Another week, another round of a lot of material! In this last week we covered seemingly almost all of Genki 2, which at some schools is the entire second year of Japanese. I’m slightly concerned about the pace with which we move, as it feels like the goal is to show us all the content rather than us fully understand everything, but there’s ample time after the program to fill in material not fully studied within the program, so I’m not particularly concerned. Especially of note is the frequency with which we learn new kanji and grammar; we’ve already covered at least a hundred new kanji in this time, it seems, with several hundred more on the way. This is great because the amount of things I can read around me has increased quite dramatically, which is one of the best parts of studying Japanese in Japan. I feel like it’s very easy to see one’s skill increase because you can almost immediately put what you’ve learned to good use in navigating and understanding the world around you!
As for non-class-related activities, this week I did my own little Mountain Day and traveled to Nara Park, summing the peak there. It was a lot of fun seeing the many deer roaming around the park, and navigating through the many different shrines throughout the forest. I particularly enjoyed hiking up one mountain and seeing a view of nearly all of Nara from the top. It’s similar to Stone Hill but if the cliff grade was steeper and there were no trees at the top, which really lets you get a better view. Sometimes when living in the city it’s hard to realize just how mountainous Japan really is, but getting up to the top and seeing the city quite literally boxed in on all sides by mountains really gives some much-needed perspective. I’ve also planned a visit to Kobe to visit the synagogue and mosque in the city two weeks from now, since I’ve been really missing going to big Shabbat services since the end of the year (and thus end of WCJA services). That’s all for now, see you all next week!