日本語教室 TAKE TWO

All right.

It’s been about two months since I went to my community Japanese classes (nihongo kyoushitsu in Japanese). You remember how they went: a couple of good ones, and a couple of un-good ones as well, like all those going home and screaming in frustration nights. I almost didn’t sign up again for the winter semester, but, seeing as I have a real tutor now who teaches me grammar, I figured I could at least practice my conversation skills once a week at the Fukushi Kaikan. So I signed up again, not for Monday nights as before, but for Wednesday afternoon, from 4:30-6:30 p.m.

January 19 was supposed to be the first day of class, but when I walked into the old familiar community center building, I discovered that neither students nor teachers were there. I waited around for half an hour, wondering what was going on, until a community employee came up to me and told me that the teacher wasn’t coming. Apparently, since I had been a Monday night student before, the teacher thought I would continue to go on that day, even though I had signed up for a different one. There were a lot of gomennasais and sumimasens, and then I went home.

A week later, on January 26, I went back, half expecting the same situation to happen again. Again, I was the only student there, but not the only person. My heart jumped in my throat for a second when I saw the same teacher I had last semester—was it just my imagination, or was he remarkably cooler towards me than he used to be? (I wonder if he’s still miffed about the letter I had written him in November, thanking him for teaching but letting him know that it was incredibly difficult for me.) Luckily he was only there for a few minutes to introduce me to my new teacher: a woman about my mom’s age (and with children exactly my age), who speaks in slow, understandable Japanese and who doesn’t mind repeating herself a few times. I wonder what Mr. S told her about me. . . “This one’s a hard one, she’s never happy, she’ll ask you all kinds of questions but then get mad if she doesn’t understand your answers. . . ” But, she was fantastic.

Unlike my very first teacher, who threw me into “Mr. Fox and Mr. Bear” on the first day, or Mr. S, who scribbled incomprehensible hieroglyphs all over the board in rapid-fire Japanese, Ms. T started the class by asking me what I wanted to study. I explained that I was studying grammar on Mondays, using the JET/CLAIR course on my own, and that what I’d really like was conversation and practice speaking.

So for most of the two-hour class, we talked about our families, American vs. Japanese housewives, the economy, learning Japanese, driving in Japan, and my job teaching English. (None of it was very eloquent, I’m afraid, but between my stumbling sentences and the pictures I drew, we were communicating!) I actually understood and could respond to about 80% of what she was saying! Of course, most of my sentences were punctuated with “umm”s and I only used the present and past tenses of verbs in simple sentences (“My brother lives in Oregon. My sister lives in Indiana.”), because I don’t feel confident enough yet to use conjunctions correctly. But she was patient and nodded and gave me time to formulate the sentences in my head, and I felt happy. She even understood my desire to learn casual speech quickly, and gave me examples in both polite and casual forms so I won’t be texting my new-found friends, “Whither shall we goeth to imbibe?”

Toward the end of class, she brought out a low-level textbook and had me practice reading from it. It was pretty easy (“This is a notebook. Is this a pen? No, it’s not. It’s a pencil.”) but, it was in 100% Japanese instead of romaji, and it used kanji! And because it was something I’d done before, it gave me confidence reading more quickly. And to boost my confidence even more, she, like the rest of Takasaki, was astounded by my writing skills. “Katakana, hiragana, AND kanji! Jouuuuuuzu desune???!!!”

When class was over, I thanked her for coming and told her I really liked the class. I also tried to excuse myself for last semester just in case Mr. S wanted to know if I was as impossible with her as I was with him. “Maybe I’m a bad student, but it was really, really hard,” I told her. “Really, really hard.” “Do you understand my Japanese?” she asked. “About 80% of it,” I said, and she smiled.

I’ve been saying I’ll speak Japanese “next year” for the past six months. So let’s see I actually keep my promise for 2011. I know I’ll never been fluent. It’s not my goal. But if I can carry on a simple conversation with people, I will be happy enough. Here's to a good start!