I was pretty slacking on my Japanese and saying things like, “Maybe I could use that time slot to take something INTERESTING next semester.” Now I feel a little better.

I’m wrapping up my second year of Japanese and I just spent a week with a native speaker who speaks very little English. My boyfriend’s friend from Hawaii came to town last week and brought his girlfriend from Japan.

Lessons Learned from a Native Speaker:
1. drink. drinking helps your Japanese immensely. You lose your inhibitions and aren’t afraid of sounding stupid.
2. girls don’t say ‘chinpo’, they say ‘asoko’.
3. Japanese drinking games are more fun than american drinking games
4. you can communicate a lot by circumventing the word you don’t know. ie: when trying to explain that I had to go to volunteer training, “free work”. Be creative.

It was also exciting to see myself correcting my boyfriend (he said ‘tabehoshii’ at one point and Yumi and I just cocked our heads at him :D). It was also exciting to see how far I’ve come. A friend’s girlfriend took first semester Japanese with me almost two years ago. She came out one night to hang out and she’s totally lost everything. (She’s been busy learning German and whatnot). So, that’s good, to see that and realize that if I don’t stick with it that’s going to be me.