Help! I'm going to Japan for 6 months!

[ilovesumo 12]

not a bad solution for someone like me, who can stagger through written Japanese but is helpless when faced with spoken.

Got the opposite problem (Clapping wildly...)

[Kaikitsune Makoto 189]

For me there has been sudden thresholds that I have crossed. First threshold was when normal Japanese started to sound like "oh I pick up some words". Then after more exposure and studying full sentences became clear at times. The biggest threshold came when consecutive sentences could be understood. I am sure Mane-san will have similar threshold occasions and more rapidly too since you seem linquistically very talented. Written Japanese is just hard core work, just takes hours and hours of exposure, repetition and studying I guess.

It IS fun though when one can understand Japanese well and not feel all the time that "soon I will drop off the wagon" when someone talks. Then when too proud feeling just tune in for some news clip about some special stuff about legislation of so and humbleness comes back soon.

I am verrrry jealous of such possibility to spend millions of years in JApan without a break and expose, expose and expose. I mean be exposed exposed exposed. Physical naked self exposing in Japan is not good as it is not good in most countries.

Make sure to visit chanko place at sumo school every day. Not so big meal but nice anyway AND you can see one of the trillions of interesting Japanese working tasks when the guard/official guides people to the tail end of the queue with SAIKOUBI....SAIKOUBI. Well that task was actually in a way sensible but I have never seen such eerily job as I saw at Tokyo Disneyland where a young woman said to all guests entering some thingie that "ashimoto wo chuui kudasai" and when the face looked foreign she says "Please watch your step" and she did CONSTANTLY as it was such device that the flow was constant and there were no breaks. If formerly common kaisatsu ekiin (ie. those clipper men at stations where they clicked the ticket before automatic stuff has largely taken over) were joked making the click movement with their fingers at sleep too, I am sure this young woman must have had some extra ashimoto wo chuui kudasai-action in her life asleep or not.

In Osaka there are guards in front of Korean embassy. It was on the way from Osaka sumo venus to my hotel last time and every day the same guy stood there for at least 7 hours. If he does that for living, it surely is a job where inner life must be rich in order to not bore to death. Well I am sure they rotate the tasks and it is not all he does all days long.

[Harry 67]

I often find it better to practice my Japanese with someone who does not know English. If they are fluent in English then they would obviously prefer to speak in English than to struggle with my imperfect Japanese while if they don't know English they appreciate how much I'm trying to communicate with them and will usually bear with me. I was speaking with several Tokyo work colleages yesterday who were in Canada for a conference and anytime I took more than a nanosecond to respond to a Japanese question they would be nice and repeat it in English which isn't helpful, though I'm sure they intended it to be helpful. I find I sometimes need a moment to put my sentence together when speaking or else it comes out in the wrong order or I've already passed the point when I should have said something that I can say at the end of an English sentence but only at the beginning of a Japanese one. This delay is surely maddening for them -- I guess I need to say "Satee..." or "Etooo..." or "Naruhodo ga..." or another pause word for a moment while thinking of the rest of my sentence to let them know I did understand their question, just like we "Um..." "Ah..." and "Well..." in English. This happens on Skype too while on Paltalk with the "take the mic" feature it means no one else can talk while I'm sounding like a brain dead idiot...

Printed Japanese I am starting to be able to read fairly well but handwritten Japanese is really tough! I look at Chiyotaikai's tegata and wonder where 千代大海 could possibly be in there? But then I look and indeed it is there in the flowing script and it looks like some of the other Chiyo_ rikishi's shikona.

Gambatte! I too look forward to some full Japanese immersion some day. Still hasn't happened and I'm not holding my breath for it anymore.

[ilovesumo 12]

We have some ANOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOs at our courses...I can't tell how awful imperfect Japanese is when each little break is filled up with ANOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO amalgam....

I still cannot speak in real sentences...nor write them....

but I was like that in English as well, so I still got hope...

[Sasanishiki 57]

Well that task was actually in a way sensible but I have never seen such eerily job as I saw at Tokyo Disneyland where a young woman said to all guests entering some thingie that "ashimoto wo chuui kudasai" and when the face looked foreign she says "Please watch your step" and she did CONSTANTLY as it was such device that the flow was constant and there were no breaks.

I had a job like this in Japan for six months back in 1993. I had to put little kids (and adults) on a ride at an amusement park (Korakuen, next to the Tokyo Dome). I had to tell them to fasten their seatbelts, etc. some were so young they were just wondering what the hell this foreign guy was doing speaking to them in japanese using words that we had to use but of which they had no comprehension. I graduated up to being able to do the announcements for a more adult ride and telling people to take all the small objects out of their pockets and put them in the lockers, move to the front of the queue in two lines, wait will the barrier comes down....thanks for taking our ride, please don't forget your belongings etc. You learn through reptition, but I was lucky that I was also formally learning at a language school in the morning and I had taken japanese at high school. i was in a position to know what I was saying, and I could have written it at a pinch as well.

[Hananotaka 8]

I guess I need to say "Satee..." or "Etooo..." or "Naruhodo ga..."

The second one's good, but the first and the last would just be weird. "Sate" is a rather formal phrase, usually used only in writing and presentations, and it's used to transition into the main topic of discourse, not as a conversation filler. "Naruhodo" is good when you understand what someone's said, and you're saying something to the effect of "Ah, of course!" or "Ah, I see!" But the "ga" is unnecessary and non-grammatical.

Good time-buying fillers would be "Eeeeeto," "Aaaaa", "Unnnnnnnn," and "Sou da (desu) neeeeee".