Achievement unlocked: Reading!

The day has finally come! I sat my butt down and studied hard and I finally know how to read some Japanese! You have no idea how much I as an adult took being able to read for granted. It was something I didn't even think about when I first moved here. I've been so frustrated that I could not do the simplest things like read a menu to figure out what I was eating or not knowing what kind of sauce I just bought at the grocery store. But, I finally conquered one of the Japanese reading/writing systems. I can now read katakana and I mean READ it. I didn't just memorize the symbols, I officially read a whole menu with no help from anyone :D It was an exciting moment for me. I'm clearly moving up in the world.

Here's a little bit of information about the Japanese writing systems. There are three different systems: katakana, hiragana, and kanji. I chose to learn katakana because it is used for "borrowed words" from other languages (namely English). This means that although I am struggling to learn Japanese, I can still understand the words I am reading because they are words like kohi (coffee) or hamubaga (hamburger) or rate (latte). Hiragana is kind of like the basic alphabet. It covers all of the basic sounds in Japanese and uses it to form words. This is taught to children before they can read kanji. I hope to conquer this next...The last and most complicated of the symbols is kanji. These are symbols derived from Chinese that represent many words and sounds. I actually have learned about 50 or so kanji from my day to day interactions. Things like "water", "day", "month", "book", or even the names of some local cities from the trains have all been burned into my brain as I see them at least one a week. I hope I can absorb more and would like to know at least 200 or so kanji before I leave.

Japanese Style BBQ

I had a fun weekend this weekend! A part of that weekend was going to a Japanese style BBQ on Monday. There were some fun differences that I really enjoyed experiencing. We had the BBQ next to the river in a town about 35 mins from my apartment. I didn't realize how popular of an activity this was! There were at least 15 other groups around the area that we were in!
Of course, the major difference here was the food that we ate. At a traditional American BBQ, we have hamburgers, hot dogs, and maybe some chicken sandwiches or bratwurst. Here, the main dish was fish, as I expected. Everyone shared the same big fish.

Cleaning and gutting the fish

Grilling that bad boy up

We also had yakisoba (fried noodles) as well as various meats and veggies. It was great. We ate all day, literally. I arrived at 12:30 and left at 6:30 and the grill was never cold. It was really cool. We cooked a lot of different foods and everyone had a little bit of everything. Not many people there spoke English so it was an adventure in and of itself just to try communicating with some new people. Still, I did it! It was a great time with some amazing people and food!

Making friends: The first 3 months

One of my main concerns coming here was social. I was instructed by my company to not learn the language and all I could think is: how in the world am I supposed to make friends?! I'm a very social and outgoing person so it seemed like a terrible fate to be living somewhere for a year with no friends except those that I met at work. Don't get me wrong here. I love my coworkers and I met some great people at training but most of my training friends are far away or busy as are my coworkers. Also, there are not many foreigners in my city let alone ones who are similar in age to me that I can relate to.
At first, I attempted to boldly face this problem head on going to international friendly places like Roppongi in Tokyo and even went by the navy base a couple of times. Every time I would without a doubt meet people. The issue was that I was not meeting the kind of people who could be my friends. A lot of them were Japanese guys trying to pick up an American or another foreigner looking to "get friendly" with someone if you know what I mean. I would strike up conversations with them and then would casually mention my boyfriend. POOF! They would vanish.
I got pretty good at occupying myself by traveling or shopping or gaming but I started to get restless and just wanted some more companionship. Luckily, my Aunt has an acquaintance over here who I met with. She was awesome to chat with and showed me around Tokyo. The best thing she did for me though was introduce me to this adventure club of foreigners. It's basically a group that allows foreigners to meet others in a fun non-threatening environment. I have gone to a couple of their events and met a lot of people some of whom I have started to really chat with. I hope that this will help me really make some connections.
I'm going on a trip with them this weekend on a hike and hot spring trip. I'll keep you updated on my friend success rate.

Japanese Skills

When I was first offered the job, they told me not to learn Japanese. They didn't want me to know any so I wouldn't respond to the kids in Japanese. They told me I would be absolutely fine with a very basic knowledge of Japanese. I'd like to take this time to say that they were wrong. Yes, I can survive with my very minimal knowledge of Japanese but I find it hard to do some really simple things. Example: going to a restaurant (and this is the one that frustrates me the most). I can't order or even read the menu. A couple of big chain restaurants have English menus but sometimes, I just want to go to a locally owned bar or restaurant. I'm making it a goal while I'm here to learn a lot more Japanese in my free time. I want to be able to get out there and do things. Not just have to settle with pointing and miming and HOPING we can understand each other. I'm starting to get frustrated that I can't communicate with others or read anything. I know that I will get used to it and learn more as I stay here longer. I just wish that the company had been more upfront about how important learning the language was instead of leading me to believe that most residents had knowledge of basic English from High School and Junior High. I'll keep you posted on the language learning situation.