sat in on 1. braille class, 2. teaching japanese to foreigners class, and (on another day) 3. teaching japanese culture to foreigners class. these three are meant for japanese students. i thought i'd take them for points if my japanese was good enough but now i'm seriously deciding not to (except maybe maybe the braille course), because they're entirely taught FOR japanese students who don't even know any other languages. meaning ex. today we had almost the whole class for going through the very basics of how to break up a sentence (these kids don't know what a "clause" or "adverb" is in their own language) and another class went through the very basics of pronunciation (voiced/aspirated versus unvoiced/unaspirated etc). which is just, how can i put it, tiring. you have to try and think just like the japanese students and it's kinda too hard on these sorts of subjects that you already know about. pluuus i want to be able to dump all these extra classes and actually work some hours if i get a part-time job somewhere.

otherwise (for actual points/my degree) i've had 1. listening class, 2. reading class, 3. speech class, 4. grammar class, 5. kanji class, i have 3 other mandatory classes but can't remember what they are. each class is only once a week but we get repeat teachers so it's pretty confusing what's what.

i can actually understand the teachers in the first classes (one's even the same as in our degree classes) but the problems i've had so far have been that i didn't get the handout that everyone else got since i wasn't there last week, and then i have no clue what the teacher's saying because i'm actually missing half the information.

in braille class i just practiced the alphabet a bit; i'm going to have to buy a slate and stuff so i can practice at home. i think i accidentally said i've already memorized all the basic letters ("didn't look at anything"), when i meant to say i was making the letters while looking at the handout but NOT looking at the slate when i was writing.

learned the basic history of tatami and how they're made (top part = "igusa", the same grass-like stuff used to make setta and some other traditional shoes; bottom part = 5cm of rice straw/hay) today...

in general, uh, how can i put it.... we're not learning all that much. even in the classes meant for japanese students, when i glanced around i was the only one taking notes that i could see (and most of my notes were words the teacher was saying that i didn't know). it's kind of like class is a game. i think we have the POTENTIAL to learn a lot in the japanese classes IF we take it into our own hands - like if i actually do memorize all the unknown words in every class, and do a lot of handwriting practice. but it's not coming from the class really.

anyway today i came home from school entirely by myself, AND in the dark, for the first time. i had to ask directions to the subway, then get on the right bus (which for some reason always has tons of foreigners but mostly chinese girls), sat in the very front so i could read the electronic sign showing which stop we were at, peered out the window, realized it was probably my stop when all the chinese girls were getting off at once so i hurridly got off, yeah it was correct, then i managed to walk home... only because i had done the same walk in the dark just yesterday with my wife /wipes sweat. basically speaking, i can only see 2-3 buildings away down the street. if it's dark, if there's snow, whatever, then i can't recognize basically anything anymore. it took me around a week just to be able to recognize the outside of my own apartment building despite that we went out walking (and thus walked back to it) every day... sigh.