Yea, 2 posts in the same day, but they didn't fit together as one, and it helps keep away from "Never-Ending-Monster-Post" Syndrome, which has, perhaps on occasion (note: deliberate irony), affected this here blog.
So, Tsukiko and Hirotake, two of my friends here in Kobe, are off to the UK for their years abroad. Sometime... Tsukiko was supposed to leave last week and is currently in a less extreme version of the same situation my little brother is in (Last I heard he was skiing with some NATO contractors heading back from Afghanistan. In Dubai.). Less extreme in that she didn't even get out of Tokyo Narita Airport in the first place and was thus able to just go back home. To Akita. Hirotake leaves at the end of the month and is off to Birmingham (!). Bham people, please say hi should you ever bump into him. Nice to know I can see them next year when I get back to the UK.
They also gave me a very nice and rather surprising birthday present, a book called "日本人の知らない日本語" (Japanese the Japanese don't know), which is about random stuff that foreign learners discover and torment their teachers with. In other words, oddly enough pretty much exactly what we discuss in Yamamori's Japanese Grammar class...
Kinda jealous in a way, given that they get to do the whole "Year abroad right from the beginning"-thing. I wouldn't change a thing I've done here, but it would be nice if I could have started this year with my current level of Japanese...
That's not to say I don't still have about a billion miles to go. We did a practice JLPT level 1 listening test. Bigorah, that be a tricky little leprechaun, though he does have a mighty fine crock 'a gold...
Harrison-sensei (One of the Japanese-language teachers. Who's white. And from Manchester.) mentioned one of the random little targets of learning Japanese; To make the Japanese stop complimenting you on it. Hehe. Silly but true.
Do I use ellipses too often?
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Haha, your posts somehow always manage to amuse me! :D Tho I'm a bit worried at you understanding the humour in the ads now ... XD
ReplyDeleteAs to your friend who's coming to Brum, hopefully we'll bump into him after exams! ^_^
二年生のクリスティーナ ：D
The whole complimenting you on it thing is so true... it's like when people speak such good English you don't bother complimenting them cos it'd seem kind of insulting... do you ever find that? Just me?
ReplyDeleteActually, it's kinda like that in Spain. I knew I could speak Spanish properly when a) I understood people's conversations in the street when I walked past and b) when people only say "yeah, your Spanish is pretty good" after about 1 hour of talking to them XD
....however I know I couldn't understand Spanish properly when I talked to my Puerto Rican friend, my roommate's southern Spanish friend or my cuban boyfriend. All those accents are UNINTELLIGIBLE. >.<
hi thomas ,
ReplyDelete" Kinda jealous in a way, given that they get to do the whole "Year abroad right from the beginning"-thing. I wouldn't change a thing I've done here, but it would be nice if I could have started this year with my current level of Japanese..."
??? mmmm . do you mean you wouldn't mind doing the whole year abroad thing starting again with level of japanese achieved during 50% year abroad. where have you been i thought yopu were doing a whole year abroad!!!!!
do you use ellipses -- are you getting too physics -oriented or forgetting your english , I presume you mean speech brackets, dear boy. xx mom
ReplyDeleteActually, I used the correct term, an ellipsis (plural ellipses) or "dot-dot-dot" (...) is exactly what I meant to say.
ReplyDeleteTake that would-be grammar-nazi. :-)