"In Japanese... OK?"
"Oh, yeah, I can understand some."
"OK if I check your bike?"
"Oh, of course."
"Ah! Seminar House One! Do you like Japanese food?"
"Uh, yeah"
"..."
"Just about anything, honestly."
"Do you eat sushi?"
"Yeah!"
"How about [?]"
"Wha?"
"Do you like BBQ?!"
"Yeah!"
"Ok! Your Japanese is good."
"Haha, not really."
"Well, take care. See you later."
"...Bye!"
The police here are not threatening at all. The uniforms are friendlier, I think, and to most of us here the police don't have as strong of a negative image as they do in the States. Usually they try and pull over foreigners to practice their English, which I find kind of funny. Too bad I knew Japanese for that guy, haha.
Today I just had a test on the last two chapters of our speaking class. I did well on all but one of the listening questions, and I didn't too well on the transitive / intransitive verb section, mostly because I didn't bother to study them since the theme was cooking...
"Has it become seasoned yet?"
"No! Not yet! Let me season it!"
In Japanese those are two different verbs, and there is no set conjugation between intransitive and transitive (For example, open the door, VS someone/something opened the door.) So it's very frustrating. You have to memorize them... But the chapter theme was cooking. I don't care about being able to say "I will simmer it" and "It has been simmered / someone has simmered it!" I don't care. I just focus on the transitive ones, the ones that I will use, and then I'll make it sound funky and it'll probably be intransitive (you can kind of guess.) So that method works well enough. It's a good thing I care about learning instead of grades. And it's a good thing I'm in a position where I can afford to, I might add, to not seem aloof.
Today I went to Osaka to get my shinkansen (bullet train) ticket to Hiroshima... one to go on Saturday, and one to get back on Sunday. You'd think it would be two tickets but I got five. One reciept, two fare tickets, two... admission tickets? I don't even know. The student discount form I brought from the school didn't do much, or when I said "Please give me the cheapest seating available" he didn't... About 16,000 yen. Man. I wish I hadn't missed the group ticket meeting, I would have saved a good bit. The hostel I'm staying at is only 2,500 though, which is great; nice looking place too. But, Hiroshima is a very important place, and I want to see more other than just the museum. I'm looking forward to hearing a survivor speak to us (in English) about being in the blast and all of that. It's a very rare oppurtunity. But I plan on seeing a few other places of interest (I don't remember names right now,) but I'll plan that tomorrow. I'm just excited to ride the train too.
After getting the tickets, I had about 3 1/2 hours to do whatever until my class started at 4:00, so I took the subway to Namba to look around. It's a huge shopping / entertainment district in Osaka. And holy crap. So many places to eat at, entertainment centers (pachinko, gambling, video games, bowling, pool, swimming, manga, internet, dancing, clubs) If you can imagine it, it's probably there. Actually, I went between Namba and Nippombashi, so the pictures I have could be from either...
There were a lot of open streets like this lined with restaraunts and stores.
Big enough crosswalk? The entrance to another one of the entertainment "blocks"
The inside... Well, it's open air, with glass roofing for protection from rain.
Hey! The Statue of Liberty outside Kyobashi Station!I went into a store that sold noren, which are curtains that are hung in doorways of shops and the like. I bought a large one for doorways for 3,000 yen, featuring The Great Wave off Kanagawa on it. Matt and I are going to hang it in our doorway, even though I was planning on having this in my apartment when I get back. I love it. I also wandered into the kitchenware area and wasted a lot of time gawking at the stylish, yet down-to-earth utensils and furnishings... I plan to come back to get a lot of bowls, cups, and that sort of thing here since they'll be so unique and I love the style. You can't get nice wooden cups like this in the States; the craftsmanship is superb and the style very unique.
