ダニエルの冒険

I just gave mashed potato a go and this steam burn is starting to hurt. I should’ve worn my leather gloves but didn’t think to. It took about 20 minutes to get the potatoes done in the microwave. First I forgot to cut them up before putting them in then it took an age of checking, seeing that they’re still hard, and putting them back in again. Eventually they were done but maybe overdone as it didn’t take much to mash them. Maybe I put in too much water.

I proceeded to put in too much milk. And then put in too much butter and too much salt, but that was intentional. In the end they actually turned out pretty well, I guess. What did I learn today? Thanks to latent heat of vaporisation, steam hurts much more than water does. I also remembered not to put the potatoes in without water as its the water molecules which gain energy from the 2.4GHz microwave emitter.

I arrived at school on the early side today so I was able to talk to my classmates. Remember that these are people who have been at Yamasa for, in general, 3 terms, and the general consensus seemed to be that the pace slows down after a few semesters and they’re not so happy with the current pace so won’t be continuing. This is something that Declan warned us about at orientation: it’s much more difficult to see progress at an intermediate stage than it is at a basic stage. I agree with this and I feel that I learned a lot today, and have a lot to study (vocabulary, etc). Learning 5 basic things gives much more coverage of the language than 5 small things, so I suppose learning at the same pace does not mean that you progress through the language at the same pace. To be honest, being in Japan, doing my best to interact with native-speakers in any way I can, and going to a language school at the same time is plenty for me, but I can easily understand the frustrations of other students. Unfortunately, the only solution is to go to private lessons instead of group lessons, which isn’t exactly the cheapest solution.
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