So you don't speak Japanese, huh?!

If you've been following my blog, then you surely have learned so much about Japan in the past few months. 

But there are plenty of things in America that come from the Japanese, and you probably never realized it!  And I'm not just talking about karate, karaoke, origami, haiku poems, and sushi!

Here's a list of words that Americans have borrowed directly from Japan:

bonsai - miniature tree
edaname - beans boiled whole in the pod
ginkgo - a tree with fan-shaped leaves
hibachi grill - but in Japan "hibachi" refers to a charcoal stove for heat, not cooking
honcho - as in "head honcho"; chief
kabuki - crazy theater performance
koi - carp fish
ramen - noodle soup
rickshaw - a human-pulled wagon
shiatsu massage
shiitake mushrooms
skosh - meaning a small amount; a bit or a few (sidebar: Jason Biggs claims to have invented this word specifically for the movie Loser in 2000.  I remember reading it in Entertainment Weekly a decade ago.  Go ahead, google it.  I'm serious!)
soy sauce
teriyaki - meat broiled or grilled in a sweet soy sauce
tofu - bean curd
tsunami - large wave caused by earthquakes
tycoon (originally spelled taikun) - wealthy business leader
wasabi - spicy green horseradish
zen - enlightenment through meditation

So what else has Japan influenced in America? 

Loads of manufacturers, such as Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, and Nintendo.

How about Japanese people who are famous in America?

Well, those are a little trickier to come by.  They are out there, but I'm not sure about household-name status.  For my money, I'd say the most famous native Japanese person is...

Yoko Ono!  Find me someone in America who doesn't know she was the wife of John Lennon and quite possibly the reason The Beatles broke up!! 

As for Japanese movie stars, some people may know Ken Watanabe from The Last Samurai and Memoirs of a Geisha.

Some might say Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki Pat Morita) from the original Karate Kid.  Although he does have Japanese heritage, they won't claim his as their own since he is an American citizen and has lived in the US his whole life.

There are a few Japanese players in MLB, but I can't name them.

I think the reason is because Japanese generally like to lead a simple life.  They are not as likely to thrust themselves in the Hollywood spotlight.  I see plenty of cute Japanese models, but you don't see them walking down many red carpets or in the tabloids for being drunk at a club and not wearing any panties.

Perhaps the most well-known thing to come out of Japan is Hello Kitty or Godzilla or Pokemon!!

Drop me a line if you can think of any other native Japanese person who might be considered a household name in America!  My colleagues at work are always quizzing me about this stuff, and I feel like I am constantly disappointing them.

Japanese class ends

Can you believe that it's already been 3 months since I started Nihongo kurasu (Japanese language class) back in the beginning of January?!
I can. It's been painful every step of the way. I constantly felt like I was the slow kid in class. (And I'm sure everyone else in class noticed it, too!)
About 4 weeks in to my class, I found out that "Beginner 1" was not the lowest level class!! Apparently, I should have considered enrolling in "First Step" or "Basic" before jumping to Beginner. At that point, it was too late to switch, and dropping out would be a waste of money, so I just powered through as best as I could.
As I learned after the final test, my best was just not good enough this time. I wasn't able to make the 70% grade required to pass the course :(
Here's a pic of me and my classmates on the last day of class. The 2 Japanese women sitting in the front are our teachers. (One teacher was for Tuesday classes, and the other for Friday.)

I'm actually really happy this class is over because it caused me an incredible amount of stress. I'm going to continue to build my vocabulary with Rosetta Stone, but grammar rules and verb tenses are history for me! I'm going back to the kiddie pool rather than drowning in the deep end!
Otsukare sama desu. (Cheers for good work!)

Language class

Friday marked my first day of Japanese language class at the local YWCA. Previously, I have been using Rosetta Stone and an e-learning course offered by Mitsui, but I am excited to get some classroom training. The homework and grade at the end will keep me on task and accountable for my progress. If I do well, I can continue with an intermediate session.

There are 12 students in the class (max capacity), and I am the only American and the only English speaker. Home countries of the other students include: 3 from China, 2 from Korea, 1 from Thailand, 1 from Brazil, 1 from Germany, 2 from Turkey, and 1 from another country that I couldn't understand and is not in our textbook! Since we are such a diverse class, only Japanese will be spoken; all other languages are prohibited!!

We meet two mornings per week for 3 hours each day, and oddly enough, our teacher is different depending on the day of the week!

My first class went well. Some students are more advanced than me, and others are less advanced than me! I do need to quickly learn my Japanese characters, though. Everyone else seemed to have them memorized!! There are 3 different alphabets (characters) used in Japan, but this class will focus on mainly Hiragana. I have included a picture of most of the alphabet below. I will also need to learn G, Z, D, B, and P, but they share some of the characters.

Here is part of my first completed homework assignment. I made pink boxes around the answers that I wrote. My characters look so fancy already! Now I just have to turn it in and find out how I did on it!

Here's the flashcards I made to help learn the Hiragana characters this weekend. (Luckily it's a 3-day weekend!) Yes, they are on lion notecards that I bought from the 100 yen store!!

My name in Japanese

One day soon these characters will make total sense to me!

New language?!

Kerri needs to start brushing up on her Japanese! Let's see if Rosetta Stone is really as good as the commercials say it is :)