il fait froid

Sometimes I get frustrated with the Japenglish- Japanese mis-use of English. They try and use English words, but with Japanese pronunciation, it all goes a bit hay wire. [What do you think this word - written by a student of mine - means? Frawar * answer at the bottom.] Eg reading English menus at certain restaurants can be frustrating because of all the mistakes. However, if it weren't for katakana and the adopted use of foreign words (usually English) into Japanese, then I wouldn't have a clue here. Usually the main or only comprehensive ability in a conversation is when I hear a katakana word! Oh dear, that just hints at how awful my language ability is.

I'm actually writing this whilst procrastinating from some much needed but brick wall- heading Japanese study. I've sometimes tried to compare Japanese use of english with English's use of another language- and the only vague thing I can compare it to is French. We use the odd word and phrase, don't we? En route, qu'est-ce que c'est, restaurant, rendezvous to name a few. And in posh restaurants, sometimes the menu will be all in French or have some French phrases. We often don't know what they mean, but they look cool so they are used. Much the same way as English is here... People often have no idea about what certain loan words actually mean, or wear weird T-shirts with the strangest slogans on them, and use them/ wear them because they are cool.

Anyway, back to the point. As of this morning, it's got really cold here. When I was going a class at school this morning, I looked out of the window & almost said to the teacher next to me, 'I'd never noticed there were mountains out there before' (think they were the mountains in Izumi way). And then I realised they were more noticeable because there was, what looked like snow on them. A later conversation with another teacher confirmed this... snow means cold.. means winter's coming... Means snowboarding and ski-ing soon. And kerosene heaters.

I'd stocked up on 18L of kerosene the other week, but only loaded my electric kerosene heater (sounds like a contradiction, but it's not really) today. I got an awful headache from it, even having had the window open. So I went outside and haven't turned it on again. If headaches persist, I'll switch to the fully electric version this year I guess.

Oh and there was something else...
Well my school won the prefectural inter school football tournament on Saturday last week. I'll post photos when i've uploaded them- my camera turned up in my school bag...

And, oh yes at the moment I'm keeping warm with a fleecy blanket over my legs. The kotatsu (heated table) duvet is being dry cleaned at the moment. But hopefully it'll be ready soon so I can keep warm under the nice warm table. Last year I didn't understand the other complaining JETs talking about the cool weather. I'd learned to wear lots of layers in my freezing bedroom in 2nd year at uni. But I'm starting to join the side of the other JETs by thinking it is getting cold. And this is before all the leaves have fallen, landscape turns bleak and everything is covered in snow....
Right, back to study nihongo. [Sometimes i never know how i got through motivating myself to work at school and esp uni. I guess deadlines and everyone else doing it had something to do with it. But I am losing any ability to choose to and do some study. oh dear!]
[The answer, of course - try reading it out loud- is flower.]