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I went to the bathroom, and the kids trashed the house in the 3 minutes i was gone… When I say trashed I mean you can not walk without scooting things out of the way now…

So I have had three of my eight super intensive japanese classes now. I’ve got to say I am learning alot more than I thought I would have. Right before I started the classes I had toyed with the idea of telling the Bossman that I was doing well studying on me own and they would not be necessary. I thought I might be able to save the company some money.

I was wrong on two fronts. The stuff I am learning on my own, is getting concreted in classes. Simple things like enpitsu to pen to kami. I had read such nonsense and studied such nonsense but I couldn’t remember it. It wasn’t reinforced. Berlitz has reinforced it to the point that I feel confident in speaking it now. A few other major things that I couldn’t quite grasp on my own but totally understand after classes with berlitz are:

Watashi no kuroi enpitsu wa asoko desu.

Are wa watashi no kuroi enpitsu desu.

The first one says “My black pen is over there”. The second one says “That(Over there) is my black pen”.

Then you can get even facier, if there are multiples you can go:

Kore kuroi enpitsu ga watashi desu.

Which means “This black pen is mine”. Of course I am probably making some gramatical mistakes right now because its 5:40 in the morning.. But the point is I would have never understood the difference between those three sentences without Berlitz.

So I was playing GTA4.. The kids were playing in the other room. My son walks up to me and right then the “Radio” in the car says “Shut the fuck up”. At which point my son turns to me and says “Shut the fuck up”.

Of course, my instant daddy response kicked in and four fingers made contact with his cheek as they brushed by in an ever so slight slap sending him crying to mommy.

So yeah.. I’m not allowed to play GTA4 anymore.

So today was day 1 of Japanese class. It re-affirmed that i was actually doing better on my own than I had thought. I got alot of confidence out of the class in my ability to speak and communicate with others. My coworker on the other hand, who is taking the class with me, is struggling so far with the pronunciation and sentence structures of the japanese language. These are two hurdles I had previously dealt with when I took Japanese in college(Even though I didn’t follow through with it and decided on an easier language like spanish).

The sensei though is able to pick up the differences in our skittle levels and engages me in asking some of the more complicated structures of my coworker so that I get a lot out of the class also.

So to sum up.. Day 1.. Was exhaustive, learned a lot, affirmed a lot, and gained a lot of confidence. If it continues like this we should be good.

Well, at least round one of paperwork for Japan is complete. HR sent it all over to HR at the other company and hopefully everything will go smoothly.

While I was in HR’s office I asked a few questions about how this will all work, and I will not be getting paid in yen. Instead work will pay me normally and the other company will just reimburse them. This solves the Japanese banking account, Insurance, and a bunch of other issues I had.

Also got approval to start taking japanese language classes, but the two schools down here that offer it haven’t gotten back to me yet with the details. They have to locate teachers first. I’m hoping to 4 hours of classes a week between now and when I leave.

So.. I decided to pick up a few children books in japanese to try to read. I spent the past hour trying to translate the title(Yes I already knew the title but its good practice to translate it myself). After an hour I started looking for help online. And now I hate the japanese language..

The title of the book was いっすんぼうし　The english title of the book was “The Inch-High Samurai”.. So I kept trying to translate it as such..

BUT NO.. The title doesn’t match the text. And I had no way of knowing that. Instead the title of the book isn Japanese is the damn samurai’s name “Issun Boshi” If I had known that I wouldn’t have spent an hour trying to translate the damn thing.

I sure hope reading japanese in japan will be easier.. Otherwise how will I order my ランケンブルゲル

I finally got some information about the Japan trip. Looks like it will be May 26th, for 3 months. The requests for paperwork has already started coming in. And I have less than a week to produce:

1. Certificate verifying my current work record
2. Salary payous
3. Resume
4. Certificate of Graduation
5. 2 Pictures of myself (size 40mm x 30mm)
6. 1 Picture of myself (size 30mm x 20mm
7. Color copy of my passport

I don’t even think this is for the visa. I think this is just for the HR department. Some of the things seem silly, like the 30mm x 20mm picture. That’s about the size of a quarter. Are they going to be printing new 25yen pieces with my face on them? And I also found out that certificate of graduation doesn’t equal diploma. So I have to try to get FSU to send them a certified letter stating I graduated before the deadline of 1 week is up.