Survival Japanese

Hajime mashite! Watashi no nama`e wa Anna desu. Nihon ga suki desu. Amerika kara kimashita. Yokoshiru onegai shimas.

(How do you do? My name is Anna. I like Japan. Nice to meet you.)

Japanese, while being a very difficult language, is incredibly interesting. There are two alphabets used to spell out words, Katakana and Hiragana, and a set of characters called Kanji, which have meaning on their own.

Confused yet?

I am too. But it`s all starting to make sense now because of my lovely teachers, Hayashi-sensei and Kawamura-sensei. I am in J3, the beginner class, or the baka (stupid) class, as we fondly call ourselves. Our constant cries of Watashi wa baka desu! (I am stupid!) can be heard at any time of the day, on the train, in the streets, anywhere. (Ususally followed by an enthusiastic shout of DEUTSCHLAND! from our loud-and-proud German friends.)

In this first week I have made use of the simple phrases Arigato gozaimas (thank you very much) and sumi masen (excuse me). I greet my classmates in the morning with ohiyo and bid my teachers farewell with sionara. Slowly, but surely, I am using more and more Japanese in my everyday speaking.

Being immersed in the culture really helps too. While English is a prominent part of said culture here in Japan (much like Spanish is in my home state of Texas) not everybody can speak it, I have to apologize to people I run into in the streets or hallway, order off-campus meals, and try to understand what`s going on when strangers ask me where the trash can is (that episode was not my finest moment. It mainly consisted of me staring blankly at the woman, trying to remember how to say I don’t speak Japanese until someone else asked me in English. But after the embarassment I felt like I had survived some great battle and was quite happy that I didn`t insult anyone.)

I have to rely on my friends in J2 and J1 (the kids who weren`t cool or baka enough to be in J3) to help me translate at times, but they`re willing and I`m learning.

So while I`m nowhere near fluent (I can`t even say compound sentences yet) I`m learning at a quick, do-or-die pace in an enviroment that forces me to interact with incredibly friendly people in their own language.

So much better than Spanish class.

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