Month: September 2015

Oktoberfest!

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Need I say more…?

I went to Oktoberfest! The real one in Munich!

I cannot describe how amazing it was to actually get a table on the first day! The energy was crazy. Waiters are carrying 12 liters of beer down the aisles. There’s a brass band in the middle of the tent, and people are all standing on the benches in lederhosen and dirndls.

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Biggest darn tent I’ve ever seen…

I was there with two friends who had never been either, so it was great to see their reactions. We found a table full of Swiss men in their twenties. With lederhosen, of course.

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Japan Debrief

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Learning Japanese is like being eaten by Godzilla…

Learning Japanese was a shock after speaking Italian. Italian was almost effortless. In Italy, I could just throw out a Spanish word with an Italian accent and be understood. Knowing French and Spanish really gave me a huge head start.

By comparison, I started Japanese with nothing. Nada. Zero. I had to memorize alphabets – three of them. I had to conjugate adjectives (that’s a new one). And I had to re-arrange my thinking so that the verb always came out last.

What follows is an assessment of:

  • My level
  • What worked
  • What I would change

My Level

I did not reach taxi-ride-to-the-airport level like I did in Italian. More like order-from-starbucks. Besides ordering food I’m pretty decent at asking about traveling on trains and subways. I can also write about what I did each day – what I ate, where I went, how long I studied, and who I met with.

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