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Year after year, New Year has become nothing particular. In my childhood, there was a mood that all the stores except convenience stores in my neighbor were going to be closed after Christmas (from around 28th) till 5, 6 or 7th of January. But as I grew up and frequent big cities such as Tokyo, Kawasaki or Yokohama, they are totally open almost all during this period, and even including the New Year’s Day at some places.

I think most of us who do not spend too much time at the relative’s or the parents’ or at travel destinations are rather bored in New Year if stores are all closed. (Air tickets and hotels can be double priced in this season and Golden Week in May, so they are the last period that I love to travel.) Also it’s a big chance for the shopping malls to increase sales in this period. Supply and demand matches. ^ ^ In fact, some of the shopping malls open even earlier than normal schedule (usually they open from 11am). It’s a New Year’s sale and Fukubukuro, or lucky grab bags are available only this New Year period in the year.

As for myself, I loved to go to New Year’s sale a few years ago. But for a moment I don’t desperately need more clothes or shoes or bag. I have so many other things that I want to do at home. Some books to read, house cleaning (I’m supposed to finish it before New Year’s Day, according to our custom, though :p), A friend to invite to our house, playing Koto (Japanese musical instrument), and etc. I hope that I can make a better Koto playing video in this coming New Year and share it with you in the next post.

Oh, as for myself, I don’t really like New Year’s cuisine and so I don’t pay much attention to each dish’s meaning such as longevity or whatever. I don’t like Nengajo (New Year’s greeting cards) either, because I’m not interested in superficial friendship that is only maintained through exchanging this thing only once a year. If it’s a true friendship, why can’t she email me, or skype with me more often throughout the year instead of sending a card automatically with a simple message “Wish to see you this year!” every single year without even trying to contact me if we can see each other? I once emailed immediately to ask such people, “so when can we see then?” and the answer was quite vague or somewhat they cannot go out because their kids are too small, or whatsoever. I don’t want such friendship. I’ve ignored many Nengajo like this. I don’t care about diplomatic friendship, that’s just nothing to me. I’m telling my friends not to send me a card but to contact me more often throughout the year, and gradually I receive only a few of them today. I may be very different from most of other Japanese people, because usually people love to exchange Nengajo a lot. lol

Anyhow, it’s the last day of 2011.
I wish you all a happy, prosperous new year and I hope to keep interacting with you in TKE blog or by exchanging emails, and etc.
Thank you for reading TKE and your friendship with me.

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I often hear English speakers speak Japanese with strong accent or intonation but I think I can understand their problem. It’s just reverse way of my difficulties when I learned how to speak English. We (the Japanese) will suffer from English accent and intonation. English speakers would suffer from the flatness of our language. (I don’t know how to explain this linguistically but I believe you know what I mean after you watch my video.) ^_^;;;

As a native Japanese speaker, I would love to make videos with natural Japanese pronunciation and intonation for those who are now studying Japanese so you can avoid copying unnecessary accent or intonation. One of my European friends once told me he picked up how McDonald’s was to be pronounced in Japanese (with Kansai dialect) from how American guy who was calling it in a video or somewhere. But unfortunately it was not correct. At first I didn’t get what he was trying to tell me at all. After I told him the true one, he was so much surprised how different the one he heard in the video was, and of course he was able to pronounce it perfectly.

Now you know the problem. If you ever have to communicate in English in Japan, and when people do not seem to understand it very well, please slow down. Please use a simple and short sentence. You could even write down on a paper. If you speak too fast and words are sounding to be connected each other, that’s what most of us don’t understand! If you speak like I did in the video (how I spoke in early days in the U.S) that would be so kind to us. (lol) Just kidding, never mind that. :p

What kind of hardships or difficulties did you go through (are you going through) when you learn Japanese? What kind of Japanese videos would you like me to make for you? As a native speaker, I sometimes don’t really have an idea what you want to know about our language. :p

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“I am too tired to do homework today.”

Do you know how we learn this “formula”?
We learned it as “Too -To koubun”.
“amarini XX nanode ~~dekinai”
XX= after “too”
~~= after “to”

We memorized it in that way, so we can insert whichever word (adjective) into XX and (verb + object and ect.) into ~~.
I think such way was basically confusing to me. Well, I basically dislike formulas.
It just made me confused to sincerely follow our education system to learn English. I was saved by a radio English education program, because by listening to the language, I was able to learn it naturally. It needs no formulas, it’s simply spoken and understood as it is.

Since my English grade was so terrible at first, my mom was worried so much that I might not be able to go to high school. (lol) She kind of watched me studying with the radio program in the morning before I went to school and in the afternoon after I came back from school. She also started to record the program so I can even listen to it while I was wearing my school uniform. I was a drowning girl who needed to clutch at a straw, because I wanted to go to high school. (lol) I was serious. I didn’t want to screw up the high school entrance exam with my poor English, while my Japanese grade was very good.

While I kept listening to the radio program, I noticed the radio program is more progressive than our English classes. I started to learn things that I had not learned at school. So what happened next? My knowledge advanced. I had already known what I learned at English class for the first time. Then my English score soared! Before I knew, English grade had become even better than my Japanese! What a surprise! People didn’t believe that I didn’t even notice the difference of Be-type of verb and all the others! I think listening worked out. It was more natural and easier to me than memorizing formulas and SVO, SVOC, SVOO…whatever.

Another example.
“Do you mind opening a window?”
At school, we memorize it as “mind + ~ing”, “mind + ~ing”, “mind does not take ‘to do’”
Listening to the radio program, my ears simply remember the whole sentence as it is. This is the way I like!

Through this experience, I noticed that I like to learn a foreign language by listening to how it’s spoken naturally, I kept listening to English after I happily entered high school. 2 weeks before the exam, I used to ask my English teacher to lend me the audio material that was made along with our English text. (Usually it was a cassette tape or a CD with the English text being read out and recorded, and our English teacher usually had it. ) I only listened to it until the English exam date instead of music all the time. Then I could even memorize it just like I memorize a song. At the exam, I had to fill out prepositions and some new words in parentheses, which was the easiest task to me! Most of the classmates suffered from the exam and asked me the secret to mark the highest score in the class. It was so simple. I listened to the tape or CD for 2 weeks and memorized everything very naturally. I shared with them this way but nobody actually tried to do the same thing and just kept asking me the same question next semester.

Before I graduated from high school, it crossed my mind that I want to be able to speak English good enough to have smooth communication with foreign people. Yes, as you see our English education totally lacked or disregarded our improving speaking skills! There was no speaking test at all! Never!!

I chose to go to a Japanese university that has an exchange student program between a collage college in the U.S. I decided to improve my English-speaking skills in the U.S. This post is to be continued to How I learned English (3) where I will share my hardships and struggles in the U.S. Stay tuned!!

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