Second semester at Japanese language school

In my last blog I think I talked about my end of term tests and stuff from the end of the first 3 months. We then had a 2 week holiday before starting school again. At my school, you move up a class every 3 months, unless you fail and have to redo a class or take an additional jump-up test and skip a class. I started in class one, and so I'm in class 2 now.

In the first class, I already knew most of the grammar that we covered, but I had very little speaking/listening experience so the classes didn't feel too easy. In class 2, I still know some of the grammar we've been going over, but this time I have a lot more confidence speaking and better listening comprehension, so nothing has felt particularly challenging so far.


This is a photo from the top of a mountain I cycled up. I took this, ate an ice cream and then went back down again. You can see lake Biwa in the distance.

Also, since a lot of people enrolled in the school at the same time when I started, there were two class 1s; I was in 1B. Some of the people only stayed for a few months and have since left the school, so for class 2 they merged both 1A and 1B into a single class. Unfortunately there's still quite a lot of people. In class 1B there was only around 12 - 14 of us most of the time; in this class there's 26. This is a problem because with more people in the class, I spend less time actually doing stuff, and more time sitting around listening to other people talk.

In class 1B, it felt to me like we were mostly of a similar skill level, so the classes felt like they were going at a good pace for everyone (although I suppose my other class mates might not have had the same opinion I dunno). This time there feels like a larger range of skill levels. Some of the people seem to struggle with fairly basic stuff like reading Hiragana and Katakana; and really have a hard time saying much of anything.

The combination of a large class and wide variety of Japanese ability means that the classes seem to crawl along at a frustratingly slow pace sometimes. I know I'm not the only one who feels like this; my friend who sits in front of me always turns round and gives me a "-_- srsly?" face when some of the other people in class get basic things wrong.

I don't want to be too hard on them; I'm still bad at Japanese, and I think it's best that everyone has an environment where they feel like they can make mistakes without being judged because otherwise they'll stop improving. However it seems like some of them just don't study or practise at all; I couldn't imagine not being able to read Katakana at this point, I've been doing it every day for ages. I think everyone would be better off if they split the classes back into 2A and 2B, but maybe they don't have enough class rooms or teachers or something. The school building is fairly small and always full of people.


This is in Seoul.

I've been considering trying to take the jump up test and get into class 3. I've been doing extra study and will soon be approaching the end of the material that we need to know for class 2. However, while I've learned a bunch of new grammar and vocab, because I've been studying it by myself, I haven't really practised using it much. I need to try to work it into my conversations with Japanese people or something. There's no point in memorizing all this grammar and passing a test if I'm not actually better at Japanese at the end of it; I want to be a fluent Japanese speaker, not someone who is good at passing written tests (I guess I would like to be both actually).

Also, one of my friends in my class took the jump-up test a couple of weeks ago and failed. She said that it was really hard and some of the stuff in the test wasn't even the same kind of things that is in the course material, which is strange. My house mate who used to study at the same school said a similar thing; he said they make the jump-up test extra hard and put weird stuff in it. I guess it's extra hassle for them to have people changing classes all the time; and they want to make sure that your level is actually good enough to be in the next class; not just barely good enough to pass a written test.

Still not sure if I'm actually going to take the test or not yet, but I've been doing a lot of extra independent study, which can't be a bad thing (although I guess it might make my classes feel even slower if I already know all the material). The speaking and listening practise in class is still useful too.


This is also in Seoul.

Not exactly busy.

In the two week holiday between school terms, I went to Seoul for a few days. I think I mentioned about it in the last blog; the plan was to go with my girlfriend, but she was having doubts because of the whole MERS thing. Personally I wasn't particularly worried about it because every news source said it was contained within some specific hospitals, but my girlfriend didn't agree. I couldn't get a refund on my flight or hotel room so I told her I was going to go anyway; with or without her. I think that helped convince her in the end, and on the day before leaving she decided she would come after all.

I don't want to sound like I'm making light of other people's suffering, but the MERS outbreak turned out to be pretty convenient for us. The majority of tourists had cancelled their flights to Korea, so there were no queues or crowds at any of the popular tourist spots. My friend had been just a few weeks before and been unable to do a few things he wanted to because of ridiculous 2 hour long queues, but we just strolled right up to wherever we wanted to go and didn't have to wait for anything.


Seoul wasn't that busy, but it wasn't quite the zombie apocalypse that my gf was expecting either.

We also met up with a Korean friend who studied at the same university as my girlfriend and I. We had dinner with her at some really nice hotel that had a big buffet that was really good. There wasn't really any Korean food but they had loads of other good stuff, so I was happy. We ate loads of Korean food on other days anyway so it was fine.

I really like the Korean BBQ style restaurant. I like how you turn up and they load up your table with different types of free kimchi and side dishes before you've even ordered anything. Cooking the food in the middle of the table with your friends is fun too. They have basically the same thing in Japan in Yakiniku restaurants, but I think it's better, and cheaper, in Korea.

