The Perils of Foreign Languages

When I was younger, my biggest fear about traveling was about being in a place or situation where I couldn't communicate or talk with people. Then I moved to Japan. I faced that fear pretty quickly. 7 months later, I am surprised at myself and my level of comfort with my level of incomprehension of most everything that is said around me. I'm not just surprised at my acceptance that I don't understand very much of what's happening around me; I'm really shocked to see how much I am willing to put together the small pieces of the Japanese language I do know and just make up and infer the rest. In America, before I left for Japan, I used to hate missing even a word of a sentence in conversations, but in Japan I'm pretty thrilled to have conversations where I understand even one word in four. And I feel like I can follow them.

If I can read 1/2 of the words in a sentence, I feel like I can read the whole thing. (And if I can read a whole sentence - even short, subject-verb sentences - I'm absolutely stoked) If I can "read" 2 sentences in a paragraph I'm feeling good about my comprehension level. (This does not happen often) Even if I don't know how to respond or write back, I am still satisfied with just being able to (barely) manage the receiving half of a conversation.

I think its strange that I am so comfortable with such small amounts of information. It makes me wonder if being in an English speaking place will be totally overwhelming. Now, most conversations around me just sound like linguistic static; sometimes I barely register that people are talking. I can't really remember what its like to be able to listen to everything everyone in the room or train or street are saying and understand their conversations! Even the thought is slightly overwhelming and more than a little appealing.

The most disturbing part about all of this is that as I become more comfortable with my ignorance, the more complacent I get about learning Japanese. Since I am not bothered by hearing - to me- jibberish all day, I feel less and less drive to learn and decipher the codes. Fortunately, this is counterbalanced by my -increasing, actually - desire to be able to communicate back. I can't really help getting better at understanding Japanese, but I do have to work pretty hard at throwing it out.

These are transcribed entries from the journal I am writing in at school. I started the journal for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that I didn’t have Internet yet so I couldn’t post things online. The other being that I had free time on my hands. These entries are slightly modified, but mostly for grammar. I suppose you’d never know either way. Surprisingly, I had way more to say than I thought. Unsurprisingly, I have been bad (abysmal) at keeping my online entries up to date with my written ones. Someday, the dates will match but for now…These are the voyages of a long time ago in a galaxy far far away:

Thursday, May 21, 2009.
Sometimes I forget that Japan is a Pacific island / foreign place. I get lulled by the trains, cars, and concrete into feeling like I just live in a very strange, very large Japan-town part of America. But then a big mother 'effing bee flies into the classroom, and everyone (including me) freaks out. This bee was, no joke, the size of my pinky finger (while that doesn't really sound meancing, take a good look at your pinky finger, then imagine it had wings and a big freaking stinger, and friends) with wings as long as a dragonfly in the US. Also, they are supposedly pretty dangerous. (Truth: I saw a news report about them recently, and saw photos of a guy who got stung a couple times on his leg and his leg looed like it was swollen to twice the size of the other one) On top of that, yesterday Winston said that he saw a spider that sounded like it could have eaten my freakishly freaking large bee. And then I remember I live thousands of miles away from red wood forests, Point D, the opens space, and and realistically sized insects.

Back to the mundane, I just figured out that I am getting a pretty sweet deal on my travel expenses. My company reimburses me for my gas for driving to and from work at about 15 yen per kilometer. (No, I'm not doing the conversions to dollers per mile... ok, its about 20-23 cents a mile) For me, this translates into about 900 yen per week (9$) when I'm working at one of my schools. (Its about 3000 yen - 30$ - to drive to my other school, much further away, but not relevant to this post) I spend about 1000 yen a week counting random trips to the mall, Bobu Bobu's, restaurants, ect. I figured I actually spend about 10 yen per km. on gas, which is sweet for me. However, I was warned that the reimbursment stays the same over the summer (and over gas price changes) when I'm going to be cranking up the a/c, so maybe I won't count my chickens yet. (Update: I ended up not using the a/c much over the summer - I'm cheap that way, who's surprised? - and the savings really start adding up when I'm traveling to my school out in the mountains, which was nice when I was driving to the beach a lot during the warmer parts of the year)

So one of the more unruly kids started throwing around the word "bitch" today in class. That was a frustrating moment because I have absolutely zero punative power and only as much authority as the kids decide to give me, so there wasn't anything I could do about the situation. He started calling the teacher a bitch, and disapproving looks from me only egged him on, so I just kind of had to ignore it. It was slightly upsetting to hear cursing in the classrom and a bit jarring to hear a student swearing at a teacher, and equally confusing when I was the only person in the room who seemed to have a problem with it. Ahh, the perils of teaching foreign languages to 13 year olds. *sigh*