Chapter 15 Part Two: From Chinese to English on the streets of Tokyo

In the Streets of Tokyo on the streets of tokyo Walk the streets of Tokyo. This topic seems to have nothing to do with learning English - the Japanese speak Japanese.But I have something to do with it, because after learning English, I once learned Japanese.It was precisely because I had studied Japanese that I was later invited to Japan to hold a Japanese lecture concert.Walking on the streets of Tokyo, I realized that some vivid languages ​​cannot be learned in books.It is the best way to cultivate the ability of listening and speaking in a real foreign language environment.But not everyone has the opportunity to go abroad, and not everyone has an ideal language environment.The important thing is to learn to create conditions, always maintain the enthusiasm for learning, give up the practice of quick success, and patiently wait for the day when foreign languages ​​will play a role.

When I started studying Japanese many years ago, I never expected to go to Japan.Until one day, I boarded a Boeing 747 flying to Tokyo, only to find that with the passage of time, my ideal of applying another language has become a reality through unremitting efforts. When I went to Japan for the first time, I was invited to hold a Japanese lecture concert in five cities. At the first lecture concert held in Tokyo, the first Japanese song I sang to everyone was called "このみち" (this is the road) , the lyrics read: この道はいつか来た道 ああそうだよ あかしやの花が咲いてる この道はいつか来た道 ああそうだよ お母さまと车车で行ったよ …………

(That's the way, come here one day, Ah, on this road, The trees are full of pagoda flowers. this is the way, passed by here one day, Ah, on this road, I'm in the carriage with my mother …………) Before I knew it, my tears flowed down, and my voice was a little choked up. At that moment, I suddenly felt that I was walking on the snowy plain. Yes, it really snowed a lot that time. The snowflakes all over the sky are like fluttering butterflies.I sat in a wooden wheelchair to find a Japanese teacher. When I heard that there was a Japanese teacher in that school, I decided to go to him. I hoped to ask him about my problems in my studies, and also asked him to listen to my Japanese pronunciation.After all, I taught myself Japanese.The place where the teacher lives is several miles away from my home.I was wearing a thick cotton coat and a red scarf that I knitted myself.The winter wind in the north is biting, taking a breath in the ice and snow is like having two knives stuck in the nostrils.The hot air coming out of his mouth is also white.It was my friend Gailian who pushed me to find the teacher. Along the way, she kept bending down and pushing the snow piled up in front of the wheelchair with both hands so that we could continue to move forward.

Finally we saw the gate of that school.The teacher is an old man with white hair. When he heard that I was looking for him, he rushed out to greet him. He said, come in and warm up quickly.I wanted to say hello to the teacher, but my mouth didn't open, and my face was frozen.In the teacher's room, there is a brick stove with a red fire burning inside, and the room is very hot.When I entered the room, a burst of heating came to my face, and my face immediately felt like there were many small bugs crawling on it, which was hot and itchy.The teacher brought me a cup of hot water. I drank a few sips of hot water, and my body became warmer before I spoke.I read several Japanese texts to him in one breath, such as "Comrade Zhang Side", "Morning Pond", "Squid"... The teacher was very moved after listening to it, and he said, "Persevere, you must persevere."He also said, you study completely by yourself, and you can read the text so well, I really didn't expect it.

In fact, at that time, I didn't know very well what use learning Japanese would be to me. You must know that I was in a small county town at that time, where the transportation with the outside world was very inconvenient, and it could even be said that it was a very small town. A small closed county.I really don't know what to do with learning a foreign language there.However, I think learning a foreign language is my dream and my wish.I believe that a foreign language is like a window to the outside world, and through it, I must be able to see the most beautiful scenery. That visit to Japan, I went to five cities, every time I was accompanied by the handsome Mr. Fukaz, and he drove to the airport.I didn't know until a few days later that he turned out to be the chairman of a company.From the first time I sat in Mr. Fukatz's car, I started my Japanese practice. Without affecting his driving, I kept asking him some questions:

Mr. Fkatz, do you think Tokyo is a very noisy city? He said, yeah, some parts of Tokyo were pretty quiet when I was a kid. Yeah?What do you think of the weather in Tokyo? Well, now that the cities are getting bigger and the air is polluted, the weather is not as clear as it used to be, he said. I asked again, do you know that apples are grown in Yantai, my hometown, and I heard that apples are also grown in Aomori and Nagano in northern Japan. He said, yes, yes, the apples there are very famous. I asked, oh, the apple tree blooms in May, right? Mr. Fkatz laughed and said, ah, I'm sorry, I didn't really pay attention to what month the apple tree bloomed.