Everything is significantly cheaper in Korea than Japan actually. It was nice to be able to travel around and do things and eat in restaurants and still be spending less than I would in a normal day in Japan.

I can sort of just about read hangul; by which I mean I can slowly sound it out if I squint at it for long enough, but I don't really know any Korean except a few basic words and phrases. Since coming to Japan, I'd been feeling like I had no idea what was going on at any point, but going to Korea, that feeling was much stronger, because I really can't speak Korean. When I got back to Kansai airport I was surprised at how relieved I felt to see some Kanji and hear people speaking Japanese.


The art style in old Korean temples and palaces and stuff is different from the ones in Japan. They also seemed to like green a lot; the guys who painted the Japanese temples seem to prefer red. + Show Spoiler +

Up until that point I hadn't really noticed my improved Japanese that much, but comparing my complete lack of understanding of anything in Korea, I noticed that I can actually sort of read Japanese and understand what Japanese people are saying some of the time. It felt like coming back home after being abroad, even though I was still on the other side of the world in a foreign country.

The guy at customs in Kansai airport asked me in Japanese "Do you understand Japanese?" I hadn't spoken Japanese in about a week so I sort of panicked and automatically responded in Japanese "No sorry I don't really understand Japanese". He looked at me like I was retarded and then switched to English. Obviously I can understand Japanese since I understood and answered his question.

Anyway, since that, I've felt a lot more comfortable and confident with my Japanese speaking and listening. I realise that although my level is still barely conversational, I have made a lot of progress and I do sort of know what's going on around me some of the time.

Masturi boys out here pulling a big cart down the street like it's not the middle of a typhoon.


Don't worry, it's only as tall as a two-storey building and loaded full of people and religious artefacts and stuff. I think if I was participating in this I'd try to get a job as a guy waving a fan around on the front of the cart rather than having to drag the thing through the streets.

Gion Matsuri is one of the most famous festivals in Japan, and takes place over the whole of July in Kyoto. There's basically a lot of different events at various temples and stuff. The main event though is a big parade through the centre of the city where people pull these enormous wooden carts around. To be honest I don't really know much about it, but it all looked pretty cool. I'm sure you can find more out about it if you google it. I might do when I have time.

In the days leading up to the parade, they close some of the main streets in central kyoto. They build these massive wooden carts up in the middle of the streets, and there's also a big night market. It was pretty fun to wander around with my friends, although I didn't buy anything.


Walking down the middle of Shijo-dori in a horde of people. It's usually full of traffic. Most of my photos of the night market are complete bullshit; I haven't really got the hang of taking photos at night I guess. Also my camera went on some mad ting and started putting random filters on everything; I'm not sure what setting I changed.

Unfortunately, around this time of year is also typhoon season, and this year the main parade coincided with a typhoon. Me and my classmates still went down to have a look. They continued on with the parade despite the strong winds and heavy rain. It was interesting, but very slow and went on for hours. I was standing in the middle of a typhoon (still in shorts and tshirt because it was too hot) for like 3 or 4 hours watching the parade crawl by. They'd wrapped most of the stuff up in plastic to protect it from the rain. It looked a bit funny; like they'd just bought all these ancient artefacts from Ikea or something, and were carrying it home.


The procession got held up by one of the big wagons struggling to turn a corner, so these guys just busted out the folding chairs and had a rest in the middle of the parade.

After the parade, I kinda forgot that it was still Gion Matsuri for a couple more weeks. I was walking to the supermarket a few days ago and then a big parade of people in some kind of traditional clothing marched past me. On the way home there was a dude on a horse hanging outside a ramen shop. My friend posted a picture on facebook of a guy dressed in samurai armour sitting on top of a big horse outside of a Karaoke bar. I also saw a random side street was closed off and there was a small crowd of people so I went to see what was going on. When I got closer I saw they were building one of those big cart things, and it had a big tree installed on the top of it. I quite like that I have no idea what it's all about, it makes stumbling across stuff like this more entertaining.


This one was shaped like a pirate ship for some reason.

Nara.

I've managed to find 3 regular students through a site that matches teachers with students. I only teach each of them for 1 hour a week, so it barely even counts as a part time job at this point, but it's nice to be making a little bit of money anyway. The first two that I met both have pretty good levels of English, so the classes mostly revolve around conversation with me correcting their grammar and teaching them new vocabulary and stuff.

The first student speaks reasonably good conversational English, but he said he wants to learn more formal English and some phrases for travelling. He'd already bought a travel phrase book, so we've been working through that. We read through the conversations in the book and I correct his pronunciation and stuff. I also answer his questions or explain additional things that I think need explaining.

The second is a university student. Her mum came with her to the first lesson, I guess to make sure that I wasn't some creepy gaijin, which is fair enough. The mother seemed even more enthusiastic about it than her daughter did. She kept asking me questions and talking over or interrupting her daughter. It seemed a bit like she was pressuring her daughter into studying more, but the daughter does appear to be quite well organised and motivated too.


