Pre-immersion

Ahhh. Future plans are starting to come together more and more. I need to pay the rest of my summer program fees (never came off the waiting list for the scholarship, but financial aid still covered half the cost), and we’ve also been sent literature that makes it all feel a little more real. We have to sign a language pledge vowing not to use English (or any non-Japanese language) except when strictly necessary (this basically means when communicating with family, and in my case boyfriend) and that includes reading English. Um, yikes. I mean, I knew all this going on, but it’s just hitting harder now. I read tons of things daily, and I’m going to have to give all that up. Checking a multitude of blogs throughout the day, Facebook, Twitter, webcomics at night, sometimes a fic or scanlated manga or two, reading from a library book before bed–none of that. Do you know how much media we take in every day, and how much that eliminates when anything in English is completely out? This means no progress on my to-read list, falling behind on celebrity gossip and my favorite blogs and webcomics, not being able to chat daily with my friends on Gchat and Skype, not getting to read my friends’ tweets and family’s status updates OR post any of my own… including on this blog! It’s going to have to lie completely dormant from mid-June to mid-August. This also means listening to music in English (or any other foreign language, for that matter!) is out, so I am going to have to reconfigure my iPod and music library to only hold my Japanese music, and only listen to that for two months, which is going to be hard because sometimes I feel like a particular style of music and the language is not Japanese. My guided relaxation recording, which helps me de-stress when I need it, is also in English and would technically be out. I was also planning to get my yoga teacher’s DVD and do yoga to de-stress as well; obviously her narration is English. But, this just occurred to me, they let you go to church and stuff if you’re religious and obviously those services are going to be in English. Perhaps I can consider yoga and guided relaxation my religion, and therefore the English is okay? Ha, I’m pretty sure I’m going to need all the sanity-saving techniques I can get; it’s a year’s worth of study crammed into two months, and I can only communicate in Japanese. All of this is going to be hard.
(Yes, no one is going to be checking my iPod or what I read/look at on my computer in the privacy of my room–except my roommate but I doubt she’ll be out to tattle on me–and anyone patrolling is mostly going to be checking to make sure I’m speaking Japanese to the other students and teachers, but I do want to get the most out of this program and I’m interested to see how well this full immersion thing actually works. Even if I get to attend the intensive program in Japan, there will be a language pledge when at the center with other students but no restrictions outside those walls, and I can just tell you now I’m not giving up non-Japanese music and literature for 10 months. So this is probably the one time in my life–including the times I spend living in Japan!–when I have the opportunity to live in a completely, fully immersed Japanese-only world. It’s two months, not forever, so I’m really going to try to stick to it as much as I can even though I know I could easily get away with less than total commitment. I’m going to try to make the extent of my English maintaining communication and my relationship with Kirk, as well as staying in touch with my parents–maybe my sister and I will start emailing in Japanese instead–and let that be it. I just don’t want this to be like the language house in college, which was supposed to be immersive but I can tell you we only spoke nothing but Japanese when we had to, mostly because we were all lower intermediate level and it was just too hard.)

I am sort of excited though to put as many computer programs as I can (including my laptop itself) into Japanese… my iPods are already in Japanese so that’s done… and I have several Japanese books, magazines, and manga I can bring with me to read, although it’s going to be hard as several of them are translation projects and I quite obviously won’t be able to translate into English. That’s another thing–no translating. Just like reading and consuming media in all forms, translating is something I do at least several times a week, and not doing any (and thus not updating my website) for two months is going to be hard. I’m just glad TV shows will naturally be on hiatus over the summer so I wouldn’t be tempted to watch those. There will be TVs with access to Japanese programming there so I’m looking forward to catching some dramas. They also screen Japanese movies weekly and I’m guessing there will be newspapers and stuff too.

