but you get what I mean.
Oh, and did I mention that every kanji has at least two ways of reading it. For example, 山 can be read as either ‘yama’ or ‘san’ and means either mountain or is an honorific. It all depends on the context. Except when it comes to Mt. Fuji, which is referred to as ‘Fuji-san’ instead of ‘Fuji-yama’ for various reasons.
Place names are kind of cool, though. My ken (state) is yamaguchi (山口), which translates as ‘mouth of the mountains’ because we live right by the sea, and are surrounded by mountains. Cool, huh?
Anyway, I’m sure this is riveting stuff for you guys, so I’ll leave it there.
じゃね！
Thursday, June 14, 2007
stuff that's been happening lately
Well, another week over. I guess it has been life as usual, although that isn’t saying much considering how strange it is to live here.
So anyway, on Sunday, my bank card died. I have no idea why, but somehow it got de-magnetised and the ATM machine kept spitting it out. I called my supervisor, but we couldn’t do anything until Monday. I only had 2000 yen in my wallet (about $30), and in a cash society where there are no EFTPOS transactions or credit cards, I was a little worried. OK, I was a lot worried. Sunday night I couldn’t sleep, and eventually I worried myself sick over the whole thing. This meant I took Monday off work and my supervisor and I went to the bank to try and sort it out. They told me I had to wait 10 days until I could get a new one. Luckily, I had my bank book and could withdraw enough money for the next couple of weeks.
Crisis averted.
Until I woke up on Tuesday and found myself head first over the toilet. Yay, I’ve managed to catch a stomach bug. So that was Tuesday down the drain. I ended up sleeping, studying and playing Playstation.
Wednesday I still wasn’t right, but I figured I couldn’t take another day off, so I checked my schedule and realised I was at Meirin Elementary School (the biggest elementary school in Hagi; we are talking classes of 40+ children). Not the greatest news, but it could have been worse. I went to Jo’s house and together we headed to Meirin. After sitting in the office for almost an hour (and throwing up in the staff toilets once), one of the office ladies came up to us and asked why we were there because there were no classes for us. WTF?? So off to the BOE only to find our supervisor had forgotten to tell us that we were meant to be at Hagi Higashi Junior High School instead! By this time, it was too late to go, so Jo and I ended up staying at the BOE for several hours playing snap and memory with a pack of cards. Let’s just say we were not impressed.
Thursday and Friday were only slightly better. At least I made it to the right schools. My stomach still wasn’t right, but I がんばって –ed (stuck it out) and had some good lessons.
On Saturday I went to Hiroshima with a big group of ALTs to watch baseball. My favourite team, the Softbank Hawks from Fukuoka, was playing the Hiroshima Carps. It was a really good game, especially because the Hawks won – よしあー！
I caught the shinkansen (bullet train) back to Yamaguchi that afternoon – it was great. I was on the super express which travels around 250km/hr. That night I went out in Hagi with Matt, but neither of us were up to drinking, so we basically chatted for a couple of hours, met some random Japanese people and talked to them then went home around midnight. Tame night, huh?
Sunday was nice because I did sweet F.A. Caught up on sleep, cleaned the house a little and watched DVDs. I don’t think I even left the house. Sometimes you just need to forget that you are in a foreign country. I’ve had days where I only speak Japanese, and days where I can’t stand the sight of anything Japan!
Here’s hoping this week is going to be better :)
So anyway, on Sunday, my bank card died. I have no idea why, but somehow it got de-magnetised and the ATM machine kept spitting it out. I called my supervisor, but we couldn’t do anything until Monday. I only had 2000 yen in my wallet (about $30), and in a cash society where there are no EFTPOS transactions or credit cards, I was a little worried. OK, I was a lot worried. Sunday night I couldn’t sleep, and eventually I worried myself sick over the whole thing. This meant I took Monday off work and my supervisor and I went to the bank to try and sort it out. They told me I had to wait 10 days until I could get a new one. Luckily, I had my bank book and could withdraw enough money for the next couple of weeks.
Crisis averted.
Until I woke up on Tuesday and found myself head first over the toilet. Yay, I’ve managed to catch a stomach bug. So that was Tuesday down the drain. I ended up sleeping, studying and playing Playstation.
