About the daily life

School...

So about two months ago, I moved from C to the first intermediate level class, D. A lot of things changed in our normal daily routine. For example acted videos about chapter conversation vanished and instead of having three books, we now have... five. Before our schedule was build on moving forward with the Minna no Nihongo book series, but now we do that only three days in a week. Remaining twon days we have speacial divided classes for those who are weak in kanji and those who has done kanji ok this far. Those who don't need extra prepping in kanji, will do N3 JLPT practising.

This class has turned out to be really usefull and also time by time challenging. When it comes to JLPT material, the texts have furigana only for kanji that are from upper levels (so in our case, N2 or N1). For the rest, they expect you to be able to read. But of course the schools rarely build their material JLPT in their thoughts, so I have found it to be good practise to challenge yourself with kanji you are unfamiliar. Also the art of guessing by contects and kanji radicals has improved a lot. For me the weakness is still definetly the reading, just because of the kanji. The N3 level listening and other parts of the test feels already rather easy, which is relief. After all, I am aiming to take the N2 level in December. Still three months to go! For that I am also participating to N2 extra class in my school, which doesn't cost extra for students, held once in a week after normal studies.

Other changes in school are the tests. I have been thinking that our tests have been rather easy. Before we had kanji test about every second or third week (we also did only 4 kanji in a day). So that has much changed now. Our kanji speed is double or triple, kanji test is now every week. The midterm exams are once in a month and the level has turned to be more challenging than before. During beginner level classes I usually had about 20 minutes extra time after finishing my test, so I would take my time to check the test in case of writing mistakes or so after turning the paper in. That is not the case anymore. Last time I had a minute extra before handing the test in and that was the case with most of us. I really like about this change, becouse before the tests also didn't really check if you were able to use the grammar more creative way, only to check if you knew the rule. Now there is a lot of half plank sentences you are expect to fill in the best fitting way. After this I am waiting the D-class finals same time terrified and excited.

Here is some pictures about my school stuff (essey included, we have to write them in these days in these "real" essey writing sheets. Before we did them with free lines.). After writing an essey we have to hold a speach based on that. Both writing and performing are worth of 30 points. 

Other...

Outside of the school I have been working part-time now since June, but by that time I only had one Finnish language student. Now the number has increased to four. I find teaching my own language really hard, much harder than you would expect. Maybe it is because you rarely think the rules or the grammar of your native language. Things just either sounds right to your ear or not. Other challenging side in teaching Finnish is the lack of teaching material, so I have basically made all my material by myself and it takes rather a lot of time. But teaching is so much fun, that it kind of makes it worth it.

Aside the work, I found a new hobby, kendo. I am so excited to see how it starts to roll. The school were the practise is held is only couple of hundred meters a way from my apartment and everybody are so nice there. I also found the art of making Temari by hand. Temari balls are made from lint and thread and... well nothing else. I made my first pair of earrings about a month ago.

I rarely update pictures about food or about the everyday life, so this time I decided to add a hin of that too. First there is pictures about a couple of aid packages we have received from Finland. I can say salmiak and Geisha chocolate has never tastes this good. Second row is from my favourite Kamakura cafe, cafe Bisquit. Their speciality is hot lemonade and grand size pancakes with fresh berries. Below that some of my favourite Ramen and an burger by J.S Burger Cafe. Then some of my favourite summer sweets: Baskin Robbins ice cream and traditional shaved ice with lemon flavour. With shaved ice you really have to be a quick eater. Mine melted in minutes. ^^ Below that more Baskin Robbins, but this time, my birthday cake. I am such a child I know. ^^ But it was delicious! Last pictures include one half made Temari ball and things from our balcony garden: huge paprika and delicious mini tomatoes. We also have enjoyed cucumbers and strawberries, but time for those is about over by now. That's all for now, see you ~

Autumn and JLPT4

The autumn has finally really arrived, the leaves are turning red and yellow and the weather is colder, though it’s still warmer than it usually is during fall. I’m a big fan of all the foliage colours and it always makes me just want to knit something warm and paint a lot with bright colours. Too bad I haven’t really had time for those things. For few weeks now I have been running from job interview to another and actually I managed to get contract with two companies which hire extra workers for grocery stores, cafes and bars. There is no such a thing as a minimum hours in a week, so it’s really mostly about luck and how volunteer you’re jumping to the metro and getting to work whenever someone calls you. I have done this couple of years ago and it’s easy as long as you don’t do any other plans you need to keep. And the variety of places you will work in is actually quite fun.

Japan… I don’t know how many times I have already written that it is getting closer. An obvious fact, but I guess writing it up makes it easier to wait ^^. I have been a huge fan of this blog called GaijinPot, very nice articles about different phenomena in Japan. One of the most interesting ones was this post about the “UchiSoto” culture in Japan. Reading that made me see the Japan little bit differently and also I had a great wake up experience about our last visit in Japan. It made me really see the natural reason behind the help we received and why we were treated like we were. I recommend reading that, it’s not that long.

From the subject to another, I’m actually really proud of myself for completing the first Kanji Book. I’m still going to do the reviews about the chapters (always after every 4-5 chapters I think) to check that I actually am still able to do even the kanji from the beginning. The next book will be little bit different to study because with this Book 1, I decided right from the beginning that I would study every kanji from that book no matter if those ones weren’t on the kanji list for JLPT4. In this point I guess I have to point out that for JLPT tests there doesn’t exist a real kanji list anymore. After the test was renewed few years ago they dropped all the official material out, leaving the situation hanging on those very flowing sentences about one’s skills (see them in on this blogs page “Project data”).

