Me: こんにちは (Konnichiwa) - Hello
J-Person: こんにちは！日本語お上手ですね！ (Konnichiwa! Nihongo ojyouzu desu ne!) Hello! Your Japanese is really good!
Me: *Painful laugh*
It's obvious what's silly about this, right? For the culturally savvy and wondering, you are right. Mentioning that my Japanese is good isn't really a comment about my Japanese, it's an immediate comment aimed at me to make me feel good and thus, feel better about the person I'm speaking to. A rapport builder, if you will. I understand this. Most foreigners here understand this. The thing is, the conversation I gave isn't really an exaggeration. After saying 1 or 2 lines of Japanese, I immediately get complimented on how good I am. I know it's an ice breaker, but there's no real attempt to hide the fact it's an ice breaker, it's just tossed into the beginning of a conversation as conversation fodder. It's just a little weird because that's something you should really save unless, you know, the person's Japanese is actually fairly decent, don't you think? Japanese people, if you happen to read this, please take note, and stop this grossly overused compliment before it's due, or at least, try to hide it better :)
Typical Day
So a typical weekday for me has me getting up at either 7 or 7:10. I get up at 7 if I was too lazy to take a shower the night before, and 7:10 if I did make it.
After that, I leave the house at 7:40 and arrive to school at 7:55. I sit around at my desk trying to look pretty, accomplishing only being pretty useless, while all the other teachers run around preparing for the day. This goes on until 8:50 when the first classes start. I hate morning classes yet somehow I ALWAYS end up with a 1st period. I usually have around 2-4 classes in a day, and I eat lunch around 12:40ish. 5th and 6th periods follow.
School ends at 3:20, after which the students start cleaning the school. Yes, students clean the school in Japan. I walk around and offer help and oddly, no one gives me anything to do usually, so I continue to walk around and talk to any students who aren't scared to death to say anything beyond "hello." This usually amounts to about 0.1% of the school. The rest say hello, sometimes enthusiastically even, then get scared and run off screaming when they figure out words beyond that are coming out of my mouth.
My school day officially ends at 4 (4:15 for elementary school) PM, and I am free to leave, but usually something keeps me around. Some meeting, speech practice, random planning that I don't have much of a hand in after all, or school club activities. I've been going to the table tennis club, but I plan to try and get around to all the clubs eventually. This keeps me around anywhere from 5 to 6:30. I think I've gone home at 4 twice in the near 2 months I've been at the schools.
If I don't have grocery shopping to do I get home, pop open the computer, and usually get hungry and try to cook dinner around 7 to 7:30ish. It's usually rice, some meat and a bunch of veggies stir fried. It doesn't taste very good at all.
Back on the computer, I reply to messages I got during the day on a website called mixi, essentially the Japanese version of Facebook. After that, if I have time and am not too tired, I try to study some Japanese. This usually works around 3 of the 5 weekdays.
I am attempting to sleep around 11. I don't usually fall asleep until around 11:30 to 12. I am very tired the next day, until of course, it comes time to go to sleep.
That is my typical day, and I was going to write more but this turned into a really long post already so I'm stopping now.
委ねる【ゆだねる】 (yudaneru) (v1,vt) to entrust to; to devote oneself to; to abandon oneself to; (P)
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