Nihongo wo Hanashimashou

I awoke to the sound of a woman speaking. Usually when there is a female voice in the apartment, it is from a staff member. Considering the time of day it was, there was little chance that the owner of the voice would be any other. After going to check, I discovered that the cleaning lady had at long last came. We were especially looking forward to her arrival due to the fact that we had amassed a large quantity of trash over the weekend that needed to be removed from the area. As the cleaning lady performed her duties, I prepared for my journey to the school. Today was the first day of Japanese class.

Once I arrived at the campus, I made my way to the classroom. Upon entering the room, I noted the approximately fifteen seats arranged in a semi-circle formation. At the desk stood the teacher who was rapidly sorting through various papers. I chose to sit in the center seat as to gain a better perspective of the teacher and the board. Without saying a word, the teacher continued to sort through her papers until the class began.

As could be expected, the teacher began speaking purely in Japanese. It came as somewhat of a shock to me that I could actually understand what she was saying, especially since such had not been the case most of the time for the week I have been in Japan. We were given a class schedule and a review sheet. After we finished filling out an information sheet, the teacher allowed us to leave. I noticed that I felt a lot more in control of Japanese while in a classroom setting. This is probably because everything is tweaked to fit the particular level that the class is in, while actual Japanese conversation uses terms and phrases that one can learn only by actually conversing in Japanese. Despite my comfort, I went back into the real world.

Today was a special day. It was the day that I would finally get to meet my speaking partner Saki. Unfortunately, our meeting was scheduled to be at 1:00 - it was 11:30 when I got out of class. As I passed by the student lounge, I noticed my friend Kouichirou (the proper spelling) sitting there. With nothing else to do, I decided to intrude upon him for company. After sitting for awhile, he got up to go somewhere after asking me to watch his belongings. After a few minutes passed, he returned with his friend Mariko (the second Mariko I've met so far) with some food. Eventually, another friend, Yoshie, joined us. From there, we discussed things about cell phones and cultures. As I discovered, Japanese cell phones have the capability to transfer contact information via infrared light. I also had the chance to explain the difference between the term 'despite' and 'in spite' which was a fairly interesting puzzle to piece together. Soon enough, the time of my meeting came.

My first task was to make my first call to a person in Japan. Fortunately, the process was not to different than in America. The dial tone, however, was much softer and more playful than the harsh and cutting sound of the American tone. After confirming a meeting place and meeting there, I, Saki, and her friend Suzuka made our way to the cafeteria. Thus far, the only thing that I have eaten in the cafeteria has been udon noodles. This was because I did not know what to call anything else nor where to get each particular item. This time, I actually had a guide who could help me. I'm not really sure what I ended up getting, but it was good enough to get again if I ever figure out what it was.

We elected to eat outside where there was far less people and noise. Since my conversational Japanese and Saki's conversational English was not that good, we had to piece together broken concepts in order to communicate. We were soon joined by Suzuka's speaking partner, a Chinese girl from Canada who spoke Chinese, Japanese, and English, who went by the name Eilene. After some time passed, Saki produced a book from her bag that provided translations for common phrases. From there, I proceded to point out many of the oddities that the book had and explain why saying things in the presented way would be strange. After about two hours, Saki had to retire to the library to study for her political science test.

I returned to the dorm to begin some laundry. After awhile, I joined one of my roommates on a trip to the grocery store. This store was different than the one that I went to before, but still much smaller than the ones in America. The roommate sponsoring the trip was my least favorite of my roommates. After talking with him throughout the trip, I was able to confirm that my dislike toward him came only while he is drunk. While he is sober, all of his distasteful childish qualities tend to regress and I can hold a normal conversation with him.

One of my roommates, Daan (Holland name), got in trouble for hooking up his Playstation to the TV. The reasoning behind not doing so was because previous residents have damaged the TV connections from pulling out the cords wrong as well as the fact that games can deprive others of watching TV. No one in the apartment particularly minds others playing games, so that just leaves the liability issue. If we are to play any more games, Daan will have to take the case to the CIE dorm supervisor and get permission. His argument is that if he were to damage any of the other equipment that he would have to pay for it and the TV should be no different.

After completing my laundry, I worked on my Japanese review sheet so that I would not have to worry about so much work later. With a lot of free time left and most of my roommates going to get wasted, I decided to watch a movie that I brought with me. After that, I typed this blog.