I really am looking forward to a lot about the program, not just the fact that it means I can quit my job and not have to work. It will be fun to live on a college campus and in a dorm room again. Meals are totally covered and we all eat from the cafeteria buffet, so for two months I don’t have to worry about buying and/or preparing food, which sounds like such a luxury to me now. Although until I find a group to sit with–and learn who I want to avoid, because I’m sure there will be some–going to meals is going to be nervewracking. There are a couple summer festivals, so I’m going to bring my yukata and geta. There’s a lot of interest clubs you can (okay, pretty much have to) join, and while most of them revolve around things that have always bored me (tea ceremony; calligraphy) there are a few I’m interested in checking out. I can tell you I’m going to arrive at the program and immediately seek out the other people who speak fluidly with good accents to be friends with, as much as I can. Hopefully others will feel the same way about  me. I do hope I can make some good friends there, and I also hope I get a roommate I can deal with who won’t hate me. I have only shared a room for two school years, and the last time was in 2005-2006. I also only had to share a communal (not attached/en-suite) bathroom for one of those years, so that’s another thing I’m not thrilled about. Shower caddies! I got rid of mine because I thought I’d never need it again; how wrong I was! Actually, I’m not excited about all the typical dorm room furnishings we have to bring when I’m flying there from halfway across the country. It was different when I could jam-pack my car and drive an hour north with all my crap; not so easy when I’m boarding a domestic flight with a giant-ass suitcase that will incur charges. I will probably have to ship a big box of extra stuff to myself too (and then back home at the end), which is not going to be fun since big boxes are not cheap to send! Also, from what I understand the campus is more or less in the middle of the ghetto and I won’t have a car so I won’t really be able to make emergency runs for any supplies I  need, so I have to make sure I have everything I’ll need with me when I start. Fortunately, however, an old classmate from Japanese and someone who went on the January Japan trip with me lives in that city now, and I’m hoping at the very least he can give me a ride from the airport to campus.

In many ways I’m sort of preparing for this as if I’m about to join a convent and take a vow of silence. And I guess in some ways, I am! At the same time I’m going to miss my boyfriend and my cat terribly. I will miss my friends and family too, but I’ll miss those two the most. I love that my cat sleeps right next to me every night, sometimes even sharing my pillow. I love that Kirk lives here now so I can go over to his place pretty much whenever I want and see him often, and I am giving that up (temporarily!) with this.

As for what I’m doing after the program, it is still not ironed out, and at this point I’m just trying not to think about it so it doesn’t cause me more stress. Program scholarships will be awarded over the next month or two, and I can’t make any decisions until I know those results (soooo worried though). In the meantime, I now have two English teacher job offers to choose from, although I have to accept or deny one soon or lose it (the one I interviewed for last month–glad I got an offer out of that!)… and I have no idea what to do there. We’ll see. It does look like one way or another… by hook or by crook… I am headed for Japan in the fall like I’ve been planning, which is good because I’d hate to quit my job, do the summer program, and then have nothing! But until I have a plane ticket, it still doesn’t feel real; it’s like it could be snatched away from me at any moment. At least the summer program is very real and becoming imminent.

With all of these thoughts comes an increasing sense of senioritis and impatience at work. I have about five weeks left and I’m ready for the end–although at the same time I want to maximize the time I have left with people here, so it’s hard! Conflicting emotions! As we saw when I tried to change jobs and hated the new job more than my old/current one, it’s not that the work itself is bad or hard. I don’t just want to quit and find a new job in the same field because there’s no guarantee it would be any better; chances are it would probably be worse. As spoiled as it sounds, I still just don’t want to be here anymore! I’ve been here so long now, seen so many people come and go, and if I wanted to I could probably keep doing it until the company folds (something I see as an inevitability) which is a thought that’s terrifying in and of itself.  But really the thing that’s gotten me through so much until now has been the thought of my pursuit of my next career awaiting me at the end of all this. If I didn’t have that in front of me it would have been much harder to deal with stuff like coworkers trash-talking me over perceived (imaginary) slights, almost everyone else in my department leaving including my mentor, ridiculous policy changes, getting lectured by someone not even in charge of me for not doing every little thing perfectly, the realization that I don’t respect or believe in what the company does… even the constant toilet issues in the upstairs women’s restroom (apparently we’re too cheap to buy new toilets which are like $100 each!). The thought that something better or at least different is waiting for me after I’m done putting in my time here has propelled me through all of that. I can’t possibly imagine staying here indefinitely, but I also know there’s a limited number of (non-teaching) jobs in my city for someone with just an English writing/editing background, and not many of them are appealing to me as something to do for the rest of my working years. I also know that I never wanted to graduate college only to end up right where I started. These are things I have to explain many times when people ask me why I want to do this.

