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Nar3: Japan

Classes
Posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2003 at 8:51am by Brett.
(Wednesday, September 17th, 2003 at 9:51pm Japanese Standard Time)

The classes here are a bit hellish. They are 75 minutes long, and my language classes are mostly doubled up, so I get a fun 2 and 1/2 hours of class. It hurts a lot.

There are people that are like "My *so-and-so* went to *some romance-language-speaking country* for *short period of time* and came back fluent!" as through they just accidentally stumbled into fluency. I'm sure with Romance and Germanic languages, that's entirely possible. With Japanese it isn't. At all. You seriously have to study. The classes are very important.

I'll not say my classes are poorly operated (yet). But I'll just say they're different than what I'm used to. They're teaching Japanese from a Japanese point of view, which does little to help any one else but the Japanese. We're actually using what appears to be Japanese Grammar books for elementary children. We'll be reviewing something I've known for 3 years, and I'll only just realize that I understand completely what she's talking about after she stops explaining it and has us do the drills. Things are so different on this side...but like I said, I'll not say it's bad...just different. And I'll definitely NOT make the rash judgement that our textbooks are absolute rubbish...all 4 of them.