Pepsi Ice Cucumber

Today, my Mother told me that she heard about a new promotion for Pepsi that just came out in Japan and only in Japan as a trial test. So when I was at the grocery store, I happened to see this new item and purchased a bottle. Pepsi Ice Cucumber. I am not sure why they named it Cucumber. I realize it is green in chemical color but it must be their way to try to convince Japanese that it is healthier for them to drink.




















So I tried this drink and found out that it was very similar to another Pepsi product called Sierra Mist. In fact it is so close, I would like to call it Green colored Sierra Mist with a hint of, I guess cucumber to slightly change the taste.

Besides that, I am continuing to chug along through language school. I feel like I have been able to stay up with the class and keep at their pace but I definitely am still slow at listening to Japanese speech. I will often hear a word or phrase that I don't recognize in a sentence and try to think what it is and by the time I realize that I don't know it or forgot it, I have missed the next 2 sentences. So listening is extremely hard and I am still pretty slow at speaking what I want to say but I can definitely read things faster and understand things quicker. Please pray for me that I may be able to understand better in my listening and that I would be able to speak quicker the things that I have learned so far. I still have just over one month of language left before I stop attending school full time for it. My last day at school is July 23.

My hope when I finish is to be able to take the first Japanese test of 4 for fluency. The first test is so much vocabulary and 100 Kanji. Then within the next 6 months to 1 year, I would like to be able to take the second test which is more vocabulary and 300 Kanji. The final two test are probably not possible for me to even take a shot at. As the 3rd test I would have to know 1000 Kanji and the 4th test to become, I guess, completely literate is to know 2000 Kanji. Whew!

I am finally getting into the swing of things for studying a little better as my mind is adjusting to being back at school again. The one thing that has continued to encourage me while studying Japanese is realizing that I am not studying it just so I can speak Japanese. I am studying Japanese so that I can share the good news of Christ to Japanese in their own heart language. This is what gives me the energy to continue to study. That God has blessed me and chosen me to study another language so that He can use me to reach the nations and peoples with His great news!