Ippoippo

We all know how languages change over time, and teenagers are quite often the ones who do it. There was quite an interesting article (considering it was sourced from one of the Japanese tabloids who normally go for titilating stories).
I love how they are making up all these new verbs.

Well, it’s over 30 degrees at the moment, even though we are half-way through September.
Weekend was a pretty chilled out afair. Got up late on Saturday, and did some cleaning. Exciting stuff ehh. Then we headed off for Asakusa. I did a bit of photography at Senso-ji, before we met up with two friends.
One of them (Akiko) will be around for our wedding in December, but the other (Mimi) is going back to the UK soon for further studies.

It was good to see them again, not seen Mimi since last year some time, and Akiko since March this year. We headed off to a rather old style Okonomikyaki house. Real proper ‘cook it yourself’ type place. Good fun.

Yesterday, we wondered if the second rainy season of the year had started. It well and truly pissed down, with quite an impressive thunderstorm above us as well. All thoughts of venturing into town were put on hold, and we duly vegged out in front of the TV.
Pizza was ordered from Pizza Hut, glass of wine was opened, and we finished off the last of the rather fancy chocolates we brought when we were in Bath.

We saw some interesting stuff on TV. There was a programme on BS Fuji (Fuji’s Digital TV channel) called “Rumor”. Basically, guests were told something and had to bet if it was fact or not. One I found quite interesting. The people who live in the Wakayama region of Japan (near Osaka and Kyoto) cannot pronounce any of the sounds on the ざ (za) line of the Japanese characters. Basically, the ‘z’ becomes a ‘d’. So, you have ざ(za) becoming だ (da). It was quite interesting to see people being shown a picture of an elephant and asked what it is. Their response… どう (dou), rather than the correct 象【ぞう】(zou). When they wrote it down, even though they knew they should write the hiragana as ぞう they still wrote it as どう. All I can say is thank goodness I don’t live their, otherwise I would be completely confused!

And now, as I type this, it’s back to the old slog in work (well, actually, it’s lunchtime, but you know what I mean).

I love those times in Japan when I get to speak to some random stranger.

Yesterday, when travelling home from Japanese class, I decided to go ahead and do some of my homework. So, out came my みんなの日本語 (Minna no Nihongo) book. The books are kinda scary looking at first, because everything is in Japanese. Not a whif of English.
Anyway, an old lady (guessing she was 60-something) sat down next to me on the train, and she then noticed the book. At one stage, I got stuck trying to remember some vocab, at which point she then told me the word I was trying to remember. Naturally, I thanked her, and then we had a brief chat before she got off the train. By no means was it a conversation about important, intellectual subjects, but I still enjoyed it.

One of the things I would like to do while I’m in Japan is do JLPT, a test than can be done here and Japan, or abroad (UK for example).

The annoying thing is the timing of it. The test is held on December 4th this year.
Well, that’s a no go then, since thats the day after my 結婚式 (kekkon shiki or Wedding Ceremony). Ahh well, plenty of time to study for the next year ehh.