But because many people feel that it’s really hard to study without any base, most of the people still use these old kanji lists which you can still find from the web. Here is the list where I have based my estimation about JLPT4 kanji (the list is cumulative with N5 kanji too). One reason why I decided to read the whole Kanji Book 1 including all the 251 kanji (even when I circle out the lists kanji there comes only approximately 170 kanji from the book 1 and rest from the book 2) was that the list is old and not valid, though it still gives you a quite a good glimpse what is to be expected.

Cheers

Acha

Roppongi (Tokyo), 2012

Öland (Sweden), 2010

Productive day

Today has been a very productive day. I begun the studying the first thing in a morning and continued 6 hours with a breakfast break. The result was 24 new kanji learned which helped me to fill the gap what the last weeks of August left. So now I'm once again in a right speed, but my right hand disagrees badly with the entire writing practice I have done today ^^.

I spent some time yesterday watching videos from different Youtube bloggers (who blog about Japan) like Rachel and Jun and Kanadajin3. I find it interesting to hear different experiences and I have to say that some of the tips they have given, if we would have known those when we first time visited Japan, some things would have been much easier. So I warmly recommend following those channels, especially Rachel and Jun are very nice to follow.

Some of those videos raises questions of course. One video told that Japanese don't use any deodorant and of course when you compare it with our culture in Finland it sounds really weird. One of our friends has been in Japan as an exchange student and she has confirmed this info for us earlier, but it still feels odd. In Japanese culture there is also plenty of rules about behavior that are very important but if you don't know those rules, you might break them but no-one will note that up for you.

The culture of ignoring misbehavior in order not to misbehave yourself is pretty interesting and gives a lot to think about. For example during our last visit in Tokyo, people in trains would just sit quiet doing their own things, just like in Finland. Speaking in a phone in a train is considered highly rude and there are signs that tell you not to speak in your phone in a train. However, if someone does this, nobody really says anything, they just maybe give you a bad look and continue what they were doing and that is a complete opposite what would happen in Finland. Here someone would shout that someone to shut up or at least would mumble to a closest person how irritating that one person is being.

I'm highly fascinated by this twist in Japanese culture. I often feel like some of the Finnish melancholic attitude comes from complaining out loud about everything and people tend to hang on with the unequal and bad happenings so long that they forgot to move on. I look forward to see the difference since in Japan it sometimes feels like they let go about things even too easily and move on.

Himawari

Today is this week's first free day from the work and I have to say that I feel pretty exhausted. I've been working really hard with the kanji and the Minna no Nihongo books so that this tight schedule could be kept, but I admit that it's not easy. The past week I've tried to study before the work and after work, so to be able to do today just whatever I wanted, study kanji without having to check time all the time and spent some time with the bunnies, it all has been so relaxing (and I bought myself a sunflower (向日葵, Himawari) to keep the good spirit up ^^ )

When I've studied to JLPT tests (first to N5 even though because of work I didn't actually manage to go to the test) I have noticed that there isn't actual official kanji list for the test. I was searching different kind of lists (you can find plenty from different "Study Japanese/Study to JLPT test" pages) when I noticed this book series. So this series seems to be published for JLPT studies in the beginning fo 2012, but I haven't yet had enough time to see how do they ship it to Europe and with how high shipping costs because the book itself isn't that expensive (and for us it's too late). But because of the different resources it is hard to estimate the exact amount of kanji that N4 requires. Oh well luckily our real goal stands further than what any list suggests (500 kanji) so we should be okey! 
 

Cheers and Ganbatte to everyone stuggling with JLPT and kanji aswell! ;)

 

Flight Hunting

Hi again!

It's almost end of the July, the blogs counter shows only 150 (approximately) days untill the take off. The fact behind the approximately is that we actually don't have flights yet. The counter has been settled to the date which would be best for us, 27th of December, but the reality is that we may have to be flexible in order to get the best flights. That has been harder than expected though. Our dates aren't that flexible what we would like them to be. The reasons are pretty simple: we want to spent Christmas holidays (23-25th) with our families because we have to be long time apart from them. We also want to fly before New Year's Eve in order to be able to start arrangements in Tokyo before the beginning of the school. So with those boundaries it actually leaves dates to be only from 26th to 28th of December... Not really flexible?

Other problem is the flying route. I personally would prefer not flying through Russia right now and even if considered the time we have to spend in Moscow's airport is insane in most of the combinations (reaching 30 hours in some cases.). But if you are willing to fly with only one stop during the way (Moscow) through Russia the prices begins from 400 euro (for one way ticket). If you aren't willing to fly with the Moscow stop the prices rises from 550 euro and there will always be more than one stopover. So we're kinda waiting something to happen and trying to hunt a best offer. We've also considered booking two-way flights, but those won't actually come much more cheaper and because we're going to spent so long time there the flying companies can't list us right away flight back (so we would have to purchase a right to change the return date and that costs something like 100-150 euro from different companies but not everyone is offering that deal) So keep the thumbs up for our search!

ps. Have to say I'm pretty proud that I've already achieved 150 kanji limit even though it was originally Augusts goal <3 Hurray! 
 

2012