５月２4日：今日は。。。

鎌倉市に有名なお寺があります。

大仏園というお寺です。そのお寺は８００年ぐらい前に作られました。最近、さびができたり汚れてきました。

おととし掃除をしました。専門家によると近くの海から吹く風や鳥のふんなどが原因です。お寺はさびなどができないようにする方法を考えたいと言っています。

大仏園は日本の国宝だと思います。だから大仏園を保つのは大切です。みんなは国宝を保つのを支えなければなりません。

Practice writing: 9 September 2016

この・あいだ・しんじゅく・に・いった。キノクニヤ・で・あたらしい・ほん・を・よんさつ・かった。さいしょ・の・ほん・に・ついて・は・にほん・の・れきし。にばんめ・の・ほん・は・ケヴイン・クワン・に・よって・かけれた。さんばんめ・の・ほん・は・にほんご・の・ほん・の・えいご・ほんやく。よんばんめ・の・ほん・は・どくしょ・の・でんしゅう、あたらしい・ほん・を・たのしみます。

Hello, June...

Image from here

Whoa! It's already June! In a few more weeks, the first six months of the year will be over! Wow! Time is flying by so fast.

And in an hour or so, the short long weekend will also be over. Haha!

So today, I decided to take it easy. By taking it easy, that meant spending most of the day in the house (Yes, that's possible!) while still keeping myself busy.

The first thing I did today was to go to Ang Mo Kio to pick up a side table from a Carousell seller. The lady was selling one of those simple Ikea side tables at a cheap price of $9.90 and the piece was still in its packaging. Since I reached AMK quite early, I passed by Toastbox and Breadtalk to have a quick breakkie.

After getting the table, I headed back home and spent the day in the house. I did my laundry, organised the clothes in my closet, cleaned my room, put my bags in the closet and assembled the table. Now, I have four tables in my rather small room. Hahaha! One table is my "office" space. The other table is my "UP Boy" space, which I got from Tipz. The other table, actually I think it's a TV stand, is where all my books and magazines are. The new side table is beside my "office" space and is where my extra-curricular-related materials are.

When I was done with lunch, I tried very hard to fight siesta because I was worried that I might wake up at 5PM. I didn't want to spend the whole afternoon sleeping. Haha! Thankfully, I only slept for a little over an hour.

The next thing I did was to prepare for my Japanese class with Yoshi san. I'm really enjoying the sessions I have with him. He speaks very clearly and he can adjust his speech to a pace that I can understand. He also prepares extra materials for us to use during class so I thought that was really great!

My class ended at 6PM. It was still quite early so I decided to go for a run around the neighbourhood. I didn't get to go to the gym today to attend any of the special classes but I already had an inkling that I will miss gym today. That's why I was rather set to go for a run.

Run was followed by a quick dinner and dinner was followed by a quick trip to Bukit Gombak to meet another Carousell seller. I couldn't resist it and so I finally bought a new iron. This time, it's a Philips iron. The current one I have right now is not working very well anymore (I burnt my white shorts using the current iron!). It's time to get a new one.

The last few hours was spent just relaxing and reading the ebook I recently purchased.

Hello, June, indeed! I can't wait for the end of the month to come.

It was a happy Thursday...

Image from here

Today was a good day.

I woke up at 5:30AM, got up fifteen minutes later and then changed into running clothes. Around 6, I headed out and made my way to the park connector. It was still dark when I reached the park connector and when I started my run.

Since I had a bunch of things to do today, I decided I'll just do a short 3K run. Having run a few times at the park connector, I'm slowly getting an idea of how far I should go to hit a 3K. Hehe! I started early today so I missed having a view of the sun rays bringing colour to the sky. Still, it was a good start for the day.

Afterwards, it was work as usual. From today until next Friday, it will be quite busy for me as I am covering for a colleague who was called to serve the nation for close to two weeks. I'm hoping that his counterparts will not give me a headache. Hehe!

Around noontime, I had a meeting which had good results. I thought it wasn't going well but I was pleased to hear good feedback afterwards.

In the evening, I had my Japanese class. In a previous post, I think I wrote how I do well in the first half of the class and how I get a headache by the second half of the class. Well, I'm happy to share that tonight I did well even in the second half of the class.

What was different?

It involved self-motivation and realigning my mindset. The past few weeks, I've been struggling with the second half of the class, yes. But on top of that, I kept thinking that this class is so difficult or that this teacher does not adopt to the learning level of the students. The result is I shut out whatever the teacher was saying.

Tonight, I really prepped myself for the class. I studied the lessons days ahead of the class. I did my practice. But the most important thing I did differently tonight was to really open my mind and tell myself, "Never mind if the teacher speaks the natural pace, I will try my very best to listen and understand what was being said."

It worked. I was able to understand almost 85% of what the teacher was saying. The remaining 15% I had to raise my hand and ask the teacher to repeat or clarify. What was also different about tonight was I enjoyed the class. I may have dreaded the start of the second half. But after doing a self-check, I found myself feeling better and really enjoying.

So yeah, no headache when I left school today and on my way home. Yay!

Today was a good day....

Sunday starts early...

Today is going to be a long day.

Foremost on the agenda today is joining the nation as they bid farewell to the first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. I promised a few friends I'll join them wait for the cortege to pass by along Commonwealth Avenue before heading to Buona Vista CC to watch the State Funeral service.

But before that...

I'm up at 6AM on a Sunday, ahead of my alarm as usual (LOL!), because I'm going to Mass and then brunch. Today is also Palm Sunday. I expect the church to be packed and the service long. Hehe!

But before that... Lol!

