日本旅行

決まった。期末試験後、日本に行くよ！ちょっとこわいが、うれしい。子供の時から行きたい。ついに本当に行く！信じるのが難しい。

今から、忙しくても、もっと勉強することにする。日本に行くとき、よく話したいから、その前に、なるべく上手になってみる。特別なチャンスがあったら、がんばるいかなくちゃいけないね。

#8: Reflection

    Whether it's in English or Japanese, I always love reading.  Everyone's gotten a lot better at reading aloud since last semester, too!  I really think going through so much text for class has helped us get more comfortable reading in Japanese.  It's also made big chunks of text less intimidating.
     I also liked having the opportunity to proofread each other's papers.  It's a great option to have since after looking at the same paper for so long, it can be hard to catch even really simple mistakes.  It also means more reading practice!  Next time we have a writing assignment, I think I'll see if anyone wants to have a proofreading meeting outside of class.  It might also give us more confidence in figuring out what we're doing before the deadline.  

#7: Paper

     For my paper, I decided to write about the differences in how people communicate disagreement in Japanese and American culture.  Since each places the responsibility for understanding a complaint or making a complaint understood on different people, it's really interesting to look at how cultural ideas influence how we work together.  In JCEC and Akron U's two Japanese Clubs, I've had the opportunity to see American and Japanese people work together; sometimes more successfully than others.  If we don't understand how the people around us communicate, after all, how can we communicate anything at all?

     I had a lot of fun writing it!  I've always liked writing, and this is the longest assignment in Japanese I've had yet, so it's exciting to see how far I've come.  Even with my limited vocabulary, I feel like I can express pretty complex ideas.  It was a great challenge to really utilize everything I've learned up to this point in context.