Wednesday I still wasn’t right, but I figured I couldn’t take another day off, so I checked my schedule and realised I was at Meirin Elementary School (the biggest elementary school in Hagi; we are talking classes of 40+ children). Not the greatest news, but it could have been worse. I went to Jo’s house and together we headed to Meirin. After sitting in the office for almost an hour (and throwing up in the staff toilets once), one of the office ladies came up to us and asked why we were there because there were no classes for us. WTF?? So off to the BOE only to find our supervisor had forgotten to tell us that we were meant to be at Hagi Higashi Junior High School instead! By this time, it was too late to go, so Jo and I ended up staying at the BOE for several hours playing snap and memory with a pack of cards. Let’s just say we were not impressed.
Thursday and Friday were only slightly better. At least I made it to the right schools. My stomach still wasn’t right, but I がんばって –ed (stuck it out) and had some good lessons.
On Saturday I went to Hiroshima with a big group of ALTs to watch baseball. My favourite team, the Softbank Hawks from Fukuoka, was playing the Hiroshima Carps. It was a really good game, especially because the Hawks won – よしあー！
I caught the shinkansen (bullet train) back to Yamaguchi that afternoon – it was great. I was on the super express which travels around 250km/hr. That night I went out in Hagi with Matt, but neither of us were up to drinking, so we basically chatted for a couple of hours, met some random Japanese people and talked to them then went home around midnight. Tame night, huh?
Sunday was nice because I did sweet F.A. Caught up on sleep, cleaned the house a little and watched DVDs. I don’t think I even left the house. Sometimes you just need to forget that you are in a foreign country. I’ve had days where I only speak Japanese, and days where I can’t stand the sight of anything Japan!
Here’s hoping this week is going to be better :)
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
The weekend
Ok, this is the last post I can be bothered writing today, so make sure you read all of 4 of them!
So 2 weeks ago I managed to make a new Japanese friend, and I bumped into this person in our bar, No Side while we were both drinking with friends. I went over and we got chatting - mostly in Japanese (I was drunk enough to be relaxed enough to talk, but not so drunk I couldn't put sentences together; thats a fine line, I've discovered), and we agreed to go fishing together on an island just off the coast of Hagi.
So on Saturday 4 of us - me, my friend and another friend and the bar man from No Side - went to the island and spent the day fishing and drinking. I managed to catch 4 fish. It was really fun! Late in the afternoon we headed back to Hagi and went to a place called Honmamon, which is a great little place to eat. There is nothing equivalent in NZ, so it is kind of hard to describe, but basically, you sit at the counter and talk to the women who run it while the cook your food. Also, there are different dishes on the counter, and you can pick and choose off those for free.
Anyway, we took our fish in and they cooked them for us in about 4 different styles. Delicious!! We then drank some more and finally we all went home. I had been in bed about 10 minutes when I got a call from Paul (another Hagi ALT), ordering me into town to make up numbers at another bar. How could I refuse? So I headed back into town and met some other Japanese people - yay, more friends! - and drank some more. We finally left that bar around 2am. Paul was doubling me on my bike as we were heading back to his place and then I was going on from there. Except, we decided to make a quick detour past our favourite bar (yup, No Side, again) for one more drink. No Side was absolutely packed, and so we ended up talking to random people. One guy insisted on showing us all his tattoos! I finally made my excuses and snuck home around 3am.
I don't want to talk about Sunday. Let's just say I made my way over to Pauls place around midday for a cooked breakfast brunch thing, then crawled home and did absolutely nothing. What a weekend!! :)
So 2 weeks ago I managed to make a new Japanese friend, and I bumped into this person in our bar, No Side while we were both drinking with friends. I went over and we got chatting - mostly in Japanese (I was drunk enough to be relaxed enough to talk, but not so drunk I couldn't put sentences together; thats a fine line, I've discovered), and we agreed to go fishing together on an island just off the coast of Hagi.
So on Saturday 4 of us - me, my friend and another friend and the bar man from No Side - went to the island and spent the day fishing and drinking. I managed to catch 4 fish. It was really fun! Late in the afternoon we headed back to Hagi and went to a place called Honmamon, which is a great little place to eat. There is nothing equivalent in NZ, so it is kind of hard to describe, but basically, you sit at the counter and talk to the women who run it while the cook your food. Also, there are different dishes on the counter, and you can pick and choose off those for free.