I laughed too. I just kept asking questions all the way, and later, maybe Mr. Fkatz was too tired from my questions, so he said, Heidi Sang, you really love to learn, why do you have so many questions and know so many things what. My heart was filled with guilt, and I quickly said a lot of Sorry. I told Mr. Fukaz that I did this to exercise my ability to speak Japanese. In China, I hardly ever spoke Japanese like this. I just read books by myself or read texts aloud.Mr. Fukaz was very moved when he heard it, and he hissed and sighed in his mouth. Japanese men like to make such exaggerated sounds when they are moved.Then I told him a secret: the questions I asked him on the way were all from the book, such as cold in winter and cold in summer, apples blooming and ducks in the water, the wind and sand in Beijing and the earthquake in Japan, and whether he likes the TV series "Oshin" And the actress Yuko Tanaka who played Ashin...I put a Japanese book brought from China on the back of his driver's seat, he looked ahead while driving, and I just looked at the book. Some content in the text changed the person and vocabulary, and it became a new problem.

So this is ah!Fkatz was moved again.In the next few days, during the trip, he kept telling me everything about Japan, history and culture, customs, life and work, everything.He also gave me some books.In those days, I felt that my Japanese had improved a lot, and I also felt how important the language environment is to learning a foreign language. A year later, I went to Japan to attend a concert again. In Tokyo, my sister and I stayed in a big hotel not far from Shinjuku.This time, the concert organizing committee arranged for me a day of free activities. They said, Heidi Sang, you can go wherever you want tomorrow.

I decided to speak everyday language among Japanese people.My sister said it was a good idea.But I said, Tokyo is such a big city, we are completely unfamiliar with it, where are we going, what should we do if we get lost?My sister said that if she wants to take me to a faraway place, she has to cross the streets and alleys, and then ask for the way back. This is the best practice.At that time, we were like two children who were going to explore the primeval forest, and there was a kind of happiness before the adventure. After breakfast the next day, we left the gate of the hotel without a map.It was summer, and my sister was pushing my wheelchair.After walking for a while, her hair was wet with sweat, but she refused to stop, just kept walking, started to walk along a main road, then came to a small street full of colorful flags, and then crossed a A very narrow alley paved with stone slabs... We don't know what kind of road it is, and we don't know where we will go-my sister said that going to an unknown place is our destination.

At noon, we went to a large store with full air-conditioning to rest. We bought boxed lunches and a pile of ice cream, and discussed how to get back to the hotel while eating. Friends call and ask for their help. In the afternoon, we started walking back.There are also tall buildings everywhere, and we really can't find our way back.The pedestrians on the road all looked in a hurry.Hi look at mine.As I said to my sister, I greeted an old man with gray hair on the temples, sir, I'm sorry!The old man stopped quickly and looked at me suspiciously.I said, sir, we're lost, can you help me?The old man enthusiastically asked where we were going, and then gave us detailed instructions, and even took out a notebook and drew a map for us.Only after looking at the map did we know that we have passed through Shinjuku District, Chiyo District, Shibuya District... The old man said that this place is more than 20 miles away from our hotel!We thanked the old man for continuing to walk back, and continued to ask for directions while walking. We asked men in suits and leather shoes, and also asked white-collar beauties with long hair. All of them gave us enthusiastic help.And we are also familiar with the method of asking directions in Japanese.

