日本語

This year is flying by...

I think I've been too relaxed about things lately, and it seems like life is beginning to pass me by. I don't particularly want these next seven weeks or so to pass me by, because at the end of them my life will be changing quite a lot for quite a while, so I intend to make a bit more of an effort to enjoy, and make the most of, my remaining time with Louise.

We have resolved to redouble our efforts to learn Japanese - that's the main thing. We'd been learning in different ways, and at different speeds, independently but now we've promised each other to help each other out with our studies. I'm coming on quite well with written Japanese (or at least well by my standards!), while Louise has been more focused on the spoken. We're aiming for at least three hour-long joint lessons a week, where we'll share with each other what we've been learning.

I'm also going to make more of an effort to keep my blog up to date - and, remembering why I set it up in the first place, I'll be sharing what I'm learning here, too.

One topic I've always struggled to remember has been days of the week - for some reason, even though there's only seven of them, they just won't stick. Louise dug this out of the internet, which really helps a lot. I'm aiming to have them - kanji and all - remembered by the end of the week, and to have taught Louise colours in the same time frame. By the time Louise goes away at the end of May, I'm hoping to have helped her master hiragana (which I've pretty much completed now), and to have learned sentence structures/verb conjugations myself. I reckon that's a healthy target to have set.

We've also set up a Tumblr site focusing on Japanese style & culture, which you can find lurking behind this link. It's a photo blog, with a new theme every week; the current one is bento. It's nice being able to share the myriad quirky pics we happen across here & there...
Finally, at the risk of sounding like a bloody advert, I have to once again extoll the virtues of smartphones, in particular Android phones, as a fantastic resource when learning a second language. An app by iStudy Campus called Survive! Japanese has done absolute wonders for my progress. And they're not even paying me to say that!

So it's back to the books and the blogs for me. Wish me luck - Watashi wa ganbarimasu!