[YuriTokoro]

Originally Posted by sarvodaya

Kawasaki, I see that's near the Tama Hills, where "Pom Poko" was set if I'm not mistaken! (I'm a bit of a Studio Ghibli fan.)

こんにちは。

Yes, you are right. Tama city is next to Kawasaki, and “Pom Poko” was set there.
Many people love Studio Ghibli here, too. Then, one of your goals can be to watch their films in Japanese language.
スタジオジブリ - STUDIO GHIBLI
This is their site in Japanese. Why don’t you try to read that!?

I studied Kamishin Ryu under Sensei Phil Snewin.
I studied 上新 流 under 先生 フィル Snewin.

Is that right? Is there a way to transliterate "Snewin"?

It’s スヌーイン.
You should call him スヌーイン先生 or フィル・スヌーイン先生.

In Japanese language, a title comes after a name.

I must say your English is quite excellent, Yuri.

Thank you!

I will be teaching myself Japanese. That is how I learned the patchy bit of Russian I know, but I would rather be more thorough with Japanese, especially as I very much want to visit Japan one day. I am really at the beginning and still becoming familiar with the kana. I have been working my way through this website:

Teach Yourself Japanese

This site seems to be really good.
Do you have any ways to listen to the pronunciation?

This site may help you.
Japanese Language Education System for Speech on an On-demand Network (LESSON/J)

http://sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/indexj.html

I may have jumped the gun slightly in asking to set up an exchange so early, but in fact I am happy to offer as much help as anyone needs and get to know some people here on the forum before I have a great many questions myself. At least in this way I will have some Japanese friends to ask about the language when I do become more advanced. As a corollary of this, please do not feel guilty if, to begin with, you are asking more questions than me, as I'm sure that will balance out in time! Besides, I enjoy helping, and in fact I put some stock in the phrase "homines dum docent, discunt".

I’m looking forward to being asked a lot by you.

Learning by teaching is おしえること　で　まなぶ（教えることで学ぶ）
おしえる＞teach
おしえること＞teaching
まなぶ＞learn
The word order is kind of in reverse….

As I can see you are quite an advanced English speaker, do feel free to ask more involved questions. Part of my work at the Oxford English Dictionary involves a lot of research into the history of the English language, as well as requiring an intricate knowledge of grammar, so if there are any more esoteric questions you have then I'd love to tackle those too.

If you have time, could you correct my short composition #708?
Please help me to read this English sentence:

That sounds appropriate. As we start out, please could you include a couple of basic sentences in your post, which I can try and tackle and deal with any issues that arise from there. How does that sound?

Do you know what to say to people you just meet for the first time?
If you don’t know yet:
English has many versions to say hello and you don’t just repeat what other people have said, but in Japanese, most people who first meet you would say like this to you and you can repeat this.
(In English, you don’t like repeating what other people have just said, right? However in Japanese, you can repeat what you have just been said when you are saying hello.)

「はじめまして。
（your name）です。（=I’m Sarvodaya.）
よろしく　おねがい　いたします(よろしくお願い致し� �す)」


よろしく　おねがい　いたします。　is a politer version of よろしく　おねがい　します。

Very Polite: よろしくお願い致します。
Polite:よろしくお願いします。
Casual:よろしく。

Most Japanese people often say this, and it is very hard to translate this word into English.
Maybe this site will be able to help you.
“よろしく”の検索結果（211 件）：英辞郎 on the Web：スペースアルク

If you have any expressions you want to know, tell me.

I...still have a lot of difficulties writing and speaking English.

It is slightly more natural to say "I still have a lot of difficulty writing and speaking English", but this is an extremely minor point!

A lot of difficulty, not difficulties. I see. Thank you.

Actually where you say:

I’m a housewife, used to work as a pharmacist.

Now I know this is only a casual introduction, but strictly this sentence is not grammatical as the two clauses are disconnected. You could say:

I’m a housewife and I used to work as a pharmacist.

or

I’m a housewife, who used to work as a pharmacist.

or even

I am a housewife but used to work as a pharmacist.

While it is also strictly correct to elide "I am" to "I'm" and still have a second verb relying on the same subject, thus:

I’m a housewife and used to work as a pharmacist.

it doesn't flow as naturally.

If you wanted to maintain the disconnected clauses, you would need a semicolon and a repetition of the subject of the verb, thus:

I’m a housewife; I used to work as a pharmacist.

I hope that helps!

I have believed that you don’t like using “I” two times in a sentence.
When you use semicolon, do you think the sentence was divided and becomes two sentences?
I didn’t know “I’m a housewife and used to work as a pharmacist.” was not very natural.

ありがとうございました。