Starting From a First Grade Level

Kyou no Nihongo no Kotoba (今日の日本語の言葉): hikari (光) - light (n.)
This word is brought to you by Ryosuke's 1st grade textbook

Today will be another short post, just because I haven't been doing that many exciting things recently. This weekend will be better, but there's little time to do things during the week but study, go to school, eat, and Skype people who are available in the mornings. I've been sleeping in (Maggie style, which means 8:00), though those damned mosquitoes won't leave me alone! They're supposed to be gone by now. -_-"

Anyways, for breakfast, I had what you can see in my bento packed for lunch. Since the stuff was cooked in the morning, that's what usually goes into the bento as well. Inside is homemade bread, cucumbers, grapes, tomato, and a sort of minced meat tofu mashed potatoes kind of thing, which was so damn delicious. I am so happy that my host mother loves cooking so much!

I then went to school today with just enough time to take a seat before class started. I took a relaxing morning at home, and it's the latest I've been to school yet! (I usually come with at least half an hour to spare, just to hang around Akihabara).

Today was an interesting day. We learned how to count, which may sound easy, but it's not as easy as you think. We learned words that would be equivalent to like, "one ream of paper" or "one stick of glue." The problem is that in Japanese, they have greater umbrella words, like "mai," which is what you use to count something that is flat, like paper, or reams, or stamps, or cards, etc. They have many words like that. They have a word for things that are stick shaped, a word for "others" — as in things that don't really fit anywhere else, like soap and apples. They also have different words for counting small animals and big animals, which I learned while reading Ryosuke's first grade textbook.

This isn't all that difficult when you're counting regular things, but say all of a sudden you want to count chairs. You can't just say "one chair" like you can in English, and for all you know, there could be a different "counter" for chairs than the ones you've learned so far (like how was I supposed to know there would be a special word for small animals only?). This is like if America took seriously the group nomenclatures, like "a watch of nightingales," "a mutation of thrushes," or "a doylt of pigs." Now wouldn't you think that might be just a bit difficult? (For other fun collective nouns, go here).

In class today, we also learned stuff about the post office, like how to send a package and what things to say along with it. I totally think that this stuff is learnable from just reading the textbook yourself (all they're basically doing is flipping from page to page and reading the words out loud), so it's a bit like wasted time. But I read, and I doodle, and best of all, I study kanji I don't know. They're teaching us survival kanji right now, which we need to be able to recognize, but not necessarily know how to write with correct stroke order or anything.

After school, I went straight home for a nice dinner. I was invited out for a friend's birthday dinner, but alas, I didn't know early enough, and couldn't inform the family in time. I want to give them at least three hours advanced notice, otherwise I feel bad if they cooked extra for me and I'm not home, you know? It would have been fun, though! Zannen!

Although it was really cool on the train, as a side note, to see a kindly old lady wearing a kimono. It's not a full fledged one (thank god, otherwise she'd be dying from overheating), but it's still very cool to see these traditionally dressed people mingling with just daily life. And this isn't the first time I've seen it. It strikes me just how common it is, actually (though it's mostly older people).

For dinner, I had ojiya, which is this porridge like thing with rice and a bunch of vegetables, but with much less water than porridge, so it's more like... a gruel? I don't know the technical terms, but it was delicious, especially with cayenne and tabasco and black pepper, which, as you can see, my host family has learned that I like a lot. The pumpkin that you see beside it is also I think the first pumpkin I've eaten (or at least have a memory of eating). It's actually pretty delicious. I thought it was going to be over sweet like a sweet potato, but it wasn't!

After dinner, I read aloud some English children's stories to the children, and Yoshiko-san read aloud some Japanese stories to us (though I had a hard time following, I got the gist of it (mostly from the pictures, to be honest)). I had gotten a copy of D.Gray Man Vol. 1 from the bookstore near my house and was struggling to read it. It was impossible. So I settled for Ryosuke's first grade textbook instead, which I thought might be easier. It wasn't. UGH.

The main thing I lack is just vocabulary. There's so much daily vocabulary that I need to learn which I never think about (like what's "corn" in Japanese? Every Japanese kid knows that, yet I haven't learned it). I need to get myself the vocabulary of a five year old first before I do anything else—thus, the textbook. It's harder than it might seem though, since this book has the habit of leaving out verbs, so you're just stuck with adjectives and nouns, and the occasional adverb modifying some verb everyone takes for granted but you, because it's completely invisible. >_>

Anyways, I have another mosquito in my room today, and it's not one to be killed. I'm trying the slow luring out technique using light, in hopes that it works so that I can go to bed in peace. Mosquitoes are damn hard to get rid of! And they're supposed to be gone by October! It's just that this year is special. Argh. Why didn't Noah just kill those two mosquitoes when he had the chance? He might have moved up a spot in the Bible hierarchy if he had just saved the future pain and headaches.

Anyways, that's all for now! My Skype name is Galythia, if any of you don't already have me as a contact, and would like to add me. I welcome all Skypes! I miss you guys so much! Can you believe it's only been two weeks to the day? Just two weeks!

See you again tomorrow! (Mata ashita!)
Maggie