Haz vs Washer

Today, I translated the eight modes on my washing machine. Until now, I'd only ever used two: normal and gentle. And none of the others were in my kanji phrasebook, so I rolled up my sleeves, copied them onto a post-it, and set down with the online dictionary I use.

If I know the reading, I can use that to narrow it down. Otherwise it comes down to stroke numbers and the radicals that make up the symbol. However, one unfortunate side effect of living with a math major is that I've slowly lost the ability to count properly, leading to some confusing translations.

Japanese lesson of the day: The kanji for "dry" and the kanji for "virginal" are one stroke apart. My washing machine does not, in fact, have a "virginal" option.

It's that clean.

You're welcome. Now I need to go wash my dirty, dirty laundry.

Anecdotes from Japan: Slang for genitalia, aka Why you should always have a dictionary

So, even though the OS is in Japanese, my denki jisho (electronic dictionary) and I are inseparable. It has JtE, EtJ, Kanji lookup, and various other wonderful features that I don't understand how to use yet.

It basically looks like a DS. Mine is sans stylus.

It's good for deciphering things in a grocery store and on various storefronts, but not much use in conversation, as that moves quickly and most people (in either language) prefer mime to get their point across.

Also, though I do make it a point to talk to people when out on my own, most of my attempts at extended conversation have been with HP around, seeing as these first few days, we've been mobbed by family members. The closest are HP's youngest aunt, Kiyomi-obasan, and her husband, Yoshio-ojisan. She peppers her sentences with the few English words she knows, and Yoshio is a fairly atypical Japanese man in that he's a chatterbox. Not that I mind - it's refreshing to see someone so friendly - but both of them have encouraged my speaking Japanese, and I've been able to hold broken conversation with them on my own and even make a few terrible jokes.

Fast forward to Sunday night. We're invited out to dinner with them and their only daughter, Reika, who is my age and recently married. Her husband Yuuji was also there, and I'd been warned that Reika was uncomfortable with her American relatives, and therefore would likely be functionally mute throughout dinner. Though after introducing myself (in Japanese) and giving her the gift I'd brought over (a designer label bracelet covered in gold filigree and various charms), she seemed to warm to me a lot. Dinner was ordered, we talked about various subjects at normal Japanese pace with HP giving me rough translations when needed, though I could mostly follow along and contribute. They asked about my family, what kinds of foods I liked, and how I was liking Japan and wow was my Japanese getting better by the day! Also, what anime and manga did I like? Because everyone does.

A mysterious but great philosopher known only as The Sphinx once said: "We are weakest when we think ourselves strong." And just as I was relaxing into the flow of conversation and congratulating myself on how well everything was going, I heard a word I didn't understand.

Now, there's a phrase that almost every beginner Japanese student learns on the first day. It follows the pattern of "Xx wa nan(i) desu ka?" meaning "What is xx/What does xx mean?"

I use this phrase a lot. The Japanese are usually happy to oblige when I don't understand, and I've learned most of my daily vocabulary this way. So when HP and his uncle were talking about work and wives and pain and snickering, I asked about the word I didn't know.

"Sumimasen - 'Kintama' wa nan desu ka?"

At this point, he and his uncle started laughing, and everyone else, who'd been having another conversation, asked what was so funny. I turned to them and repeated the question, and they laughed too. Kiyomi smacked her husband a little, and HP only managed to say that they were "Ichiban no taisetsu" [the most important thing] before he and his uncle died laughing again. At this point, I sighed and grabbed my jisho out of my purse (a habit that made his family laugh without fail, and this was no exception) to look it up. Reika looked over my shoulder, saying "Arimasen!" [It won't be there!]

Except it was.

Don't bother looking it up; I'll save you the trouble. Hint: It means "balls."

Kintama - lit. "golden balls;" testicles.

Reika laughed even harder as she declared "Aru yo!" [It's there!] and everyone broke. Again.

I had (albeit unknowingly) functionally asked them "What is 'nutsack?'" and then looked it up in the dictionary.

His uncle bought me a beer and gave me a thumbs-up. I am apparently the most hilarious white person ever.

The moral of the story is always have your dictionary with you and men are the same everywhere the end.

Punctuation is important

As I mentioned in my last post, I was facebook-swarmed by Showa girls, which was super cute, and I got to see pictures of the fun things they've done so far in Boston, like going to Fenway and Blue Man Group and fireworks on the 4th.

One of them, who I tease by calling Yukari-sensei (she was one of the rotating tutors I had in my group), is a bubbly ball of energy who was very chipper and also wanted a bazillion pictures. Anyway, she knew that I am very poor with kanji, but I can do hiragana and katakana well. So when I posted on her Facebook wall, she was a saint and took the time to write out hiragana in her response.

I can read and understand this. Mind officially blown.

And I learned something important.

When communicating with a Japanese teenager, various adorable emoticons and pretty much all of the Lucky Charms shapes are vital. More so than punctuation. It's fun, it's silly, and it makes learning Japanese feel a whole lot less scary.

