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Welcome to Hugo's homepageby Hugo Britos
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Hello. My name is Hugo Britos and welcome to my homepage.
I come from Majorca, a small island in the western part of the Mediterranean Sea that belongs to the Spanish Kingdom. In summers I work there for the Spanish National Airlines, the famous/infamous IBERIA Líneas Aéreas. Majorca is where my parents live, but I spend most of the time in Barcelona, a medium-sized city in the Spanish mainland, studying English and Japanese at the university Autònoma de Barcelona. In both regions half of the people speak a language which is closer to Italian than to Spanish. How close? An 87% lexical similarity.
While in Barcelona I decided I wanted to study Japanese in Japan because I did not get to practise Japanese as much as I would like to. Besides I found it difficult to improve my proficiency level there. The funny thing is that I don´t particularly consider Japanese as a difficult language, but I simply could not learn much in classes, although I more or less managed to pass my exams. By the way I should also mention that things were getting awfully boring there so I chose to take a rest from the university and taste a bit of Japanese routine instead.
At Yamasa, I enrolled for 8 weeks in the SILAC program. Most of the time there were only two students in my class, so it was more like having private or semi-private lessons! The reason why class size was so small was of course that I studied during the off season (February to April). The teachers were wonderful all of the time. They were loaded with patience (or the reputed Japanese gaman) and were always ready to hear what I got to say, even if it took me a long time (which it often did) to express my opinions.
I lived in Yamasa Villa 3, and had a apartment to myself. At first I could not get used to so much room because in Barcelona I shared a flat with 2 other students. Having an apartment in Villa 3 was convenient, because I could go from classes home in approximately 5 minutes. Very soon I got a bicycle from a dump heap, I somewhat fixed it and went everywhere with it. Get a bike as soon as you can, but watch your step while riding it in Japan!
The thing I did not like, and perhaps I should not be mentioning this, is that due to a strange phenomenon dust seemed to grow unexpectedly fast in my apartment. Ok, Ok, maybe I am not EXTREMELY clean, but...
After my course I did 4 weeks of full time work study in the International office.
My main role was translating files into Spanish and making the Spanish homepage. The Yamasa site is so huge I thought it would be impossible to finish it in that time.
I was right. I could not finish even half of it. From time to time I also translated emails from and to wanna-be students of Yamasa with Spanish as native language. I was also interviewed once for the newsletter, but I never wanted to see the final edition.
While I was in Okazaki, I also did a language exchange (Japanese-Spanish) with one of the teachers.
Onishi Sensei, is for some reason, very fond of Spain. As you may have already noticed, I am a bit critical towards my home country, and very often I found myself explaining Onishi Sensei and whomever it may interest ugly things about Spaniards in general and Spanish politicians in particular.
But actually, Spain is not that bad. Best way is to go and see it by yourself, and DO NOT BELIEVE anything you are told by the locals!
Thank you for visiting my page!