JLC-Wilson-Serena

  After watching the video about spreading culture through food I am thinking about all the food from other cultures that I get excited about as well as food from my culture. I know that Japanese food in particular is very exciting for a lot of people here, including me. Unfortunately, I have tried sushi and do not like it but I have been able to try some other foods common in Japanese culture that I have enjoyed. I particularly love gyoza and takoyaki and I also go to the Asian market to try new things every now and then. I habitually purchase ramune and some candies, my favorite flavor is lychee even though I wasn’t super into the lychee jelly that I tried. I am so excited to one day visit Japan and try even more foods like authentic ramen and street foods! I also thought about some of the foods from my culture after the video. My grandmother used to cook us some Spanish foods for Christmas, but her ability to do that every year for us dwindled fast when I was younger so I do not...

 わたしは　あさごはん　を　よくたべあす。いつも　シリアル　を　たべます。ヨグルト　と　くだもの　も　たべます。　卵は　あまり　たべません。よく　ジユース　を　のみます。コーヒーは　すきじやないです。

  (Draft) In Japanese my self introduction is different than how I would do it in English. Usually in English I don’t introduce too much about myself. When I meet a new person I’ll usually tell them my name and then let information about me be revealed naturally. But, my Japanese introduction includes my name and information about my country of origin and the languages I speak. I wouldn’t feel the need to include that in my introduction because it is implied, being that I am in America and speaking English without a notable accent or cultural identity outside of that. But, when I’m speaking Japanese I feel the need to disclose that about myself because I am obviously not a native Japanese speaker. I wonder how it will be when I really have to introduce myself to Japanese speakers. I know that it can be a very formal activity like when you are introducing yourself to your class. But, will I need to be so formal when meeting a new friend? I was able to meet Brynn again today, a stude...

  Disaster prevention is taken much more seriously in Japan than it is here. There are some similarities, like the earthquake procedures we have in school are similar with covering your head and getting under your desk. However, past that Japan is much more conscious than we are here. They talk about everyone having their own kits for both at home and at work, both kits stocked with everything you need and protective equipment. Also, the fact that people organize their own practice drills in case of emergency makes it evident that the Japanese people truly care about their personal and community safety. Here, our drills are viewed as annoyances and people do not care to do more investment in their emergency readiness. In one of the videos we watched, the workers explained that all of their furniture is bolted down, I recognized this because I know that furniture here also comes with brackets to bolt it down to the wall. I just recently got a shelf that included bolting it down to t...

  It was difficult to understand the Ted talk given about this topic because they did not silence the Japanese when they dubbed over the speaker with English so I couldn’t glean much information. But I know that she started off talking about the declining birth rate in Japan and I am aware of some of the problems with that. I think the work culture in Japan is often cited as part of the problem. Because people are so intensely worked, it does not leave them much free time to meet people outside of work and develop relationships that could lead to marriage, nor does it leave much room for time with kids. I’m not sure what the parental leave looks like in Japan but I imagine that it isn’t very good given the emphasis on working long hours in everyday life. I do know that when you have a baby, they Japanese government assists much more than the American government does. I’ve seen the care package given to new parents and it is extremely useful. Also, I know the hospital bills for havi...

かぞくは　ちちと　ははと　わたしです。ちちは　じえいぎょうです。ははは　こむいんです。ちちは　よんじゆうさんさいです。ははは　よんじゆうさいです。かぞくは　アメリカのミズーリに　すんで　います。 

  I think that it is very valuable to have a community while learning a language. I have been attempting to learn Japanese since highschool but I haven’t gotten far any time that I have attempted. I never felt that I was learning in an effective way on my own so I tried a lot of different methods that I never liked because I felt that I wasn’t internalizing anything. But, now that I have others to speak it with at my same level, learning along with me, I feel much more confident that I am taking in the information. I even did the same course that we’re doing now over the summer shortly but I didn’t enjoy it because I felt that I wasn’t recalling the information and taking it in. I felt that after every lesson I would forget what I’d learned in the previous one. But, this time I feel like I’m taking in the information because I am using it with others. The prospect of also learning from others that are ahead of me in the language community is very fun, I think learning from others w...

  The usage of business cards in Japan as far as I know is very formal. There is etiquette for accepting and giving business cards to people that is very important to having a good business relationship. I know that if I ever get presented with a business card I will feel nervous in case I don’t know to follow the right etiquette. I know to accept them with both hands and bow, I think in a lot of cases you can get away with copying other people, but I’m not sure what else there is to do. In America business cards are thrown around and not respected like they are there. I wonder if we have anything like that here that we take much more seriously than them, I’m sure we do, I just can’t think of anything. While designing this I was surprised that my year in school was necessary, it makes sense, it’s just that here I generalize and put “current student” on my resume. I also enjoyed looking at the list of different majors, I enjoy the ones that are English loan words, especially Faibā, ...

Learning katakana was very similar to learning hiragana but for me it took a bit longer. Some of them are easy to remember like the character for “ka” because it is very similar to the same one in hiragana. The dakuten doesn’t take too much longer to learn after the regular characters as it’s pretty much the same as in hiragana, the combined sounds are also easy to learn after you have the original characters. I think the most confusing thing about katana are the characters for “shi”, “so”, “tsu”, and “n”. Even now, I don’t actually have a very good grasp on them. I am a little rusty on katakana in general so I can’t recall them as well as I can hiragana but the characters I previously mentioned have never been super well remembered by me. For those, there’s essentially two sets of them that look almost identical but for some reason, I think because they’re the ones I have major issues with, I have a hard time remembering them all. I definitely need to brush up on my katakana more, usi...