I'm curious to know who Noboru Kaneko is and what brought him to volunteer to teach Japanese at the Takarazuka International Friendship Association. International Friendship. There are so many things to which one can volunteer their time in retirement and he chose this one.
His enthusiasm was endearing and he presented me with two copied pages of text with phrases for introducing oneself, stating and asking one's native country, and asking about one's career. These were romanji versions with English translations along with them and since I've learned this much Japanese fairly well and already been practicing a fair amount of kana, it wasn't a challenge or anything new. I'm an experienced beginner, perhaps one of the most challenging places from a which a teacher can start to teach. I showed him the book I've been working from, which has about 60 pages of kana examples and writing that I've done, covering shopping and telling time and getting directions. He was impressed, but somehow at the end of the lesson he still went over to the copy machine and printed the hiragana alphabet for me. Finally, he "presento shimas" (gave me a present) of a folder in which I could keep my papers.
I left feeling very enthusiastic. He doesn't speak any English at all. I may speak more Japanese than he can speak English. Just as I confidently prepare a Japanese conversation and am surprised when the other person decides to use words other than what I assigned them, I think he had alternate expectations for the hour and the course of study. I can understand. Familiar feelings of frustration arose when he had me read the conversations of introduction, interrupting me as I slowed to make out the superscript kana above the kanji characters. He was very enthusiastic. But I got a lot of value in the interim portions of the lesson, when he would ask me a question about where I'm from or how long I've been here or if I'd been to Japan before. Armed with our respective dictionaries, we had a battle of communication, trying to learn more about one another. At one point he asked if I had studied other languages and I told him I knew a little German and little Spanish. He also knew a little German and from that point on in the lesson we had a Japanese lesson in German. Apparently this was more comfortable for him.
I imagine that I'm going to learn a lot from Noboru Kaneko. Today I learned that he is 7 years past the mandatory retirement age (I tangentially learned that companies in Japan have one), and that he used to work for a marine (?) and fire insurance company. He is from Kyoto. It is a wonderful opportunity to practice Japanese. I'm not sure if it will be be my primary source of learning, though. It wasn't really possible for him to assign me a book to purchase or homework to study. I'm not sure how he would have been about to communicate this and I think he was surprised at how much I had done on my own, despite being a beginner. We'll see where things are next week.
My friends has agreed to be an unofficial tutor. She is an American and avidly studies Japanese, mastering what I consider to be an incredible amount for one year. After our lessons we went to the bookstore and I purchased some new books from which to practice. I'm looking forward to availing myself of so many friendly resources. And now to study, study, study.....
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