⭐ Ejderha Sato ⭐

As 2023 concludes with today's lesson, it’s time to reflect on a year and a half of learning Korean! I am deeply and incredibly thankful for discovering Sato! While I began the year familiar with many words, now I can engage in basic Korean conversations. My proficiency in conjugating between past, present, and casual to polite tenses has grown significantly. Sato's teaching skills are evident; he gauges precisely when to challenge me and when to allow independent exploration. Whenever I struggle with a concept, his patient explanations ensure clarity. He will always keep at it until I have fully grasped the topic. His organized Google Docs of lesson notes are invaluable, and his commitment shines through—even when responding to late-night questions! Beyond language, Sato also adds invaluable insights into Korean culture and lifestyle. His meticulous attention to my pronunciation ensures I sound as authentic as possible. Truly a dedicated and skilled instructor! Thank you!

Another fun and very helpful lesson with Sato-sensei! I appreciate his patience and understanding when I forget vocabulary or make mistakes. And I'm super enjoying the pace and really am absorbing the new information well. I also enjoy all the cultural and language context that he gives as we go through the lesson. It gives so much more life and meaning to learning Japanese. I also found it very easy to study up on the previous lesson thanks to the Google Doc notes and organization.

During this lesson I refreshed myself a bit on the usage of のに for expressing how much X it takes for something. Also using my brother and plumbing as examples we were able to do a good bit of speaking practice.

As another year studying with Sato San is finishing, I feel the need to write a proper review. A new year's resolution two years ago changed my life, I decided to try learning another language and shortly after discovered Sato San. Looking back after almost 100 lessons it is hard to believe we've come so far. Starting from scratch, we are now conducting class in almost exclusively Japanese. I am still far from proficient, but feel like I have an extremely solid foundation to build my intermediate level Japanese on. Sato San's style of teaching puts the ball in your court as a learner. The amount of information and study material he provides is abundant, its up to you as a student to study and apply. We have come a very long way together and I am very grateful as a student to have found such a great guide on my language Journey. We continue to trudge towards the metaphorical peak of Everest together. Sato San- 本当に　ありがとうございました

During the lesson today Sato taught me a valuable lesson in a misunderstanding I was having about "things to eat", I was under the impression that I could use たべもの, but that's food not a "thing to eat", and using noun modification of たべる I'm able to combine it with もの to make たべるもの which is a thing to eat and then なにか食べるもの becomes something to eat. Then if I want to modify this to become a negative I can say なにも instead for　何も食べるものがない for "there's nothing to eat" and further the more natural way of saying that is actually 食べるものが何もない. In line with being a bit off from normal speech, I also missed that for "come back home"　帰る isn't exactly the best fit, more what works best in this situation would be 帰ってくる.

Sato-san and I chatted about some interesting cultural current events regarding solar panels. We then reviewed い adjectives (with kanji and definitions). To finish up, we continued learning how to use the verb “to make”