Steadily - don don (どんどん）

Learning Japanese is probably the only hobby I have. From the 8th grade until my Junior year of college, I have been learning Japanese off and on. In the beginning, I really did not have the means to focus on my Japanese studies. There were no Japanese people or classes near where I lived. My parents did not support my interest so I had to make due of what I had access to like the Internet or anime. I did my best to keep myself motivated without a teacher. It was hard but I learned how to learn. It wasn't until college that I actually took a Japanese class.

Why Japanese? Don't ask me that yet. I'm still trying to figure that out. Japan is not the ideal country like many people think. Taking classes at Kansai Gaidai challenges my previous preconceptions of a more contemporary, realistic Japan. Some of my friends already can't wait to go home or don't want to come back to Japan ever. I on the other hand still feel that comfortable feeling. I'm not facing any major problems except what am I going to do with myself after Japan. Honestly, I'm having the time of life. At least five of my friends have moved out their homestay due to various reasons. My homestay family situation is probably one of the best experiences so far. My speaking partner is sweet and affable. The people I have met give me memorable moments and experiences to look back on. I really like the Kansai Gaidai program. I'm actually learning all the things I ever wanted to learn about Japan: the bad and good. This is the comparative experience I have been looking for.

The only complaints I have about my stay in Japan only centers on myself. I came here to learn Japanese and I always feel like I can never learn enough to express my feelings or thoughts naturally. Right now I'm in this train of thought that in Japan, I'm a kid. I know as much as my 7-year old host brother. I have to learn like him by asking okaasan lots of questions and making mistakes all the time. Our loving okaasan is there to teach us.

How I actually practice and learn Japanese:

1) The Kansai Gaidai program makes you take Spoken Japanese 5 times a week and you can also take Written Japanese 3 times a week. These classes are extremely useful but the problem is that they are just a class. Learning for the test doesn't encourage you to use vocab or grammar points after the test.

2) Texting in Japanese is probably the best way to practice writing in Japanese. I hate writing exercises in Written Japanese because I feel you are not learning something that will help you in daily life. When will I never need to write a personal ad in Japanese? Sending messages in Japanese to your friends is actually useful. You are also learning how to write more casually. I always tell people to correct my messages. My okaasan is very good at this. Once in awhile after dinner she takes out her cellphone and shows me what I should write.

3) My host family likes to sit at the kotatsu and watch TV together. I have gotten in the habit of doing my homework during this unless I have something really important to do. I'm starting to like Japanese TV. I'm remember the vocab from my spoken class more because I'm actually hearing it being used. Japanese commericals are my favorite to watch because sometimes they are strange but easy to understand especially the jingles. I'll never forget the word kumiawase or combination because one day I kept hearing this furniture commercial saying 'ichi, ni, san, shi! KU-MI-A-WA-SE!'

4) My DS Kanji dictionary is the best investment I bought. I already talked enough about this. I write down kanji I see on TV or on signs and look them up later. The word in the picture is a rare thrity stroke kanji that is easy to write. Its is tsuru or to cramp. 攣る. If you can see it the character has the character for 'thread' on both sides, the character for 'to say' is in the middle, and below is the character for 'hand.' Useless but fun to learn. 　


5) Translating and reading manga is another thing I'm working on. Thanks to my DS I am now able to read books. Book-Off is one of my favorite stores. It is a second hand bookstore that sells cheap books, Dvds, Cds, and video games. Right now I'm reading this sappy, romance girl's manga. It chose it primarly because it is a one-shot or a one volume manga and it was written for middle schoolers. I'm mainly doing this for vocab comprehension.


This is the manga and I can't say much about it because I only read the first pages. The art is decent I think.
I had to translate a TV manual to figure out how to copy DVDs. That was useful. Burning a CD in Japanese is called "dabbingu" FYI.

5) I still suck at conversational Japanese. Half of the time I don't know how to organize my thoughts in to a comprehensible sentence. I just remembered that in the 5th grade I had to write a diary in English in order to learn English. My ototo has to so the same thing called a sakuban to learn Japanese. So I started to write sakubans to learn how to write and hopefully speak. I have written one so far and my okaasan corrected it. While she was correcting it I was cringing on the inside trying to suppress my embarrassment but I do need the help.

Conversing is the most obvious way of improving your Japanese but these ways are somethings that help me practice....