I’m very rude …

I have come to the determination that I’m a very rude and inappropriate person.

Well, not really, but that is definitely how I feel when it comes to writing/speaking Japanese.  I knew from the get-go that Japanese had different forms of speech etiquette(formal/polite/casual), but I had no idea how in-depth it would really end up being.  Social situations dictate different forms of speech for different scenarios.  Thus, understanding when and how to speak politely has been rough.

Let’s just take a look at probably the first phrase you should learn when studying Japanese: “Thank you”.  ありがとう(arigatou) is the translation of thank you in Japanese, however, ありがとうございます(arigatou gazaimasu) also means thank you.  The latter is just considered more polite, but in which social interactions is it appropriate to use just ありがとう instead of ありがとうございます?  To be completely honest, I’m still not entirely sure.

Despite the title of this post, if there is one thing I hate in this world, it’s when people are rude for no reason, so, of course I don’t want to be perceived that way when that isn’t my intention at all.  My natural instinct would always to talk politely, but then I’ll end up speaking to a small child like he/she is the CEO of where I work.

In English, we do have polite speaking mannerisms, but they are seldom used unless in the work environment.  It’s completely normal for someone to just say “Thank you” or “Thanks” to a boss/teacher/customer and not face any form of reprimand for it.  If they like to be polite on their own merit, then they may say “Thank you, sir/ma’am”, but not very many people will get upset if they don’t.  It’s mainly personal preference.  I personally enjoy speaking politely to strangers.  It shows that you are an intelligent and respectful person.  It could also be my military background that plays into this a bit as well.  In the military, you are made quite aware that you better speak with respect when talking to an officer or higher rank, but honestly, I found it much more rewarding to speak respectfully to people even outside the military evironment.

I know this post has been a lot of word vomit, but I wanted to show, I wouldn’t say frustration, but difficulty in understanding which social situations dictate which form of speech etiquette that is required.    As with anything, more understanding will come over time.

WORD OF THE DAY

Let’s mix things up a bit and do a phrase of the day instead.  Since we learned a little about “thank you” today, let’s also learn about “I’m sorry/I apologize”.  Just like “thank you”, “I’m sorry” has different levels of politeness, depending on social situations:

すみません(sumimasen) – this form of “I’m sorry” can be used in a wide variety of different situations.  It’s not extremely formal, but it’s also not extremely casual either.  It’s a happy medium and seems to be the form that is used the most.

申し訳ありません(moushiwake arimasen) – this is an extremely formal apology.  This is the form you would use when talking to superiors and want to portray a very deep and formal apology.

ごめんなさい(gomennasai) – this is the casual form of “i’m sorry”.  This is much less formal than the first two, so obviously if  すみません(sumimasen) is too casual of a choice, you wouldn’t use ごめんなさい(gomennasai) since it’s even less formal.   If you wanted to even make it more casual, it can be shortened to ごめん(gomen), but should only be used in very, very informal situations.

Food Talk – 卵かけご飯(Tamago Kake Gohan)

While studying 2 nights ago, I found out about a Japanese breakfast dish I’ve never heard of before.  It’s called Tamago Kake Gohan(卵かけご飯), or Egg on Rice.   Now this within itself doesn’t sound necessarily interesting or exceptionally tasty, but I decided to try it out anyway.    It turns out it’s really delicious.  I mean, it blew me away how something so simple to make ended up tasting so good.  So how do you make it?  What do you need?  I did a very simple version, but there are plenty of recipes on the net that have additional seasonings.  However, my version ended up being so good, I doubt I’ll change it up.  Anyway, here’s how I made it:

Ingredients:

• White Rice – 1 cup
• 1 Raw Large Egg – Egg White Separated from Yolk
• Soy Sauce for flavor

Instructions:

1. Boil the white rice and drain;  place the rice in your bowl. (Do not allow the rice to cool)
2. Pour the egg white in bowl of rice and mix vigorously for 1-2 minutes.
3. Make a small crater in the center of the rice and add the raw egg yolk.
4. Optional:  Add Soy Sauce for taste

Here’s what it will look like when it’s finished:

Photo Credit(In-depth cooking instructions can be found here as well):  http://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/02/23/ultimate-tkg-well-never-eat-tamago-kake-gohan-the-old-way-again-%E3%80%90rocket-kitchen%E3%80%91/

For westerners, eating raw eggs is a bit unusual, especially when it comes to concerns with food poisoning.  However, you can find Pasteurized eggs in plenty of stores if that’s a concern.  I personally get mine from a neighbor who raises chickens, but that’s just me.

Also you don’t have to leave the yolk separate.  You can mix it in with the egg white if you think you would like that better.  I personally enjoyed eating it with the Yolk sitting on top and just taking bits of the yolk every few bites.  Soy sauce is optional as well.  I tried the dish with and without Soy Sauce and I did prefer just a few drops of Soy.

Overall, it took me around 10 minutes to make(the time to boil the rice).  Extremely simple and delicious.   I suggest trying it out.  If there is any confusion on how to make it, please check out the link below the picture above.  There is an in-depth guide there and also a very good video guide.

What’s the word of the day?  None other than 醤油 (shōyu) or also known as Soy Sauce.  Although typically very high in sodium, it does add unique flavor to our favorite dishes.

Moving On

I finally have committed most of Hiragana to memory.  I still have to stop and think for a second or two when I am thinking of the pronunciation for a particular symbol, but for the most part, I have it down.  I took a mock test on a website for every Hiragana character and I believe I got a 96% and the ones I did miss where just me not taking my time to think of what it might be.

