Day 4: Pronouns and Prices

I am so early and it's so creepy. I arrived at around 7:30 and no one's around yet. I wandered around Palma Hall for the meantime looking for the ladies restroom. The one in our floor was closed so I managed to find one at the ground floor. The moment I returned to our classroom, two of my classmates are already there. There are six more sessions to go, I hope I make a few close friends I can get in touch with even after. 

The lessons for today were: 

1. Listening exercises for Hiragana 

2. Japanese pronouns - kore, sore, are; kono, sono, ano; 

3. Numbers and prices - thousands to ten thousands 

4. Particle mo 

5. Asking Where in Japanese - doko, koko, soko, asoko 

Finally, I was able to understand the pronouns in Japanese. I'm really excited to use them with my otaku friends! LOL! And yeah, I need to master Katakana before our next meeting. Errm, it's just a personal preference. Gambatte!

SS #6: The Katakana Rush

I am now at the verge of rushing my Katakana assignments. Sighs. Maybe I didn't find it interesting enough to do it or I'm just busy at work. Anyhoo, I'll just finish 'em all till Lesson 6. Sighs sighs sighs.

Day 3: Numbers and New Writing

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! All screams for today since I forgot to do my Hiragana assignment! Oh hell, oh hell. I even left our house later than usual which resulted to my arrival at UP five minutes before class time! 

What I did was stay at the Sunken Garden and rushed my assignment. I even attempted to do it while on the jeepney to UP but to no avail since it's moving thus my strokes are affected. I rushed to our classroom at exactly 8 AM only to find out that there are only around five people there. So they're late. Also, sensei's late. I forgot that my watch is five minutes advance so I'm still on time. The panic! The stress! LOL. I just reviewed the mastery of the Hiragana characters for our quiz. 

The three hours passed with no quiz. LOL. Well, at least I managed to memorize everything as an expected output. What we tackled today were: 

1. Numbers - how to count from 1 to 999 

2. Time - how to tell time 

3. Katakana - we tried writing our names since Katakana is commonly used for foreign words 

My name in Japanese is pronounced as PORIN (sounds like poring in Ragnarok) and is written as ポーリン. Dofitas-sensei told us that he prefers Hiragana over Katakana since it's a lot easier to use. But he likes Kanji better since it's more convenient; as for Katakana, inconvenient he said. Ha-ha! Well, let's see what will my preferred writing system will be!

SS #5: Achievement Unlocked! The Dictionary Is Here!

I have my own Japanese dictionary! Yatta yatta!

I was able to get one in National Bookstore SM Masinag, the nearest mall in our house and the last mall I will go to since it's not so mainstream. I phoned different bookstores earlier today along with those near my office but only SM Masinag has the dictionary. I asked them to reserve it for me and they agreed. It was looking old maybe because it was not the first choice of the customers in the mall. 

Regardless, I bought it because it's a diamond for me! Ha-ha! Now I'm really really happy!

SS #4: A Dictionary Alternative

We already had our second meeting yet I wasn't able to bring my own dictionary. Errrmm, yeah, I have one but it's an electronic dictionary. Dofitas-sensei recommended Oxford Japanese Mini Dictionary since it has some useful daily terms and basic phrases to help in learning. I'm still on the run looking for that one! I went to three bookstores in SM Megamall to no avail. Where can I find that?

For now, I use imiwa?, a Japanese e-dictionary available in iOS. It is a good app which provides not only the definition of words but also gives it's correct pronunciation. I used this in our recent class and indeed a dictionary is really handy when you start learning the language!