Well, there aren’t really any whales there, but the Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium does have some really spectacular whale sharks in their enormous tanks for public display. I saw them this past weekend, when I spent the day with a group of other Japanese language students from the Osaka YMCA Gakuin on a field trip to [...]
Homeward bound. I’m on my way from Japan to visit my family in Oklahoma for the holidays. Even though I usually avoid traveling on major holidays like the plague, this year I decided to forgo my usual concerns and make a surprise trip. I was able to travel in real lux this time around, as [...]
Today (2008-10-08) was an auspicious day, as my Japanese language class graduated from the 初級 (beginning level) class to the 中級 (intermediate level) one. After having had a couple of weeks off to decompress and prepare, the day started with an introduction to the faculty for the intermediate level course. Some of the instructors are [...]
Learning a foreign language is hard. I studied French for several years, including while I lived and worked in France, and that taught me how important it is to always keep going. But nothing has taught me perseverance in quite the same degree as learning Japanese. I’m currently studying Japanese full-time at the YMCA Japanese Language Institute in Osaka. It’s a fantastic program, but I’m not sure that any system can fully prepare a westerner for learning an ideographic language: you have to just jump in the deep end and keep your head above water.
