Breakfast with Amber

June 2020: All Japan All The Time

It's my bad for not stating this specifically earlier: back in March when our classes at Trinity went online, I was alerted that my summer Japanese program through Beloit would also be online. I expected to have an incredibly busy schedule. 9 AM to 12 PM would be three straight hours of Japanese classes. Four days a week at 1:40, I'd have a small group session with the professor, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we'd have dinner together while conversing in Japanese. Even on the weekends, we'd be participating in a cultural event. That's why I felt the need to make all my videos for the summer in the span of a month and then schedule them.

The program orientation was on June 14. That's when we met our professor, Ohashi-sensei, and probably also our teaching assistant, Takasu-sensei. (I don't remember specifically if she was there, but she had to have been.) That's where I also saw the roster of students for the first time. All of our names were written in English and in Japanese. I noticed that my name was written "ダフン." I took a little bit of Japanese on Duolingo in high school, so I already knew that Ohashi-sensei had spelled my name "dafun." Was I really going to let her get away with calling me Daphen?

Not even in the Japanese language can I avoid my name getting misspelled. I'd write a whole rant about it, but I'm sure you assumed that Daphne is a hard name to spell the moment you saw the cover.

Speaking of covers, before the beginning of the actual class, my mom had the idea of preparing a binder for me where I could keep my syllabus and worksheets, including inserts for the cover and spine. I decorated the cover by creating a PowerPoint slide, cramming pictures from all my favorite anime onto it, and printing it out. I was in charge of the cover, but Mom was in charge of the spine, and she might have initially put "ダフン" before I corrected her.

The first day of actual classes was June 15. I was in my bedroom getting ready hoping that I wouldn't embarrass myself. With all the K-pop I listen to, my worst fear was that I'd log onto that Zoom meeting and introduce myself with, "Konnichi wa. Watashi wa Dafuni Tetto imnida."

At 9 AM, I logged into the meeting, ready for the next month and a half of my life. As Ohashi-sensei called each of our names, we had to introduce ourselves by saying, "Konnichi wa. Watashi wa (insert name here) desu." As everyone whose names came before T introduced themselves, I waited to see just how she would pronounce my name.

That's when I saw her squint at the paper. "...Dafun-san?"

"Actually, it's Daphne."

"Ah!" Then she immediately corrected it on her roster. "Da...fu...nii. Dafunii-san, why don't you introduce yourself?"

"Okay. Uh...Konnichi wa. Watashi wa Dafunii Tetto desu."

Nailed it.

Ohashi-sensei was just the sweetest old lady, and she was actually from Japan, more specifically Kyoto. I think some of her Kyoto dialect transferred onto me because in Kyoto, the ん kana is pronounced "m" when in front of an m, a p, or a b instead of "n" like in standard Japanese. For example, when saying "三百" (300), we'd say "sambyaku" instead of "sanbyaku." However, my second-year Japanese professor, Dr. Wu, didn't like that, so I started using the standard pronunciation.

Back to Ohashi-sensei being the sweetest old lady I'd ever met. She was super enthusiastic about everything we did. Whenever any one of us would pronounce a word correctly, she'd cheer for us like, "Waaaaaa–(audio cuts out)" Honestly, it was a real mood booster, even with the audio cutting out. She also used the Japanese pronunciations for all our names. I was Dafunii-san, but there was also Joshu-san and Derekku-san and Gyabin-san.

By the end of the morning, we were already on to the first two rows of hiragana. With every lesson, Ohashi-sensei would send us worksheets to work on in the afternoon, and with the first unit being hiragana, our worksheet was writing exercises. Each row had the hiragana printed out, then a couple boxes with the hiragana in them in dotted lines so we could trace them, then three blank boxes so we could try writing them ourselves, so I spent my afternoon writing: