sasha has recently started babbling in japanese. she will blah blah blah (or, whatever the japanese equivalent is) and it *sounds* japanese, but isn't. she'll throw in a 'ne?' at the end once in a while, and says her version of 'irrashaimase!' frequently, but the rest is pure nonsense. i find it absolutely fascinating. i wonder if she gets it from day to day life outside the home, the (infrequent) japanese hiro speaks at home, or the times we go to the yochien and there's loads of japanese all around us. perhaps all of those things, and more? (we don't watch japanese TV except the occasional chibi maruko-chan or sazae-san, so probably not TV so much. we watch loads of DVDs in english, though.)

we are practicing the minority language at home in order to help our children be bilingual. we can do this because yoshi speaks english so well. i am happy with our current situation, and i hope that we can continue it. at the moment hiro speaks english with us, even after starting kindergarten. i know he can understand a lot of japanese, but i'm not sure he speaks much (at school). something he says at home frequently is 'miyote ne.' (or maybe 'mi-o-te ne') and usually means 'show me'. sometimes he means 'look', though. (i don't know this phrase in japanese, so i don't know if it's hakata-ben or a mistake.) other things slip in ('chotto' or 'matte') but for the most part, he still speaks 99% english at home. and the kids play in english. i hope it continues!

but i do find it really cool that sasha babbles in japanese. i hope it helps her when she starts speaking japanese!