Sequoia Wild

Shanghai is apparently going to get neglected in my blog, because most of those impressions proved fleeting in the face of my first week in Japan. Except for the pretty substantial amount of monetary stress I am under to find a job, I am having an amazing time. Japan is a lot of what I thought it would be, which surprises me, actually, given the hype about it being completely unfathomable to westerners. I am learning the language at a rate I am quite happy with, as most of it is doing a more permanent matching of audio to subtitles and then making myself say it out loud and get over stage fright. Some phrases I can say only when NOT looking at the romanji, which makes me wonder if I am saying them right, but I know for sure that they sound weird when I try to say them as written, even at semi-proper speeds. For several days, the phrase ‘wakarimasen’ was going through my head, usually appearing when a conversation hit an obstacle that I didn’t know how to get around. But I didn’t know what wakarimasen meant until I looked it up. It means ‘I don’t understand’! So I knew what to say, but I didn’t let my instinct go through. (more…)