日本語 Japanese Language

People seem surprised when I tell them that I am teaching myself to speak Japanese. I know it's not your average language to learn but it's really not as difficult as it seems. Now, reading and writing, that is a different story. I normally have the opposite problem when learning a new language – I can read it perfectly well, but when it comes to actually saying something the desire to run in the opposite direction overwhelms me. In that sense it is refreshing to be learning Japanese, which is so much easier to speak than to read. Here are my main reading and writing goals:

Reading:
1.street signs
2.food labels
3.price labels

Writing:
1.my name
2.the date

That's it. If I get those sorted, then we'll see about moving on to something more difficult. I'm not holding my breath though, especially since the main focus will be to learn how to hold a conversation in Japanese, as well as developing a vocabulary that includes any medical terms that I am required to know for my voluntary work.

Having said all that, the language studies are on hold at the moment, but once I finish my exams I can start buckling down again. I'm going on a five-day intensive Japanese course at Lancaster University in July and I've got an array of Podcasts, Pimsleur (audio) lessons and books to help me get my language skills up to scratch before I go. I've heard that although foreigners always receive a warm welcome in Japan, they find it difficult to be seen as anything other than exactly that - a foreigner. I am hoping that by making a decent effort to learn how to converse in the native tongue, that won't prove to be such a problem.