So when I first got here I had no idea what was being said to me aside from hello, goodbye, thank you, and maybe a couple other words. It's not like I didn't know more, I just never spoke or heard it. However, even if I could speak and understand all I knew, that wouldn't have gotten me very far. It was very frustrating and confusing for the first couple weeks.
A couple weeks into the program they started bringing over high school students in the afternoon to talk to us in Japanese. The first day I was the only one there, and I don't speak much Japanese. The two girls tried to talk to me but I couldn't really understand them. They tried to figure out something to do with me and ended up playing word games, but at one point they were talking to each other and one said "I like food" and I gave her a thumbs up. They both looked at me completely shocked I understood and were happy. One of the words I knew for the word game was the word for jet lag so one of the girls asked me if I had jet lag and I said yes, which also entertained them.
A couple weeks later and a lot of staring at people quite confused until they gave up or one of my friends who speaks better Japanese helped me, some of the kids in my program went to a barbecue at one of the staff member's houses. Right when I get there a guy walks up to me and asks in casual Japanese "do you understand Japanese?" I wasn't really sure how to respond so he asked my friend and my friend said no (gee thanks dude). He then swore and went on to talk to other people. Mind you I understood all of what he said 😆. Later on he handed me something and I thanked him in Japanese and he looked at me like "wait, she does understand Japanese!" In general I didn't know what he was saying but I knew what he was saying sometimes.
Last weekend I was wandering around outside in the rain and got completely soaked because I didn't want to use my umbrella. Just walking my usual path near the guesthouse and I noticed there were some (very small) fire trucks going past. From what I can tell there were two, but anyway they passed me about five times. The last time I got passed the guy pulled over and asked me if I was okay (in Japanese. The word is ”だいじょぶ” (not super sure about spelling) and it means most short expressions using the word "okay"). I said I was okay and went home. It was one of the first times someone had spoken to me in Japanese and I didn't get confused or had to think about it.
So this morning I was walking because what else are you going to do and it's beautiful here and while I was walking past one of the houses a guy came out of one and drove his tiny truck up a little ways then stopped. When he got out of his tiny truck, he said something I assume to be along the lines of "hey, there's a foreigner over there" because suddenly a whole family was looking at me. I waved at them and said good morning which entertained them. The daughter (adult) asked me if I lived in Higashiyama and how many people lived there (all in Japanese). Not a super complicated conversation but I was happy to be able to talk to people and not be completely confused.
No comments:
Post a Comment