Sam's L33t Journal

The results of my kaiwa and Japanese placement tests came in yesterday. Apparently, I'll be in Kanji Basic (tentatively, but I don't see how that could possibly turn out otherwise), Kaiwa 1, and Nihongo Jissen (Japanese in Context) 1.5 (?!). All the other shoshinsha are in the first-level class, so I'm probably going to be way in over my head.

The IES kids traditionally hang out at Y's Bar (an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink, flat-admission establishment in Makuhari Techno Garden), but the place was reserved for some corporate event. The IESers who would have gone (including myself) went to some other bar instead, on the first floor of the Carrefour. Fun evening, but annoyingly smoky. I called home for the first time since my arrival in Japan while taking a break to grab some fresh air (first time I'd had a good moment at a time when my family was awake); it was good to hear their voices again.

This morning, I decided to walk down to Shisui station in order to see the town and enjoy the beautiful weather. I stopped at the Peacock Cafe along the way for lunch. The other customers at that time were two girls from Juntendo University (a few blocks from my host family's house). Between my limited Japanese, their limited English, and my denshijisho (which seemed to impress everyone in the cafe (employees included)), we had a very nice conversation. The owner of the cafe seemed to know the girls and gave us some (free) homemade cheesecake for dessert.

In the afternoon, I visited Roppongi with Vito. Nice cafes, and some very odd shops. The Fujifilm shop/museum was especially cool.

In the evening, I went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with my host family. Very good food, although more similar to American Chinese restaurants than I had expected. I had a very interesting dessert, a sort of pudding made with soy milk and sesame, topped with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

On the way home, I had an interesting conversation with Kyoko-san on one of the finer points of English grammar (countable and uncountable nouns; the difference between "job" and "work").

When we got back, I gave my gifts from home to my host family (I didn't give them earlier because one of the IES full-years said that it was better to wait a while), a photo book titled Cleveland: Then and Now and a bottle of maple syrup from Solomon's school. I also showed Kyoko-san pictures of my home and school neighborhoods on Google Maps, and figured out how to display my host family's house as well (Google Maps takes Japanese addresses just fine, but you have to write them in kanji). Google Maps is a really amazing tool for talking about your neighborhood. Also, the new "My Maps" feature is cool; I'm making a map of locations related to my Japan trip, but it's still a work in progress.

My Japanese is improving. I'm taking the advice of Malek-san (IES director) about being more willing to talk to strangers than is the local norm. I've been trying to speak Japanese. Failing that, I've been trying to speak pidgin. I wing it with the grammar. I try not to worry / feel embarrassed about mistakes (although that can be tricky at times). I try to leverage my weakpoints into a source of humor.

I need to go over my Japanese notes tomorrow, as I've neglected those for a few days. I may stick around the house all day (for the first time since my arrival).

IES convinced Piccell to waive their phone rental fee for all IES students, which is cool.

I am able to read on the trains, which is good. I've finished two more books since arriving. I should write a book post fairly soon.

I've been too busy to work on that programming project for Liana, Duc, and Ryan's business. I may need to put that aside... I really don't have enough time to program, and our schedule doesn't allow for many opportunities to meet anymore either.

I need to get back to JPod. Audio lessons have their place in language study, and I've found JPod to be quite effective (and extremely useful since I've arrived in Japan).

To do for tomorrow:
1. Laundry
2. Upload photos
3. Update and review Japanese notes
4. JPod
5. Watch some anime?

Real classes start on Monday.

I'm a big fan of liberalviewer's videos (they're fairly insightful and a good example of some of the benefits of fair use), and I thought this was particularly interesting.