If I Read Any More Japanese Today I'm Going to be Sick!

I'm hard studying. I'm studying for a Japanese test that I will take on December 2^nd. But there is a lot to study in a short space of time!

Since my frustration overload with Japanese over the summer, I had been trying to motivate myself for getting back into a routine for studying and wanting to study again. It's not easy. When I was in Italy, the words came so easy and I could see the progress from day to day. But with Japanese it's like a game of snakes and ladders with no ladders! Just when I feel like I'm making some minimal kind of progress, I land on another metaphorical snake. But, nevertheless, I find drabs of motivation and time to study hard. I am slowly chipping away at the sum 400 words I need to study (These are only the ones I don't know that are required for the test) and the 111 Kanji (Chinese style characters) required to pass the test.

With the Kanji, I have a love / hate relationship. Sometimes it can be beautiful and poetic, easy to read quickly when you know and random scribbles of meaningless script, bemusing and confusing, when you don't. Sometimes they come easy and with my creative mind I can assign stories to their meaning and sounds. For examples, the Kanji for 'east' 東, looks like a the Kanji for 'tree' 木 with the 'sun' 日 rising behind it. Where does the sun rise? In the east. It almost remembers itself. Others are more like pictures themselves, like to rain 雨. Tell me that doesn't look like rain through a window! Others are too complicated to remember, like the 23 strokes it takes to draw the Kanji 艦.

My grammar, however, is serious poor and trying to work out what goes where and how to change it when your dealing with a language as far from your own as hieroglyphics, it can kind of be expected. But my greatest stumbling block seems appears to my reading speed. I've always spoken Japanese and there isn't a real need to read basic sentences like “I like sushi” or “This is Yamada-san's bag”. The test I will take requires a lot of reading, and while I know if I study hard to remember the 400 words of vocabulary, the 111 Kanji symbols and get my head around the principles of Japanese grammar; my fear is, if I can't answer enough questions, I won't pass. Bare-in-mind, this is the simplest of 5 test and you might have some idea of the Everest of a language I am staring up at from the lowest base camp.

Watch this space!