さいごに

I feel kind of sad as I type this. I've ignored this little blog for so long now, completely unlike the way it was at the beginning of last semester, and since I've recently opened my own website under a friend's purchased domain, this is probably the last post I'll ever write here.

This coincides with my Japanese class' year-end project, in which we were assigned to compile a CD featuring audio clips, images, and movies describing a major building on the UVA campus. I had the privilege of working together with Keem-san and Carandang-san (a fine group if I do say so myself), and we chose John Paul Jones Arena as the subject of our project.

John Paul Jones Arena, or JPJ for short, is one of the more famous buildings in the UVA-Charlottesville area, despite being only about 2 years old. It's a top-scale facility for both concerts, having hosted such popular acts as Maroon Five, Justin Timberlake, The Police; and basketball games, with Sean Singletary and his teammates gathering their fair share of glory under its roof.

I feel like it should take a while to explain how we managed to complete our project, but it's actually a very short story. All three of us had been to JPJ enough to know most of its brief history, so we were able to compile a draft in no time. Keem-san and Carandang-san were especially impressive with their work in collecting photographs of the Arena, and while all three of us edited our script at some point and time, I think they took it upon themselves to make the most important corrections. Things went so quickly and so well that, at the time of this writing, we've already recorded our respective audio clips and need to meet only once more, on Sunday, to put everything together in proper fashion.

In retrospect, I feel like I was pretty lazy during this project, and probably could have done a lot more - but with the school year winding down, I'm feeling less and less motivated to do much of anything. I don't really even feel bad about our Japanese class being essentially over for the year, as I expect to see Sato-sensei and several more familiar faces next year in Japanese 202. (I'm taking the 11:00 section next year, by the way.) This is more like an intermission than an ending.

But what a year it's been. I'd try to summarize it all, but it would be too difficult - besides, this is the reason blogs have archives. Suffice it to say that, looking back, Japanese class has been one of the most positive aspects of my college experience thus far, and looking forward, it's likely to continue to hold that distinction. If that's the last important thing I ever say in this blog, then I'm satisfied.

Recording

If you press the "play" button, you'll hear a speech that I delivered in my Japanese class as a major graded assignment.

I'm afraid I'm always the sort to be harsh on myself - I can't say I really like what I hear, especially after I felt like I did so well on a similar project last semester. All I can notice are the times when I stumbled, stuttered, paused, and forgot.

I'm especially glad that I didn't ask Lam-san to record the questions that people asked about the speech later. I know for a fact that my replies were simplistic, poor, broken, and made use of far too many borrowed English words.

But as for the speech itself, I guess it wasn't ALL bad. I can't say that it was a total failure, because there are times when my Japanese sounds fast and fluent. I just really wish I could have kept that kind of proficiency throughout the speech, especially considering how much I demanded out of myself and how diligently I practiced beforehand.