Class, Manga, and Times

Okay Monday is rapidly drawing to a close here so I figure I'll cap it off with a blog post.

To start what follows are times (in the States) that it will be good to try and contact me on Skype.

7-10am (this is 9pm-12am for me so I may sound sleepy)
6pm-12am (this is 8am-12pm for me)
Also on Fridays and Saturdays (US time) I am usually around more bearing that those are Saturday and Sunday for me, which extends the available times a little more.

I usually try to get up at around 8am here and when I do I flip open my mac which always has Skype running. In a few days I'll have the ability to do international calls to mobiles and land lines (total of 75min a month), that is if anyone is okay with me calling them. To find me on Skype search: TsukadeHaruo (I think searching Steve Young works too) then add me to you contacts.

Now that the Skype business  is taken care of, I'll relay a bit of what I have been up to since arriving. Class so far has been a one on one with one of my teachers, Watanabe-sensei, and has consisted solely of review, this is because the next set of classes don't start for about a week if I recall correctly. We are simply going through a few important chapters of my old textbook to help me remember some of what I have forgotten. Not too bad, except that normally one would take about 2 weeks covering the material in one chapter, however we are doing  one chapter for 3 hours each day.

This makes things a little frustrating, but at the same time I have learned all this before and it is simply trying to remember everything. As a side note..... verbs give me headaches.

Something occurred to me the other day that is actually helping to some extent. Manga (Japanese comics) is a great way to study Kanji and slang. What I mean is that as in English we do not speak in proper sentences (I will call and order a pizza vs I'm gunna order a pizza). Textbooks do not teach that, and just as English speakers use slang so do the Japanese. As for Kanji, its just plain hard to remember all the characters. Luckily lots of manga has furigana (not sure of spelling on that) which is the pronunciation of the Kanji in Hiragana.

To sum all that up I bought some comics to help me study, cool huh?

Anyway that is all that I have for now, remember get on Skype and give me a call or leave a message~

Steve Young~