Language Learning: October 13

Writing a daily journal of my feelings is quite a demanding business too～～

I went to bed too late again yesterday, so when I woke up, I felt like the walking dead once more. After breakfast, I returned to my room, intending to review some Japanese, but my mind was far too muddled for it to do much good.

I am deeply worried that, at the rate I shed so much hair every day, I will be bald very soon. I cannot help wondering whether insufficient protein intake is making the hair loss worse.

So after class today, I wandered all the way to Dotonbori and bought a 1,500-yen wagyu skewer to try along the way.

It really was delicious. But since I had no wagyu at another price to compare it with, I had no way of judging its relative quality.

The last time I came to the Dotonbori area was probably three years ago. But on that visit, I had to work, so I never took a proper look around.

Walking along today, I suddenly found myself thinking: wow, have many of the shops around here been replaced by new ones?

In particular, great stretches have become drugstores, and I do not remember there being so many Don Quijote branches.

The shopping arcades continue one after another without end, the tourists arrive in wave after wave, and the shops along the way are as numerous as fish crossing a river.

Density on this scale simply cannot keep turning without a certain population and volume of foot traffic to support it.

With visitors streaming through without pause, Japan’s commercial appeal as a brand truly is formidable.

Although the language school uses Minna no Nihongo, the classes do not follow the textbook by explaining every passage or example sentence. Apart from grammar, which is covered in full, the teacher selects the key vocabulary and sentence patterns, and only some of the exercises are done. Much of the time, students have to work through the textbook on their own.

Otherwise, with a book that thick, the portion actually covered in class would be very limited indeed.

Most of the content consists of things I encountered while studying on my own before, but never truly learned. The advantage of group classes is that I have more opportunities to listen and speak than I did when studying alone, but with a language, everything comes down to whether I can remember it and whether I can actually use it.

Even so, my ability to speak is still dreadful. When I have to make a sentence in class, my mind often goes completely blank, and I have no idea what to cobble together.

So then, is paying to attend a language school actually worth it～～

I think it is still far too early to pass judgement.

If we look only at the content, of course it is all material one could learn through self-study in Taiwan or online, and at a much lower price.

But studying in Japan still has advantages particular to studying in Japan. There is more input in everyday life, and the focus devoted to learning is magnified, because the very purpose of coming to Japan is to study the language.

Still, I think having opportunities to make myself use it more may be the most important point of all.

Studying bitterly behind closed doors should not be the method I use while in Japan. Yet unless I deliberately go out and look for meetup gatherings, there seems to be very little opportunity to practise Japanese.

Could the answer be to shop more often and practise striking up conversations with the staff?