The Naganuma School

September 26-30, 2005

日本語を勉強します。 I’m studying Japanese, once more. This time I’m doing it intensively, 12 weeks, five days a week, four hours per day, at the Naganuma School in Shibuya, Tokyo. Obviously 12 weeks won’t be enough to become fluent in this difficult language, but I hope I’ll get a bit further this time than in previous attempts. On day one, we had a placement test, which showed how much I’d forgotten, so I’ll be in one of the lower classes. Like several other students in my class, I was wondering whether that would allow me to learn enough new material to be worthwhile, but after some discussions it seems the teachers are willing to move fast enough to make that happen. がんばりましょう。

The composition of my class is interesting: Five Koreans, three Chinese from Taiwan, one Chinese from Hong Kong, one Thai, one British whose mother is Japanese, one German living in California. Instruction is about 99.5% in Japanese, with an occasional English word thrown in to break logjams.