Categories
Japan Japanese culture Japanese language travel

First step off the plane.

Arriving in Tokyo in the late afternoon/early afternoon, my sense of time has been altered a bit. Coming back to this city, this city that used to be my home for four months, feels so strange. A mild culture shock hits me as I try to re-grasp my knowledge of the Japanese language for the day.

It feels strange arriving alone, without someone to welcome me. This happened last time as well, but at least with last time, I was welcomed to Japan by a student helper from my exchange school. Perhaps that time was scarier because I knew little to no conversational Japanese; this time, at least I had more knowledge of Japanese and could somewhat get around.

Yet, it is all overwhelming to go back to a country and try to get used to the way of life, the language again.

(Note: for the remaining entries of my trip, I shall be posting pictures of my meals as a sort of photo documentary. Food is always an interesting thing to look at, right?)

Categories
Japan Japanese language learning

Need to brush up on Japanese.

I am really disappointed that I have not been practicing my Japanese enough in the past year or so. I used to know so much Japanese, but now I struggle with the grammar and kanji again. It’s not fun at all–but it’s so hard to really practice Japanese without having someone else practice with me or…I need to go back to Japan.

It would be nice to be able to speak/write fluently again. Well, just gotta keep working hard on it this year.