Taking Japanese lessons again
I have reached a point where my paltry understanding of Japanese is not enough to skate by. The nitty gritty in moving apartments, shopping online, and speaking to customer service folks in Japanese is humbling. I felt like a three-year-old who had to ask my Japanese friends for help in these “adult” routines.
The latest incident involved me ordering a piece of glass instead of an exercise bench for the kangaroo weight-lifting sessions. Sounds dumb, right? Let me explain: the glass is meant to convert said bench to a coffee table and was photographed as a bench on Amazon Japan. Didn’t I see the word “glass”, you may ask? Frankly no, because I have a bad habit of relying on pictures and skim over clusters of hard-to-read Japanese characters.
Even a simple conversation with the Japanese company who delivered the glass was impossible to decipher after the first three sentences into our dialogue. I gave up in frustration, as he didn’t speak a word of English. With my tail between my legs, I called a Japanese friend to call them on my behalf.
I joined a school in Azabu Juban where I will take one-on-one lessons with a middle-aged sensei (teacher) starting in May. Japanese for busy people II will be my text. I prefer this brand of learning materials because it has explanations in English. When I was in that first intensive course last year, the daily lessons were conducted only in Japanese and I was so confused over certain grammar structures. The kangaroo uses this same series of texts so when I flipped through his book one day, I could completely understand the stuff that I was boggled over before.
During the trial lesson with my new sensei today, I had so much fun. I forgot how interested I am in language learning. I began the lesson with a resolve to go through the pain of studying hard for the JLPT test but emerged thinking, “I am going to enjoy this!” I like absorbing practical daily life type of expressions and words. Tanoshimi (looking forward to it)…
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