At dinner time, we finally returned to the hotel.My sister and I were very happy that day. We found our way back in a bustling metropolis in a foreign country.We treated ourselves to a sumptuous dinner, we had sashimi boats, fried prawns, grilled eel and beef noodles.My sister and I raised our glasses of red wine for a happy day... At that time, my sister and I lived in Japan for two months.In Tokyo, we went to the bustling business district, Ginza stores, Akihabara Electric Town, we visited bookstores, we went to the park to look for koalas, we also visited some small shops and night markets, and participated in charity events auctions.We went to many places, Morioka, Chiba, Toyama, Kanazawa, Nagasaki, visited the beautiful scenery there, and visited the atomic bomb exhibition hall in Nagasaki. No matter where I am, I try to speak Japanese as much as possible.In order to speak more Japanese, my sister and I bought a lot of things, some of which were almost useless.For example, in Kanazawa, I bought a large stack of Japanese lacquered wooden bowls. In fact, I bought those lacquered wooden bowls to practice speaking Japanese. I even learned to bargain with the lady who sold the lacquered wooden bowls: Excuse me, how much is this bowl? It costs 250 yuan each. Look at how beautiful this bowl is. The cherry blossoms on it are all hand-painted. Look here, they are painted with gold.The proprietress couldn't hold back her mouth once she opened it. She spoke quickly, enthusiastically, and eloquently, which was overwhelming. 250 yuan ah, this is too expensive.I said it out loud on purpose. The proprietress said while bowing, ah, I'm sorry, you know how difficult it is to make a wooden bowl. It takes an hour to make a wooden bowl, plus it needs to be polished and painted. However, we can meet today. We are all happy, so I don't care, so you can say another price. Thirty yuan each.I say. I heard my sister secretly laughing on the sidelines.Because she knows that I hardly ever go shopping on the street in China, and I don't know how to bargain. Ah, no no no.When the proprietress heard 30 yuan each, it was like being stung by a scorpion, and she let out a strange cry. I was afraid of scaring the proprietress, so I didn't dare to bargain with her again, so I gave her 1,500 yen and bought 10 lacquered wooden bowls. During a festival, in the beautiful small city of Kanazawa, my sister and I walked along a dim sum street, walking from the east end to the west end, and walking back from the west end. We kept asking the names of the dim sum in Japanese , place of origin, and price.In the end, my sister and I bought a lot of "yogashi" (Japanese sweets) because we couldn't resist the warm introductions from the dim sum women.We gave more than half of it to our friends, and the remaining few boxes were not eaten until we returned to China.But we still remembered those dim sum names that sound like classical poems, such as: Luoyan, Eight Bridges, Soka, Songfeng, Beidan, Zhuyue... We also went to tea shops and coffee shops to appreciate Japanese folk culture and the extent to which the Japanese accept Western culture.Billboards are everywhere on the streets there.Billboards that only write Chinese characters can be understood by people who have not studied Japanese, for example, Chinese dumpling restaurants, ramen restaurants, Chinese medicine pharmacies, western clothing stores, and so on.But for more advertisements, even Chinese who have learned Japanese have to work hard to guess and think, and even look through Japanese loanword dictionaries. Contemporary Japan is a country that hopes to leave Europe and enter Asia, but in fact they have great enthusiasm for the pursuit of Western culture, especially contemporary young people. They always follow various fashions in Europe and America, except for clothing and hairstyles. , cosmetics, as well as language, music, movies and so on.There are English corners and English schools in many places in Japan.What I find most interesting is that the Japanese use Katakana (equivalent to the uppercase letters of the language) to turn English into the pronunciation of their own language. For example, they turn the English ice cream into: アィス?クリ-ム, read it in Chinese Just like, Ais? Gulimu, change milk into: ミルク, read it in Chinese like, Miluku.There is also a more complicated satelliteサテライト, which is read in Chinese like, Saitella set.In fact, in this way, people in English-speaking countries can no longer understand what the Japanese are saying, and for Chinese who have learned English, it is even more troublesome, because we have to make the English pronunciation we have learned into weird and weird. Japanese pronunciation, so that Japanese can understand.However, there are too many loanwords in Japanese, so I have bought several Japanese loanword dictionaries, and those dictionaries are very thick and have various names, such as "Japanese Dictionary of Foreign Languages ​​for Science and Technology", "Dictionary of Foreign Languages ​​for Japanese Literature and Art", "Japanese Dictionary of Medical Loanwords, etc. Japan is a country that is good at learning and drawing lessons from the culture of other nations. Of course, they are better at transforming the culture of other nations and turning it into their own wealth.Therefore, it is also beneficial to learn English and then learn Japanese.When you spell those Japanese foreign words katakana, you may be able to guess its English meaning. Language is the eternal culture of human beings. Learning English makes people happy, and learning Japanese is the same.