liathchan

I was grumbling to a friend of mine in Tokyo a couple of days ago about how little J-study I've been able to get in lately, being as I've been bouncing all over the country for research...and now heading to the USA for a 2 week holiday. Safe to say while I'm not forgetting much stuff that I've learned, I'm just not picking up much new material. My classes started again last week and I was too busy to go this week ...although I will be there next week. It's a bit frustrating. When he and I chat on Messenger we chat mostly in romaji Japanese (because I can't always get my language settings to work for hiragana etc...crappy old computer) he's a huge help for my conversation ability and yet with messenger you get to take a moment to think a sentence through before writing it down, so I'm probably gaining a false impression of my own fluency!!! It helps that his English is excellent and that he corrects me when I screw up......and explains stuff I don't know. I totally reccomend getting a Japanese pen-pal or something if you're learning the language, it really really is an asset. S and I get along well, we've known each other for ages, we're both researchers and we have loads to talk about other than language so I get a stack of new vocabulary all the time as does he from me when my Japanese fails.....

Once I get back from my hols I'm going to seriously stick in and study lots. The Scottish Potters Association, of which I'm a member, is planning a trip to Japan in the spring and have recruited me a one of two leaders ...I'm also the only Japanese speaker of any level in the association it seems.... so I need to get my fluency up fast. We didn't get the grant money we hoped for to allow two people plus myself to go over for a recon expedition in Sept to liaze with some potters and galleries there and get aquainted with people and  with the general Japanese-ness of everything, so it's all a little "so....what do we do about it?" just now ......it's all a little chaotic..........looks like we'll have to organize from here in the UK, and that means I'll probably have to translate emails and so on for our main organizer-person......I'm so glad my sensei said she'd check my work for that!
so MADNESS MADNESS EVERYWHERE!
I hope it all works out....I totally have my heart set on this trip, as have the others.