So, you know how for the first week or so of classes in Australia, you're not actually expected to do anything? Japan is not like that.
First up today I had Japanese. There's only three of us in the class, me and two American guys, which I think will probably be good, but also harder because it will be pretty obvious if we're slacking off. Our teacher is adorable, she's fairly young and has this habit of repeating things in a funny voice after she says them. I kind of love her already. The class is all in Japanese but she gave us the whole semester's textbook as a massive handout, and everything in there is in English (luckily, because I'm still about sketchy about how much I actually understood). We had to do self-introductions and ask each other questions, and then we had to do a revision test to see what grammar we need to catch up on to be up to the right level. There was a few things I hadn't studied before, so I need to go over them on the weekend. American guy Chaz had been in level 2 before this, so he'd covered everything, but Omar hadn't done some stuff - kind of like the opposite to what I had. I still suck at transitive and intransitive verbs, by the way. We were given a book of the vocab we had to learn each week for our vocab tests - our first test is tomorrow. There's not that many words for the first test, probs about 20-25 but we need to know the kanji as well. I'm not really sure what sort of format it's in either, I'm pretty sure it won't be Elise-sensei style where you just have to write the hiragana/English - more like those scary ones she started doing through semester two with the grammar and the confusingness.
After class I met up with Liam for coffee. We were going to go to this "talking in foreign" club thing but apparently it doesn't start until next week. While we were waiting to see if the club was on, I went to this really scary toilet. You have to like swipe your hand over a sensor for it to open but then it wouldn't close!!! I tried running in and out but that did nothing, and hitting it didn't help, and Liam tried swiping it for me and then running away really fast. In the end I got the sensor to work (not sure how), but I was really scared I wouldn't be able to get back out! Obviously, I did though, as I'm not posting this from the loo at uni.
We met up with Vincent and... the really nice blonde American girl whose name I forget? Nadine? Regina? Something like that. Liam went off to smart people class with them and I went to "Seminar in Japanese Culture and Language", which is the class that's for people in level 3, and all in Japanese. The teacher doesn't actually speak any English at all, but the Japanese she spoke was perfect for my level. There's only one other guy in that class - Danny from Ohio, who seems nice.
This brings up a funny point that I've been thinking about though, right. Like, if you're speaking only in a foreign language your personality seems different. One time I watched this thing with Nino speaking English in a press conference and he wasn't cocky or smug at all, he was really shy and sweet. It's sort of like that with me and Japanese, I think. Not that I'm a smug-face in English or probs particularly sweet in Japanese, more like a shy and dumb person. I'm not used to being shy and dumb, it's weird for me. The point being Danny from Ohio seems nice, but who knows, if you talked to him in English he might be a real prick. He seems nice though.
Anyway, this class was awesome but hard. She showed us this old school anime called Sazaki-san or something and we had to guess the relationships between the family members and discuss why we thought that. Then we had to talk about the difference in family relationships between Japan, Australia and America, like who sits at the head of the table and why - like whether it's based on age or money or what, and then why we thought it was like that for that particular culture. We had to talk about why people are leaving home earlier than they used to and that sort of stuff, and ended up sort of talking about Confucianism and gender roles... which I had no idea my limited Japanese could stretch so far. It was so hard to keep up concentration to talk about this kind of thing in Japanese for 90 minutes but I think for me, who is scared of talking in Japanese usually, it was really good to build up my confidence and whatnot. Am not so confident that I understood the course curriculum though, except for the part where we watch Totoro a lot.
After school, Kathryn and I were going to go to the Edo museum, but because I have my test tomorrow we decided to meet at the karaoke near our station instead, because we hadn't tried it. It is the best karaoke, it's only 200 yen an hour before 6pm (or 700 yen from 10am-6pm!), and the acoustics are amazing! Like, we actually sounded good! Plus the guy did a mean coffee float. Of course we ended up staying until 6, and then we went grocery shopping. I was going to cook dinner tonight but started to panic about having no time to study for my test, so instead we went to Gutso so we could study and smoke with the free refill drinks bar. Tip to anyone ever going to Gutso - do not try the iced tea, it is revolting. I only learned like 5 words but maybe I learned more by osmosis at karaoke. My Japanese teacher doesn't think karaoke counts as Japanese study, but I have improved at reading already! Plus, one of my vocab words was on the desserts menu at Gutso, so it was a good thing I ordered that parfait!
Anyway, the plan for tomorrow is to get up early and try catching the bus to school. Hopefully I'll get there early enough to learn the other 20 or so words for my vocab test! I am really not going to have time for slacking off from hereon in, I think!
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