Japan: How to Learn Japanese
On this dialogue, I am currently taking a Japanese class which helps with speaking the language. On top of the class, there are frequent Japanese conversation sessions with local university students for an hour. During these conversation sessions, I get the opportunity to practice new grammar points learned from the Japanese class that day. Additionally, there are so many opportunities to practice Japanese besides in class and conversation sessions.
Some common questions I find myself asking are “where is the restroom?,” “can I go to the restroom?,” or “can we pay separately?” A new word that I learned was from trying to ask if a group of us can pay separately for a meal. I didn’t know how to say the word separately, but the cashier got the gist of what I was trying to say. So, the cashier inserted hand movements indicating the word separately and saying the word “bara-bara.” And that’s how I learned the word separately, and have been using it every time I need to ask if a group of us can pay separately.
Although it’s been about three weeks here in Japan, I am still learning Japanese, and nowhere near fluent. However, I am doing my best to try and speak Japanese as frequently as I can, even if some of the Japanese people I speak to may know English. For example, there was a misunderstanding in the hotel I was staying at in which these cheap sandals I bought to wear comfortably around the hotel went missing from my room. In the best Japanese I could, I explained to the front desk person the situation, and surprisingly went through the whole conversation in Japanese with the front desk person understanding the situation. However, after coming out of the conversation, I think I said, “my sandals have died,” instead of “my sandals went missing.” The misunderstanding was cleared up, and it was found that a housekeeper got confused with their own sandal because they use the same kind of sandals. I’m glad that it made sense to the front desk person though, and that he didn’t burst out laughing, because I probably would’ve started giggling if I were in his shoes and heard that someone’s “sandals have died.”
