Day 2: Getting Down to Business

Don’t be fooled by the single entry, this blog post has been completed in two sittings. It’s funny though, because I’m typing this during the first sitting and there is nothing past tense about my writing at all. One this is very clear though, I do not have the energy to finish this up tonight, much less proofread it. Even more importantly, I don’t have all the pictures I want yet to post along with this entry, maybe I can get them tomorrow.


Alien Registration and Health Insurance
I’ve started writing this the same day of my last entry, only at the end of it rather than the beginning. If you recall, I unwillingly woke up at 4:30 AM. It is now 8:00 PM and I am coming to a whole new understanding of what it is to be tired. The time my sophomore year that I stayed up 37 straight hours never felt like this does right now. The decision to stay up the night before my flight, the intermittent sleep on the plane, and the unproductive night of sleep last night have finally taken it’s toll. Right now, I’d like nothing more than to be asleep in bed, but I feel like every hour I can get closer to 11, the faster I’ll deal with the jet lag and get on a local schedule. If I can make it to 9 I’ll consider it a win. In short, jet lag is really uncool.

Today I ended up having a pretty productive day. My suitcase ended up arriving at 11:50, ten minutes before the close of three hour delivery window, in the same way that the four hour time blocks you schedule with the Time Warner technician really means the last 30 minutes of that block. At any rate, I was thrilled to see rest of my stuff arrive… so I could leave it untouched because I don’t own any hangers yet. Since it was noon, and I was hungry, I made my first trip to the supermarket. I’m going to have to get better at this, as what I came home with was pretty insubstantial and didn’t really live up to the images in my head. I only have myself to blame though.

With some food finally in my stomach I set out to obtain my alien registration card and get enrolled in the national health insurance program. This wasn’t the smoothest operation I’ve had since I arrived here, though it went slightly better than my attempt to ship my bag and definitely smoother than the Citibank adventure which is coming up shortly. My time at the Nakano City Office has taught me one very important lesson though, I need to find a Japanese conversation partner and fast. I seem to have three major deficiencies with the Japanese language. First, my vocab just isn’t very large. This is understandable, and will only correct itself through exposure and use. Secondly, I need more confidence. I know the grammar and I can string along a few phrases but my lack of confidence with the language has left mumbling incoherently more than I should. I will just have to the language more and is the primary reason I need a conversation partner. Finally, I have trouble picking out all the words when they’re spoken in real time. This probably will correct itself over time. At the end of the day though, I managed to get applied for my registration card and get enrolled in the national health insurance program, so big success. I am, however, less clear on when I pick up my alien registration card, or when I am supposed to pay the premiums for my health insurance. This is something I will have to investigate soon. (Mystery solved as I have now read the booklet they gave me for the health insurance and I know when to pick up my card. Amazing what a night of sleep can do for your brain).

The Citibank Adventure
I have to get three things done before I can move forward with my job: applying for the alien registration card, enrolling in the national health care system, and opening a bank account. When I finished with the health insurance it was a around 3, so I thought the best thing to do would be to knock out the bank today and then I could spend Saturday trying to get a cell phone. Before I headed off to Citibank, though, I needed food. Apparently my lunch had been too insubstantial and I really needed something to eat. I felt light headed and lethargic. In the past this has always happened when I haven’t eaten in a while, so logically I went to eat food to make my head feel better. Now that I sit here on the other side of dinner feeling the exact same way, it is apparent that this has more to do with being tired than it does with needing food. At any rate, having eaten some food, I headed out of Citibank.

Banking is a bit of a strange beast in Japan from what I can tell. Citibank and Shinsei are the only two banks that can really be considered “nationwide” banks. That being said, Wachovia seems to have about as many branches in Charlotte alone as Citibank has in all of Japan. This is probably because the Japanese do most of their banking through the post office (which is very ubiquitous), so it just isn’t worth the money for private banks to build the number of branches we do in the US. Also, the ATMs are not open 24/7. After examining the Citibank site I decided that the financial center near Shinjuku station was the best one for me to head for, it was close and I had conveniently been through Shinjuku station the day before, so I had some familiarity with the place.

