Friday, October 30, 2009

When things click

Today, I was sitting at the elementary school and realized that over the course of the day, I had understood several Japanese conversations around me. I didn’t catch every word, but I was able to catch enough to make sense.

After realizing this, I was left alone to wait for lunch; I decided to check out the lunch menu to see if I could figure it out. (In the past, I have been able to figure out milk and maybe one other thing)

It read:
どんこラーメン
牛乳
ミックスゼリー
チーズ

Translation (at that point):
Some kind of ramen – didn’t really matter what kind, I had read it!!!
Milk
Milk Jelly (which is strange jelly stuff with fruit – I actually like it)
Cheese
It does help that everything besides milk was in Katakana, but I still understood the whole thing!!

Side note – we got to lunch and I went to open my ramen. I opened the package, but apparently with too much force. It plopped right out of the package and onto the floor. Luckily, they had extras.

Anyways, the best part of this is when the two sweetest little girls, came in and asked the principal how to say “let’s play” in English. Not only was I was able to pick up on most of the conversation, but after they very quietly while they painfully try to get out “Let’s play” (these two are a second and third grader), I responded with “あそびましょか。” The looks on their faces were hilarious, when they realized that I could understand “Let’s play?” in Japanese. I’m pretty sure the last time I was here, I was barely understanding super basic Japanese and now, all of a sudden (for me too), I’m understanding what’s going on around me.