Today, I remembered this one time, maybe two years ago, where I got off the train and there was this lone Japanese girl standing in the station. She was looking down at the fold up map in her hands and biting down on her lower lip. I knew she was Japanese because of the characters on the book she was holding the map against–a mix of kanji, katakana and hiragana. I wanted to help her so much, when all I could have done was asked “Daijoubu?” and then the conversation would have ended there. Embarrassed with myself I just walked past her and up the stairs, I didn’t even try to help her in English.
To this day I still feel pretty crappy about it. And when I think that I still don’t know enough Japanese to have helped her it bothers me even more. What am I doing wrong? How can I get better at conversational Japanese? What studying techniques should I try?
Someone Help!
