Benkyoushite Iru!

"I Need To Study!" <-- my title

...or at least, I hope that's what my title says. I do love the irony.

A week from tomorrow, I start off on my mini vacation to Okinawa with Miyavi. A part of me is very excited for this rare chance, not only to meet Miyavi, but to visit a part of Japan I never thought I would see. Unfortunately that part of me is rapidly losing voting rights in my brain. This is of course primarily due to my fear of being totally ostracized as possibly the soul non-native speaker on the tour... Ah, Lindsay, what have you gotten yourself into?!

Fortunately, panic has a positive side effect: motivation to study! Extreme motivation, but hey, that's what it takes!

Actually, that is only part of the reason. The other part was a little more exciting.

A couple days ago I returned to the teacher's room at school, having just finished with a rather depressing class, and was feeling the worse for ware. Wanting something mindless to take my mind off things, I flicked through my iPod for an old TV show I had featuring one of my favorite artists, Gackt. It was a Japanese talk show ("HEY! HEY! HEY!"), something I had pulled off YouTube, and while it had no subtitles, I generally didn't mind because it was sort of a game-oriented episode. At that moment I was feeling particularly resigned so, planning on enjoying the funny atmosphere of the show and not much else, I popped in my headphones and clicked play.

Imagine my surprise when the host started talking, and I understood what he was saying! Then Gackt enters the set, and I could understand him too! Oh man, it was like being splashed with cold water, hearing the speak Japanese but understanding them perfectly fine!

Here I must warn you not to get too excited on my behalf, however; it was a very simple conversation and the episode itself was a scene reflecting everyday life, Gackt working at a gas station (okay, that does NOT reflect everyday life... but you get the point); it was not as though I could understand the conversations that were going on in my own office space. Point of fact, I even watched a normal episode later and found that, sure enough, I understood relatively little. Still, I watched that whole show and understood maybe.. 80% of what was being said whereas I had previously only been able to understand maybe 5%. That's pretty exciting! Particularly because it was mostly without effort of my part... just the natural result of living in Japan for 8 months; Just imagine what I could do with actual study!

And study I have. With school winding down into the last week, my classes with the 2nd and 3rd years having already come to an end, I am getting more and more free time at the office. While previously I had Colleen McCollough's version of the Iliad to keep me occupied, now I just have my textbooks. It's pretty convenient to have an office full of people for me to check my grammar on, though I have to rely on my English teachers for any direct translations. Actually, on that front, my iPod had come in extremely useful. I downloaded a new application called Kotoba!, a Japanese dictionary. I love it because not only is it really easy to use, it translates not only into English, but Russian as well. Double check the meaning in two languages! Sweet!

Today I had zero classes and spent 6 straight hours studying. Be nice if I could keep that up, at least for the next week.

Cheers,

хорошо Baer