That familiarity ended up counting for nothing. Shinjuku station is absurdly confusing for first (or in my case second) time visitors. It has about 6 different exits and the station itself apparently expands all the way to the next station on the Marunouchi line. Today I was looking for the east exit, yesterday I had used the west exit and knew that the east exit was near it, so easy enough right? Sadly that was not the case. The signs leading you to the west exit take you right up to the stairs that put you out on the street. The signs for the east exit suddenly disappear and you are left with signs like “A9 (the one I needed) and “B8”. Furthermore, if you look at the map of the station where it says “West exit” there are some stairs, and if you take them you go out onto the street. However, the stairs where it says “east exit” actually enters back down onto the metro.

After looking at the map I concluded correctly, that I wanted to take A9, and then promptly became lost. I ended up going out the south exit, saw a landmark from the previous day, made my way around to the west exit (by walking around the outside of the station), and found myself back where I had previously been. I ended up talking to an attendant, who said take A9. My mistake at A9 had come at the top of the stairs. Once I got up the A9 stairs I continued further into the station and got myself confused. Turns out all I had to do was look behind me to see a second set of stairs leading up to the street.

Having finally made it out the east exit, I managed to get to Citibank only to discover there was no one there to help me open an account. I thought maybe I had misread the branch services on the website. So after my adventure in Shinjuku station I ended up just taking the metro back home. Once I got home I rechecked the website. Had I been reading more carefully I would have noticed that you can open accounts from 9-3 and 5-7, I had arrived at the bank around 4. By the time I got back to my room I was too tired to head back out during the evening rush. Instead I got dinner and sat down to write this. I made it to 8:40 before I gave up the ghost by the way. I woke up at 1, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30 and got up at 6. I did manage to get some sleep though, and 6 is far better than yesterday’s 4:30. I am feeling much better this morning and hopefully I’ll have the jet lag out of my system tomorrow. On tap for today, Softbank (cell phone), the hyakuen store (dollar store), and perhaps finding a gym.

Now that I see how long this post is I’m going to forget the pictures and put them in a separate post tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Day 1: The Arrival

Well, I’ve made it to Japan in one piece, one very very tired piece. I went to great lengths to try to make sure I would hit the ground well rested, and that was certainly not the case. I figured if I stayed up the day before my flight and took an ambien, I could get 7-8 hours of sleep on the plane easily. However, I botched my plan by taking the ambien right after take off. The problem with that was that I took it before the crew served the first meal of the flight. Turns out that no amount of tiredness and ambien will enable me to sleep through the sound of knives and forks on plates. The noise work me up and by the time things had quieted down, the initial punch of the ambien had passed.

I did manage to doze off a few times, so I did get some sleep, just not a lot. About 70 miles from Narita, I opened the window shade to the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. It occurred to me then that it was actually the first time I’ve ever seen the Pacific Ocean. I snapped this picture as the first bit of land came into view.

From 2010-06-18

From 2010-06-18

Everything was going smoothly at the airport to begin with. No problems at immigration or customs, I got through it in a timely manner. My only real problem of the trip came after that. I wanted to have my checked luggage delivered to my apartment so I wouldn’t have to drag it through the train system. The problem was, they wanted a local telephone number, which I obviously did not possess. Eventually I managed to get the phone number of the guesthouse I am staying out and was able to use that. Another issue with the shipping is that they wanted the address in kanji and I only had it written down in romanji. Now, they were able to write it down in kanji, but I am still slightly concerned. I suppose I’ll find out in the next three hours, as that is when it is supposed to be delivered.

From 2010-06-18

After I finally had my luggage dealt with, I hopped the express train to Shinjuku and made my way to the Sakura House office. At this point I was absurdly tired, dragging my laptop bag and carry-on luggage around. They got my room all set up and sent me on my way. After some initial difficulty with the metro (I had the wrong line) I made it to my room, met my suitemates, and hit up 7-11 for a small dinner. I’m clearly going to need a few days to work out the Jet lag. I went to sleep at 10:30, woke up at 2:30, and again at 4:30 (no more sleep after that). So by tonight I will probably be pretty dead. Here are some pictures of my humble home (and shared kitchen).

