ohayou gozaimasu

[nekobasu]

ohayou, watashi no namae wa Tessa desu. nyuujirando kara kimashita. ichinensei desu. nihongo o benkyou shimasu.

I'm in the 5th week of an introductory japanese course at Otago University in New Zealand, and I would love to find a japanese or japanese-speaking penpal so I can practice my japanese, I'm planning to go to japan to teach english in about 3 - 4 years time so I don't want to lose everything I know before I go, and I'd rather keep expanding on my (currently limited) japanese.

I can't speak it all that much, so it'd be great to write to someone who is practising english so we could write some in japanese with an english translation underneath (or vice-versa), so we can both practice at the same time.

I prefer to write in hiragana/katakana but I don't know how to do so easily on the computer, anyone got any links to programs that help with that?

please leave a message here or email me at [email protected] if you can help me

[Matley]

Hi nekobasu,
I'm italian, but I'm here to practice my japanese too, as I intend to fly back 日本へ in a couple of years.

About writing in hiragana/katakana, you need to install East asian language support; under control panel -> international and language options.
I'd bet there's a thread about it in this forum, but I'm a newbee here and can't say for sure.

[nekobasu]

hi matley, thanks for the reply I tried that thing with the eastern language support but it still doesn't seem to work properly.. thanks anyway
I met someone today who was from Italy originally, then moved to Japan for like 9 years or something, and then married a Japanese man, and then they both moved here to NZ.. I wonder where they'll go next..
you've been to Japan? how long for? was it just a holiday or did you work there or what? I'd love to hear about it =)

[kazya]

hi.

you need MS-IME.
Type in Japanese - Install MS-IME

[nekobasu]

ありがとう　ございます！ that's the first time I've managed to get this working!

[Nagoyankee]

Originally Posted by nekobasu

ohayou, watashi no namae wa Tessa desu. nyuujirando kara kimashita. ichinensei desu. nihongo o benkyou shimasu.

If you say "ichinensei desu", most Japanese including myself will think that you are a first-grader (in elementary school) . You may want to say "daigaku 1-nensei" just to be precise.

One more thing. We don't really say "nihongo o benkyo shimasu" in this case. We would say "shiteimasu" instead of "shimasu" if you're currently studying it. What you said is gramatically correct but it sounds just a little bit 'foreign' to the Japanese ear.

Sorry if corrections weren't expected here. これからもがんばってください！