Conversation Practice

I have had a longish day at the university, more so than usual. It started with the usual Japanese language lesson, which was just finishing off the chapter. We seem to be doing a chapter every three days, which still seems too long, but I guess is not too bad. We watched the amusing video clip for the chapter about Mr. Miller asking his next-door neighbour to receive a package for him. We had dinner before Seb’s class, which was again good. I am enjoying the translation. It is not too difficult when you get down to it, though there are some underlying subtleties that Seb notices and explains. We could do it by ourselves if we had the inclination. All we would need was a big dictionary, or the vocabulary list provided by Seb, and we would still manage to make some passable translations. It is quite interesting, as it is about a little village in Japan, post-WWII. Nothing much has happened so far, and I am not sure whether it ever will, as it is a short story.

Katherine phoned me after the lesson to tell me that she had tried to pick up her plane ticket, but had come into difficulties. Admittedly, she went to the wrong floor and the lady she spoke with took a while to figure out what she wanted. Turns out, supposedly, that our tickets have been changed three times already, to get them to the current date, which means we owe 15,000yen in exchange-fees, which is £75 and slightly more than I was hoping to pay! I have told Maki-san, though, and she is going to try to sort it out. I hope that she will be successful, otherwise I will just send the university and invoice for the difference.

I then had my conversation with a tutor. Mine was called Miyamoto Aiko and was very good to talk with. We ran over the one-hour time we were supposed to talk for by 20 minutes, not that I minded, as it is more practice for me. I am again impressed with my communication abilities and Aiko said I was very good, though I reckon she would have said that anyway as she is Japanese, and thus, by extension, overly polite. We talked about many different things, like food and alcohol (very important), as well as films and music. She came prepared with a list of things that can be said in a restaurant, as well as a menu, and initiated a role-play with me, where I was the customer and she was the waitress, which was a little odd, but shows that she is learning how to be a teacher (or a Blue Peter presenter). She also taught me some of the local dialect, as well as different counters for objects (it is a Japanese thing). It was a good experience and practice; I like talking Japanese.

Next, I went to Linden Hall where Flick, Binks, and I took the children outside and played British Bulldog with them, which they all enjoyed. I slipped and fell three times, though, on the soggy field and manage to get my jeans covered in mud. Luckily, wash day is tomorrow, and I always have two other pairs of jeans if I cannot be bothered to wash them! It was quite an easy lesson, though, which makes a change.

I came home and had dinner with Flick. Ciarán was supposed to come down as well, but got “caught up in his emails” so did not show up. It was not particularly nice, though, and I picked out all the tiny pieces of asparagus, as it is nasty stuff.