google translate - s.akashi

7 | feminist gym teacher

★
[NAME]

sejuro and i sit on the roof of the school together. he's helping me with my japanese like we usually do in my free period.

i really am getting better. it's been four weeks, or twenty eight days, since i moved to japan, i've worked on learning the language for two and a half hours everyday. that's seventy hours total. two thousand one hundred and thirty hours left until i'm fluent in japanese. i guess i've been speaking a lot of japanese at home too. my mom has started only speaking japanese. it's her way of helping me become fluent.

sometimes it's frustrating only being able to have conversations with akashi. not that don't enjoy talking to him. frankly, i don't know what i would do without him. if he wasn't here i wouldn't be talking to anyone, and my progress would be much slower, but i want to be able to talk to lots of people. especially my basketball team. communication is super important in basketball, on and off the court. without communicating there are miscommunications on the court, such as passing errors or defensive errors. off the court you need to be able to have conversations to create chemistry. i haven't been able to do either of those things.

"someone back in america told me that some guy went into a coma and when he woke up he could speak fluent spanish. we should do something to put me in a coma." i suggest to akashi, resting my head on my hands.

akashi laughs a little and shakes his head at me. "i don't think that will work [name]." he gives me a comforting pat on the shoulder. "you're getting better already. we've had a couple conversations in japanese recently. your accent isn't perfect but you're getting some of the words down pretty well."

"thanks sejuro." i sigh, flipping to the next sheet of vocabulary words my mother had printed out for me. i'm proud to say that i can say the names of most farm animals in japanese. "do you think if i just like, stop speaking english i'll learn faster?" i look up at akashi.

he shrugs. "that isn't how i learned english. it's such a difficult language to learn. i focused on grammar and speaking." he explains. i nod along as he continues talking. he's right. english is an extremely difficult language to learn, yet he's fluent in it. "it took me around a year and a half to get where i am now. i'm still nowhere near perfect."

"i think you're pretty incredible, if that helps at all." i smile brightly at him.

"i must admit, that does help a little bit." he smiles back at me. i like his smile. i don't see it very often, but maybe that's why i like it so much.

we continue studying vocabulary and grammar for the rest of our free period. akashi is very knowledgeable, and he's a good teacher.