This is how I spend my time.

This week marked a major milestone in my Japanese speaking ability. I have been studying my ass off for months now, and just in the last few days, some amazing things have happened. The most surprising has been that suddenly, I have become the designated speaker when out with my friends. Whenever we encounter a hurdle that requires a dialogue in Japanese, I find myself being pushed to the front of the group while being cued "Gail, ask this guy about......" or "Find out how...." This is a new development that makes me proud, but also a little scared. It's a lot of pressure.

Then, last Wednesday I went out with four of my students to an izakaya (bar) after class. Yuri, Miku, Misa and Asami are all friends in their twenties who decided to chip in on a weekly private English lesson together. The are beginner level students, but not afraid to make mistakes, which makes them very easy to teach. They will just throw every word they know at you until they have made their point. The opposite is true with many adult students who refuse to utter a word until they have double checked the correctness in their electronic dictionary. I like these girls because they are enthusiastic, up for anything, and damn good note takers. They are more interested in being able to communicate that being right, and I share their philosophy.

I've gone out with students before, but I usually have either Justine (fellow teacher who is near fluent) or Mio (Bi-lingual receptionist) to translate when times get rough. This night, I was on my own and had to really stretch my brain. I spoke in BUSTED Japanese for about two hours. I mixed my tenses, screwed up my word order and acted out several words, but in the end we were communicating and having fun. I confused them a few times with sentences like:
"Last weekend, I will go on a date."
"It was having fun."
"We maybe go again soon or later."

They seemed to get the gist despite my tense butchering and asked questions in broken English to find out more:
"How many years does he have?"
"How good is his face?"
"He is tall or short next to you?"

By far the highlight of the evening was when I realized the last train was leaving soon and asked the waiter for our check (Okanjo kudasai). He looked at me blankly, but then when Miku said exactly the same thing he hurried off to grab the bill. I said in Japanese "I said that! He didn't understand me!" Then Yuri said in English without hesitating "I know, he's crazy." I just taught them the word crazy earlier that evening; it nearly brought a tear to my eye.

At the end of the evening I had a splitting headache and was mentally exhausted. I don't think I have ever been mentally exhausted before. Physically and emotionally, yes, but this was probably the hardest I have ever thought for an extended period of time. When I got home I could barely get the key in the door. I took two tylenol and laid on the couch with a pillow over my head. The girls are coming over for dinner on Friday so the brain's going to have to run another marathon.

My study schedule isn't so slack on any other day for that matter. I am taking the Japanese Level Proficiency Test (level 4) in 5 weeks and still have a lot of ground to cover. I took a practice test with my tutor two weeks ago and BOMBED it, but at least I know where the gaps are now. I think I may have registered for the test prematurely before understanding the extent of the curriculum, but my goal is to at least fail it respectably.

A few days ago I bought My Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS and I think it just may be the tool to get me there. My weekly study regimen is this:
50 Kanji (able to recognize, know the meaning and write in the correct stroke order)
2 chapters in my text book Japanese for Busy People (about 10 pages)
3 audio lessons in Pimsleur Japanese II (30 minutes each, I listen to them twice)
At least 5 hours of drilling and practice using the DS program

This week I noticed I can write at almost normal speed using the kana (hiragana and katakana). A page in my text book now takes about 20 minutes. It used to take over an hour. I've been told my handwriting is great, but I've also been told that I speak Japanese very well and that I look just like Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ so I take it with a grain of salt.

An exercise from my text book Japanese for Busy People,
I'm only moderately busy so it's only moderately effective.

I feel pretty good about the Hiragana and the Katakana at this point. I arrived already knowing Romanji (roman letters) so that makes three out of four alphabets done. Unfortunately, it's the fourth one that has more than 8,000 characters and prevents me from reading most things. I have been paying attention to the kanji around me, looking for the ones that I already know and to try to notice a pattern in ones I don't and gather their meaning that way. The best way I've found to recognize them is to associate them with a familiar picture. Then, the kanji will pop out at you wherever you go and you can start to guess what it might mean depending on where you see it.

Joe and Liz and I played this game in Shikoku when we had maps noted only in Kanji. The following nonsense was uttered pretty much verbatim in the car "OK, we're looking for a sign with three characters. The first one looks like a chest of drawers with a crooked vase on top. The second one looks like a diving board over a whirlpool and the third one looks like a tall man speaking into a short microphone."

It's kind of like looking for animal shapes in the clouds, but instead of lying on your back in a field relaxing, you are lost in a city of 27 million and are surrounded my a few thousand different clouds at any given moment. The sign below is a train station name. The four large characters at the top are kanji. The six smaller characters below are hiragana (these I can read!). They both say "Kita Narashino" which is the name of a town close by where some of my friends live.
Take a look at the Kanji and let's see if your imagination is as twisted as mine.
Don't forget: Click to zoom.

Can you see what I see?

Character 1: Nazi soldier marching away from an overgrown coat hanger
Character 2: A close up of a female robot wearing fake eyelashes
Character 3: Viking war ship
Character 4: A man selling a large waffle iron

First the Kanji in red at the top:
1. Small ikea bookshelf
2. 2 toothbrushes making a quick exit out a window (notice the movement lines)
3. A barbershop pole sliding down a mountain
4. Tiki monster pinata

Now for the first three characters in green (the rest in green are kana)
1. The Pringles man screaming
2. An old TV with rabbit ears broadcasting an image of the Union Jack
3. A woman adjusting the cushions on a folding chair

And if you think that's funny, check out what I found in my basic English adult text book the other day. I think Dr. Dre might be co-authoring to make ends meet. First, in chapter one, this is the illustration used to demonstrate first and last names. Look at the depiction of the fans in line. Awesome, and fairly accurate.


Then check out the topic for unit 4! Keep in mind, the first three units started with a question too. They were: How are you today? What's the weather like? How much is it?
And now, behold Unit 4:

WTF?!?!?