仕事からお休み日 (Shigoto kara Oyasumi hi) means a day off from work, or so I believe (I wrote it). This is my second day not working and I believe my third day of being sick. I have fever, yet amazingly I feel just fine. I also had a runny nose, which was disgusting and felt really annoying having to sneeze every two minutes. On top of that I have a strong cough, which hasn't cured itself for days. I have eaten hot soups and drank hot drinks like tea, yet this cough does not want to go away. This is very tough for me, because I hate laying in bed doing nothing, it's a waste of time. I try to make the best of it by learning Japanese, which has been very productive and interesting way to kill time.
Last week, Ogawa-san downloaded a TV-app in to my phone, which shows different channels of different kind of programs that air in Japan. From Drama to anime, and some times movies, it shows it all. But it is TV, and like any TV, you must make an offering to the Gods and pray that something good happens to be on. For me this is not a problem though, because I only watch it for the sake of the language, and there is an Anime channel which runs nothing but Anime shows one after another, so I am more than pleased. Very rarely do I find any anime boring and not worth watching.
I am sorry that I don't have anything interesting to write about, there is not much an ill man can tell while spending his days inside a tiny box. The picture you see above is my view from my room window. It's so beautiful during days. There is a whole world out there to explore, yet I lay here, sick. I am very lucky to be here for 2 months. This is only the second week of the first month being here, and after I am cured, there's still a lot of time for me to do the things I want to do.
Kato-san has been ever so caring for my health. I tried to offer to work from home, like I did the first day of being sick, but he wants me to get better as soon as possible, so he ordered me to forget about the work, and just focus on resting and eating healthy. In Finland, this is usually not the case. But if you really think about it, there's a lot more benefit in letting the worker rest and recover fully, than command him to work while being sick. A sick man produces poor results and takes more time to do even the most basic things. But even worse, he is a risk for everyone in the building, which could lead to even more sick workers. Also the sickness may become worse and take longer to cure. So rather than caring for my health, perhaps this is just a simple business protocol, or why not both? とにかく (Tonikaku - anyway), I think I have learned something very important from this. Never would have such a thing occured to me, unless Ogawa-san had not explained it to me. If I ever were to start my own business, now I can understand what's more beneficial to my company when my workers are sick.
But there is something to mention about my resting. For years I have had Insomnia, and due to this I am unable to sleep, so recovering takes me more time than other people. During deep sleep, the body can truly rest and heal itself, but I rarely seem to achieve this state of sleep. It hasn't bothered me at all for over 5 years now, but only when I am sick, do I notice how tough it is for me - imagine, lying in bed, sick, unable to fall asleep, having to bear the pain till the very end. I experience the whole process. But there is some good in it, too. When lying on the bed fully awake, I get to spend my time thinking about critical things that I don't have time thinking about during my hectic day cycle. Because of this, I am able to process complicated and heavy things and achieve inner peace, because things don't get to pile up on me - each night, this is my process. In a way, with all bad things, there is good, too. A blessing comes in disguise, you just have to think positively and find what's good in bad.
大丈夫です。早く元気になりますよ!
Daijoobu desu. Hyaku genki ni narimasu yo!
I'm fine. I will get well soon!
I remember arriving to Japan just last week on Monday morning. I didn't know how to speak Japanese, even though I had studied it a lot. I couldn't write any Japanese that would be correct in grammar or even sound right. I had to push my brain to its limit to say even the most simple thing like: "it's a nice weather today." - 今日の天気はいいですね (Kyoo no tenki wa ii desu ne). I couldn't even read Kanji, let alone type it. Now after only been here for a week, I am able to read a lot of Kanji, use it, too. I can make complex sentences. My Japanese grammar is a lot better now, though obviously there is more work to do and a lot more things to understand. I am not a shy person, but I am a tongue shy. This means, that even though I would know how to say something in Japanese, I lack the ability to say it, because my brain and my mouth is not used to speaking in this foreign language. However, this problem will fix itself the more I speak in Japanese. I know this for a fact, becuase I had the very same problem with English. Even though I have known the language for years, I never had a chance to speak it before I met two Singaporean friends who I communicated in English, daily. I sounded so awkward at first, but after only couple months, I began to be fluent and my friends noticed it, too - it was very fast progress without any effort. I know the same is bound to happen with my Japanese as well, though obviously this time it may take a little longer, because the language is flipped in word order. Where we say: "I eat bread", Japanese people say "I bread it". It will take time before my brain will get used to this.
