WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY! (FOR SOME INTERACTION...)

Overslept three hours. Ran to class (got there only about 5 minutes late, thank goodness). On the way, I passed a couple electric company workers on their lunch break, it looked like.

Worker: これから、学校？　(School now?)

Me: はい。(Yes.)

Worker: がんばって。(Work hard. Similar to "good luck" in English.)

Me: はい、がんばります。(Yes, I will.)

Pep talks from strangers is one thing I'll miss back in America.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the start of a new semester, Ichikawa-sensei introduced a new Thursday class schedule. For the last 40 minutes of class, native Japanese speakers (either our friends or other SatsuDai students) talk with us one-on-one about our home country, friends we've made in Sapporo, or whatever subject we happen to be practicing in class. Then, we individually evaluate ourselves (in Japanese, of course) and then our partners give suggestions for what we need to improve.

For the past two weeks, our partners were hard to come by. Most of my friends had another class or a part-time job and couldn't make it, and it seemed just as hard for my three classmates. Our teachers' solution: putting up posters asking for help from any and all students who want to participate. Slightly embarrassing for us, but the end result is worth the desperate cry for conversation partners.

Take today, for example. Two second-year girls from the cultural studies department, one third-year boy from the English department and an older man (an acquaintance of Watanabe-sensei, I believe) were assigned as our partners. We began with a warm-up of exercises from the book and, as we switched partners, we continued conversation about adjusting to Japanese life - with the goal of mastering the ーようになる grammar pattern. After the first round, most of our self-evaluations were negative. (I criticized myself for speaking so slowly, Jordan felt he needed to use polite form more, Emma was worried about not knowing enough vocabulary, and Ash jokingly said her conversation was awful.) I was surprised at how different our strengths and weaknesses were. For example, I am more comfortable with formal speech (i.e. です、ーます）but speak too slowly, and I'm jealous of Jordan, who speaks so easily even if he only uses casual form.

Eventually, we began to improve and the conversations flowed more naturally. The girls in general were more lenient, saying "That's okay" and "Take your time," whereas the boys (er, boy and man) put more emphasis on correcting our broken Japanese. Not sure if that's a gender-related difference or not.

We were nervous throughout the conversation exercise - Ash even mentioned it during one of her self-evaluations - but an hour and a half later, we all noticed our own improvements and could articulate how we had improved and what we still wanted to work on.

Thursdays just doubled on the Fun-O-Meter.

photo taken November 26, 2009

BLOG SOUNDTRACK: 嵐　「時計じかけのアンブレラ」