Linguistic anxiety

My Japanese office wrote me an e-mail on Monday. Originally my embassy told me they'd phone me, so I'm actually pretty happy they wrote their questions down instead. The e-mail was in Japanese of course, as this is the language I'll mostly be conversing in once there (or so they think). Anyway, of course I had to write back and did so in pretty shaky Japanese. If they didn't think so already, they now think I'm an incompetent idiot. Oh well, it's not like it isn't true, I've never been one for faking it :P
On the other hand, writing those e-mails is very good practice I think. I've already picked up a great deal of vocab and honorific language. Japanese has at least three politeness forms with each having a distinct grammar and vocabulary, so it can get a bit confusing to say the least. It'll be good to learn how to use those correctly one day.

I really hope my Japanese will improve quickly once I'm there. At uni I always was one of the weaker students in Japanese language classes. That's because I always was too poor to actually travel to Japan a lot and too shy to just chat up Japanese people whenever I get the chance. (And also of course I was too lazy to make much of an effort, because partying always seemed more fun.) So my conversation ability = close to zero. Interestingly though, I always passed the language classes just fine. Even the pretty advanced ones. And even more interestingly, my marks weren't that bad, pretty much always in the upper third actually. At the same time it was pretty fucking evident that everyone else was a lot more advanced than me, but they got the same grades. I have a theory actually that the teaching staff just wanted to be rid of me and therefore let me pass everything no problem. "She's a hopeless case, just move her on. No-one will notice anyway, since chances of a Japanese studies graduates actually landing a job are less than zero, hohoho!" .... or something like that.
I may be exaggerating. I usually am... Actually I've been told a lot that I'm "good at languages", but my studying Japanese has cast some serious doubt on this theory. I think I am good at languages in an immersion environment. Meaning, when I'm surrounded by the language via texts, films, conversations, etc, I soak it up like a sponge and make progress extremely quickly. I immediately start thinking in the foreign language, use new stuff I've picked up etc. However, I suck at memorizing things and I HATE learning vocabulary outside a context. So obviously I had a hard time learning Japanese, cause it's all about memorizing characters and vocab before you can even start immersing yourself. So yeah, I'm curious about how it'll go. The first coupla months will be painful, but if my theory is right, I should pick things up in a while... I'm still scared to death I can tell you, oh dear...

At least I get the cultural references. For example, my future colleague asked me if I already had an inkan. Now, if you don't know what an inkan is and what it's for, this requires quite a lot of context. An inkan is an officially approved small stamp with your name engraved on it that that you use instead of a signature in your day-to-day affairs. Anyone who doesn't have one can't function in Japanese society apparently. I'd completely forgotten about that, but they're having one made for me so it's cool. I hope it'll be pink and have kittens on it, but I doubt it... They also asked me to tell them how to spell my name in Japanese, so I gave it a go, although all you basically have to do is fit your name into a two-syllable structure. So if your called John Smith, this makes you Joon Sumisu in Japanese. What I'd also completely forgotten about is that in Japan your last name comes before your first, so it would be something like Sumisu Joon. As I've already mentioned, I forgot to do that, so I hope people now won't think that my last name is Eva...

Also, they asked if I wanted an >internet connection< in my >apartment<; two words that immensely put me at ease. I've never had my own internet connection, let alone my own apartment, so these are definitely two things I can look forward to!

Oh yeah, and my Japanese language partner here, who is amazing, basically, is teaching me how to cook Japanese so I can make good use of the Japanese stuff I find in Japanese supermarkets! It all seems like extremely yummy, healthy and easy to make stuff, so this is great. I tried to make some Austrian dishes in return and failed miserably.

And that's it for an update.