If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I have started carrying around a small notepad with me to write down Japanese words I come across in the day. I was really happy as well as I got to saw a pencil in half with my Swiss army knife so it would fit in my pocket. (No felling trees to make a camp or slitting throats behind enemy lines, I saw pencils in half with mine) I`m not trying to show off that I can speak (a tiny tiny amount of) Japanese. Really. I`m not asking for a medal. You speak Japanese do you? You want a medal?

This is starting to sound a bit schizophrenic. So I`ll stop that now. I carry around a notepad because I would ask somebody how to say this or that word or I see a word I can read and instantly forget what it means. So now I`ve got a place to store them (and a semi-valid excuse for using my army knife.) Whether they are sinking in or not is debatable but it`s an improvement.

Learning to read and write in Japanese is the best thing about learning Japanese. So much so that I have done almost nothing else except some vocabulary learning. Who cares what shio means when you can write Fujimoto in hiragana and kanji? Right on. A lot of the other Japanese knowledge I have picked up has come via repetition. You go through the same thing so many times that you soon become an expert.

Alright then a few choice cuts from the magic book of wisdom are:

kobucha - seaweed tea. Always useful to know so you don`t order it by accident and end up in the toilet retching although it`s really not so bad.

saikolo -dice

okashii - strange/funny/crazy. Useful for most things. ie. You do it that way? What the hell for? That`s crazy.

kawa - river

hitsuji - sheep. My university was in Wales ok?

and in case you were wondering (Yeah right) Shio is salt.