With that being said, my new main focus is on grammar and sentence structure.  Katakana and Kanji are going to be a learn as I go type deal, especially Kanji since there are so many radicals to remember.  Katakana I don’t see as being much of a problem to memorize since I didn’t have much trouble with Hiragana, but I have a feeling Kanji is going to be a different story.  Oh well, I guess that’s why we have dictionaries to use.

Now concerning grammar, the first thing it looks like I’ll be learning is about Nouns, which makes sense since that’s one of the first things you learn about when learning English.  We’ll see how it goes.  I honestly think the biggest problem right now will be trying to remember what words mean what.  I means all great if I can read sentences and all, but that doesn’t do me any damn good unless I know what I’m reading.

One final thing – typing Japanese characters.  Right now, I’m copy and pasting every character I need one by one.  This has gone far past the point where it’s working – I need to invest in a Japanese style keyboard ASAP.  My computer has the the correct language packs and is set to type Japanese characters and can do so with my current keyboard, but I need a keyboard with the characters printed on the keyboard.  It will just make things so much more simple.

Tonight is going to be a heavy study night for me.  I’ve been slacking the past few days.  I don’t really have a good excuse for it either and that’s a bad habit to start building this early on.  My goal is to study at least 3-4 hours a night and from this point forward I’m going to do my best to stick with it.

And finally, the word of the day.  ^^  I know I’ve been slacking on this.  However, let’s talk about what I had for dinner tonight.

鶏肉 – Chicken – pronounced 「とり・にく」.  Yeah, I eat 鶏肉 a lot, so I have a feeling I’ll be using this word quite a bit.

The Weekend

I haven’t been doing any updates the past few days because, honestly, there isn’t much new happening.  Friday night I didn’t study, because I had other things going on and last night way mainly focusing on finishing memorizing Hiragana(平仮名) .  I pretty much got all the characters committed to memory now.

So what’s next?  Well, I’ll be moving on to memorizing Katakana(片仮名), but that’s not going to be my sole focus.  I’ll be moving on to proper writing styles and grammar.  What exactly will come first? I’m not sure.

My Tongue is Broken

Despite what I may have portrayed in my first post, this isn’t actually my 2nd day learning Japanese.  I’ve been studying for about 2 weeks now.  I didn’t study for about 3 days because I wasn’t feeling the greatest, but on average I put in 4-5 hours a night.   I’m putting some serious effort into this and I would most definitely even study more, but I can’t deprive myself more of those 4-5 hours of sleep a night I get right now.

I’ve been putting a lot of effort into memorizing Hiragana(平仮名 or ひらがな).  This is the first base to cover when learning how to properly speak/read Japanese.  It really does give you the base to build on.  It is the “alphabet-equivalent” used for Japanese-origin words.  Of course, there is Kanji(漢字) as well, but it is impossible to figure out the proper pronunciations without first learning how to read Hiragana.  I’ll talk a bit more about Kanji in a future post and why it is causing me a lot of headaches.

Katakana(片仮名 or カタカナ), which works essentially the same as Hiragana, is used for words of a foreign origin(non-Japanese).  I haven’t quite put serious effort into memorizing the Katakana characters yet, but that is definitely going to come as soon as I feel like I’ve completely committed Hiragana to memory.

Anyway, I got a bit sidetracked.  I’ve made myself some nice little Hiragana flash cards to carry around with me to whip out when I have a free moment and I’d say I have about 80% of the characters committed completely to memory.  Give me another day or two and I’ll have them all down.  The problem isn’t the memorization, but the pronunciation with a few of the characters – particularly these little bastards:  ら(ra), り(ri), る(ru), れ(re), and ろ(ro).  Looks pretty simple, right?  Well, they are.  However, they don’t quite sound how they look for an English-speaking.  Here is the pronunciation for  ろ(ro).  I don’t want it is, but my brain/tongue has serious communication issues for making this type of sound.  I don’t know what the problem is.  The sound I end up producing sounds like someone is forcing water down my throat(think glub glub glub).  There isn’t really an English-equivalent for this type of sound so I have to re-wire brain to not just say “row” or sound like a drowning child.  It’s going to take some practice and probably a bit of outside help to really sort the wiring out with brain/tongue.

Anyway, let’s do something fun and a bit cliche, but I it will work out for my benefit as well.  The new word of the day I’ve learned:

ゲーム – Game(Gēmu) — This actually surprised me a lot when I saw it.  Since it is written in Katakana and not Hiragana, that means it’s a foreign-origin word.   It’s interesting to see that game doesn’t have Japanese-originated equivalent.

 

 

First Post…

Okay, here it is.  The first post.  The hype is…well, not here.  Mainly because I didn’t really tell anyone I was even creating this blog.   So what is the real purpose of this?

Well mainly, it’s to keep track of my progress as I expand my language and cultural knowledge.  I’m going from knowing only English to learning one of the hardest languages that native-English speaker can learn – Japanese.  I always get asked, “Why Japanese?”  Well, to be honest, it comes down to the challenge.  If I’m going to devote hundreds if not thousands of hours to learning a new language, why not choose one of the hardest?  It’s not only that though, I actually find Japanese culture very interesting.  There’s a big sense of tradition I’ve seen that you don’t find the U.S. very often.  I really want to learn as much as I can and eventually, hopefully, be able to travel and experience it for myself.

So in a nutshell, I’ll be keeping track of the things I learn on a daily basis and things I just find interesting.  It will be really cool a year from now to look back and see how much things have changed and how much I have learned.  I’ll be putting small things here and there from my personal life, but the focus will mainly be focused on the progression of my knowledge and my cultural enrichment.

Everything looks kind of bland right now on the blog, but I’ll be working on that bit by bit as time goes on and hopefully things will be looking better and more lively very soon. I’ll try to put updates out daily as I do plan on studying daily – like I have been for the past 2 weeks, but we’ll also see how that goes.