Japan University

Nani jin desu ka?

Had my first Japanese class this afternoon which was great fun but fairly challenging. There were only about 12/15 people in our group which was good and made pronouncing things out loud a lot less embarrassing! Interestingly about 50% of people in the group were Chinese foreign students but they all spoke very good English so it wasn’t a problem talking to them. We learned a lot of basic stuff like greetings and introducing yourself which was fairly easy but it’s once you start constructing sentences out of it all that it becomes a bit of a headache! Luckily our sensei (teacher) was very good and explained things at a pace I could keep up with.

Hiragana

For homework we’ve been set a Hiragana chart to complete which basically means learning how to write the squiggly characters (one of a set of three different symbolic systems). The task in itself isn’t very hard but remembering what they all mean is going to be a nightmare! That said I’m definitely looking forward to next weeks lesson – it beats the drudgery of some of my other lectures!

If you want to learn a few words of Japanese yourself a good place to start would be here.

Author

Originally from the UK, David is designer and wanderer currently based in Kamakura. Prior to this, he lived in China and longs to explore more of this vast and varied land. He started Randomwire in 2003 to chronicle his travels and occasional musings. Feel free to drop him a line.

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