Seoul

Anyway, her written English is very good; she writes various paragraphs and stuff that she translates from Japanese, and I correct the grammar. Her spoken English is a bit shaky, although not bad, so I'm trying to put more emphasis on conversation than written grammar stuff. Sometimes she gives me a text of some kind. We both read it and then I explain bits that she didn't understand, and then I ask her questions about different parts of it to make sure she understood. She doesn't like being asked the "What do you think about X?" questions, which I've heard from other English teachers and Japanese people is common among Japanese students. They aren't used to being asked their opinions on things, so don't really know what to say.

The third student contacted by email in Japanese; but so did the first guy, so I wasn't too worried. I asked her what level her English is, and, like all Japanese people, she basically said "I'm a completely beginner, I have no skill whatsoever and I am ashamed of myself". Usually when people say this, they're just being unnecessarily modest, and they actually speak at least conversational English. This lady wasn't exaggerating that much though . When I met her I tried asking her a few basic questions in English but she just looked at me like I was speaking Russian or something so I had to switch back to Japanese.

It turns out that she has a reasonable grasp of written English, but not much listening comprehension. This seems to be a common feature of Japanese people too; they only study written English in school. So anyway, I had to teach her English in Japanese, which was quite a challenge for me. The format I've adopted with her is to give her some kind of role-play situation in Japanese, and try to get her to say something in English. Then I correct her grammar and we sort of build a conversation.


Abunai!

So for example I say in Japanese "You're in a restaurant and you want to order a steak, what do you say in English?" and she will say something that's almost right and then I'll correct it and write the sentence down. Then I'll come up with another line in the roleplay situation and she'll have to respond to that, like asking "How would you like your steak cooked?". Once we've built a conversation we go through it again and she asks me some questions about bits she doesn't understand.

The people of Nara.

As well as visiting Korea in my 2 week holiday, I also did a few bike rides. The biggest adventure was cycling from Kyoto to Nara. Nara is about 40km from Kyoto so it took me like 3 or 4 hours to get there. It was almost completely flat, but I got lost a few times so it took longer than it might have otherwise.

I left in the morning, but by the time I got there it was already the afternoon. I took a look around one of the main tourist spots in Nara which is a park with some temples and a bunch of wild deer that wander around. The deer are pretty friendly, although one baby one was crying to its mum because it got stuck on a ledge or something, and since I was the nearest person, its mum came running over and glared at me like it was my fault somehow. It's not my fault you can't keep track of your kids, lady. The main temple there has this massive buddha statue in it. I'd seen photos of it before but when I got in there it was pretty amazing.


There was a spare hand for the big buddha statue round the back.

After looking around there for a couple of hours I realised it was already mid-afternoon and I was going to have to leave soon if I wanted to get home before dark. About 10km into my return journey, it started pouring with rain. It didn't ease off at any point, so I did about 30km in the rain. Also I got lost at one point and cycled into Uji rather than Kyoto, which cost me an extra 30 minutes or so.

When I finally got home I got in the shower and found that I had somehow got seriously sunburned. I'm too white to live in this country; even when it's raining I get sunburned. I've got some pretty strong tan-lines on my arms and legs now; I roll up my sleeves and show them to people to start conversations sometimes.


This statue made me really uncomfortable for some reason.

A rainy day in Arashiyama.

My friends who I usually go to summer music festivals with went to Metaldays in Slovenia this week. I'm really jealous because I love that place, but Japan is cool too I guess. I've been feeling a real lack of metal recently. At least yesterday I got a chance to go to a BBQ and get drunk during the day, but it's not quite the same without the loud music and temporary suspension of personal hygiene.

I think in my last blog I complained about not having enough money a lot. In the end I had to take some more money from my parents. I wanted to avoid having to since they had already given me money before coming, but I hadn't managed to find much proper work, so it was either that or go back to the UK early. I guess I should focus on feeling grateful that they are able to help me than feeling bad for taking their money. I've been feeling less stressed out since, which is nice, I think I should have enough to at least pay the rent for the next couple of months anyway.


Todaiji in Nara.

After my next term finishes, I won't be able to continue studying at the school. Ideally I'd like to stay in Japan, but that most likely depends on me being able to find a job and a work visa. My girlfriend has got a good new job in Tokyo, so I'll try to go there if I can. I've been looking at software developer jobs, but most of them seem to want someone with 'business level' Japanese (usually JLPT N2+; I could probably only pass N4 at this point; maybe N3 in a few months time, but certaintly not N2 level).

This is making it look increasingly like my best option is to get a full time English teaching job with a company that can sponsor my work visa. I don't hate this idea, but it's not really my first choice either. If I'm going to be teaching English, I'd rather be doing more of the one-to-one private tutoring style thing that I've been doing recently, rather than standing in front of a class of school children, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

Being in a long distance relationship isn't great, but we seem to be doing OK, at least as far as I can tell. If I can make it to Tokyo, or at least the Kanto area, I think it'll be a lot better for us though. If I have to go back to the UK it'll probably suck. 頑張っている as always.