What is it like to live in Japan after six months?
Language is still a problem, we are still having lessons and a very long way to go. In practice, we can manage. We can go to shops, ask questions, order stuff online (with a lot of help from google translate or similar), get stuff delivered. But for complicated matters, we still have to rely on our Japanese friends to make phone calls for us. Also reading is going much better. We are now at the point that we can actually read simple things like lunch menus or ads on the train. What made the biggest difference was learning the kanas (Hiragana and Katakana). We were a bit slow on this and only studied them seriously after two months. My advice to newcomers is to learn them as quickly as possible, maybe even before arriving in Japan. I still study Kanji for 10 minutes every day. To learn them is a long process, but it pays off. Daily life is going fine. We learned to stand on the left side of the escalator and to bike on the left lane, but on foot I still have many near collisions, since
