I'm Learning Japanese!

Hmm the title was supposed to be a pun on the song title "I'm Turning Japanese" but it makes so much sense that it will probably go over everyones' head. It's actually quite a useful little phrase. So far I've managed to use it for "I'm Dancing Japanese" and "I'm Learning Japanese." Ok maybe I'm the only one who sees the humour in it-at least the second one rhymes.

The reason for my newfound love of learning is that I've only been here a month and already I'm tired of never knowing what the hell anything says. If you're at the train station or airport then you'll be alright but anywhere else and you're screwed. So anyways I've started re-learning the japanese character system called Hirigana. I learned it in my japanese course but then of course forgot after the course ended. So far I've re-memorized the first 20 of the 46 characters and let me tell you it's a lot easier the second time around. This will only help out a little though. Assuming that I do manage to get the characters down I'll still be screwed because even though I'll know what it says I'll still have no idea what the heck it means. Oh well we all have to start somewhere.

In other matters, my roommate Ben just returned from Thailand and in addition to bringing back absolutely nothing for me, he also brought back a case of pink eye. How in the world he managed to pick that up I have no idea but I assume it's probably one of the more benign infections that you can pick up in a country like Thailand. Anyways I think I'm likely to get it as I have been using his keyboard and probably have touched other things that he has touched. As a result I have been washing my hands like crazy and trying to keep my hands away from my face. I suppose I'll know within a couple of days whether I've contracted it as well.

let me get to sleep