Some updates...

Sorry ("gomen" as they say in Japanese) for the lack of updates. As I predicted, I have been very busy. I'm doing well in my Japanese class, I think I have an A. Last night, I completed my first homework assignment completely written in Hiragana, which is one of the three Japanese alphabets. There's a lot of pressure when writing in Japanese, because the Japanese put much emphasis on penmanship. Good penmanship in Japan indicates an educated and intelligent person. In the US, you're good as long as you can write...heck, we even say the more educated you are, the worse your penmanship becomes....I mean, who can read a doctor's prescription, ammiright??

Other than that, I haven't been doing much. John and I are going home to the US to visit in March and April, so we've been hibernating and saving money for that. In March, we will go to the Tokyo Anime Fair, and I want to dedicate one whole post to explaining what that is and how it is NOT a comic/scifi/nerd convention like it would be in the US. It's actually very different....or so the Japanese would like to think.

One last interesting connection I've made. In Japanese, there is no direct word for "no." There's "iie" which translates to "not at all," but it is never used to say just flat out "no." For example, you would never turn down an invitation using "iie." So, if you want to turn down an invitation in Japanese you say something to the effect of, "That would be inconvenient for me."

At first I was a little put off by this. In the US, we value directness. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized in English, we rarely flat out refuse an invitation. For example, if your friend said, "Want to go to the movies on Friday?" it would be considered pretty rude to say, "no" and leave it at that. Instead we say, "Friday? I can't I have to...." or "I don't know my plans yet, I'll let you know." which is pretty much the same as dancing around directly declining the invitation Japanese.

Hmmm. We're not so different after all.