During my orientation training for JET, we had to watch the TED talk "the secrets of learning a new language" by Lýdia Machová . The main point of the video is you need to find a way to make learning fun. Some people have some wacky techniques like the presenter, who watches FRIENDS in her target language until she knows it, and some simply like learning new languages for the sake of it. Something else my friends who learned English told me is "you need to have a reason to learn a foreign language," which made me wonder, "why do I study Japanese?".
As with many people, my desire to learn the Japanese language came from Japanese pop culture. However, that isn't the whole story. You see, my aunt is Japanese and my uncle is fluent in Japanese, so my whole life I've heard them speak Japanese and seen their heavily Japan influenced life in America. My aunt always gave my sister and I little gifts from Japanese stores and my uncle taught me how to count to 6 in Japanese when I was a little kid. My mom often told stories of my uncle's adventures living Japan and her visit during the 80's, as well as their family's multitude of host students, many of which were from Japan. While on a family vacation when I was 12, my aunt brought along some Japanese manga magazines and my sister and I wanted to check them out. Of course we couldn't read them, but were absolutely fascinated by the stories, art, and style, doing our best to guess the plot lines of the various stories. These magazines paired with my sister finding a "how to draw manga" book at our art teacher's studio, and of course our general familiarity with Japan from my aunt, made me particularly interested in the magazines. My aunt ended up giving us the magazines, which I actually found in a desk drawer over the summer before moving to Japan.
A month or two later, inspired by my fascination with the magazines, my sister got me the first two books from a manga series called "Fruits Basket," which was apparently the highest rated manga in the US. I immediately fell in love with the series and collected as many books as I could, which proved a little challenging. This is because while it is the highest rated manga in the US, it had that title 10 years previously, so the books were a little hard to find. I tried looking them up online, where there were lots of them available, but they were all in Japanese! My brilliant 12/13 year old mind decided "oh, well I'll just learn Japanese then!" but after about 15minutes with a Japanese learning program I quickly realized this was a lot harder than the Spanish I learned in 2nd grade. Didn't really think about learning Japanese again until several years later, but I did read the "Fruits Basket" books I have close to 30 times.
In the beginning of my senior year of high school, I decided I didn't want to keep studying ancient Greek like I did in middle school and high school, but instead wanted to go to community college full time and try something new. Luckily for me, there was a Japanese class available so I jumped at the opportunity to take it. It was an immersion class, so truly a wild ride that first day, but I was hooked. While waiting for another class, I saw a poster for study abroad and convinced my parents to let me go before heading to college in the fall. I was one of the best students in class, so what could possibly go wrong?
Well, upon getting on the flight and hearing the announcements in Japanese and understanding zero of it, and especially upon landing and proceeding to get lost between the airport and my train platform for nearly 5 hours, I very quickly realized that good in class does not equal good in the real world. The study abroad was stressful, hard, lonely, but also inspired me to keep trying. After a couple weeks of being there, I understood some kids teasing me. Sure I was being teased, but I was ecstatic to finally understand more of the world around me. My whole world opened up, and while my level was still low, even being able to understand a little is a big improvement.
Upon returning to America, I was asked to host some students from the English school my study abroad was connected to. I was very excited to participate, with my parents' approval of course, and just a few months after returning from Japan had 3 Japanese middle school students in my house. The kids did speak some English, but as I had struggled in Japan, they couldn't understand American accents and Americans couldn't necessarily understand them. Remembering my own confusion living in a country where I barely understood the language, I did my best to translate as much as humanly possible with my maybe 6 months of Japanese study. A lot of it was simply "we are going shopping" or "we are going to a restaurant," but much of it was finding creative ways to communicate with our limited language ability. In that one week, my Japanese improved faster than ever. Those host students gave me a gift that continues to give today: how to speak.
Now, of course I knew how to speak Japanese beforehand. My midterms and finals included a speaking section, we had many speaking exercises in class, my teacher in Japan had me speak for some lessons, I had to communicate stuff while in Japan of course, but I did not know how to speak freely. It's one thing to speak from sentences you memorized from a textbook and another to just talk. My Japanese still sucked, but at least I could manage outside the confines of a classroom.
Now skip to 4 years later. During that time I studied abroad again, had more host students, conversation partners, classes, and of course gotten myself an Assistant Language Teacher position in Japan. Sometimes I wonder "why do I learn Japanese?", my dream of reading Fruits Basket in Japanese long forgotten and my level way below what it should be after 5 years of study. However, some recent experiences,especially those of yesterday, have shown me exactly why I keep trying.
In one of my classes, we were playing a variation of Go Fish but with sentences of the target grammar. This class is very quiet and generally aren't very enthused about English. Usually I'll explain something in English and the teacher translates into Japanese to make sure the students understand, but yesterday I decided to explain as best I could in both English and broken Japanese. When I started talking in Japanese, I got a huge reaction from students, amazed that I could actually speak. My explanations definitely weren't elegant, but it got the point across. Due to having an uneven number of students, I even got to play with some of the kids. They were very excited and impressed when I knew their names, as well as had fun responding (in English!) to my comments on the game. I'm not sure what the other tables thought of the game, but my table definitely had fun.
After work, the weather wasn't completely horrible so I decided to take a walk. Some stray cats hang out outside of my neighbors' houses, so I often go over and give the cats treats. A kei truck pulled up, but instead of running away I decided to stay and introduce myself, telling the driver how cute I think the cats are. This evolved into his wife coming out, complimenting my knitted hat, showing me their dog, and inviting me into their house. They showed me handmade nori, raw seaweed collected from the sea of Japan, red pickled turnip, explained mountain vegetables using some books about wild plants, and even made me onigiri to eat for dinner. They talked about how when they were children the rice fields were plowed my horses, that their house is heated by kerosene heaters, digging for bamboo sprouts in spring, worried about my house being cold, and talking about how we should get together to knit and do ikebana (flower arranging) sometime. While I didn't understand everything they said, the fact I could understand anything is a testament to why I learn Japanese. If I didn't speak at least some level of Japanese, I never would have seen their traditional Japanese house, hand collected nori, learned what fuki is, have the chance to try some Japanese food you never hear about in the US, or get the chance to learn ikebana from my lovely neighbor. These are all things I learned about in Japanese culture class, but experiencing the real thing is much more incredible.
I guess I would say that I learn Japanese for the people. Without language skill, there are many people I could never meet and many things I could never learn. My dream of reading "Fruits Basket" in the original Japanese is once again a goal and feels more achievable now, but as much as I love the series, my true reason for learning Japanese is the people.
Also, here is my cat tax: this is おばあちゃん(Obaa-chan, grandma). She is one of the three cats that my neighbors take care of. She is smart around cars and likes food and attention (on her terms, she is a cat after all).
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