James-san, weekend: hiragana, hiragana!

The title is a direct quote from my teacher, Kawashima-sensei, after our first lesson on Friday. I was worse with hiragana, one of the basic character systems in Nihon, than any of the other students in the class. So, at the end, she emphasized, in Japanese, that I buckle down this weekend and get to know my hiragana. So, that's what my weekend has been like. I'm not confident yet, but I can identify most of the Hiragana now, there are only a few troubling me. The issue is going the other direction. I can write some of them alright, but if you were to ask me to do sa, or nu, or several other hiragana, I'd have to look them up. With time I expect this to not be an issue, although soon I will be learning katana, which is basically hiragana's fraternal twin.

After I improved my hiragana knowledge (more studying before I go to bed tonight. Yay!), I sat down to do the homework. I've been told you are expected to do 2 hours of work before each class: 30 minutes of homework, and an hour and a half of preparation. So, I did my homework, which involved listening to a CD with a two Nihonjin (japanese folk) saying words to me. I did my best to write down this words in hiragana. It went well, for the most part, except for the "r" sound, which is kind of like "l' and "d" simultaneously, with some words emphazing the L portion, some the D. Ugh. More experience, that's what I need.

I figured my hiragana practice counted as preparation, but then I found a mysterious packet. This packet contains words written in hiragana, kanji, and romaji (roman letters). These words are categorized into lessons, and further marked as "prepare ahead of lesson" and "learn in lesson." Okay, so it seemed like I might have more work to do. However, I'm not sure if tomorrow's lesson is considere #1 or #2, so, that leaves a big question mark. I'm really not willing to spend all that time learning this many words, so I'm just gonna go in tomorrow and see how things go (and check what lesson it is). There is still much to do before I get myself totally oriented here, and at this point I think only time and experience are going to help with that.

In other news, while the recycling centers in Okazaki remain elusive, I think I may have figured out a good system for trash, which involves taking everything to Yamasa at putting it in the bins they've provided.

Today I also did laundry for the first time in Nihon, which was quite an adventure. Yesterday at the supermarket, careful examination of the pictures many cleaning-type boxes led my to find proper laundry detergent. Today, I discovered that the mysterious box on the small porch outside my apartment was indeed a washing machine, although it is certainly a minimalist one. This was a relief, as I previously thought I would be using the pay machines outside the apartment building.

So, after some care experimentation (read: random pressings of buttons written in kanji), I discovered a way to make the washing machine turn on and start filling with water. There was also a button that you pushed to set what kind of load you were putting in, which thankfully had drawings of water levels and measurements in romaji. So, I put my small load in, dumped in what I determined to be a reasonable amount of detergent, I pushed the button that corresponded to "go!" and hoped for the best. Magically, things went really smoothly, save for the part where I discovered that the emptying hose was attached to nothing. Howeer, this was all a part of the grand engineering scheme of the apartment, and the porch sloped towards a drain that the hose end was over. So, the soapy water would dump onto the porch and drain immediately. There is no dryer in my apartment, but there is a pay machine outside. Screw that pay machine, my porch is shelterd and there is a metal bar for hanging stuff. We're drying the old fashioned way, baby.

It rained all today, and this was the first day that I never left my apartment.

Well, the pizza in the microwave seems to be just about ready, so its dinner time. Oyasuminasai.