JLC-Wilson-Serena

  I thought it was interesting listening to different people talk about how they view the town changing. Looking back and missing the old town while also being happy that it is changing to be busier. I liked seeing people admiring the beauty of the town, like the person talking about the beautiful ginkgo trees or the person that views the town from the surrounding mountains. Another thing I found interesting was the differing city infrastructure. One person talked about how playing in the street was safe for them because the street doesn’t support cars. That’s just not really something that we have here and yet I see streets designed for people only there all the time in pictures. I appreciate a city structure that supports pedestrians and walking in general. Another thing I thought was interesting was the person talking about catching crayfish in the river. That’s an activity a lot of kids like to do where I’m from in Missouri by all the lakes and rivers. I’ve heard of people from...

  It was interesting reading about how Japanese people live during the summer. I know that a lot of traditional Japanese homes are built very differently to ours and are insulated differently. I know that it gets very hot there during the summer and to hear that it’s getting even hotter is a little worrying. I like reading about taking care of the futons during different seasons. I bet sleeping on one that’s been fluffed up outside all day is really comfortable and it’s interesting how there’s an exact time to bring it in so it’s not too hot for bed time. I thought that keeping plants near windows and watering them to regulate temperature was really smart, and I bet it makes the air quality really nice throughout the house. When reading some of the blog posts back in Japanese I noticed that my stamina for reading is getting better as I keep challenging myself to keep going past when I’d want to stop. I had also read some other little books in Japanese today so I got in a lot of rea...

  It’s nice to see that the spread of housework is becoming more evenly distributed than it was. I knew that Japan was still fairly conservative and had what we would consider now to be outdated gender roles but I’m glad to see that changing. It was nice to see how different couples and families spend their free time doing chores. In my household, we would distribute chores based off of who had the most free time. During the summer my mom would do more chores since my dad was working long hours landscaping, but during the winter when he wasn’t working much he would take over the brunt of the work. In my apartment with my roommate, we split chores pretty evenly. We usually rotate back and forth on them. I’d like to live in Japan but I don’t plan to live there for a long time because of how outdated some of the standards are there. I don’t wish to over work myself at a Japanese company and if I were in a Japanese household, I would be annoyed if I was expected to do all of the housew...

I think I retained most of what I learned last semester. Some of it is fuzzy but I think without too much review that I could remember all or most of it easily. I made sure to practice my Japanese over break to try to keep learning new things so I think that helped a lot. I do need to work on my katakana, for some reason I’ve just never dedicated the time to learning it like I have hiragana. Reading doesn’t scare me, sometimes it tires me out, but whenever I see any Japanese I always try to read it. It’s really rewarding when I’m able to understand what someone is saying, especially if I can understand some kanji. I’ll start reviewing my katakana again, it shouldn’t take too long to be able to know all of them. And then I’ll start back up on my kanji flash cards of the 2,000 most common kanji and their radicals. My biggest roadblock to understanding the Japanese I see is all the kanji I don’t know yet. Though, through talking with chatgpt over break in Japanese, I’ve been starting to i...

  I thought that the act of making postcards being popular in Japan was so cute! Christmas cards are popular here, but they feel less personal because they’re not handmade. I’d like it if printers here were also made for postcards so that it would be easy for me to make and send things to my family and friends. I think sending things through the mail is an underused form of communication here. I’d like to start sending postcards through the mail because I think it’s special to receive something handwritten and hand decorated. I also love Japanese stationery! I’d like to get my hands on more products that I can use for letters and postcards. On this new years nengajo, my name is written on the left side of the card in katakana. Then the Japanese way to 2024 is written to the right of it with new years written under it. The kanji for dragon is written in the sun and to the right of that happy new years is written in hiragana. I included a dragon because it is the Chinese new year of ...

 あたらしいレストランでしよくじをしました。ぎゆうにくをたべました。おいしかったです。たぶにきます。

  The book that I read I think was about different characteristics of things. I didn’t understand much of this book, I think because it relied on knowledge that I don’t yet have. Each page had two pictures of things and each picture had one or two sentences using a word pertaining to the picture. The back of the book had some definitions that helped me understand but there's still a lot that I didn’t catch. I think there are books that are pretty common in English that are like this book as well. I think usually they use the context of the sentences to help you understand the word central to the sentences, but I also didn’t understand much of the sentences even apart from the word so it didn’t help too much for me right now. Oh, also the words were really tiny which I think was affecting my ability to smoothly read the Kama. Maybe I’ll try again when I’ve spent more time studying.