3 posts tagged “japanese”
I met my ホストファミリー (hosuto famirii - host family) for the first time yesterday. We spent the whole day together doing wacky stuff. But first, some context.
JTW host families don't host full-time. They're basically available for weekend get-aways. Each student is pretty free to form whatever kind of relationship they like with their family. I know one person who hasn't ever heard from their host family even after several contact attempts, and so hijacked a friend's host family who was a lot more supportive.
My host family consists of a mother, father, a son, and a daughter. The children are both old enough to not live with them any more, so they don't. So I spent all day with お母さん (おかあさん - okaasan - mother) and お父さん (おとうさん - otousan - father). They asked me to call them this way, which I don't think is unusual. I should ask around.
Anyway, a week ago or so I got a voicemail on my ケイタイ (keitai - cell phone) from an unrecognized woman's voice. It was in 日本語 (にほんご - nihongo - Japanese), which was my first hurdle to understanding, but the second was that all she said was her name and to call her back. At this point, I had received no indication that I would be contacted by my ホストファミリー, so I had absolutely no clue who that person was. I heard from QZ that it was ホストファミリー time and that was probably who it was, so I answered the next time she called. (I also got confirmation from the JTW office, of course.)
The call was a mixture of 日本語 (Japanese) and 英語 (えいご - eigo - English) and I hardly knew what was going on. I think there was some kind of self-introduction, a description of her family, where she lived, and when we should next meet. But I really couldn't tell. She knows a lot of English, but it was hard to understand. Luckily, she called again and I sent her e-mails and she sent me e-mails and she called me again (she doesn't like e-mail). Eventually I understood that she wanted to pick me up from the 会館 (かいかん - kaikan - dorm where I live) on Saturday.
So they did. 土曜日の午前１１時に (at 11 AM on Saturday) I got a phone call from her and she told me that they were at the gate. It was kind of funny to me that they had spread out from the car to maximize their vision of dorm while still being able to see each other, so that they would see me approach. Unfortunately for them, I took a back way and still managed to sneak up on them. Mua ha ha! That's when お母さん (mother) took out the photo I'd attached to my 申し込み (もうしこみ - moushikomi - application form) and told me that I didn't look the same. We hopped in the car and took off!
Their 車 (くるま - kuruma - car (the character means "cart;" doesn't it look like one?)) looked like a typical Japanese model to me. Things I noticed:
- The steering wheel was on the wrong side! Not a shocker, obviously.
- There was a tiger print cover over the back seat. It was very comfortable.
- The back seat seatbelt buckles were hidden. They were covered by the seat cover, and also embedded into the seat. お母さん (mother) explained that they are typically not used, and not required by anyone. Their last car didn't even have seat belts in the back. The back of the front seats looked pretty comfortable, so I figured that I might be able to walk away. I wore the seat belt anyway.
- Their GPS was awesome. It was higher-resolution than any I'd seen, it showed you which lanes you could use to not miss your turn, and it seemed to show which highway lanes you could use depending on the type of toll you wanted to pay. Really cool.
About ten minutes of awkward conversation later, お父さん (father) idled in front of a レストラン (resutoran - restaurant) while お母さん (mother) and I went to look at the menu posted by the door. After hearing my approval of the traditional style breakfast, she signaled that it was okay and he parked the car and joined us. We arrived just before lunch hour, so we got seats immediately.
There were mats and the table was low so that you could sit Japanese-style while you ate. But there were also giant holes in the floor beneath the tables so that you could also sit western-style, for which my knees thanked me. A very, very short time later, a gigantic tray of そば (soba), チャーハン (Chinese-style fried rice), pickled fish, soup, 天ぷら (てんぷら - tenpura - tempura), and probably more was placed in front of me.
More in Part 2! (I'm tired of writing!)
It's probably pretty meaningless for me to use words like "tomorrow" with this confusing 13-hour time difference from family, but 明日までに部屋にインターネットあるでしょう (I might have Internet access in my room by tomorrow). Yesterday, they tried to deliver the "Internet box" but 部屋にいませんでした (I wasn't in my room).
今から日本語で書いてみるつもりです。日本語の授業の後で書く練習のチャンスあまりないんですけど、いいでしょうね。(From now on, I plan to write in Japanese. Outside Japanese class, there are few chances for writing practice, so this should be good for me.)
I knew before I arrived that I would have trouble speaking to Japanese people. I wasn't disappointed on that front. There are some outstanding English speakers here, a lot of pretty good English speakers, and the rest don't talk to me. Sometimes I make a bus driver or a grocery store clerk talk to me by asking a question in Japanese, but everyone in the JTW community knows enough English that I really haven't spoken much Japanese yet.
Even so, sometimes conversing is hard. I mumble, I stutter, and I use some weird colloquialisms---ask anyone at home, as they already knew this. But as early as the car ride from the airport (oh, so long ago), I've had to slow down and use simpler wordings when talking to non-native speakers.
I found that while a Japanese person speaks casual Japanese sentences with subjects, pronouns, and particles removed, they still need that "cruft" from me when I speak English. So even though they might not understand a complete sentence the first time around, they (and other non-native speakers) need all that context to parse my words.
They would understand if I asked 「どこへ」 (doko e), but not the literal translation, "Where to?" Maybe they're trying to figure out whether I'm asking "where two?" or "wear too?" Or maybe it's something completely different. All I know is that I can repeat a short phrase like that all I want, and some people won't get it until I ask, "Where are we going?"---which, when I'm not careful, sounds more like "wherer we going?" with my accent. When that happens, I have to repeat it anyway.
Because most of the people in JTW come from other foreign countries like France or China, a week after I arrived, I had mostly gotten used to speaking this simpler English. But that caused strange problem. I couldn't stop. I called home and tried to speak naturally, but I couldn't stop speaking slowly and carefully, trying not to use difficult sentence structures. My mom and sister admitted to thinking that I was doing it because of a poor Skype connection, but it was worse than that. Thankfully, I think I'm past that stage and can switch easily. I think I can, anyway. Hopefully I haven't just gotten used to it.
