(Yet Another) Student Blog

The blog of a student at GenkiJACS from December 2007 to January 2008.
http://whiskeymaninjapan.blogspot.com/

Some self-serving excerpts about the school itself:

“…we have been doing a lot of out-lessons. this is where we learn a few things then go to a store, restaurant or place of amusement and fill out a worksheet in Japanese by asking japanese workers questions. it helps in our way of conversing in a real life situation. the people we ask are always cool. They don’t speak english and speak as they normally do. they don’t dumb it down so it’s tough sometimes.”

“The school is great. They really help me a lot. I’m actually in two different conversation classes. One is still in the beginner 1 stage where I need to be polite. well, really in my polite form. And the other we get to be more casual and its more of an everyday form. Kind of what you hear on TV and anime. Though not as advanced as anime. From what I was told, anime has a lot of advanced stuff and high vocab. The news is probably the only thing that is really advanced.”

“I do like all the teachers in Genki JACS. They all are very helpful and they don’t look at you badly if you don’t know the word or if you are grammatically incorrect. I feel sorry for them, when they are trying to pull out the word from me. When I get it, they very happy. It’s cool. So I make an effort to really study when I get home.”

“…they want us to speak only in Japanese when we are at school. This makes it tough for some, but I feel a necessity if you want to learn by total immersion. I must sound retarded sometimes, but the staff there is great. They always find a way to help you with a smile and encouragement. The school is great. We met more teachers which, for me, helps me in my listening skills on different ways the language can be spoken. The ones that are very energetic are Mika and Chihomi. They make it real fun. Yujii is fun too, he’s quite young but very knowledgeable.”