You know that feeling when someone spots you from far off and waves to you, but you don’t know who it is so you’re like errrrr… and then the person gets closer and it turns out to be someone you know really well and really like, but haven’t seen in ages so you’re like “OMG, it’s YOU!! :DDDD”? I saw it happen just yesterday on my way home, actually. This lady, standing at the bus stop, dressed up to the nines. A car pulled up just a bit away and the gentleman in the car beckoned to her to come closer. You could tell by the look on her face, she’s like “WTF do YOU want, fool?” as she stalked over to where he was parked (note to sensible ladies out there: don’t approach parked cars at night). Then her face did a total 360 when she saw who it was. It was the most amazing transformation ever, like, WHOA, night into day. She was all like “Heeeeeeeey! It’s been aaaages! Oh I’ve missed you! Tee hee hee hee” and stuff like that. And then my bus pulled away so I couldn’t see the rest of the reunion, but you get the picture, right?
It’s been like that with me and Japanese lately. I won’t kid you: Japanese Wikipedia used to intimidate the hell out of me. I’d open up a page and bam, all these curly lines and huge blocks of densely-packed text. Not a picture or a graph in place to lighten the mood a bit. >__< Sometimes I’d just close the page right away, like “I didn’t really want to know this stuff that badly anyway,” and lately I still get that reaction, but as soon as I look a little closer, I see tons and tons of old friends, all lining up to say hello. 😀 It’s amazing how much more I understand now, ever since I started making a focused effort to read all the pages in Japanese. Even those scary-looking strings of 5, 6, 7, 8 kanji in a row like 最多候補数 and 主演女優賞受賞 that look like they just escaped from a Chinese newspaper, once you look at them closely you see they’re made up of simple 2 and 3 kanji compounds that are a cinch to read. Y’aaaay~!
I’ve still got a long way to go, of course. I come across at least 10 words and compounds I don’t understand in even the shorter wiki articles, and I still get a little turned off by some of the longer pages, but I’m getting there. I’m definitely getting there. And that’s all for today.
