I have no more excuses

[elfs]

As I mentioned earlier, I had to go into work this weekend. It's a quick drive, no more than 20 minutes when the traffic's good, which it was, so one trip out and back has just enough time for one lesson of my Japanese classes on audiobook.

I haven't been posting about my Japanese studies because I haven't been doing them. Too much to do, and I've started to feel the need for more downtime from my busy and crazy life recently. I'm not really getting it-- children don't allow for it-- but I have put aside some extra-curricular activities that one might consider life-enhancing. (Sadly, one of those seems to have been dating, recently. I should get out more often.) So I put it on random and let it pick a track for me.

The lesson was one of the transitionals: it started with "How many people in your family? How many boys? How many girls? Are they here with you in Japan?" and ended with "Please put 40 liters of gasoline into my American car, which is really too big for me. I have to go to Tokyo. Which road do I take?"

I had no problem at all with the lesson. I tore through it, only once losing a vocabulary point, expressing someone else's desires, "My wife would like wine." Other than that, everything was in place: grammar, conjugation, tense.

It was mildly frustrating because I now know that I have no excuse for not continuing. The mechanics of this language are easy for me, now. I'm now carrying, along with a library of 1,500 books, the finest Japanese-English dictionary available, 24/7, in my pocket. I can look up Kanji with radicals and with hirigana, with English and romajii if I have to. I have every tool I need to complete my study.

I just need to memorize 2,000 kanji and 40,000 combinations.

Comments

[fallenpegasus]

There was a very cute very petite little Japanese woman at the MySQL con. I non-plussed her a bit by shaking her hand, but she followed thru, and then gave a very Japanese bow after. This was her very first time in the US, and I could tell she was struggling hard but doing passably well with her English. She also struck me as smarter than the 4 loutish Japanese men from her company who also attended.

Procrastination

[shemayazi.livejournal.com]

If not now, when?