journal features

Japanese lessons

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2009.01.11

One of my coworkers came up with an excellent suggestion on Friday. I'm going to look into taking some intensive Japanese classes starting after my job ends next week. If I'm going to be running a business in this country I'd damn well learn some proficiency. At present I'm able to talk about simple subjects with Mari's family, but that's as much a testament to their patience than it is my skill ("My wife tells me I've got the worst pronounciation of any foreigner living in this country").

A fine idea! Now I just have to find someone. My colleague suggests that there are courses available that allow for twenty hours a week, four hours a day. I've contacted two schools, including one that I've previous attended in the twice-a-week evening classes. A friend suggested that I closely evaluate the objectives of such "intensive courses" because they might have a focus different from mine. I can certainly see how signing up for the wrong class under a 20-hour-a-week structure could be frustrating and wasteful. Especially if it runs for three months!

But it's become a complicated search. It turns out that a number of the schools have closed recently because foreigners are leaving Japan in droves due to the downturn in the financial industry. It seems like everything's contracting at once.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.