Watashi wa ureshii desu !!!

Why did I choose Japanese? The Daniel is Korean-american. I only know three words in korean, and those are the equivalents of 'yes', 'hello', and 'do you want to die?'. When I know enough jap to speak to an actual human, I suppose I could go look up Mr. Miyagi. Konnichi-wa, Miyagi-san! Byoin wa doko desu ka? I just asked him where the hospital is. Should come in handy when I break my neck after he teaches me karate.

The title above means I'm happy. And why is that? Item one - I may have finally found a product to reduce the scary blotches on my face (kao); a soap (sekken) of apoplexy-inducing cost that is supposed to be composed of various lipids which I presumably lack, hence my tendency to blow up like a mutant strawberry whenever I am exposed to freezing wind (as in the case of the Melbourne sojourn) or saltwater (Boracay 2007: pox monster rises out of the sea and terrorizes villagers of Station 2). Item 2 - I opened my email today and got a lovely new translation job to do. It keeps me busy, exercises my aging brain, and puts a little extra in the kitty. Plus I can do the work in my pajamas. Aaaah daisuki desuyo.

Tokuni Daniel Henney ga daisuki desu.

I don't want the year to continue marching closer to its end without my learning anything new. So I've begun learning a new language. I could have chosen French or Spanish, since I had taken both languages as electives back when I was in college. But I'm a lazy bum when it comes to verb conjugation. Yo me siento, tu te sientas, el se sienta, nosotros nos sentamos, vosotros os sentais, Ustedes se sientan. You don't have to do these verbal gymnastics with Japanese; desu is desu whether it's me doing it, you, he, or they. Besides, I wanted to go Asian for a change. Everyone I know can claim some familiarity with Spanish and French, and some will even engage in spouting off whatever they managed to retain from their college classes. But nobody knows much Nihongo beyond arigato and sayonara. I suppose I'm attracted to the idea of knowing something the average joe probably doesn't.

A friend of mine who used to work for a Japanese company heard about my little language project, and asked if I would like her to ask around about proper classes. Whoa! Am having a cart-before-horse panicky feeling of being expected to see this through until I speak better Nihongo than the Emperor Akihito. Just let me get through all four audio cd's in my basic course, and then we'll see whether I have the proficiency for further study. Hold all the banzais and the kanpais; I'm only doing this for fun for now. As yet, I only have a vocabulary comparable with a Japanese three year-old, and I have only enough confidence to speak Nihongo to my car (it's Japanese, after all), but I would rather not rush things or it will never stick. Slowly but surely, that's the way to go. Dekimasu.