Insert Adjective Here

今日の日本語の言葉: keiyoushi (形容詞) - adjective

This word was brought to you by the words that have been spinning around my head all day: adjectives.

Today wasn't a particularly stand-out day. Nothing special happened, but altogether, it was still a better day than usual. I woke up bright and early, there were no mosquitoes during the night to keep me up, the room was warmer than it usually was, etc. Breakfast was a fantastic affair, with melon pan (bread) to boot. I also had a wonderful time writing with Anna this morning, and she's taken to drawing brilliant cartoons for the CRLS newspaper, and I got to see her in her process today. :3

I went to school as usual, though with some new songs on my iPhone now! I added a new album by Arashi, my beloved boyband that cannot dance to save their own lives, and they don't sound particularly awesome either. They're just so well coordinated with each other and their melodies are so catchy, I can't help but love them. If you're interested in hearing what I'm talking about, try Monster or Cry For You (the music video is of the anime Ouran High School Host Club).

School was the usual today. I had Shimazaki sensei, which was fantastically hilarious, as always. That lady definitely knows how to make people laugh. We learned about all sorts of adjectives today, many of which really don't make sense when they're translated into English (like, "your nose is big" if translated into Japanese and back would be "your nose is tall"). And we played so many games to make sure our adjective conjugation was spot on and came to us faster (some adjectives can be turned into past tense words, whereas others rely on the verb "to be" and such to turn past tense instead, etc.). Thus, by the end of three periods of this stuff, my mind was swimming in adjectives. @_@

My Japanese textbook has kitty faces sticking up
from my kitty placeholder stickers 

From there, I went on to kanji class, which is still interesting because I get different teachers than I do in my regular class, and thus I get to meet and work with new people. Speaking of teachers, us girls in school have found the teacher. By that, I mean the one that every girl has a thing for, no matter if they're dating someone or engaged or whatever. Sasaki sensei. I'll see if I can capture a picture of him sometime, but it's not really the face. It's more the way he practically skips down the hall singing Swedish Christmas music that makes him so interesting. Very outgoing.

Anyways, back to kanji. We learn five every day, and there's a test every other day. So actually, this class is slower in learning kanji than I expected. The difficult thing about kanji is that it's difficult for me to use it much. Unless I'm writing some very specific sentences, I don't tend to use the kanji for "fat" that often. Reading signs is also not getting easier, since there's just so many different kanji out there that honestly, the one for "rice field" is the least of my worries. And even though those kanji do end up in station names and stuff, like 五反田 (Gotanda), with the "rice field" kanji as "da," you still don't know how to pronounce it when you encounter it. How am I supposed to know it's "da" instead of "ta," since both are correct pronunciations for 田? It's not something you learn in school. It's mostly intuition, actually, which is why I guess I wanted to come to Japan in the first place. You just don't learn that stuff in a classroom.

My kanji textbook is very interesting though. It comes in two parts. Part one is pictures that try to get your mind to relate the kanji to its meaning (some of them work, and some of them are fishing pretty hard at anything they can lay their hands on). The second part is about meaning and the different common usages for kanji (there are many more pronunciations and meanings that the book doesn't cover though, many of which are commonly used anyways). My book is in English, a few other languages, and then Vietnamese! I got to pick which book I wanted, because they both had English, but the other languages differed. I picked Vietnamese so that if I got bored, I could spend some time touching up on my other language too. Thus, I've been learning quite a bit of Vietnamese in kanji class. Cool, ne?

I went home without a hitch. It was a nice 60 degrees outside on my walk back, and people were in fur coats and stuff. I couldn't believe it. I was wearing sandals and a dress (and getting weird looks from people who were trying their best not to give me weird looks). It's just so weird to have it be 60 degrees and see people wearing leg warmers, full on coats, scarves, hats, etc. 

Another view of the living room. I've never
properly documented this house yet.

I had a great dinner of soba and vegetable tempura, which might be the best soba/tempura I've ever had. Something's different about it... It just tastes better. I really don't know how to describe it. Maybe うま味 (umami) is the best word I can use in this situation.

After dinner, I read a book called You Are Mine to Ryosuke and Ayuka, who are very attentive listeners. I don't know what it is, but I always feel so warm and fuzzy inside when I read to children, especially Corbin and those two kids. They're all so interested in stories and reading that it makes me so happy! This is probably also another reason I want to be a writer.

Ryosuke understands a surprising amount of English, actually, and understood almost the whole book. He can't speak English nearly as well (the same situation I have with Japanese), but reading books with me has helped him quite a bit already, and it's only the first month. Hopefully, he'll be talking quickly and confidently by the time I'm through with him! =]

The last thing I leave you with is a picture of the first drawings to grace this new sketchbook! I did what I wanted to do, and I started personifying stations. The first two I did today are Shibuya and Harajuku, which are neighboring stations on the Yamanote line. Humor me for a moment and let me explain their personalities to you: Shibuya is very outgoing and vaguely obnoxious, but he's kind and very much a gentleman. He laughs a lot, avoids serious subjects, and is very technologically advanced, and especially skilled at programming. Harajuku is a highly fashionable girl who likes to make people laugh, laugh a lot herself, and hang out a lot with friends. She dotes on those that she likes, and she's a pretty skilled cook too. And since Shibuya can't take care of himself well (he always forgets to eat), they're perfect for each other. I didn't intend for them to be a couple, but them more I thought about it, the more it made sense. So there you have it. My highly imaginative mind.

Ta-ta for now! I'll see you guys tomorrow!
マギー