Final Days of Classes at Hakuoh:Reflection

Today was the final day of classes at Hakuoh and had all of Iijima-sensei's finals today. The tests in essence were not completely hard at all. They weren't easy however. Iijima spent most of this semester focusing on correct Japanese pronunciation and by the tone someone used in speaking, you had to determine the emotion involved in the question. Obviously, being here for a while, you know when someone is asking you a question as generally in most languages the final part of the sentence in a question is raised. But, the hardest part of those tests where mainly the words with the same pronunciation in dictionary form. The words with the same pronunciation tend to be pretty difficult even in conversation. I heard that people from Tochigi cannot pronounce the difference between words such as 橋　and 箸　both read as hashi (hah-she), but the first means bridge and the second one means chopsticks. Of course, this example is pretty obvious and easy to figure out, you don't eat with a bridge. But, without the Chinese characters, the meaning is the same in the other writing systems in Japanese....and this is one reason translating from Japanese to English is pretty hard, but I'll make a separate entry for that sometime.

Earlier in the week I had to pull out all the mad rushes. I've been skipping a few of the Intercultural Understanding class just to get projects, speeches, and reports due on time. I should really stop hanging out at the International Center or my friends around these times. I was so literally pressed for time that I seemed to half-ass my way in Adachi's paper for Japanese culture class. I wrote about the Japan-America relations following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I originally had an idea for the paper, but as I wrote it (writing in Japanese first, one of a few times I have done only that completely straight) it changed mainly that both sides had these perceptions of each other and that the US tried covering a lot of the information from their own people and the Japanese themselves (at least, until 1952 when a plan went in effect and ended most of the occupation). Alc's online dictionary helped great heaps here.

I also had a speech to do for Takahashi's class. I first made my powerpoint slide, and had a lot of materials and such, but didn't feel like translating the slides nor the pictures (which would involve some photoshopping on a few), so in basically one night (and skipping IC again) I translated the entire thing in a word document to give to the class. Business Japanese is not my forte and once again ALC's dictionary, plus several other dictionaries (to cross check a word I choose to make sure it doesn't have any unintended nuances in Japanese) and was able to finish it. Many in the class were surprised that I was able to do it. I also spoke in a mix of Japanese and English (though, my written Japanese was better than my speaking) trying as much as possible of being understood and speaking as much Japanese as possible.

This semester compared to last semester was better. Sure, there were 4 of us (IUPUI students) last semester, but things outside of the classroom and school were just unneeded and were quite disappointing. The classes were more interesting (probably because I understood a LOT more than I previously did) and I already had tons of friends in many different classes. The classes seemed to fluctuate again between difficult and easy again, but with only two American students, matching Keleih or I's level was a lot easier than last semester with 4 students. After the first semester of it's unbalancedness, I basically treated the classes as Independent study and asked quite often a lot of questions that were slightly off topic of the main class work. I think this worked out for me the best in the end because I couldn't just go off to what was being presented before me.