Posts tagged japanese

I haven’t posted here in a bit, and a lot of stuff happened. I sort of intended to write at length about each thing, but I lack the resolve and that’s stopping me from writing anything. So in order to get back in the swing of things I thought I’d post a catch up entry. I don’t really know who I’m telling these things; really I think it is more for myself than anyone else, but it gives me something to do while Andy is off cycling the width of the country without me so I shan’t let that bother me.

Live Roleplaying

I did some. A weekend of CP with Stef. I played a healer who didn’t remember her spells, and it was good fun (if cold standing outside all the time). Half way through just as I was getting into the swing of things I went over on my knee while attempting to evade a werewolf. A month later and it’s still not better. I’ll try not to let that experience colour my judgement however, I did enjoy myself and I met some lovely and interesting people.

Job Interview

I had one. Well technically I had two if you count a telephone interview. Really though only one mattered, an assessment centre for BAE Systems. It was over two days at a posh hotel in Preston, and happened very soon after the roleplaying event. I was quite stressed about it, but it did give me the opportunity to wear my nice suit and limp around with my bad knee. There was a group work exercise, a one-on-one interview (in a hotel bedroom..), a written exercise and a presentation. I felt like I aced the interview and the group work (though I got off to a quiet start), was meh on the written exercise (unlike me) and completely stuffed up the presentation.

Job Offer

The next day at 9.20am they offered me the job :-) It’s a fantastic opportunity and I grabbed it with both hands. The salary is higher than I was expecting, and working hours are really intriguing (Friday afternoons off!?). It means I am 80% certain I’ll have to move to Ulverston in the next six months, but I am more or less happy with that. Nearer the Lake District.

PhD Viva

I had it, I passed with minor corrections. The week/weekend preceding it will probably go down in my life’s history as one of the most horrible, stressful and painful times ever known. I was a nightmare to deal with, I couldn’t focus, and Andy was a complete and utter star. I would never have made it to the actual event without him, and without his help during the last year or so I don’t think I’d have ever got to the point of submission. Basically he owns my doctorate. Anyway, it means I’m now (pending corrections) Dr Sara, and that feels really very strange. I don’t really want to talk more about this. I’m very glad it’s all over, and it was an experience. I loved the travel and the people, but I don’t think I could recommend to past me that it’s a good idea. Without having done it my life would be very, very different, so it is hard to put things into perspective, but I’m very glad that chapter of my life is coming to an end.

So, yes. I don’t know what’s next. There’s going to be some big changes coming up, new house, new job, probably lots of other little things. I intend on using this blog more regularly again, and starting to take some more photographs. I want to do some more travelling, and carry on learning Japanese. Other than that we shall see what comes.

I said I’d post more about learning Japanese and it’s been ages since I talked about week 1. It’s progressed quite well and I’m starting to feel like there’s too much to try to keep in my head! We’ve covered quite a bit; asking what things are called, telling people what things are called, asking where things are, what time things open and close, asking the price of things and saying ‘that’s too expensive’. I’ve decided if I ever travel to Japan I’ll make sure I have a watch, asking and understanding time is terribly complicated!

We agreed to learn some writing as well, so the teacher has started us learning groups of Hiragana and a little bit of Kanji.  It’s mostly memory, but then also knowing what words are once you’re able to sound them out, more complex than it sounds. I really need to sit down and work on the characters we have learned as I don’t feel like I have actually learned them at all, more I wrote them on a piece of paper a few times and then they fell out of my brain.

Andy and I attended a Japan Day in Manchester a few weekends ago, but we got there fairly late on. It was interesting, but I think perhaps if we’d been there to see some of the on stage events it might have been better. I also missed out getting a raffle ticket by about five minutes - no free flights with FinnAir for me!

I’m actually really enjoying it, it’s nice to be doing something different, and it  feels like we’re making progress too.

I didn’t know what to expect of a language evening class. The only thing I had to base my opinion of learning languages on was from school where the overbearing feeling is embarrassment - you have to say things in a silly accent infront of your peers, if you get it wrong you sound stupid, if you get it right you sound like a swot. 

As it turned out it started off embarrassing, or rather I felt self-conscious. The teacher put a lot of emphasis on “who knows some Japanese words”, “who’s watched Japanese TV”. Unsurprisingly there were a number of manga/anime addicts and it turned out they knew more Japanese than they were letting on. I think the teacher was too rigidly trying to follow a lesson plan she’d picked beforehand though, and when she’d relaxed and stopped trying to fit too many things in it started becoming more fun. 

Lesson one was about counting to 10, basic greetings, how to ask and answer “what is your name?”. We learned about the three different kinds of Japanese characters, and when they’re used (seemingly all three, interchangeably a lot of the time). She asked us if we wanted to learn about how to write in Japanese since it wasn’t actually part of the syllabus and we all said yes, should be interesting!

I came away from the lesson feeling like I wasn’t likely to have learned very much by the end of the eight weeks, I thought the progress during two hours had been slow and I hadn’t taken in as much as I’d wanted to. During this week however, I’ve copied my notes across into the right notebook (OCD FTW) and tried copying out some of the characters to make the sounds - having a phonetic language is actually really interesting. Andy and I have played some word (actually more like number) games, and watched some Japanese TV… and wow. I’m amazed how much I’ve taken in without actually realising it. It feels like a language to be learnt now, as opposed to something mysterious, just sounds that blur together. 

I’m properly excited for Tuesday evening, really looking forward to learning some more building blocks so I can start constructing my own sentences instead of parroting phrases - not sure that’s likely to be something we’ll learn soon, but anything more than having the same boring “nice to meet you” conversation over and over again will be a plus ;-)

I’m sure I’ll update here again when I’ve learned some more. For now, Sayonara :-D