A Japanese Day

Today was the first day I have went out in weeks because I'm in exam block now. I didn't plan on my day out to be a Japanese day, but ultimately it ended up that way, all of it happened on the way home from my day out at. Taichi (太一), Gamaliel (Mexican) and I were on the train heading home, of course I got bored, Gama was listening to music, so naturally I became annoying and started jabbering in Japanese to Taichi, very loudly because I assumed because I originally tested the area by yelling..."首を切たい!" which in English means "I want to cut throats!". It normally works on spotting if anyone is Japanese.

Nobody seemed to understand so I started having a very philosophical conversation with Taichi about life and the universe, just kidding, I began talking about I began talking about of zombies and werewolves (I actually picked up some vocabulary) but it just involved me saying "ゾンビはとてもかっこいい" which means "zombies are cool" and then Taichi replies "Why?" and then I say "僕も人の脳を食べることが大好きだから" which means "Because I also love eating people's brains" (very useful), anyway.... about halfway through the conversation this women who had been sitting next across from me and Taichi who we thought was Korean or Chinese appeared to be crying but was actually laughing, she was Japanese and she had heard all the weird, possibly psychopathic things I have said throughout the conversation! Taichi and I had only just realized that and began testing her and from then on every weird thing I said such as "狼男" which means "Werewolf", and sure enough she began laughing, you have to give her credit though, she tried so hard to maintain a persona of "cool" but we could see it. It might not seem interesting but whenever you realize someone can understand you, it's hilarious, and it was! For 5 minutes after it only involved Gama, Taichi and I saying "Oh My God, she understood us!".

The second, less embarrasing event that occured while coming home, was within 20 metres of my house I realised that there has always been a Japanese person who had a house in my street, his name escaped me but he within a few minutes of talking to him, he offered Taichi, Gama and I to cook us a real japanese meal one day in the next few weeks, which is pretty impressive and ofcourse Taichi and him were able to communicate pretty well, and because it was generic introductary stuff, I was even able to understand their conversation a bit. But hopefully this "connection" will be conveniant in the future and I want to try a real japanese meal.

Well, I better get back to studying.

My Speaking Test

Today I had my Japanese Speaking Test, basically it involved me and my Japanese teacher conversing for a few minutes pretending to organize a party for a friend called, ゆきこ. We had to discuss location, food, entertainment, decorations, presents, all the while considering the cost, fun and availability. I walked in and was given a sheet of paper with what I had to talk about in and was given 10 minutes to write any Japanese I think I would need and i was able to look at it throughout the entire conversation and the result was a...

you should the what a D feels like if it was a building.

It was one of the most horrible experiences of my life, I even forgot how to say "What is your favorite color", apparently my confidence in speaking is horrible as well. I asked for a copy of the recording and hopefully in a few weeks I'll be able to post it on this blog for all of you to hear someone crash and burn more than the Hindenburg Disaster.

imagine this, but 100 times worse.

My final test is next week and its going to be a writing test, I have to write about the differences between Australian celebrations and Japanese celebrations, if you got any advice to give for me about the writing task please post it in the comments.

Well, I better get back to studying.

Colours

I found this very convenient document from, Nihongoup, where you can Learn Japanese the Fun Way, check out their website, you can download the this document really easily in their blog, which is really interesting.

Japanese Color Names

Publish at Scribd or explore others: fun colours

My Listening Exam

I'm not going to try and make you believe that I'm amazingly gifted and find Japanese really easy, I don't, I love learning it but it doesn't mean its not a challenge for me. In saying that though, it won't change the fact that I'm cringing right now at how badly my listening exam went today, the entire class listened to a few minutes of a very crudely edited cassette tape done by my Japanese teacher and another Japanese teacher which involved them talking very slowly about "Celebrations", they mentioned (luckily in katakana) New Year's Eve, Christmas, Valentine's Day and even White Day,but when it came to the some certain vocabulary i was left in the dark. So I ask these questions to you.

• What is おぞうに?
• What is おとしだま?

If you could leave the answer in the comments that would be great.

I'll post up up the results from that test as soon as i get it. My next exam is my speaking, and my task is:

"You must speak for a few minutes to a friend about organizing a party for a common friend, you must organize arrangements such as food, decorations, etc."

We'll, time to get back to my studying.

My Week of Kanji - Chosen Kanji

Today I chose my Kanji which I'm going to study during my holidays, I looked through about 20 websites and finally found one that looked accurate and I could print, and thanks to a very helpful "How to" Google search I am able to show them on my blog so here they are (ありがとうございます).

JLPT 4 Kanji

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Kanji Japanese

If you think the JLPT 4 Kanji list is long, just try out JLPT 3 Kanji list.


JLPT 3 Kanji

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Kanji Japanese

So, those 2 sets of Kanji are what I'm going to be learning over my holiday break. more updates on my week of Kanji are coming soon (first I have to do my exams).

Weekly Progress

Being sick this weekend (風邪を引いた。）made it pretty difficult to concentrate while studying stuff I learned during the week.

School

This week we concentrated on comparing which was pretty hard (for me) cause there are many ways of comparing several things.

1. How is A compared to B?

日本語：（Aは）　Bと　くらべて　｜どうですか　or 　どう思いますか｜

2. What is more (adjective), A or B

日本語：Aと　Bと　｜どっちのほうが　or　 どっちが｜adjective｜ですか　or　と思いますか｜

Favorite Example

日本語：ピザとマックとどっちが美味しいと思うの？

English: what do you think is more delicious, pizza or mac (McDonald's)?

Answer: both!

Why am i studying this? you may ask, because next week i have to speak for few minutes with my 日本語の先生　about organizing a party for a friend for my speaking test.


At Home

I revised adjectives yesterday (while attempting to stay conscience) on Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide, very helpful. I also tried to catch up on all my Vocab Lists on iKnow, today i learned some animals and some adjectives so luckily i now know the very useful phrase..

日本語：このキャメルはとても失礼

English: This camel is very rude

dam, if only i could describe this camel in Japanese....

But anyway.... tommorow I'm going to take a day off my study of Japanese because apparently i have other subjects that i study at school. So that's all for now.

　

My Exams

my exams are next week and for homework i had to write a diary in Japanese entry about anything.... so, i wrote about my exams (that took imagination). For my first attempt i only used a dictionary to remember stroke order for some Kanji and the result was..... 糞！





after i finished it i then gave it to a real Japanese person, and this is how it turned out
(太一ありがとうございます）.




Oh well, i have to get back to my 勉強 for my exams, that's it for now.