And now, back to class...

     So the point was, the schedule gets confusing sometimes. That's not really such a big deal. We do have different teachers almost every day, though, which is odd. Here's a rundown of the teachers:
- Hino-sensei: She's first because I can't stand her. How many days in a row are we going to learn how to ask our teacher if they can do a favor for us??? Dan says: the whole semester. Unfortunately, the girl that sits next to me doesn't get what she's saying most of the time, so when I black out and wake up when I have to talk to her she's just as clueless as me.
- Kobayashi-sensei: The second strongest emotions go to Kobayashi-sensei, who is just freakin' rad. He's a guy in his early 30s, I think, and is really hilarious every day. Our class likes him so much that we took him out to karaoke the other week (pictures and videos are on others' cameras because mine ran out of juice), and to give you an idea of how awesome he is, his first song was "Wild Wild Life" by The Talking Heads. Yeah!!! I used to call him Yoshinoya-sensei because it was the closest thing that I could associate his name with when I didn't really know it... which I'd say is a compliment.
- Noguchi-sensei: My friend German friend Jonas calls him "No-good-chi Sensei" because he speaks Japanese in class until he gets to a simple word and says it in English. Sometimes, he says other words in English, too, but usually it's like, "newgrammarnewgrammar FOOD oldgrammaroldgrammar". But he's pretty hilarious, so I don't mind his oddly-timed English. Last week he showed us this Japanese sci-fi short in class, and supposedly he talked about cremating kids in Natalie's class as an example of picking up fresh bones with chopsticks. He probably said chopsticks in English.
- Silver-haired-sensei: Yeah, I still don't know her name. She's really nice and effective, though. That's about it. I rode the elevator with her yesterday and we talked about how she was in an orchestra, which is cool.
- Remi-sensei: That's her first name, and the only reason I know it is because of X-Men. Her last name is something-yama, but the first day she explained to us that her name was really weird. She's the kanji teacher, which means her class is inherently boring because it consists mostly of us saying words and watching her write words that are in a book we have. It's hard to explain, but if that sounds boring to you, I've done my job. Today was a lot different because we got a new book, but we'll see. She speaks really fast, and since her class is really boring, it's REALLY hard to pay attention. Especially when most of it isn't really important sounding.

      That's the rundown of them. As for my performance, I'm on par with a lot of people, I think... and that may the first time since Japanese 102, haha... and as for learning, well... it's a little difficult. I don't know what I covered before, but it's really hard to make a lot of the new stuff concrete. We speed through the grammar with relatively easy sentences and have our quizzes and tests on vocabulary, but we're never really prompted by the teachers to use this new stuff in class. In fact, I think I've barely used new grammar in non-grammar classes because it's not something that's naturally coming to me. The thing is, it takes usage for the ideas of these new grammar structures to actually be realized in everyday speech. It's not that I don't know the grammar or that I don't need to use it, but because I have minimal practice with it, it's like I don't even have the option of doing so... that's how it works for me, at least. Same goes for the vocab--I feel like most of it is learn-and-dump, much like it was last semester in Japanese 310 where I learned a billion kanji compounds and dumped them after quizzes and tests because they weren't relevant and we weren't learning them in an effective system. But that's another story, I guess. The most I've learned vocabulary-wise is from hanging out with Japanese people, and usually the vocabulary is vernacular.
      Speaking of speaking, I think the course is actually designed so that we don't focus a lot on speaking because they expect us to be doing that outside of class with actual Japanese people. There are two problems with this: 1) again, we aren't prompted to use the new grammar and vocabulary, and 2) we learn how to speak in everyday Japan rather than classroom Japan. The latter fact is actually not really a problem in general, but just a problem for the class. I REALLY love speaking everyday Japanese and learning everyday Japanese. There's so much more gratification in that than speaking BS in class. I don't know how it is for others, but in my case, I can't usually understand the kids my age well because of their really fast, really vernacular-tempered tongues, not just because of vocabulary alone, because I think that they're using a lot stuff I know in just different ways. I've gotten use to a bunch of these, and have learned a lot of popular words among kids my age, which got me thinking about how awesome a class on everyday Japanese would be... learning modern slang and grammatical deformities of the times. We learn a few, but they're few and far between, and when you're in class using the words you don't have a tendency to use the slang because you're in a classroom.
      Oh hey, I just got my pictures from Jen, so I'm going to take a break, get them uploaded, and finish up my homework. I'm trying to go to bed early tonight, so maybe I won't return this evening, but I hope to talk about a topic that Julie keeps reminding me of: the friends that I've made!

     On that note, I'll leave you with a video of a song that is wildly popular all around Japan. It's by a 25-or-so-year-old group called the Southern Allstars (no hyphen). I know you won't understand the song... I mean, I don't totally... but you'll get some idea by the title... and you'll understand me when I say that I thought it bizarre when I saw parents dancing with their kids in the video that I watched at Jazz camp this weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQwm7HIBLTg


Until next time...!