I made the mistake of scheduling a 730 Skype session with a Japanese teacher via italki. Haha! I got home from a dinner and movie around 12 midnight. Because of the Skype session this morning, I also wasn't able to join RKGreg, MkSurf8 and iandarric on the impromptu nightout last night. :-/

In a recent post, I mentioned that I was thinking of trying out another language teacher aside from Harusan. The teacher I have a session with in 20 minutes is someone based in Nara. I've read the student feedback and it has been generally positive. I hope the session will be a good one.

This coming Tuesday is the last session of the Japanese language class. I decided to keep on going with the course, so I'll be registering for the next 10 sessions. Initially, I thought of switching schools. However, I decided to just stick with my current school. The fee difference between my current school and the other school is $140. Since I'm paying out of my own pocket, my resources are a bit limited. Lol! I'm hoping that the italki sessions would be good enough to supplement the once a week session in school.

I'm not sure what will come out of this language classes. I am planning to go to Japan later this year. At the very least, I hope that the language lessons will enable me to converse casually with the locals when I go for the trip.

Happy Sunday!

かようびのあさ

My Japanese writing practice for today. Lol.

おはよう。

けさジムにいきました。それからうちにかえりました。

きょうはいえでしごとをしています。

いいかようびです。

About Friday night...

I thought I'd end the day by writing briefly about my Friday... in Japanese.

こんにちは。アンジェロ です。 げんき です か。きにょうび の よる です。なに を して います か。

きょうは いえ で はたらきました。しごとは あまり いそがしくない です。5じはんに しごと を おわりました。 それから としょかん え いきます。 6じはんから 8じまでに ほん を よみました。

ほんは すき です。よむは すき です。9じごろに としょかんに でました。でんしゃのえきに あるきました。でんしゃで うちに かえります。

きょうは いい です。いま、ねます。おやすみなさい。

I posted this also on italki.com so that Japanese speakers may comment/correct the post. I'll translate the above post, along with any corrections, when someone takes the time to reply to the italki.com post. Haha!

Good night!

Good first time experience with italki...

Knowing that a once-a-week three-hour class is not enough to learn Japanese, I've been doing some things for me to learn more about the language.

The school gave us a book and a companion vocab book, which I both use for my classes. Of course, those are definitely helpful and my main sources of information. Every morning, I spend about thirty minutes writing the entire katakana and hiragana characters before I start the day's work. I can read the characters, I can write them in the correct order. The challenge is when I translate sentences in romaji (Hajime mashite. Watashi wa Angelo desu.) to kana characters (はじめまして。わたしはアンジｴロです。) It takes me a second or two to recall the character. The other challenge is reading. I really should find more time to practice reading skills. Let's not even start with kanji. Haha! Oh boy, I still have a long way to go.

To supplement the class lessons, there are a few websites I regularly visit to gain more knowledge about Nihongo. That's the great thing about the Internet and Google, I must say. Type in the right search words and voila! you get a plethora of websites on learning Japanese. The ones I like are also language schools that have free learning materials for download such as hiragana/katakana charts, writing worksheets, and so on. Now, I have a bookmark folder labeled Learning Nihongo. Hehe.

In addition to reading and writing, of course, the number one skill I want to be first good at is speaking. Yup, I can learn about particles, verb conjugations, sentence orders, and so on. Without speaking practice, my learning will be more theoretical. Hehe!

Recently, I found a few websites where you can find a language exchange buddy. I had no idea there are groups like these. Again, Google has the answer. Out of curiosity, I Googled Japanese language learning or something like that. The Google search returned a few sites. There is one site where I found a language exchange buddy based in Singapore. We already met up once. I don't know if I'll organise a meetup again. The thing is I'm a beginner and on our first session, there was really no concrete structure how to conduct our language exchange session. For the first hour, he taught me basic Japanese. For the next hour, I spoke to him in English and gave pointers on what to improve on.

Thanks again to Google, I stumbled upon this site called italki.com. It's an online language service where one could find language teachers from around the world.

What are the good things about italki? One, you can find a real language teacher from various parts of the world. Two, you can practice the language with native speakers. Three, because it is not free, you are sure that the teacher would ensure that you get something out of the session. Four, all you need is a good Internet connection and then you can already start learning.

So, I decided to sign up and searched for a language teacher. The search results gave close to 100 individuals teaching Japanese. I decided to go with a teacher named Haru. He has good feedback from students. He has quite a number of students. He has conducted more than a thousand sessions. He really seems to be in demand because when I checked his available schedule, he is booked for almost the entire day almost every day. That gave me the impression that he must be good.

I found a convenient schedule so I went ahead and booked a 30-minute trial session with Haru-san. On our agreed time, I received a Skype video call. For the next thirty minutes, I was able to practice some of the lessons I've learned from my class. In addition to that, I've learned a few new words and a new grammar structure (making comparisons). Haru-san was very patient and very cheerful. Believe it or not, we spoke very little English throughout the call. He can speak English but he spoke in Nihongo 90% of the time. The good thing about this is that I was forced to think and speak in Japanese.

The cost for the 30-min session was just $8. A 60-min session is $15. Not bad, right? The fees vary from teacher to teacher. I think Haru-san's fees are very good.

So yeah, that was my first time to learn language online via italki. I've been on the Internet since 1996 and up until now, I'm still amazed by technology. I'm in the comfort of my own home in Singapore. My teacher is in his own home, in his own room in the Kanto region in Japan. With a few mouse clicks, taps on the keyboard, I am able to enter into a learning environment in cyberspace. How awesome is that! Hehe!

Anyway, I think I'll schedule another session with Haru-san next week. We'll see how far this new project will go.