Morning! I'm kind of tired of digging my memories for now lol So let me talk about this topic today. As you know, I speak both English and Japanese. My parents only speak Japanese and I went to a public school back in my hometown (100km North from Tokyo) until 18. In total, I lived here like 21 years. People often ask me "Are you Japanese? You lived in the U.S. right? Are you mix?" but I'm not.
I can think of the reason why I was good at learning language. I used to learn piano for more than ten years but I was not good at reading scores lol. I mean, I could but it was easier for me to listen to my piano teacher playing and imitate it! It works this way; listen, understand and play. So for me learning English was like listen and speak! Although I had an intense writing class at my vocational school in Tokyo, I was always good at speaking English. When I was fifth grade, my family welcomed one exchange student from Pennsylvania state for one week and we did it again on the following year. At that time, my mum was mainly communicating with them but I tried my best.
When I entered junior high school, I went to a town called "Lancaster city" in Pen state for a week and stayed with one American family. This was life time changing for me. It was when I visited local junior high school. I stood in front of students and a teacher asked pupils "Do you have any questions to them?". Then, everyone raised their hands!!! Why this is surprising for me? It's because no one really raise their hands in Japan until teachers point out to ask for answers/opinions. I was also shocked that everyone was wearing what they wanted and even girls were wearing makeups! In Japan, you wear uniform and schools are so strict about the length of skirt. For me, America looked like literally freedom! This led me to study in England later my life....
See you tomorrow!
Gym In Japan: https://gyminjapan.net
Haruka
Comments