More Conversation

This week's number one learning goal is improving my conversation skills: I met yesterday with Yoriko-san for a conversation practice dinner & today in Ueno Park with part of the class crew for a follow up. Being a very mixed class has the benefit that for some of the students, such as the Koreans, it is now easier to try to converse in Japanese than in English and this means lots of opportunity to practice. It's quite amazing what you can manage to get across even with a limited vocabulary, for example I learned today that "in Korea most pigeons living in tourist spots are so fat (from too much/generous tourist feeding) that they can no longer fly and hence only stagger about". Who would have guessed a few months ago that I would be discussing this wonderful topic in Japanese soon?

Yoriko-san continues her quest to teach me the "tomodachi-fomu" (i.e. colloquial Japanese) and I am slowly beginning to get it, at least in theory. This is a great pleasure as it significantly adds to my coolness factor in class during breaks ;)

In other news my German friend Christine has come to Tokyo to visit, giving me a reason to get those tourist-must-sees checked of my list, so expect more photos soon...