Japanese

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my relationship with the language. In some ways the longer I am in this country the easier it becomes for me to get discouraged by the fact that I am not yet fluent in the language. Then recently I found a lovely, and perhaps quite insane individual who espouses the following basic method of learning Japanese:

Spend literally every waking hour(or in his case even the sleeping ones) doing something in Japanese

He went on to go from zero to fluent in 18 months, in the middle of Utah, while carrying on a full course load, and a social life.

He has a wonderful collection of surprisingly motivational articles up on a site of his, but the sheer insanity of the idea as first presented really got me thinking about my own relationship with the language.

I spent 4 years "studying" Japanese, but in that time how many hours did I actually spend listening to and reading Japanese? Probably surprisingly few, especially given that I was clinically lazy outside of class. And often in class, for that matter. 1 hour x 3 days a week x 52 weeks x 4 years = 624 hours. Maybe 1-2000 if you add in Tokyo, and some out-of-class work. The average Japanese toddler has somewhere in the range of 40,000 hours of Japanese listening practice. To poach a quote: "It is a poisonous combination of ignorance, arrogance and innumeracy to expect to have even passable Japanese WITH AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE LESS EFFORT than even a typical Japanese toddler has put in." I am a miserable failure.

Or maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm just finally coming around to the wonderful reality that life is not a matter of talent, genius, or education. It's not even so much a matter of effort. Your work need not be painful for it to have value. It's persistence. Just showing up, day after day after day.

New Years is fast approaching, and in the traditions of America-land, we generally view this as a time to change ourselves. New Years resolutions have always been one of those surreal practices which I have never quite been able to grasp. This year, I am going to will myself to enact some sort of change, not so much by actually changing anything, but by WILLING IT SO. This year, I will go to the gym every day, despite the fact that I find it cripplingly boring and tedious, and would really rather pull out my fingernails with pliers. Maybe the answer is not to resolve to fight harder, struggle through the pain for a brighter tomorrow, and blame our failures on our own weakness. Maybe we just need to play more.

Next year I'm going to play more.



...and ask that waitress out.