Anyway, we took our fish in and they cooked them for us in about 4 different styles. Delicious!! We then drank some more and finally we all went home. I had been in bed about 10 minutes when I got a call from Paul (another Hagi ALT), ordering me into town to make up numbers at another bar. How could I refuse? So I headed back into town and met some other Japanese people - yay, more friends! - and drank some more. We finally left that bar around 2am. Paul was doubling me on my bike as we were heading back to his place and then I was going on from there. Except, we decided to make a quick detour past our favourite bar (yup, No Side, again) for one more drink. No Side was absolutely packed, and so we ended up talking to random people. One guy insisted on showing us all his tattoos! I finally made my excuses and snuck home around 3am.
I don't want to talk about Sunday. Let's just say I made my way over to Pauls place around midday for a cooked breakfast brunch thing, then crawled home and did absolutely nothing. What a weekend!! :)
More pics from Kobe
Looking down on the roller coaster from the ferris wheel. Kobe, Tuesday night.
Looking down on Kobe from Mt. Rokko (night and day)
Arima, a small town outside of Kobe. Jen, Starsky, Simon, Matt and Sharona.
Jen hiding in the cupboard at the hostel we stayed at Sunday night. She managed to scare the crap out of Starsky :) Kobe
So as I mentioned in a previous post, I went to Kobe for a seminar Sunday to Wednesday. The hotel we were staying at was bloody luxurious! About $NZ150 a night, and man it showed! Anyway, the seminar part was boring for the most part - discussions and workshops and speeches and stuff. Unfortunately, most of it was useless to me because as a one-shot ALT I don't have a base school that I teach at regularly, and EVERYTHING at the seminar was aimed at ALTs with base schools. You can understand why I got frustrated at having to attend the thing when I could have been hanging out with my kids.
Ah well, aside from the work stuff, the trip was pretty awesome. Went out on the town Monday and Tuesday nights. Monday night was ridiculous. A group of 8 of us went to a really nice pub with jazz and imported beer, only to be told they had run out of hamburger buns after we had all ordered one and was bread ok. We had no problem with bread, except they only had 6 slices. WTF?? Also, they had sold out of most of the better imported beer. Needless to say, we weren't impressed. Town was awesome, though. Saw yakuza and drunk business men, and everywhere we went there were ALTs singing, walking, drinking - good times. On the Tuesday, I went to an amusement park with 2 other Yamaguchi ALTs for the (late) evening. We went on a ferris wheel and a roller coaster and played claw games and stuff. It was a great night! Ok, enough writing, just look at the pictures:
Ah well, aside from the work stuff, the trip was pretty awesome. Went out on the town Monday and Tuesday nights. Monday night was ridiculous. A group of 8 of us went to a really nice pub with jazz and imported beer, only to be told they had run out of hamburger buns after we had all ordered one and was bread ok. We had no problem with bread, except they only had 6 slices. WTF?? Also, they had sold out of most of the better imported beer. Needless to say, we weren't impressed. Town was awesome, though. Saw yakuza and drunk business men, and everywhere we went there were ALTs singing, walking, drinking - good times. On the Tuesday, I went to an amusement park with 2 other Yamaguchi ALTs for the (late) evening. We went on a ferris wheel and a roller coaster and played claw games and stuff. It was a great night! Ok, enough writing, just look at the pictures:
Sharona, Matt, me and Jen on Mt. Rokko, Sunday night.
We were looking for sheep, unfortunately, all we managed to find was Starsky and Simon.
Oh, yeah, feel the love!
Me in a small town outside of Kobe enjoying a foot spa while talking to old ladiesChild labour
About 2 weeks ago, now I was at one of my favourite schools, and on that day I found out everyone was going around to the elementary school to help clean out the pool. I couldn't miss that - it is really difficult hanging out with the kids outside of the class because most of my schools are in the middle of nowhere and I only have a limited amount of time between teaching and buses. Anyway, for once I remembered to take my camera along to document that child labour is alive and well in Japan. And pretty effective, too!
In the beginning I was helpiong these guys sweep the sludge into the middle of the pool -mmmmmm.
These are ni-nensei (13 year olds), and my favourite students.
This is Ippei. He is 3rd grade (15 years old), and my favourite kid at that school.
Some of the elementary school kids. The one in front is Ken, he is the monkey boy at school. Really cute, though.
We had way too much fun for it to feel like work!
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