Our Japanese Tutor
Colby asking Mrs. Kodera a question
For the past month Colby and I have been meeting with a lovely lady named Mrs. Kodera who has agreed to tutor us in Japanese for a very reasonable fee. We usually meet with her at her home twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, for a couple hours at a time. We take our shoes off in her entryway while she greets us with an “ah, konnichwa!” and a smile and bow. As we pile our textbooks on her table, she usually brings out coffee and some snacks for us to munch on. Then we get down to business and for the next 2 hours or so we study the ins and outs of the Japanese language. Thankfully Mrs. Kodera knows some English and so between that and our dictionaries, we are usually able to understand each other fairly well. When we understand a new concept she is explaining or say something correctly she usually replies with, “ah, so so so so so”, which in Japanese is like saying “right,” or “yeah yeah yeah”. It’s funny how each culture has unique little sayings of their own. Colby and I enjoy meeting with Mrs. Kodera because she welcomes the questions we have about Japanese, and there are always good opportunities to practice speaking the little that we know. We often catch ourselves trying to say something in Japanese the same way we would say it in English and Mrs. Kodera has to tell us that it is “too much of a direct translation. The Japanese people would not say it like that.” I think that is one of the most interesting things we have learned about the language so far – we can’t expect to just swap it out word for word with English in order to say what we want. We must instead learn how the Japanese people would say things, which often is very different than how English speakers would say them. In all reality, it is a process of adopting the Japanese mindsets, views, and culture, which, as Colby and I have been told, must be done in order to really communicate effectively. Mrs. Kodera, like our Japanese tutor in America, teaches Japanese at the local college and so because she has had some teaching experience already, it is nice to learn from someone who understands the nitty-gritty of the language. Our last couple of sessions have been encouraging because we are finding that we can understand a bit more of her Japanese each time.
Mrs. Kodera is not a believer as of yet. Would you please pray that God would do a work in her heart to bring her unto Himself? Pray also that we would be good testimonies to her.