SKYPE is such a wonderful thing.

Been spending the last few days talking 13 hours into the future. (so weird how that is). Usually it's with Yuko from Shimane Prefecture. She teaches English to high schoolers and have a front desk job. She's the go to women when they need English spoken. She definitely has that teacher tone when she's speaks in Japanese to me... and she's speaks FAST. I'm always going "ゆっくり話してください。(speak slower please). But her English is pretty fantastic, so we try to do both.

Speaking of Japanese
http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/

best sight for free Japanese study material, movies and music. I got the entire "Erin Ga Chosen" which has been such a massive help for me. It's about a girl from the UK (in reality, she's half Japanese) and her challenges in studying in Japanese. Each lesson goes over a verb form, give examples and real life situations. It even gives you information on Japanese culture. It's all in Japanese, this show, but that's what I need to learn. The only subtitles are on the skits, but enough visual is presented for you to understand.

A lot of folks have told me that is how they learned. They removed as much English as possible and the dreaded romaji (roman language Japanese). They tried to use as much Japanese in their explanations as possible. They use Japanese-Japanese dictionary for the most part. In other words, they are associating as much Japanese with objects rather than English.

On Mixi, a friend went over every entry that I wrote using Japanese and give me a paragraph explanation on my mistakes... completely in Japanese. Talk about a challenge. Eek!

But I enjoy the challenge.

Andrew picks up Japanese all the time. He know what NOT to say to Japanese girls or what they say when they want a person to stop being a spaz. He can sometimes understand commands, like "Look" or Listen" or Stop". In a sense, he understand the most basic Japanese, like a child would. He knows how to order coffee or wine. But he getting better. He's coming with me to Japan and he doesn't want to be the american who can't speak any Japanese.

and yes, we wil be checking out the love hotels.. .but that Hello Kitty bondage room sounds a bit weird.
http://www.kittyhell.com/2007/01/18/hello-kitty-love-hotel-bondage/