Thursday, June 19, 2003
Wow! I feel fat. Maybe thats because I just ate one metric buttload of sushi at a very interesting restaurant. Dr. Ahmadyar treated me to a wonderful meal at a sushi bar near Meikei HS. The coolest part about the restaurant is that you dont really have to order much other than any special items you may want, such as soups. There is a conveyor belt (maybe a job for Stephanie?) that carries around color-coded plates with freshly-made sushi, made right before you in the center of the conveyor system. Think typical Dairy Queen sized restaurant, not just one lazy susan type table. If you see something you like, you just grab it. Its that simple. The plates are colored-coded so you know how much the item on it will cost, especially useful for money-conscious college student types. You just stack your plates and they count them at the end of your meal for your total. He promises me many restaurants to take.
So you may be confused by that last sentence. I have spent a good portion of the day trying to learn some Japanese. It is slow going because I have to learn all of those new symbols that make up the Japanese written language. I guess the spoken language too, since they represent the phonics. I have never really thought as much about a foreign language as I have today. Spanish didnt really count I suppose because it was mostly things like word substitution, gato = cat, or noun goes before adjective. No major changes from English minus a few grammatical discrepancies. This is totally blowing my mind. It is very fun to see the responses of people, especially students, when I pop out a Japanese phrase. Of course, that only leads to a quick assumption that I know Japanese and I constantly find myself soon after such an instance trying to explain that I only know very little Japanese. Maybe I will get better in a few weeks.
So, you have probably noticed the fact that I havent really been using punctuation as I usually would, such as apostrophes, etc. Well, that may be due to the fact that I am using a Japanese keyboard. The most noticeable difference other than the plethora of symbols on each key is the fact that a great deal of the punctuation marks are moved around. Colon is where apostrophe should be, quotation mark is where @ should be. Obviously, @ is also moved. I grow weary of trying to remember where the right ones are, so I have just decided to not use them at all for now. If you are lucky, I may figure it out one day. Right now, I will focus my efforts on learning hiragana and more Japanese words and phrases. Did I mention ridiculously small spacebar?
I finally got more Yen yesterday. It took me forever to find an ATM compatible with my card. It seems that we will only be able to use post office ATMs, so I went ahead and took out a good quantity yesterday because it is many blocks away. Finding the post office was a good experience because most people dont expect anyone to talk to them. Most people seem to be quite animated and helpful when probed. So, after this experience, I have made it my duty to act like an arrogant foreigner and greet people as I pass them on the street. I started today while riding to school. I rang my bell and said ohayo gozaimasu, or `good morning,` to as many people as possible. You should see the looks on many of their faces. It is priceless. But not in the MasterCard sort of way.
Until tomorrow,
Muddy-san
So you may be confused by that last sentence. I have spent a good portion of the day trying to learn some Japanese. It is slow going because I have to learn all of those new symbols that make up the Japanese written language. I guess the spoken language too, since they represent the phonics. I have never really thought as much about a foreign language as I have today. Spanish didnt really count I suppose because it was mostly things like word substitution, gato = cat, or noun goes before adjective. No major changes from English minus a few grammatical discrepancies. This is totally blowing my mind. It is very fun to see the responses of people, especially students, when I pop out a Japanese phrase. Of course, that only leads to a quick assumption that I know Japanese and I constantly find myself soon after such an instance trying to explain that I only know very little Japanese. Maybe I will get better in a few weeks.
So, you have probably noticed the fact that I havent really been using punctuation as I usually would, such as apostrophes, etc. Well, that may be due to the fact that I am using a Japanese keyboard. The most noticeable difference other than the plethora of symbols on each key is the fact that a great deal of the punctuation marks are moved around. Colon is where apostrophe should be, quotation mark is where @ should be. Obviously, @ is also moved. I grow weary of trying to remember where the right ones are, so I have just decided to not use them at all for now. If you are lucky, I may figure it out one day. Right now, I will focus my efforts on learning hiragana and more Japanese words and phrases. Did I mention ridiculously small spacebar?
I finally got more Yen yesterday. It took me forever to find an ATM compatible with my card. It seems that we will only be able to use post office ATMs, so I went ahead and took out a good quantity yesterday because it is many blocks away. Finding the post office was a good experience because most people dont expect anyone to talk to them. Most people seem to be quite animated and helpful when probed. So, after this experience, I have made it my duty to act like an arrogant foreigner and greet people as I pass them on the street. I started today while riding to school. I rang my bell and said ohayo gozaimasu, or `good morning,` to as many people as possible. You should see the looks on many of their faces. It is priceless. But not in the MasterCard sort of way.
Until tomorrow,
Muddy-san
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