The past week was a tough one for everyone at HIF between a speech presentation, kanji test, and cumulative mid-term. I made some friends at my okaasan's gospel choir practice as they eagerly read over pages of my kanji study sheets looking for mistaken strokes. Last week was also Tanabata matsuri, or the Star Festival. Somewhat like Halloween in America, on 7/7, Japanese children dress up (in kimonos) and go from house to house to receive sweets and snacks. The houses which have bamboo stalks with little slips of paper hanging from them are ones that offer snacks and candy. But first, the kids have to sing a song:
"take ni tanzaku, tanabata matsuri ooi wa iya yo, rousoku ippon, choudai naa"
Okaasan dressed me up in a kimono and took me out with Sana and Kousuke.
Last week, we made takoyaki (doughy balls of fried octopus) when Sana and Kousuke were over.
The Light Fellowship asks how 'my formal academic learning has differed from this "real living experience" abroad' which reminds me of one obstacle I've encountered recently outside the classroom-- the Japanese tendency to guess the ending of sentences. A crucial word in Japanese is "aite," which my dictionary translates as opponent, partner, companion and other party. In this case I would choose Seto-sensei's preferred translation of "interlocutor." Considering the feelings of one's aite in interactions is not merely a cultural tendency-- it's built into the structure of the language. Native speakers are accustomed not only to inferring objects and subjects of sentences, but broader things as well. For instance, if an offer is inconvenient or undesirable, this is often expressed through the phrase "ah, that's a little..." with the expectation that the listener will understand. The ability to "read the air" (as the Japanese expression goes) is not some sort of gift limited to the particularly emotionally intuitive- it is a standard skill required to navigate the most basic social situations. This is such a fundamental characteristic of the language and culture that as exchange students in Japan, we had this reiterated so often that initially I was a little overly cautious for fear of offending someone. Another related feature of the language the expectation that the listener provide almost constant feedback to show attention. A "good listener" in English doesn't speak much, but in Japanese, every sentence that one's "aite" says should be punctuated with an "ah, is that so?" or "oh, that's how it is," "I understand," or at least a reaffirming "mm." Not only that, but repeating sentences back and forth is very standard conversational form (to the extent that it can be comical to an english listener,) for example, the following exchange might not be unnatural: "The teacher is strict, isn't he." "Oh, the teacher is strict?" "Yeah strict." "Oh, I see. He's strict."
When I try to construct a difficult sentence or use one of the longer, more complicated verb tenses or grammatical structures, I find that often after the slightest hesitation, I'm often cut off, as my "aite" tries to guess where I'm going and supply the ending of the sentence for me. This is frustrating in a few ways. Not only is being cut off in the middle of a sentence frustrating as an English speaker, I also need as much language practice as I can get. Furthermore, if the person guesses wrong, I'm presented with the dilemma of contradicting someone politely, which requires some finesse in Japanese. After thinking about it thoroughly and realizing that it's counterproductive to let this get to me, my newest tactic has been practicing sentences ahead of time, sometimes even writing them down, so that I can say them quickly and smoothly enough to get an entire thought out at once, and I seem to be having some success so far.