From 2010-06-18

From 2010-06-18

From 2010-06-18

From 2010-06-18

From 2010-06-18

Also, Japanese toilets are crazy. As you will see there is a sink on top of our toilet so that when you flush water to wash your hands with runs immediate. Genius I say!

From 2010-06-18

Springtime in Charlotte and My Future Plans

With March now squarely in the rear-view mirror, it seems like we've left the cool weather behind and can look forward to... well summer, which is actually worse. In the meantime though we have Spring, as fleeting as it may be. I picked up my final Christmas present today, a new camera and I took it out for a test drive today. Fun stuff.




That's all minor stuff. Much bigger news is that I have accepted a position teaching English in Japan. Nothing is guaranteed yet, the Japanese Immigration Bureau still have to approve me for a work visa, but if that happens I'll be off to the land of the rising sun. It's pretty exciting stuff. This has been in the works for well over a year now and I'm really excited that things are coming together.

Of course, now I have a nice new camera to take with me, and hopefully I'll be updating this blog somewhat regularly with my exploits in Japan.

Don't think that just because I haven't updated my blog since January that I haven't been working on my Japanese either, I have. I took a break from Rosetta Stone to read through an introductory grammar book on Japanese; it was an excellent decision. I think if you are learning another indo-European language Rosetta Stone's system of not directly addressing grammar is fine, but it doesn't work so well in Japanese. The idea behind Rosetta Stone is that you learn the language in the most natural way possible, by being exposed to it with contextual information, just how we learn our first language. The problem I found is that, as adults, we come with baggage, expectations based on knowledge of our own languages. In my case, my problem came from English's emphasis on word order. English grammar is all about word order, and the order we put our words in decides the meaning of the sentence. This is not the case in Japanese. Other than the need for the verb to come last, word order is VERY flexible. Instead, Japanese grammar is based on particles that are tagged onto the end of words that indicate what that word's function is.

は is a topic marker.
に indicates direction of an action or location of existance.
で indicated location of actions or by which means an action is done.

明日、私は海岸に車で行きます
Rather than translating, if you were to swap out words it'd look like this.
Tomorrow, I (topic marker) beach (direction marker) car (by means of marker) go.
Of course, translated this says, "Tomorrow, I will go to the beach by car."

There's a lot more to it than that, but that will give you an idea.

Needless to say, Rosetta Stone just dives in throwing the particles around, but it never became clear to me how exactly each particle was functioning. Now that I understand the particles though, I'm back into Rosetta Stone learning more than ever.

Breaking Through

I'm closing in on the end of the first level of the Japanese Rosetta stone, I only have the final fourth unit to go, and I've come to a realization; I'm really enjoying learning Japanese. This is a big deal, mainly because through seven years in grade school and two terms at Furman I never once enjoyed learning Spanish. It always seemed like a chore to me, something I had to do to graduate but didn't really want to do. When I set out to learn Japanese I knew that I was already at an advantage in that I wanted to learn, but I was never really sure if I would enjoy learning the language. I am happy to discover that I am enjoying learning Japanese, and I think this, more than anything, will help me along.

Learning a language takes discipline, there's no doubt about that, and you need to be regularly working with the language if you want to make any real progress. But the more something feels like a chore, the less you want to do it. The fact that I am enjoying learning Japanese turns that chore into something I want to do, and makes it easier for me to devote my free time to it. I remember making the comment once that I would prefer for everyone to just learn English because learning a foreign language was too much of a hassle. My Spanish professor thought that was a short sighted view and was a poor outlook on language learning. I'm happy to discover seven years later that he was right, it is a poor outlook, I just didn't like his language. So for those people who never felt like they could master a language other than their own, I'd encourage you to give it another go. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would be unable to learn another language, I am happy to be proving myself wrong.

Excellent Kanji Compounds: 警察官

Most kanji are made up of smaller elements which are often times kanji themselves. When these elements are combined together into a single kanji they often lose the meaning they had as a kanji. For instance, 田means rice field. This kanji is also an element in 猫 (cat), which we discussed earlier. What do rice fields have to do with cats? I don't know, probably not much.

