This morning I felt like the living dead; getting up was so difficult. I barely had much time to study for the vocab quiz I didn't plan for... It went okay though, after the trial that Reading / Writing was. A bunch of us were asked for the last time if level 4 is okay though, so it was good to see that others were where I am, and I think the others agreed to stay... I hope. Still I have a ridiculous amount of words and kanji to know by next week, plus there's a speaking test on Tuesday... I don't have the new grammar down too well from the last two chapters. I need to get that done on Sunday, since Saturday is for traveling, experiencing culture, and not school-work.
Lunch was good since Yukina invited me again! She had a friend too, a guy who goes to Kyoto University and is studying to teach middle schoolers electrical engineering. I think he said he wanted to do this because of an awesome teacher he had in school at some point... A lot was lost in trying to communicate. I tried to explain that not everyone in America has a gun, just the rural folk. That and explaining that I'm not rich because my Dad has a lot of old Mercedes, or bentsu. Also I explained how we have bears near us, and the time I hit a deer and the hunters behind me took the body and most likely ate it. This surprised them, and Yukina especially since she lives in Nara, where deer are kept in gardens / shrines and are fed and petted... Very small deer though. Haha.
It was a lot of fun communicating, but you have to keep yourself in high-spirits, since it can be frustrating not knowing how to get a point across, or a nuance, or just not knowing the words, or in actual practice your studied grammar patterns flutter away out of reach. You have to be mindful of it though. Trying to explain my opinions of American politics didn't quite work, neither did trying to explain why Americans keep the toilet and bath/shower in the same room, which seems odd keeping a dirty thing and a clean thing in the same room; how do I say Americans are afraid of nudity and would rather do all of the "naked things' in one room? "Moral cleanlines" is more important than actual cleanliness, and I am highly exxagerating the former...
Dinner was had at a restauraunt that I need to learn the name of... 600 yen for three huge peices of fried chiken with gravy, a slice of ham, two eggs, all of this on noodles and sprouts, and you get a mountain of rice, some miso, and pickled radishes. Man. Joe, Jesse, and Sean, a guy from the dorm who is also in my Negotiation class came with. The place is run by a nice couple, and maybe a son or daughter of theirs helps or some hired help... The husband came out and gave everyone in the place some odd candy to be nice, which was really cool. All of the locally run joints are really the best, the people there are so nice, generous, and try to be more intimate, which makes it more enjoyable for everyone and more profitable in the long run for them. Anyway, the treat was something like sweet bean-curd in cookie-dust that you pour a little bottle of syrup over. That's not at all what it actually was, but it's the best I can do to describe it.
The title of this entry is something along the lines of "I wonder what way to study is good...". At least I hope so. I say this because I'm having so much trouble lately motivating myself to memorize a new batch of words after barely commiting the old ones, and the new mess of kanji just looks painful.
However, I just dived into reading more of the detective manga, 名探偵コナン and I'm having so much fun reading it. Every sentence understood is a little victory and it fills me with excitement and joy understanding it, even more so when I come upon a new word, look it up, and see it later and understand it immediately... I read at a very slow rate though, although using this computer as a dictionary makes it quicker; a paper dictionary would take longer... But due to my reading speed, I spend more time thinking about what is being said, paying more attention to the character's emotions and thoughts, and the artistic style being used too. All of this makes me appreciate the manga more I think, and I doubt I would feel the same way if I was flying through this in English. I've tried it before and I could never get into a manga and it would be over so soon.
Maybe this will change my outlook on manga for good. I'm surprised that I was excited at the thought of picking it up and reading it tonight, and spent a good two hours or so when I maybe should've been working on vocab. It'll take me hours to get through just one book, or volume I suppose. So the 250 yen spent on one of these goes a long way... I'm conflicted between reading them through because I'm so into the story and characters or if I should try and master the words in it to read more smoothly... We'll see how long I last before moving on, haha.
Tomorrow I'm going to plan a bit for Osaka, but I'm considering just winging it and I might just plan only how to get there by train and do whatever once I'm there. I can ask people what direction to walk in, and maybe a bus with have some familiar kanji, we'll see. It'll be an adventure no matter what.
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