Learning

Hiragana

 

I was fascinated by french sometime back. Today, it is Japanese. I have a colleague at work ( Business Analyst - Shin Ohkura ), who is Japanese. I am very impressed by his working style. That added to the Anime( Japanese) movies that am watching lately got me interested in Japanese Culture. I have ordered few classic Japanese novels ( translated to English) which are yet to arrive.

Learning the language itself stems from watching this movie - "5 Centimeters Per Second". Such a brilliant movie. So poetical. So real. Reading English subtitles I wanted to know what those mean in Japanese. In the native language. So I started learning Japanese. I wanted to pursue this as a serious avocation. I tried to contact few schools in Bangalore. But to no avail.

So I started learning it online. I have finished learning Hiragana, Katakana Alphabet. I easily can write a spoken word in Japanese using these Alphabet. I can also read a word that is written with this alphabet. Yet to learn Kanji which seems difficult at this moment. I felt the same looking at Hiragana 2 days back.

Katakana

 

Learning is something I enjoy very much. I love to learn new things. Just that it has to catch my interest. Not sure if this exercise of learning Japanese is also going to go down the hill like French. Hope not.

I was searching for desktop or online tools to practice more of what I learnt. Then I landed on this site LiveMocha.com. They link you with another person who knows the language that you are learning so that you both can converse and know the culture/ language.

So while I was browsing this website I see a pop up. A chat window from a total stranger on this site. It seems he is an Indian living in UAE and who is seeking friends. Friends on a language learning website? I am amazed at how guys try calculate your age by asking indirect questions :-P. Like, when did you complete your studies. Their rough estimate of graduation is 21 years. So if you say 2008 today, then you are 24 now. This guy asks me since when I am in Bangalore. And he was surprised or rather disappointed to know that am in Bangalore since 5 yrs. Not sure what his calculations told him. But his immediate next question was if I am married. I enjoy bashing these strangers online when they ask me such questions. How desperate men are! But well, I had registered with my original name and I was afraid to bash him ruthlessly. So I politely denied his so-called friendship request and escaped from this site.

But whole of this exercise of trying to learn something new, taking tests, writing down the alphabet which is the first thing I do as soon as I wake up in the morning, a guy hitting on you...makes me feel like a student all over again. I must admit it makes me feel young. Not young in terms of age, but young in terms of lightening up my heavy heart :-(. I love learning. Cause I am good at it. And when I evaluate myself at the end of each learning I feel good. The sense of accomplishment feels great. No wonder I loved being a student. No wonder why I was so happy in my college days.