Sometimes weekends are more hectic than weekdays, especially
when you have to cleanup your cupboard that you yourself have messed up. You
can’t even blame others. Last weekend when I was cleaning my cupboard, found a
bunch of CDs and books. My Japanese books. First let me tell you proudly that,
I do know Japanese language.
It was sometime, after my placement to the IT Company, when
our company gave us this opportunity to learn Japanese language. Company
appointed a teacher for us, and our classes started in our college itself (as we
haven’t joined the company yet). On very first day, when we entered the class, saw
a south Indian (?) teacher welcoming us. Later on we came to know that she,
Miss Momita, was from Orissa. Our question was, how can she teach us Japanese?
We were expecting someone from Japan.
(And that was the first learning… don’t expect anything from your company.) First
day she taught us the Japanese numbers in a form of a (funny) poem. All of us,
who just knew the spelling for word ‘Japanese’, were actually learning the
words in Japanese. First day ended with learning and practicing few
letters in Japanese script. After 2 hours session, we were coming out like
winners of the game while Miss Momita, giving us “Picture abhi baki hai mere
dost” wala look.
In few days, we got our books and our hard time started.
Japanese is really tough language. 1st of all the script is
different and secondly words are difficult to pronounce. As our teacher was
from Orissa, she used to pronounce the word differently (in oriya accent) while
we maharashtrians used to give marathi accent to the word. We were giving
Indian touch to the Japanese language :). Miss Momita was very strict,
and used to scold us a lot. Thankfully one of our friend already had an experience
with Japanese, and according to us she was the master. She was the only one who
used to complete the homework on time. And we being honest students and future
engineers used to copy paste whole the thing from someone else’s book. So
homework was either done by all or none. Though we were in the college, bunking
the Japanese class was not at all allowed, Japanese was always better than Miss
Momita’s punishment :P. With a start of
our final year PL, company stopped the classes.
Exam ended and our Japanese classes started again, now in
the office :D obviously college was not allowing the company to conduct their
classes in the college class rooms. I still remember the day, when we entered
the company premises on SB road. We didn’t event know where to park our two wheelers.
We parked our vehicles intelligently and entered the reception desk. The person
at the desk already knew about us and gave us a sheet to sign and enter as
visitor. One of the training rooms was assigned for our Japanese classes. Wow…
such a big room it was. Room had centralized AC, every desk with a desktop, pen
and notepad, bright lights and speakers in the room. All these things were
really fascinating at that time, especially when we were entering to our first
company...for the first time...
Japanese classes were going on. We were learning new words
and grammar everyday. We used to relate every newly learned Japanese word with
some other word irrespective of the language. It was difficult to store such a
huge set of new words with new pronunciation, so we tried to find out easier
ways to remember them. Every week we used to have objective written exam and
orals. We were consistently performing (horribly) in the exams. Days were
passing with our teacher scolding us for our mistakes and admiring us for our
hard work. Gradually we also came to know that our Miss Momita was really good
at her heart was scolding us just to motivate us.
Finally when we were quite acquainted with this new
language, Miss Momita told us the real scenario. We were supposed to appear for
the JLPT exams which have 4 levels and our company wanted us to clear directly 2nd
level exam (for JLPT pattern it's level 3). We were shocked but had no other
option. Our teacher told us the exam pattern, which includes 1 objective paper
on Japanese grammar, 1 objective paper on Japanese vocabulary, and 1 objective
paper on Japanese listening. We were ok with grammar and vocabs sections
but now what’s this Japanese listening. In listening section, you have to
listen to a Japanese conversion and have to answer the question at end of the
conversion. Miss Momita gave us few CDs, having Japanese conversions. Hehehehehehe… :) :) :)
Our reaction after listing to those CDs. I swear couldn’t understand a single
word. Whenever teacher used to take these conversion sessions we used to laugh, sometimes at pronunciations, sometimes at there speed, sometimes on our own condition.
With all this HAPPENING we finished our Japanese class. Now
we were ready with all our 
weapons to win the Japanese battle. But the truth
was we… the worriers were unaware of these weapons. Just 10 days after our
classes finished our engineering results came out and company wanted us to
join… now as an employee… all the JLPT people joining location – Kolkata.
Thanks to Japanese once again… This Japanese took us to from the Arabian Sea to
the Bay of Bengal…
weapons to win the Japanese battle. But the truth
was we… the worriers were unaware of these weapons. Just 10 days after our
classes finished our engineering results came out and company wanted us to
join… now as an employee… all the JLPT people joining location – Kolkata.
Thanks to Japanese once again… This Japanese took us to from the Arabian Sea to
the Bay of Bengal… 