I jumped on that train like a spaghetti western bandit.

My first foray into conversational Japanese, and I DID NOT FAIL.

On Saturday, we had a second Japan orientation, this one run by JET alums.

Side note: Go the the official orientation. I am so glad I went. Meeting people who've actually done it and seeing everyone else who's in the same boat as you really makes it feel less daunting. Also, they talk about important things, like squatter toilets :

we seriously broke Ita-san, the consul, by one of the alums giving us a detailed instruction/demonstration on the proper way to use them, and she dissolved into giggle fits for a good ten minutes

 ...and banking and mail.

Anyway, this one took place at the Showa Institute in Boston, which is an awesome resource. They have sister campuses and send students back and forth for language learning. The campus is beautiful. I hate to admit, it's more than a little surreal being in a classroom geared toward teaching English, but I saw some familiar faces and a lot of my nervousness dissipated.

The first half of the day was spent on learning different techniques for listening and comprehension exercises, which was nice, but the real thing I was looking forward to/dreading was lunch and what came after: meeting the Showa students.

We went into the sun room for pizza, and met about a dozen very shy (well, most of them) Japanese college girls, and were told "socialize!" When they let us loose, the girls had the most terrified looks on their faces.

oh shi- I just forgot all of my english

Then we descended like hawks in a field of baby rabbits, pulling some to each of our tables and encouraging them to speak English as we put together our terrible pidgin Japanese. They opened up a lot more as time went on, especially when they saw that while some of us had a few years of Japanese under our belts, others had varying levels of "none."

BUT I COULD HOLD ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS. I did! I managed to find out their names, where they were from, what year they were in, when they arrived, and a whole host of other things. Turns out, they were all 19-year-old sophomores, fresh off the plane 3 weeks ago. So as nerve-wracking as it was for us to talk to native Japanese speakers, at least we had home court advantage.

I was super nervous at first. I rehearsed things in my head before saying them, often missing my window to actually say it out loud. It was frustrating, and I quickly realized that this was Not Going to Work. Thus, my "Say Stuff and Correct as You Go" system was born. And it was awesome.

In less than an hour, I was speaking confidently and quickly, although I might not have made a whole lot of sense. But the girls were all over that. (It probably also helped that one of the teachers earlier in the day had given us a quick vocal coaching.) We got used to laughing at each other.

A lot.

The rest of the day was a lot of fun, as we rotated in little pairs and groups of english and Japanese speakers to do self-introductions and skits and whatnot. By the end of the day, the girls were a lot more social and friendly, asking to take A BAZILLION PICTURES (seriously, there are about fifty pictures of me on Facebook with a variety of Japanese schoolgirls) and asking for our facebook information.

HP commented that I was like a rockstar in the number of girls who flocked to me, further chirping that he was right about just loosening up and being a chatty, friendly person in order to win over everyone ever and make ALL THE FRIENDS.

He might be right this one time. Might be.

Flashcards, anyone?

The first thing I did was start learning Hiragana.

Brief rundown of writing systems:
Hiragana = for phonetics of japanese words/words there are no kanji for. Softer, prettier, more complicated.
Katakana = for phonetics of foreign words. Blocky and sharp.
Kanji = the big, complicated guys. Stand for words, not sounds. Schoolchildren are required to learn 1,000, and 1,900 is considered fluent. Yikes.


So, baby steps. I will learn to communicate, even if I have to look like a third-grader spelling everything out phonetically.

POINT OF EXCITEMENT: Japanese is entirely phonetic. Spelled just like it sounds, none of these ridiculous pronunciation of german-french mishmashes that English has in abundance. Maybe not so hopeless after all?

Google searches will find you kana charts easily. Learning is more than memorizing off of a chart, though, so writing them is actually a huge help. Get some graph paper and write the characters in four-block squares. Strokes go top-to-bottom, left-to-right. I had a surprisingly easy time with hiragana, but katakana kicked my ass. For some reason, I just can't commit it to memory. Maybe because it's not as pretty. Or I haven't been practicing as much as I should. OR BOTH.

Anyway, something I've found really helpful is this simple little site designed with a flashcard mechanic to help you remember the writing systems. You can choose to go from english to japanese or vice versa, clicking on the appropriate translation in the buttons below. You can also set your proficiency level (level 1 is the first 10 characters, 2 is the next 10, on and on until you get to "all") and see a letter grade based on your correct answers.

I can get a perfect score on the hiragana game, but haven't even tried the katakana one. When I do manage a perfect on the utmost level, though, I'm going to reward myself somehow. Like wearing an "I'm number one!" blue prize ribbon on my jacket for a few days.

It's not flashy and it's not complicated, which actually works best, I think. I do drills once in a while, especially to work on the three or four characters I constantly get mixed up. It's a good tool, and, like any links I post in the future, is going up in the link sidebar to the left. (To the left, to the left...)

T minus 107 days.

for serious.