I was just reviewing the adjectives of Chapter 12 and I started wondering where the origin of the difference in "na" and "i" adjectives came from. How was it determined whic each adjective would be? I did a little detective work through google and wikipedia, but found no definitive answer. If anyone has an answer or any information regarding this and other etymological mysteries of Japanese, feel free to leave a comment.

Haven't updated in a while, but Japanese in general is running pretty smoothly. Its a lot easier to memorize vocab and retain the information. However, I feel my audio comprehension is behind. Audio lab and the audio sections on tests just seem to go by waaay too fast. I can understand the drill CD pretty well, but the information is pretty formulaic and doesn't come at you in huge chunks like the Audio lab. I think the only real way to solve this is to just go to extra Audio Labs (I'm not on a very good start though because I missed this week's session :-/ ) Chat Club helps a lot as well, but the people I speak to tend to speak pretty slowly, deliberatly, and when they use a lot of vocabulary I don't understand it's easy to tune out and make excuses for myself. Audio lab on the other hand should be very comprehensible to me.

I attended an info session on the Study Abroad and Summer Programs the department offers. It sounds like most kids do them in their junior year, so I have a while to play with the idea, but I think it would be a really fun opportunity. I really liked Japan when I visited, but it was still through the mindset of a tourist. I think it'd be really interesting living their for an extended period of time and really getting to know the culture.