I arrive in Japan

After I left the intensive Japanese course, I knew the two Kana alphabets, some formal greetings, and basic sentence structure of subject-object-verb. I spent the intervening month in Moorhead, Minnesota with the English village of Concordia Language Villages. In the second two-week session, we had a group of 15 Japanese high school students come for some English instruction before they stayed with host families in the States. I didn't learn much language from them as I did culture. How they behave in groups, socialize one on one, and talk differently between boys and girls. One example is that girls are always giggling. About what I don't know. But I think I'm digressing.

On my way to Japan, I stayed with my cousin in Hawaii who's 1/2 Japanese, his 4 children who are 3/4 Japanese, and you guessed it, his Japanese wife. Yumiko teaches Japanese at the local school. She gave me a crash lesson in question words. The one that stuck with me was, "ikura" or "how much does it cost?" That's a good first one to learn as I learn to survive on my own.

I arrived at Kansai International airport very nervous about my immersion in a print environment that I couldn't understand. The beginning of illiteracy. My teacher mentor, Aki, picked me up and drove me to my apartment. On the ride back, I tried to read the factory and billboard signs. We whizzed by faster than I could make them out. Aki's fluent in English so we didn't speak much Japanese.

I remember these first few days just being so baffled at the supermarket. I'm a pretty stingy and particular consumer in the States, so when I want skim milk and free-range chicken eggs I require some specific vocabulary. Without it I'm reduced to survival strategies like looking at pictures of chickens in a field and scanning for numbers to tell fat percentage.

I bought a book called "instant Japanese" which has 100 headwords of essential words to be combined to communicate. I set about working to memorize and use these words. I find they're good for businessmen and temporary (as in tourist) visitors, not for talk in the classroom or teachers' office. I set about looking for affordable evening classes in Japanese to improve my ability.