Sometimes, I feel like I wreak havoc wherever I go. I’m getting used to it and it doesn’t shame me or embarrass me anymore. Okay, it doesn’t *as often* anymore.
You should see what happens sometimes, when I walk into a post office, and it’s like all hell broke loose because I’m trying to send my sister a birthday present and they can’t understand my Japanese—in part because my pronunciation is awful, but also in part because no one is used to seeing it pop out of a foreigner’s mouth. The women become frantic and then erupt into loud giggles when we finally determine that yes, I want to send this as a “small packetto”. (Turns out, it was that simple all along.)
I know I’m trying to learn a foreign language, keyword foreign, so that’s what keeps me from burying my head under my warm kotatsu never to return. It’s not supposed to be easy.
I like the irony of it. How I have spent hours on hours studying Japanese but I still have nothing to show for it.
According to the FSI of the U.S. Department of State, Japanese is one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn. Other lists put the language at number three on the most difficult to master list, right behind Mandarin and Arabic.
Adding onto that, there are multiple studies that say you should start young if you want to learn a second language. Some articles discussing a recent study from MIT say that if you want to become proficient in a language, you need to start before the age of 10.
This is not particularly surprising. We’ve known for many years that learning a language young is advantageous.
But many people stop there. That’s the easy interpretation of the study, or as some say, a very poor, lazy interpretation of the raw data.
In fact, the study shows that there are many speakers who begin after 20 and reach a native-like level of English.
So, to say we can’t get there, that it’s impossible, completely dismisses the thousands of learners who’ve already done it.
At first I thought, it’s funny how the statistics are stacked against us and yet we do it anyways. How we strive because connection matters that much, communication matters that much.
Now, I know though that’s not actually the case. We strive because it can, in fact, be done. Sure, it might be a little harder. But what’s harder on top of an already hard language?
I’m not sure if I’ll become advanced in Japanese. I’m not sure I’ll ever pass the N5 (the test I failed), which only says you understand the same level of Japanese as a kindergartener. But, for now, I’ll keep trying.
After all, doesn’t the most joy derive from what is the most challenging anyways?
* * *
Right now, I’m mostly enjoying how there are no emotional ties to the language. No words that will make me think of somebody. No words that bring me back to a time long gone, that make me think of a song, or how that’s what he or she used to say. There are no memories attached to them. No heightened emotions. And that’s a cool feeling.
Of course, with that, I also lose all the positive connections I have to a language. But that’s the beauty of it.
Right now, there is nothing. But someday, maybe, new connections will be made.
Being surrounded by a new-to-me language often makes me a mute. Sometimes, it makes me cry after a long week, after a confusing experience—one that I can’t figure out if it was out of humor or spite. But I will say you see who are when you’re surrounded by foreign sounds. Things aren’t buried, because they can’t be.
If someone ever asked me “how can I get to know myself?” I’d say book a one-way ticket to somewhere and immerse yourself in a world you don’t yet know.
Before Japan, I was volunteering with immigrants and refugees to gain a little more teaching experience. It was quite amazing and I know I want to work with the organization again in some way. Teaching with adults has its benefits over kids sometimes.
I had compassion and admiration for the students then, but not to the level I have now. I have a whole new understanding of the struggle they go through.
It’s so baffling to me that people are against refugees. You really think that people want to leave home? That they wouldn’t turn around and go home if it was a safe place to be?
I’m here and I get to choose to be here. Through an interview and application, yes, but I get to come here by choice. I get to leave and go home by choice. I can pack up and say no to a difficult language and forget it all if I really want to.
Few refugees or immigrants have that luxury. Instead, they are surrounded by foreign sounds in the same way I am, but they don’t necessarily get to look forward to a reunion with family or a break in the intensity of learning a language.
And on top of all that, many are hit with hostility or indifference or with dozens of microagressions in their daily lives. I can’t tell you how many people have been helpful to me here, who have been so incredibly kind, far kinder than I’d ever expected them to be. And it makes me so sad that people new to my own country don’t get to receive this kind of care.
A woman is teaching me Japanese, once a week, for free. She’s taking two hours of her limited free time to sit down with me and help me. She calls it a language exchange, but her English is so great that I’m not sure we can call it that. I’m trying to repay her in gifts, but no amount of treats can equal what she’s done for me. Then there’s the school music teacher who also takes time out of her week to assist me.
I’ll end this here as I’m rambling now, but I only wish that we all would pass on the kindness. That we help. That we assist when someone struggles, that we applaud broken English, that we become patient, and think a little more about each other, about the greater community, and a little less about ourselves.
Acclimate Already 