I laughed out loud at the Sydney Morning Herald’s Heckler this morning on learning Japanese.

My well rehearsed phrases were the English equivalent of conversational oddities such as “Good day sir, I dare-say I need to be escorted to the nearest gentlemen’s restroom.”

Sigh, the complexities of language. I’ve been attempting to learn Japanese for the last 6-8 months or so, not getting terribly far (but not putting in a lot of effort either). I know enough to recognise the difference between Nozomi and Hikari on train timetables, pick out a soba or ramen restaurant from the crowd, and that’s about it.

I’m working with the textbook “Japanese for Everyone” which I like so far, yet I can relate to the overly formal sentence structures quoted above. All the same, I am enjoying learning and have just reached the chapter on reading train timetables, which would have been very useful back in October.