Is has been a week! Wowza! here's monday's report:
Got up, hung around, read some manga. Then we went cell phone hunting with Hiromi. Annoyingly enough, (as we suspected) we will be unable to get one until we get our alien registration card. And that goes for pretty much everything else important.
Afterwards, we went to the mall and picked up some groceries. May I just state that JAPANESE MILK IS AWESOME. It's just like milk in Europe, so extra deliciously creamy! We stopped by the bookstore so I could pick up a few books that I couldn't find at the used book store. There a Japanese old lady walked up and said…something to us. Boy do old Japanese people talk funny. Didn't help that she was muttering. I suspected she was saying "is it ok, those books are in Japanese" but Brad thought she said something about it being cold out (I was wearing a t-shirt). Whatever it was, when she asked "daijoubu" (are you ok) we just answered "ee, daijoubu" (yes, we're fine) since we couldn't see anything immediately wrong with us, especially nothing she could help us with. I made a fool of myself at the bookstore, asking for some books, since I ran into the issue I always have when talking to Japanese people in Japanese: I freeze up and all my Japanese goes out one ear. I can understand them, I just can't TALK to them. Is very frustrating. I've finally gotten used to our landlord and his wife, so I'm able to remember more grammar around them and not totally freeze up. I guess I'm just so eager to NOT butcher their language that my brain starts yelling "DON'T SAY ANYTHING! IF NOTHING COMES OUT, YOU WON'T SAY ANYTHING STUPID!" But then I look like a moron, nodding away, but not saying anything. Ah well.
Class went well tonight. One of the students (a high schooler) LOVES detective conan! We chatted about it and about how they butchered it in the US. Perhaps I can work in detective conan into lessons :P For the doctor's class, they asked me to give them vocab that is good for ordering in resturants, for introducing patients to doctors in other countries and "date vocab". The last one should be fun. But any ideas? I was thinking "I'd like my meat medium well" or something, since that's not something you hear in Japanese resturants. Mostly, I need answers to common waiter questions. I'll probably come up with more when I'm more awake ^_^
Well, that's Monday, on to Tuesday with LOTS of driving.
Common waiter questions? Well, I feel like most of the time you tell the waiter things, so I guess phrases like "Check, please," or "Can I get this to go?" Sometimes the waiters come around and ask if everything is fine and if they can get anything else for you.
ReplyDeleteI bet you'll get over your Japanese fear fast. The best thing to do is just---DO IT! YEAH~ XD
ReplyDeleteHmm...maybe you should teach Western restaurant etiquette. Like, it's polite to say "thank you" to waiters instead of ignoring them like you do in Japan. Also, it's okay to not eat everything and take stuff to go....and oh! Water is free in California at restaurants!
Maybe you can try to come up with all the different ways of ordering eggs, too XD
I can only think of "over easy," sunny-side up," "scrambled," and "poached." Are there more?
Teach them side dishes. That's big here. Lots of side dishes.
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