Blog Entry #6 ９月２５日　木曜日
This week in we learned how to use すぎる at the end of a verb stem to mean "to do in excess" or to use the negative form to mean "to not do to excess." An example is 食べすぎたから、おなかがいたい。"Because I ate excessively, my stomach hurts." The part that is hard for me to remember is that the negative form has さthrown in it for some reason. 食べなさすぎますね。"You don't eat too much, huh?" The さ thrown in is hard to remember and is a little weird, but the only thing to it is to practice. A fun activity we did in class was a bingo game, where we asked our classmates if they did something excessively or not. We also had a vocabulary quiz on Thursday and I think I did really well on that, so that was fun. We also learned a new grammar on Thursday - ので This is pretty much used the same was as から except it is more used in written Japanese and has a few exceptions. It cannot be used if the independent clause ends with a helping verb with strong feelings attached to it like ～たい、せんか、～しましょう。Other than that the use is the same and it sounds pretty professional ;). 新しい文法をならったので、頭がよくなりました。^_^

Blog Entry #5
This week we learned a couple new grammars. We learned how to use ～んです。 which is used to give an explanation for something without saying "because." It is kind of tricky to use because it does not really translate to English. So an example conversation would be: Teacher:おそく来ました。You:バスが来なかったんです。Rather than say "I'm late because the bus didn't come" if you just say 「バスが来なかったんです。」it includes the meaning "that's why I was late." We also learned how to use the new grammar ほうがいいです。Which is pretty fun because you can use it to give suggestions. It means "it is better to do [something]. An example is if your friend says there's a test tomorrow, you could say 勉強したほうがいいです。Telling them they'd better study. The tricky part is you have to use short form past affirmative tense for affirmative and just present negative short form for negative. It feels a little weird. On Thursday tomita-sensei came in and evaluated the class.
We wrote sentences on the board and I'm glad my sentence turned out alright :). One of the things I'll have to work on this weekend to remember is the conjugation for  ほうがいいです。It is kind of confusing that it uses past tense to say it in the present.

９月１１日　木曜日　Blog Entry #4
This week we learned a couple new things in Japanese class like ～たことがある　and how to use や in between nouns to mean "things like" Examples is うどんやらあめんが好きです。(I like things like udon and ramen (and other things.) ～たことがある has the meaning of "Have done something" This is really easy to construct as it is just the past affirmative short form of the verb you want to use. An example sentence is. 日本に行ったことがありません。So we did interviews of our classmates asking them a question like that and recording the results. I was sad to learn that only a few people had been to Colorado before. Then we used the results to those interviews, among other things, to make a newpaper on thursday. That was pretty fun and incorporated all of what we've learned so far into one concise assignment.I'm glad I was able to make a decent comic in the paper, even though my artistic ability is awful. I was able to do it and I'm pleased with the result.

Also, the difference between ～たい　and ～たがっています　is simply that ～たい is for first person or asking a question to someone directly about what the want to do and ～たがっています is for 3rd person - saying what someone else wants to do. ex. 日本に行きたい (I want to go to Japan.)
and for someone else wanting to go you use the other form. ボブさんは日本にいきたがっています。 Bob wants to go to Japan. So it's pretty easy, but sometimes hard to forget, and たがっています is such a pain to say as well.

９月４日２０１４年 Reflection
This week in Japanese class we practised a lot with ～たい forms, conjugating it like an い adjective at the end of a verb stem. We learned how to use ～たり、at the end of past tense verb short form （example：食べたり）to link two sepearate actions together with the meaning of "things like___ etc. The second たり we have to put する at the end. Learning this new form was really neat and it is not that hard, it only gets complicated when combining with different grammar like たい or つもりです. I'm glad that I actually remember grammar from last semester like つもりです. I also remembered all of the new Kanji we have been learning. As long as I keep up my studying and memorizing I know I can continue to do this. :)Here's to another great week of class!

As for the place I want to go to first when I visit Japan...it's got to be Kyoto! There are tons of old shrines preserved there and the culture in that city seems neat. Also, Nintendo's headquarters are there.
日本に京都に行きたい。お寺を見たり、にんてんどの本部に行ったりしたいです。