on friday night i watched the news on yoshi's keitai. it was really weird, because i haven't watched the news on tv in so long. the most disturbing thing was reading the japanese that flashed on the screen. or trying to read. in the past three years i haven't spoken or studied japanese much. there was a period when hiro was a baby when i was studying for the JLPT, but i didn't pass that by a long shot, and i haven't done anything about that since then.

the main reason for this is i only want to speak english to my kids (though japanese does seep in) and i want to speak only english at home. yoshi is pretty good about that, and we mainly speak to each other in english, so my days are spent in english. it's not like i forget i'm in japan, we go out too much for that, but my speaking is limited to shopping or restaurant eating, which really is a specialized set of phrases.

with new neighbors moving in, i find myself tripping over my japanese, and using too casual japanese, and often excuse myself by saying that i haven't spoken japanese much in the past three years. not having TV since we moved into our new house has also gone a long way in excluding japanese in our house. before, i would often leave NHK on in the morning because of all the (good, but in japanese) children's shows. i don't miss it, but...

last night i asked yoshi to put sazae-san on for us (he has a cable that can connect the keitai to our tv). the kids were riveted. even yoshi noticed and commented on it. when the news came on later they hardly noticed, but i think i'm glad we don't watch TV here.