Today, in class, I had trouble keeping my eyes open. Unfortunately, the class relies a lot on participation so I have to fight to keep aware of everything that’s going on lest the teacher call on me unprepared.
I’ve been increasingly busy not just with school work but also with enjoying my life here in Tokyo. As a result, I don’t get as much of a chance to sleep. You’ll notice that my blog entries recently have become shorter! This is usually because at around 1:30 or 2:00 when I’m ready to go to sleep, I realize that I haven’t updated my blog yet. Since I try to write a blog entry every day, this means I have to get on the computer and write something quickly that qualifies in order to get to bed. As it is 1:39am now, tonight is one of those nights!
Recently, I’ve noticed that my Japanese is becoming more fluid and less troublesome to speak. I started to notice this after some Japanese friends of mine commented about how natural my Japanese sounded and began to continually ask how I studied Japanese (in order to learn my secret?)
Of course, since learning to speak a language is a continuous, gradual process, it never really struck me at once that I had gotten better. The change is so small everyday that it is unnoticeable to me. However, when I think about recent events now and compare them to what I was doing and how I felt speaking a year ago, I can see the difference.
These days, I don’t really have trouble holding a conversation in Japanese. The words flow naturally and it is no longer mentally taxing like it was in my earlier days. As far as I can tell, I’ve held conversations with Japanese people for hours at a time and haven’t really run into any serious problems or any misunderstandings.
The places where I still have trouble are reading text since I still am learning the characters (yes, all 2000+ of them) and also, uncommon words are used more frequently in text than in speech. So, not only do I need a wider vocabulary but I need to know many words which I may see only once and then not see again for a very long time. This makes it more difficult to remember them.
I also have difficultly sometimes watching TV. Most of the time I can understand it, but occasionally I don’t. I think this might be because the context is sometimes difficult to tell. Knowing the context facilitates understanding immensely. When I have conversations with Japanese people, the context is always relateable and almost immediately known. When I’m flipping through TV channels and stop on one, I’m not always aware of the topic.
Additionally, TV programs usually focus on non-daily activities (since we get enough of that sort of thing in our daily lives, why watch it again on TV?). So, if there’s a program about a giant squid living deep in the ocean, I’m in a bit of trouble because I’m not really familiar with boat, ocean or squid vocabulary like mast, crest or tentacle. This type of vocabulary is the sort of specialized vocabulary that I learn just by continuing to come across varied and unfamiliar situations.
Anyway, it’s getting closer and closer to 2am so I will go to sleep now and give myself a break! At least I don’t have class on Thursday so I can sleep in the day after tomorrow!