Three weeks 'till the end of the year and I'm already making new year's resolutions, oh boy... One of these is to get my act together and take up my study of Japanese again. Yep, after an explosive, energetic start in September the drive to study the local lingo has already dwindled, due to a combination of laziness and slight anxiety. Proof of our linguistic inability was again given on Saturday, when Vaughan & I ended up in a muddled, somewhat absurd conversation with a sword sharpener. While walking in our neighbourhood we spotted this guy's shop and were invited to come in to have a closer look. Immediately loads of questions entered our minds: 'how much do these swords cost?', 'how long does it take to make one?', 'who uses them in this day & age?', etc. But the transition from mind to mouth proved rather difficult, with both of us struggling to put together sentences and leaving the sword sharpener dazed & confused! The kind man then proceeded to call an English-speaking friend (see photo) who assisted in the translation of our enquiries. All in all quite a funny, bizarre situation, which was both a reminder of the friendliness of the Japanese and a wake-up call for us to learn their language. To be continued in 2006 ...
2 comments:
I am so impressed by your photography and journalistic skills! Reading this is re-exciting me about Japan and perhaps swaying my decision to stay another year (although my feelings change daily, or hourly).
Don't worry too much guys, it'll keep happening, guarenteed. Especially as you move around the country & are subjected to various dialects.
Also many Japanese, especially those who don't have much contact with 'gaijin' have subconcious blocks about any gaijin being able to speak Japanese as they've been brought up to believe it's far too difficult a language. A couple of times I know I said a correct phrase with pretty good pronunciation but the Japanese person was not 'able' to understand it as I was a gaijin & thus a gaijin speaking Japanese did not compute.
As to the writing, that's another matter. Yes, it's bloody difficult!
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