Tutor

I had my first tutoring lesson last week. It was fun. It went by quickly. She speaks Japanese very quickly so I did lots of "Please repeat that". I got two new key words out of it, though. "O namai" (sp? I'm too lazy to get my dictionary right now.) which is name and "ikutsu" which is another way of asking age. Both have already helped me answer questions in the park - yay!

She also had me read a lot of kana. I stink at this, still. I'm getting better (I decoded Prius the other day on the Toyota sign), but it's a long road. I was reading fruit and vegetable names since I told her I needed things to help at the grocery store. I don't really remember any of what I read, which stinks. It's all in repetition for me. I don't have the book so I can't keep going back to it. I'll get there eventually, though. I did learn that "kobansha" just means squash/pumpkin so I have to stop calling the acorn squash (hehe...learned what it was, too, I guess) just "kobansha", not that I remember the word for acorn. D'oh!

She also walked me through how to tell people where I live, where I'm from, when I got here and when I'll leave. I don't remember much of those, but I wrote it down. I'll probably have to get her to go through them again.

Someday, I do realize that I'll want to have a conversation without just listening for key words. I'm SO far from that right now, though, that it seems like a ridiculous idea. Right now, I'll settle for a couple of new key words and the 'right' response to them. It can get me in trouble. If I know the response correctly, they assume I know more than I do. Oh well...there's always "wakarimasen" to bail me out.