Before coming to Japan one of the question that frequently being asked by a lot of people is how are we going to manage to come to Japan without knowing any Japanese?
To tell the truth, both of us tried to learn Japanese once in Malaysia. We did not succeed since the focus was not really 100%. I am not blaming anything since we were still working back then so it was kind of difficult for us to learn new language. But before coming here we kind of have a little idea on what is the difference between kanji, hiragana and katakana eventhough we were yet to memorize the lettering. The few words that we know before coming to Japan was only konnichiwa, ohayo gozaimasu, arigato gozaimasu.. Haha serious..
After both of us finish our entrance exam, then only we started to join japanese language class. I managed to finished 2 semester of Japanese and kanji class - and so far I can say I managed myself well to understand basic conversation. Especially going to market and sending our children to local daycare.
My husband on the other hand can understand a little bit but yet to be able to converse in japanese proficiently. But it's still fine considering in the university our medium of communication is still english and communicating with supervisors and labmates are usually in english.
What I can say is that knowing japanese will be extra point for you to study here but it is not compulsory. We have friends who cannot speak Japanese at all and still can survive living here.
I personaly think that having a good circle of friends really helped in order to survive daily living in Japan.
Next entry will be preparing to come to Japan - for Malaysians especially
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