Anyway, I got my gaijin card AKA Alien Registration Card today at the Ward Office - I can now technically live in the country in Oota-ku district until 2015 if I really wanted to. But I don't think I'm gonna do that. I have to admit though, the card looks cool - it's way more official-looking than my New Jersey driver's license!
I was having a good hair day when I applied for the card. It's the little things in life that make me happy.
In other news, I have completely learned both Hiragana and Katakana, the two main writing systems that the Japanese use. It's cool being able to actually look at the symbols and know what they mean - of course, I can't actually read what signs say in English about 99% of the time, but I can sound them out in Japanese if I wanted to.
The top set of symbols are Hiragana, and the bottom are Katakana - Hiragana is more curvy while Katakana is more linear and simplified. However, the Japanese don't actually need two sets of symbols for the exact same sounds. It makes no sense to me why they didn't just pick one and stick with it - it would certainly make things easier for foreigners learning the language!
Now that I know how to write in Japanese, our professor requires us to write our homework in Japanese from now on. It's extremely time consuming, but I have to admit that when I'm done I feel very proud of myself - and the sentences that I write look so cool!
The picture above is of a worksheet I had to do for homework today. I would say it took me a good half hour to get it done, and I had about five pages total to complete - it definitely took up a chunk of my evening, but I felt accomplished when I was done.
I don't expect that feeling to last long, though - in about a week and a half we're going to start learning kanji, which is insane. It's so confusing since the symbols are adapted from Chinese into Japanese - and there are a million symbols that all look different that can all mean the same thing! I don't know if I have enough room in my brain for all that information! In fact, most Japanese people have not completely mastered kanji - they know enough to get by well, but I have often seen Japanese students in class look up the proper kanji when they're taking their notes. It's kinda like our vocabulary - the more complicated words you know, the more educated you typically are.
I mean, even to read a newspaper here you need to know at least 500 different kinds of kanji (I believe). Crazy.
Well, that's all the time I have for right now. Hopefully I'll be able to post again soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment