Long Overdue Update

It’s been a little over two months since I’ve posted anything, and I didn’t even deliver on the vacation posts that I had promised! They’re still in my drafts folder just half way completed. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually!

So, I want to start off by saying that I’m sorry for being such a horrible poster over the last few months. I hope to get back into the swing of posting regularly, so please bear with me while I get used to things again.

Secondly, I want to give some general updates on my life and time here in Japan! I will (hopefully) give some more details in certain areas later, but for now I hope this will suffice!

Wake me up when September ends…

September was full of excitement and busy weekends. If you remember my talk last year about Sports Day festivals, you’ll know that every school is busy preparing for their own Sports Day and that I’m busy running around with the students and attending the events. Due to rain, we had to reschedule one or two of them, which really messed with my availability on weekends…but it was fun in the end and I enjoyed it a lot!

I also went camping in Ehime prefecture during September! The weather was nearly perfect, granted a bit warm. It was fun to cook outside and just enjoy the fresh air. The campsite was right next to the water, too, which make it the perfect location for relaxing and enjoying the view.

Aside from camping, I enjoyed some local trips to nearby places in the city such as Kochi castle and Harimaya bridge. It was nice and relaxing!

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers

October was an outdoorsy sort of month. I visited two beautiful natural sites. The first was Muroto Cape. Though I’ve been before, this time was even more fun! The cape is covered with rocks, and I absolutely love climbing things…so I climbed them all. It was fun and slightly exhausting, and the views were incredible. I enjoyed the light breeze and the crashing waves as I wandered around the cape.

Then I hiked a trail in the mountains near my house which has 4 main waterfalls along it. The first one is quite easily accessible and takes minimal effort, but each consecutive waterfall gets further away and more difficult to reach. In the end I saw all four waterfalls, and they were all worth the trek.

November arrived, cold as frozen iron

Honestly, the first day of November felt quite cold, and my body struggled to get used to the cold, but before I knew it we were getting warmer temperatures again. I’m sure that December, January, and February will be a handful for someone who gets cold as easily as I, but November’s cold arrival melted into a chilly stay.

This month was full of events with my community, school, and visitors for the most part. Though I still managed to take a trip out of town. Lately one of my schools has had a variety of foreign visitors throughout the months of October and November particularly. We’ve had visitors from France, Sweden, and Germany. My students got to interact with foreigners who were not me, and who were not from America, which was a wonderful experience for them! Especially since our visitors spoke such limited Japanese that my students had to use the English they knew. One of the visitors also joined a teacher from my school and I on a hike in Tokushima!

Similar to the Sports Day for my schools which I mentioned in the September bit, there was a community sports day. The area where I live is split into 4 smaller villages which competed in the community sports day. My team was the smallest team, but we fought hard and came in 3rd place in the end. I enjoyed participating and hope to do it again next year! And hopefully I can be a more useful player next year, too. Because let me tell you, pushing a metal wheel with a stick while running a lap is NOT my forte, or so I’ve learned.

I was able to make a trip to Hiroshima during the 3 day weekend in November which was to commemorate Japan’s version of Thanksgiving. I made it in time to see the beautiful fall leaves, and I enjoyed eating some local oysters, which Hiroshima (specifically Miyajima island) is famous for. I went to see the stars from the mountains of Okayama on Friday evening, and took a ferry ride over to Miyajima island, Itsukushima shrine on Sunday. It was definitely a fun weekend filled with beautiful views.

And now?

Well, I have just under a month before I visit America! I’m looking forward to seeing my family and eating delicious food. I can’t wait, but I’m also excited to see what the rest of this year will bring!

In the meantime, I just took a trip to Naoshima art island this weekend for work, and I have plans to visit an onsen next weekend! After that I have the winter conference and closing ceremony for the year before hopping on a plane back home!

I’m sure there’s a lot I’m missing, and even details missing on the things I mentioned, but for now this should give you an idea of what I’ve been up to! Sorry for the major delay, and sorry for the fact that summer vacation posts still aren’t up!!

 

Until next time!! xx

My Newest Adventure

I had a lot of down time today at work…and I spent most of the time studying Japanese, brushing up on some Spanish, and writing a project proposal. However, as we entered the late afternoon, I began to feel restless. I wanted something exciting! So I started learning Korean.

So far I’ve learned the writing system (or at least mostly) and the basic sentence form of “subject + subject marker + object + be-verb.” This format is exactly the same as Japanese, and therefore was quite easy to pick up. I just had to learn the new words to fill in the spaces. And I’m sure all (or most) of Korean will be like that.

Currently the only subject I can say is “I” and the only verb I know is the basic format, “be-verb.” But it’s all up from here! If I stick to it, that is. Even if I don’t, it was a fun hour or 2 of studying!

자는제시카이다　(jeo neum Jessica i da)
私はジェシカです。 (watashi ha Jessica desu)
Me llamo Jessica.
Jaz sem Jessica.
My name is Jessica.

I can tell you my name in 5 different languages, now!

So far the hardest part of the language for me is the pronunciation. I’m used to English and Japanese, and even Spanish pronunciation, but Korean is a whole new ball game for me!

 

Until next time!! xx

Why vs. How Come

You learn something new every day! Or at least I try to. It’s interesting for me (especially now that I teach English) to learn about different intricacies of English. Whether that’s a grammatical point or a new word, a difference in regional usage or anything else, it’s all interesting to me. It’s so much easier to explain a grammar point to your students when you’ve looked into it yourself. “Ms. Jessica, why do we use such and such here but not there?” That’s a great question! Let me get back to you on it… I like to be able to answer my students immediately if possible, but if I can’t then I can always look it up to tell them later.

Anyway, that brings me to my point! I was wondering if “how come” was grammatically correct, or if it was just a colloquialism. As it turns out, it is indeed grammatically correct and has slightly different usage from the word “why.”

Structure

First of all, when creating a question using “how come” vs. “why,” the word order in the question is different.

Why Questions – Why + aux verb + subject + verb + object?

Why are you eating pie?

The tense in this case is determined by the aux verb.

How come Questions – How come + sentence?

How come you aren’t hungry?

The tense in this case is determined by the main clause.

Meaning

Why Questions – When you want a reason for whatever piece of information you already know.

Why are you studying English? (I know that you are studying English. What is the reason?)

Why can be used in both formal and informal situations. It’s a very versatile question word.

How come Questions – When you want a reason for a piece of information which you are surprised by.

You’re already so good at English. How come you are studying English?

How come you aren’t in Chicago? (I thought you had a business trip.)

How come is used in a more friendly context and is used to express that the asker is surprised by the piece of information which they are asking about.

You shouldn’t use this in a more formal setting such as at work or in a presentation.

Conclusion

Basically, English is super versatile and has an abundance of ways in which to say the exact same thing, or the same thing with a very slightly different nuance. If you’re wondering how these translate into Japanese….

Why = なぜ？

How come = え、なぜ？

Yes, it’s the same thing…you just add some surprise to the second one.

Sorry for the potentially boring post! I found it interesting!

 

Until next time!! xx

Borrowed Words in Japanese

You may know that Japanese has 3 different alphabets. These alphabets are called hiragana, kanji, and katakana. Rather than alphabets, they should actually be called divisions of characters. While hiragana and katakana both sit at decently low numbers (46) there are slightly over 2,000 which are used regularly.

Of these three character subsets, katakana is used to denote a word which was borrowed from another language. This applies to names as well! Originally, when I began learning Japanese, I assumed that these words, in general, were English words. Apparently Japanese people do, too! You can’t imagine how many things people end up saying which don’t make sense because of this assumption…

Anyway, as a weird habit, I now attempt to learn the origin of katakana words that I come across so that I can tell my friends and students where those words originated from if they ask! I guess it’s not really my responsibility to have that information memorized…but it’s interesting to me! Let me give you a few words which are not English which are used often as borrowed words – as well as their origins.

コンクール(konkuuru): concours – origin: French, meaning: contest, competition

ピーマン(piiman): piment – origin: French, meaning: bell pepper
pimiento – origin: Spanish

アルバイト(arubaito): arbeit – origin: German, meaning: part-time job

Though, it’s important to note that you can also refer to a part time job as a パート(paato) or “part.”

These, among many others, are mistaken as English words. Imagine how confused you’d be if someone came to the grocery store in America and asked if there were any piiman.

Anyway, the reason I wrote this post is because I keep seeing the word コンクールin the hallways of my school and couldn’t stop thinking about how close, but how far it is from the word contest.

 

Until next time!! xx