Well, hello everyone!
I’m a 24 year old English teacher living and working in Japan. I’m originally from Texas, but for the past 6 months I’ve been settling into my new life here in this beautiful country.
I studied Japanese for two semesters in college. (I didn’t have room in my schedule to study all the levels! Boo.) That gave me a very basic grasp of Japanese. I learned Hiragana and Katakana and basic grammar structures. However, those classes were 4 years ago! (Say whaaaaaat.) So, my Japanese is in very poor shape. When I first came to Japan in August I sat down and refreshed myself on Hiragana and Katakana (it’s much easier the second time around) and extremely basic survival vocabulary and grammar. As of right now, I can read very few kanji, just the ones I’ve picked up while living here. In the past 6 months, however, I have come to understand a lot more Japanese when someone is speaking to me, which is great for communicating with my fellow teachers, but not so great if I need to respond in Japanese which is always a laughable experience.
As for my reasons for learning, well, in college i was purely because I’ve always been fascinated with Japan and I thought Japanese was a pretty language (and I had to have a foreign language credit anyway.) But now that I actually live in Japan I have a lot more reasons. Like you know, being able to know exactly what I’m buying at the grocery store instead of standing in the middle of the isle with my translator out trying to figure out if this is skim milk or soy milk I’m looking at. But my number one reason?
My students. I teach elementary school and junior high school and damn it, those kids so badly want to talk to me and I so badly want to speak to them. But we can’t, I can only ask them if they understand, but then if they don’t, how do I explain something to them? I can’t! Luckily I have their Japanese English teacher or homeroom teacher there to help me out, but I would love to be able to communicate with them on my own. So now my motivation is purely so I can talk to my ever adorable and silly students. I think that’s a much better and stronger reason.
Alright, I’ve rambled enough. I just wanted to pop by and say hello! Also if there any fellow English teachers in Japan pursuing these forums, say hi!
Let’s enjoying communication building(u)!