日本的な準備

Preparatory doings.

Today I did the same as every day. Procrastinate Prepare for the impending linguistic death that is my year abroad. 

Armed with the sound advice of  my residence abroad co-ordinator of "make sure you learn more than you know" -__- Anki has become my number one pal in my attempt to become ready for what ever dastardly grammar and kanji Meiji throw at me in their call allocation test. This combined with Tobira's (my second year textbook) vocabulary gems:

- 偏差値  [へんさち] : 'deviation score indicating the degree of difficulty of each school's entrance exam' 
- 紅葉　[もみじ] : 'Japanese maple'
- 暮れなずむ夕暮れ　[くれなずむゆうぐれ] : 'lingering evening glow after sunset'
- 山伏　[やまぶし] : 'itinerant buddhist monk'
and 白鷺　[しらさぎ] : 'white egret'

I now feel fully equipped to deal with common day to day situations in Japan. Especially if my large pet bird gets stuck in a tree in the evening.



I also invented an extreme art form called procrastaparing. And this lead to an exploratory venture into the wide variety of traditional Japanese culture, from extreme chop-sticking to the ways of the silent ninja.

Here is a picture montage of my training. *cue Europe - the final count down* 


Kanji by the thousand? CHECK

KANJI

Saying KAWAIII at small animals? CHECK

Practice Kawaii

Name every street in Tokyo? not quite...

not enough guidebooks

Japanese gaming culture master street fighter? In the making.

Otaku - training

 Extreme chopsticks! gotta get them cherries.

箸道

 I also mastered the gentle and sophisticated art of the tea ceremony....

茶道

So, I think I am now fully prepared, and apparently have nothing better to do than to spend my days messing about. But in all seriousness I have learnt so many new kanji compounds and words and repeated them most days of the week that I feel ready to take whatever they wish to throw at me :) bring on N2. (in a year)