The Two Month Post

Tomorrow will be two months in Japan. That’s a long time. It means I’ve been through a fifth of my stay here. Kind of weird because I can’t get used to not saying, “I’m going to be here for 10 months.” It’s a phrase I’ve used countless times. Now it’s, “I have 8 months left.” I’ve come a long way in these two months but I still have so much to go.

The language is really hard. I’m looking forward to the day when I can read a book in Japanese. I think I can get there. I know what I have to do, memorize thousands of kanji and kanji combinations. It just takes a lot of time and effort. I have flashcards on a binder ring. Whenever I get the chance I make more. It is exhausting work, but I can already read more than I could when I got here. Reading is more important to me right now than writing, although I’m practicing that too. Writing will take much, much longer and I’ll probably need some sort of guided study as opposed to just doing it on my own. Learning several thousand characters, some with upwards of 20 strokes is no easy feat. My speaking is coming along. I try to use as many grammar patterns as I can remember. The listening is the most frustrating part. I still feel like I haven’t made any progress when it comes to understanding the teacher or my track team. I get so lost in the conversation. I can’t follow a single bit. I’m getting better at picking out spot words, but by the time I think I know what they’re talking about, they move on to a different subject. When it’s just one person, and me I can see the improvement. I’m much better at carrying on a conversation one-on-one. But the group thing is not coming along.

Besides the language I feel much better about my stay here. I have solid goals, long term and short term. It is much more satisfying to be working towards something than to just be passing time. These weekends are precious to me now, not something to be dreaded like before. I’ve found countless activities I like to do, but still mostly on my own. I’m really glad I’m with a host family. There’s an English teacher at my school from Britain and he lives by himself. I can’t imagine spending the day feeling isolated, then going home to a quiet house. At least I know I can always speak at home if I don’t get a chance at school.

Some quick news. I got two of my tests back and I didn’t do badly. I scored better than much of my class. The test are heavily curved, so the fact that I only got 32 points on the science test doesn’t matter. It was out of 40. I think they take the highest grade in each class and grade it off that. Science is where I can make the biggest improvement. I spent the first half of the test looking up kanji for oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and such. These are the kind of kanji they don’t teach you in Japanese class or in my grammar textbook. By the next text I want to be able to read all those so I can focus on the questions. It feels good to be able to do something. The only test I’m waiting for now is English, and I know I got most of those questions right.

So school is going pretty well. I have a better idea of what to do there. It is no longer just a way for me to stay occupied. Today though, is beautiful so I’m going to go to a park to have lunch. Maybe I’ll take a nap too. Then I plan to head over to the URALA shopping center. There’s a library on the fifth floor. I like to go there to read the news because they have an English newspaper. The front page every day is about the financial crisis. What a mess. But anyway, feeling better and I hope things just keep improving.