progression

I met today with my friend Yuki, who is one of my conversation teachers on Monday mornings, and ironically the one i disliked most because he spoke too fast for me. We met after i got out of work and went to a cheap udon place. A small sidenote--Japan is packed with cheap udon and soba places. Udon is a thick white noodle and soba is a thinner noodle made of buckwheat. A bowl of noodles can run anywhere from 100 yen to 300 yen, which is expensive. One hundred yen is about a dollar. I know, it's cheap. And you can get tempura and wakame seaweed and an egg and onigiri (rice balls) and various sushi for cheap too. Japanese people usually put their tempura in the soup with the noodles, which is sickening because it turns all soft. The soup usually contains a fish base, and i always order my noodles without broth. These places are great for vegetarians, as long as you know to avoid the soup. And everyone slurps their soup when they eat their noodles as well--it's not rude here. Sidenote ended. So almost the entire time we spoke in Japanese, so i was happy with that, but i still sounded dumb and i basically used up all of my vocabulary, which is insufficient for an intelligent conversation. I also am not yet comfortable with semi-complex grammatical structures. Oh well, if this is progress, then i should be content. In essence, i need to learn more words!