first day of school
Today was the first day of language school. I had taken a semester of Japanese at CCSF (City College San Francisco, San Francisco’s free community college) two years ago, and this was pretty reminiscent of that, except the students in this class are from all over the world. There’s a pretty good mix in the class: people from China, Korea, Italy, France, a few other places, and only two other people from the US (as far as I can remember). I think there’s about 20 students in the class.
The first day was paced very interestingly - we started learning Hiragana (one of the 3 Japanese writing systems/alphabets), which at least I was told to learn ahead of time, so I was thinking that the beginning was going to be pretty slow. A part of me wants to expedite the learning as much as possible because I want to get good at Japanese fast so I can do more things here, and a part of me wants it to be slow in the beginning while I still get my bearings here. Well, it seemed like everyone in the class already knew basic phrases and Hiragana, but we learned a few characters anyways, and then immediately dove into reading the textbook and slides that already had kanji (which we were told we weren’t going to have to learn until week 3). I was really grateful I had a decent amount of Japanese experience under my belt because it was pretty easy for me, but for those who don’t have quite as much previous study time, I can see how they would get super confused and lost. I wasn’t sure how intense all the other students were going to be about language learning, but it did remind me a lot of my CCSF class where it was clear some of the students were much better at Japanese than others, and the pair practice exercises devolves into me teaching my partner Japanese.
I would say I’m a pretty serious language learner when I’m in a classroom setting, but it’s been incredibly difficult to self-study Japanese (which I wish I did more of ahead of time in hindsight). The only method I’ve found that works for me is using Quizlet. It’s similar to Anki (a very popular spaced-repetition memorization tool) but there are a few key differences which have been a game-changer for me. This is how I use Quizlet:
- 1. Go over next class’s vocab words the day before and create your own flashcard deck by hand. Do not import someone else’s vocab deck. The act of typing out every single word the first time and thinking critically about it, such as, “is there an extra ‘u’ at the end here? oh, I noticed that this doesn’t follow previous patterns exactly” is huge for kickstarting the memorization process.
- 2. Go over the flashcards in regular flashcard/Anki mode and make sure you know the terms. Focus on the ones that are hard and just skip the ones you already know.
- 3. Use “Learn” mode in Quizlet - I have found all the other modes pretty useless. You have to type out your answers and if you make a single typo, misplace an accent, forget a dash, it will mark your answer as wrong. This level of ruthlessness is the only way I’ve found to get me to succeed in class, because you will get graded on all the things that seem small to you, but are a big deal for the language. Imagine misspelling an English word and thinking to yourself, “ugh I typo’d ‘too’ as ‘to’ but I swear I know this word, just pass me!” the small details are really important.
- 4. If you really do know the word and simply typo’d it on the first go-around, you’ll easily get it on the next try, but don’t build bad habits by glossing over common mistakes. Over time the set of words you don’t know will shrink and the last few might be really challenging. This is when you have to build mnemonics in your head, and those are also the words that if you stop studying for a while, you’ll definitely forget.
- 5. Something I haven’t tried in the past but I think I’ll do this time is keep a running list of words I often mess up and copy them into their own deck, so still maintain separate decks for every class/chapter/whatever, but make a targeted deck that aggregates all the challenging terms that I have to review and pass every day. Once a term becomes super easy, I can remove it from the “challenging words” deck.
Well, I just tried it out and it looks like Quizlet is now paid, and there’s a free alternative called knowt. I’ll try it out and write up a review sometime in the future.
As far as non-study stuff goes, I was hoping to make lots of friends through school, but it’s proving to be a bit more challenging than what I envisioned. It’s been one day so I’ll give myself some time, but I’m also realizing that I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more and more picky about who I become friends with too. It might be like dating in some ways, if group class outings doesn’t become a thing (which is what I was hoping for, but might be hard with language barrier/age gaps/wide range of interests and some preexisting friend groups), perhaps I’ll end up being much more intentional and deliberate about finding friends.
Steven and I (Miles was sick, unfortunately) went to a badminton MeetUp and it was so much fun! It was in an elementary school which was kind of weird and cool, but I’d definitely like to play more badminton in Japan. The location was an hour away from our place, so it would be a lot better if it was closer of course…
it felt kind of illegal just waltzing into an elementary school at night
a very small crew but we played so much! I even got some free coaching
One thing to note is that the school gym is an indoor space, which means you can’t wear outdoor shoes. We had to buy brand new shoes because all the shoes we have with us are dirty. It seemed a little crazy to buy shoes just to play badminton, but I plan on doing a lot more of that throughout the year, so hopefully it’s worth it. Just one more pair of shoes to add to my athletic gear collection, which is kind of hilarious given that I don’t consider myself to be an athletic person, but on the other hand, I guess I like activities and doing stuff, so it’s not that crazy I guess. I have yet to go to a workout gym here, but I wonder if the rules are the same (my guess is no).
Also a small side story: when we went to buy shoes, the shoe salesman actually spoke more English than the average Japanese store employee, but he told me he wasn’t comfortable with English and asked if I spoke Spanish, which I kind of do. So he started speaking Spanish to me, and my brain instantly froze, because all I was thinking about were Japanese words. But I managed to uncover some Spanish in a dusty rear filing cabinet in my memory warehouse, and here I was, sitting in a shoe store in Japan talking to a Japanese man in Spanish (I mean, it was hardly a conversation, but it was amusing nonetheless).
Ramen place called Gankuru Ramen in the Musashi-Koyama mall, pretty good. Best ramen I’ve had so far this trip but not the best ramen I’ve had in Japan, 7.5/10. Thinking about it more critically…I think I might not love Japanese-style ramen? (I LOVE instant ramen though, which seems sacrilegious to put into writing.) I can’t think of one that’s 9+/10. But very willing to be proven wrong. (Please someone prove me wrong.)
Another bonus nugget: whipped cream sando. Yep, it’s two slices of crustless white bread with just whipped cream in the middle from a convenience store. And it was delicious.
