make that four...

Right after I started counting down the months, I got a phone call from the head trainer asking me to stay on for an extra month because they couldn't find anyone to fill my position in time for the end of my contract. It means I get extra money, and it works out with the schedule for the language school I want to go to, so it looks like I'll be working until September instead of August.

Today, I bought this ds kanji game my friend told me about. From what I've seen of it, the easiest two levels (of ten) are around where I'm studying now, and then they just get harder. The most annoying thing about it for me is the stroke order, because Japanese stroke order is slightly different from Chinese stroke order. Not enough to make the final kanji look different, but enough to screw me up when the game asks me about specific numbers... It's nice that it keeps track of the ones you get wrong, though, because then you can go back and correct it. And it keeps track every time you get it wrong. So even if it's been cleared before, if you miss it later, you have to go back and correct it again for the level to be 100% complete.

So I'm getting into studying again, even if I still fail at making full conversations in Japanese. In between the youth service and the main service this morning at church, one of my friends started asking me about the places I wanted to go in Japan and ended up talking about some old shrines she'd been to once in Gifu because I couldn't come up with anything interesting, exhausting my vocabulary after naming the places I'd been and the things I'd visited there in pretty much the briefest manner possible.

Apparently, I can give directions now, though. When I first got here, an old woman asked me something while I was using the wireless outside a coffee shop, and I had no idea what she was saying and couldn't answer her. But today, in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in the city on a Sunday afternoon, two tourists happened to pick the only foreigner in the entire intersection to ask for directions. Granted, they probably couldn't tell I was a foreigner, but I'm just glad I managed to 1) understand them and 2) tell them where to go. Even if I still can't really speak Japanese, I can at least pretend I can sometimes...