I don't claim to be the master of Japanese language, but I do say that the hours and the effort I have put in to my language study for the past half year has clearly paid off , and thanks to it, I am able to enjoy conversations with Japanese people as long as they are not complex in subject. Though I may give a wrong idea to people when I say this. I listen a lot, speak very little, but the conversation moves on, because I am able to understand what is being said and answer to it with a simple line like: "そうですか" - is that so? or "なるほど" - Ah, I see. or "ざんねんですね" - that is unfortunate to hear. These kind of words convey to the speaker that I do understand what is being said, but for obvious reasons, I am yet to speak the language in manner that I could reply with a full sentence that gives further meaning to the discussed topic. So more often than not, I am just listening and absorbing information, than actually taking full part in the conversation. But I do try my hardest to speak Japanese whenever there is a chance for such. I rather say something that is completely broken and learn from the experience than stay silent and learn nothing. I encourage everyone else to do the same with their own language study. Do not be afraid to say something stupid and wrong, you are bound to make mistakes and make a complete ass of yourself, but only through trial and error can one truly master a language. You have no idea how many word mistakes I have made during last week alone, and I am bound to make many more mistakes, probably ones that is going to make me thrust my head against a pillow and scream as loud as I can from embarrassment. There is so many examples I could give you about the kind of mistakes I have made, that I think the best idea to do would be to open up a different section on this website where I will list sentences that I have messed up in Japanese. Just give me some time, and I will make it happen, you will have a good laugh, I promise.
I have noticed during my Japanese study, that the more I study the language, the easier it gets. Everything is hard at first, but even the hardest things in the world become the most easiest thing to do, once we understand it and put in the hours it requires to master the subject. Take Kanji for example: at first I didn't know how to read Kanji at all, there is the Kun-yomi and On-yomi reading system, which confused the heck out of me. Just when I thought I knew a particular kanji, it proved to be wrong when seen in a sentence which had other kanji next to it. The word conjugation made it even worse, and rarely did I manage to read a kanji right, even though I had practiced it day and night. Instead of studying the kanji symbols and their meanings, I began to focus my time on understanding the whole Kanji and word conjugation system of Japanese language - in other words, the fundementals of Kanji and Japanese language. In time, everything became clear to me, and now I don't waste so much unnecessary time in learning one kanji. I have trippled my learning speed, and thanks to it I have the ability to learn around 15-20 new kanji each day, where as before I could only learn 1-5 kanji, and keeping them in my head was very hard still. I see many people having this same problem when learning Kanji and it really does not have to be that hard. The secret between learning all 2000 kanji within 1-2 years instead of 10 years (which is the time it takes for Japanese people to learn them during their entire school life) is an angle of approach and understanding how Kanji are built. I read multiple articles and watched multiple documentaries about how human brain works in sense of memorizing complex patterns. Through this knowledge I was able to unlock the secret in learning Kanji the easy way. So rather than following blindly what other people are doing, invest time in researching on how to study efficiently. You will save so much time and suffer less headache when you know how to be efficient in studying.
There is around 2000 kanji that are important and in daily use in Japan. Knowing those kanji, one can read newspaper in Japanese, because Newspapers are forced to use this list of 2000 common kanji for people to be able to read it with ease. in truth there is a lot more Kanji out there, 20,000-50,000 I have heard. But most of them are dead and never used. A well studied person is expected to know 5,000 kanji, like a professor or something. I know around 200 kanji by meaning, and I can read around 60-100 kanji that are in daily use. It would not take me more than a year or so to know all the 2000 important kanji と思います - To omoimasu - I think/I believe. That time is bound to pass, because time moves forward no matter what. Within a year or two, I know Japanese, or I don't. It all depends on did I put the time and effort to study it during that period of time. So what is going to be amazing for me is to look back at this blog post in a year or two and see what I have become since then. I challenge you to do the same. Write about what you want to do or be, and set yourself a realistic deadline, then go and do it - it is that simple really. At the end of that deadline you have set yourself, you either are what you set yourself to be, or you are not, there is no between. As long as it's a realistic goal, you can achieve it, and once it's completed, you feel amazing, the kind of amazing that money can not buy. For me it is going to be to be able to speak Japanese fluently.
A river bank next to my house. I walk this road every day and appreciate its beauty. Seeing something like this each morning is what gives me a smile when I go to work, something I don't have in Finland unfortunately.
I hope to write about my work in Japan really soon, but for now I will remain silent, because I am still thinking what I am allowed to mention and say about my job. I wish to write an interesting blog post about my work and the things I do there, but there is a lot of confidental stuff which can not be discussed openly. For example, I get to test games that are not even out yet, but for obvious reasons I can not discuss them in detail, even though it would be very interesting to talk about. For now I hope you enjoyed this post, and until next time: またね!- Mata ne! (See ya!).