This however is NOT the case for kanji combinations. A kanji combination is when several kanji are strung together to make a word and there's almost always a logical pattern to why certain kanji are grouped together to make word. Kushner points out that this can give us some insight into ancient Japan when many of these patterns were established, but more importantly, they can be downright amusing.

And so, I present to you 警察官 (keisatsukan) the Japanese word for “police officer”.

What is a police officer you ask? Why it's simple, a police officer is a person who:

警 - “admonish”es you

察 - “judge”es you and is a

官 - “bureaucrat”

It's the admonishing bit that really gets me.

There you have it, the Japanese have nicely summed up the function police officers.

(Our own etymology is somewhat similar. Police comes from Middle French “police”, essentially meaning government. No admonishment though... sad).

New Book, New Vigor?

So I picked up another book to help me with my study of Japanese, specifically, Kanji. This one is called “Crazy for Kanji” written by Eve Kushner (who contributes to this great blog here: japanesepod101.com). Where Heisig works to teach you Kanji, Kusher works rather to teach you how to study kanji.

I've already discussed how Heisig's method is very effective, but I had trouble focusing on it. Even though it is based on some whimsical, often amusing tales, I still had trouble keeping to the task. Kushner aims to alleviate this by trying to show the many ways kanji can be fascination. In the end, Heisig is essentially a means to an end, a method of getting the kaji into your head and that's it. Kusher offers a much deeper knowledge of the kaji, discussing their history, patterns, evolution and so much more.

I said I wanted to continue to use Heisig and I am, but I'm going to try to do it at a higher speed, not necessarily going over each kanji to the degree Heisig envisioned. What I hoping is to see them, and then as they pop up in Rosetta Stone, I can deepen my knowledge and make the connections I need. This could backfire horribly though, we shall see.

I think Kusher's book is interesting but I won't truly know how I feel about it for a long while. I feel it is the type of book you need to read at least twice. Once, when you are starting your study of the kanji to give you a sense of what to look for. Then a second time after you've become more proficient with kanji, to truly discover everything she's talked about. At any rate, I plan to deal much more directly with the kanji while I'm doing the Rosetta Stone, making sure I at least get a good look at them, and break down kanji combinations when I come across them. Well, here's to hoping it all works out.

Back in the Saddle Again

Well, it's been a while. I'm not surprised that I let this blog sit here unattended for three months, perhaps more surprising is that I came back to it this soon at all. It's unfortunate, because part of the goal was to use this blog to help me stay focused on learning Japanese and just as I had let this go, my focus on Japanese slid as well. But I'm back, and back to the Japanese as well.

I've decided to change my approach, originally I was going to focus on Kanji via Heisig, but I've decided I need to be grappling with the language itself, so back to the Rosetta Stone. I still want to use Heisig's book, but I'm going to adjust the way I've been using it. As I've come back to Rosetta Stone one thing has been made abundantly clear, Heisig works. When I first started Rosetta Stone, back in June, I had it set to romanji, and shortly thereafter switched over to kana, but I avoided kanji like the plague. That's past now, I have Rosetta Stone set to kanji and it's staying there.

The thing with kanji is, you have to do it at some point if you actually want to be able to read the language and like so many things in life, it's that first step that's the hardest. Kanji are intimidating. They're complex, numerous, and used very differently from how we use our phonetic alphabet. When you first approach the language and you see all these crazy symbols it's very easy to switch over to romanji and stick with something familiar. But after doing the first few hundred kanji in Heisig you can more easily tell the kanji apart and memorizing kanji you've never seen before becomes easier, even when not using his method.

Whether using Heisig's method or not, the most important thing is to continue to work with the language and the kanji. Even the Japanese start to forget kanji if they don't use them regularly, so you can imagine as a student of the language there can be no let up.

As far as Rosetta Stone is concerned the verdict is still out, but I'm thinking it is going to work. My anti-virus owned my Rosetta Stone unfortunately and I had to reinstall and start over from scratch, but I am kind of glad that that happened. It is a forced review and I am finding out how effective what I've been doing up to now has been. I definitely feel like this time through I have a much stronger grasp of what's going on, so hopefully that's a sign that I can actually pull this off.