I then went to Den-Den Town, the electronics / nerd district and went to a store that sold just figures and figurines. It was massive. Characters from anime, manga, and video games, along with a few other categories were lining the walls. I bought the vanguard monster from Dragon Quest, the blue slime to adorn my desk, and got something for a friend that should surprise him and make him quite happy, Hehe. I also spotted a huge manga store next to it, but I didn't have the time to check it out. I want to find the older, maybe not as popular manga that deal a bit more with history and Japanese culture that I can't find in most stores. Next time I'll look.
Speaking of manga, I started よつばと！, or in English, Yotsuba&!. It's a funny manga about a single Dad and his young daughter that move from I-don't-know-where, presumably not Japan yet they speak Japanese. I'm not sure. At any rate, little Yotsuba, the girl, knows nothing about anything. I can perfectly relate being a foreigner in Japan (albeit not as clueless as a lot of people here are). Oddly enough from reading the first two chapters of this book, I understood 80% without using my dictionary. Only a few words were new, but the grammar was way out of whack. Maybe I'll ask Yukina. But it was a great feeling. You get more into it when you're struggling to understand the meaning of what's going on, so you become more interested in the stories and they mean more to you, plus you pay more attention to detail in the words used, the art, and the emotion behind everything (there are emotional parts in Conan, in Yotsuba it's all comedy). I don't know what to think about becoming to like manga. Of course it isn't all the ridiculous things of giant robots piloted by genious teenages and weirder fantasy, but that's been the stigmata of it, at least in the West. I don't think I would waste my time taking a class on manga though. Go read some, then read a book about manga. Man. Same goes for you, anime!
At any rate, I need to do some studying then hit the hay.
Oh, one more thing:
Elections in Japan are noisy. You get people driving around in vans blaring campaign slogans, then, in busier public squares, politicians will give speeches from megaphones. I've seen one guy do this in the park in Hirakata, and then I ran into this guy on top of his own StraightTalkExpress(TM), so I thought I would take a picture. I didn't have a clue what he was saying, either, haha. Just feel lucky we don't have this in the US.
I then went to Den-Den Town, the electronics / nerd district and went to a store that sold just figures and figurines. It was massive. Characters from anime, manga, and video games, along with a few other categories were lining the walls. I bought the vanguard monster from Dragon Quest, the blue slime to adorn my desk, and got something for a friend that should surprise him and make him quite happy, Hehe. I also spotted a huge manga store next to it, but I didn't have the time to check it out. I want to find the older, maybe not as popular manga that deal a bit more with history and Japanese culture that I can't find in most stores. Next time I'll look.
Speaking of manga, I started よつばと！, or in English, Yotsuba&!. It's a funny manga about a single Dad and his young daughter that move from I-don't-know-where, presumably not Japan yet they speak Japanese. I'm not sure. At any rate, little Yotsuba, the girl, knows nothing about anything. I can perfectly relate being a foreigner in Japan (albeit not as clueless as a lot of people here are). Oddly enough from reading the first two chapters of this book, I understood 80% without using my dictionary. Only a few words were new, but the grammar was way out of whack. Maybe I'll ask Yukina. But it was a great feeling. You get more into it when you're struggling to understand the meaning of what's going on, so you become more interested in the stories and they mean more to you, plus you pay more attention to detail in the words used, the art, and the emotion behind everything (there are emotional parts in Conan, in Yotsuba it's all comedy). I don't know what to think about becoming to like manga. Of course it isn't all the ridiculous things of giant robots piloted by genious teenages and weirder fantasy, but that's been the stigmata of it, at least in the West. I don't think I would waste my time taking a class on manga though. Go read some, then read a book about manga. Man. Same goes for you, anime!
At any rate, I need to do some studying then hit the hay.
Oh, one more thing:
Elections in Japan are noisy. You get people driving around in vans blaring campaign slogans, then, in busier public squares, politicians will give speeches from megaphones. I've seen one guy do this in the park in Hirakata, and then I ran into this guy on top of his own StraightTalkExpress(TM), so I thought I would take a picture. I didn't have a clue what he was saying, either, haha. Just feel lucky we don't have this in the US.
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