I think I’m turning Japanese…

I realized this morning that I’m coming up on five years of Russian studies.  And there is still so much to learn.  It’s a hard language.  You can see my Russian blog for details.

So I decided that it was time to take on a new challenge.  I’m not ending my Russian studies.  I feel like that is a permanent part of my life now, like music, cooking, etc.  I’ve been learning some Korean phrases here and there, and it’s been fun to go into a Korean restaurant and be able to say something in Korean.

But I’ve decided that Japanese might be more useful.  I love the original Japanese Iron Chef, and I’ve collected a lot of episodes in original Japanese without subtitles that were never shown on the Food Network.  For example, there was the ostrich battle.  Maybe they thought that American audiences couldn’t handle that.  The only glimpse of it that we got was the blonde lady in the opening sequence.  She’s an Australian chef named Gillian Hirst.  Hey, you can watch this episode on YouTube now!

Alright, so being able to watch and understand the Ostrich Battle probably isn’t all that urgent of a need, but it does sound like fun.  Plus my wife is willing to learn some Japanese with me, which is a big plus.  My son Jeff has absorbed a surprising amount of Japanese just from watching endless hours of anime.  My step-son Malcolm took Japanese in school.  And I have friends who speak Japanese fluently (Hi Yasmin!) and of course I LOVE Japanese food.   I love to eat it and to make it.  I love going to Japanese markets and it would be extremely helpful to know some Japanese when heading out to my local Nijiya Market.

So we’ll see how it goes.  So far, after 3 days of study , I’m blown away by how EASY the grammar is!  Perhaps that’s a reaction to studying Russian.  Russian grammar is legendary in its difficulty.  I’m not worried about how far I get with Japanese.  Anything counts.  The main thing is to learn and have fun.

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