It’s funny how long this post-grad journey has gotten, and how many times my plans have changed over that period. First it was teach in Japan (just to be there and pick up the language by osmosis, apparently–I hadn’t really thought that plan through beyond “get to Japan”) with Kirk, then it was go to Japan by myself to study, which led to the discovery of the 10-month program which now seems like the only and best way to do this. In some ways I wish I’d had it all figured out sooner so I could have planned for this since age 15 and made much better, more informed choices. But I can’t deny I’ve had so many great experiences along the way, and of course met some people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, while I’ve been working it all out and waiting. I’ve reconnected with my high school (and earlier) friends, I had a fabulous time being roommates with Aro (the night we stayed up until 4 a.m. inadvertently and had no choice but to go out for freshly made doughnuts will go down in history), I’ve dealt with my anxiety/OCD issues that cropped up, and Kirk and I have built an extremely solid relationship foundation that means I can leave without worrying (too much) that our connection will fall apart with the distance. It’s all been worth it, though just a little vexing when I think about how long it’s taken. I’m impatient for the rest of my life to get started.

Visiting Tokyo Disney Resort in 2006

While I don’t have much to report during this time which is hopefully leading up to a departure for Japan, I thought I’d try writing about my previous experiences there. The first topic that came to mind was the Tokyo Disney parks, since DisneySea was one of the first places I went after arriving the first time, and also because thanks to my mom who is kind of a Disney nut I know a lot about Disney parks. Some background: I first came to Japan as part of a January term class; we flew into Narita early that month (the New Year’s break had just ended), spent a week in Chiba staying with host families and taking basic Japanese classes, then we used the next week/week and a half to travel around the country on the bullet train before returning to Tokyo and then going home. It was my first trip outside of the U.S. and I was lucky enough to be awarded a scholarship that paid for most of it!

Our group had left together on a Thursday, gotten to Japan when it was Friday, and on Saturday afternoon/evening I came home with my host family, who lived in Shin-Urayasu (one stop on the Keiyō line away from Disneyland, incidentally). The family consisted of a mother, father, and six-year-old daughter; the couple was on the young side and the mom was eager to practice English with me. It sounded like she’d been trying to master English for a while and it just wasn’t coming; she had her daughter enrolled in eikaiwa (English conversation) classes in the hopes that she, at least, could become fluent in it. Most of the time we spoke Japanese, but we did have lots of conversations about the nuances and differences of each language (once–on our way to Disneyland, actually–I recall explaining that while tabun [たぶん] encompassed both “maybe” and “probably,” in English those two words were different. I drew a spectrum between “yes” and “no” in the air to illustrate that one). I’m still not sure what my host dad does for a living (maybe… graphic design?), but he had an office downstairs he spent a lot of time in, and he seemed to make good money, because their house was incredibly nice. It had central air-conditioning and heating and they even had a clothes dryer (used only for certain articles of clothing though!). (Although I should mention that my host mom was not satisfied to just be a housewife and a mom; she also worked 2-3 part-time jobs even though I don’t think she had to for financial reasons or anything. Maybe it was to pay for the eikaiwa lessons! Ha.) They set me up in the house’s one tatami room, with a wonderful futon composed of many super-soft layers:

It’s like sleeping on a cloud.

That night after dinner, I sat down at the table with my host mom to hash out what we would do that week. She asked me where I wanted to go while I was here, and I answered: “Disneyland, and Tokyo Tower.” She wanted to know if I’d been to the original Disneyland, I said yes, and because of that it was decided that we would go to Tokyo DisneySea instead.

I had no idea Tokyo DisneySea even existed before then… but now I know she made the right decision, because Japan’s Disneyland is in many ways a carbon copy of the original, but Tokyo DisneySea is completely its own thing. A little history: the Disneyland park opened in 1983, run by the Oriental Land Company with a license from Disney (Disney doesn’t own it!). But now it’s a resort complex of two parks, three official Disney hotels, a handful of other hotels, and a shopping area, all connected by a monorail line from Maihama Station on the Keiyō line. It’s also not officially in Tokyo, but in Chiba prefecture. It’s about a 20-minute train ride away from Tokyo Station. But it’s also closer to Narita airport than Tokyo is for those who are arriving straight to Disneyland from an international flight.

The next day, Sunday, my host mom, six-year-old host sister, and me (my host dad rarely accompanied us on our excursions–once we all went out to eat together, but that was it) went to Tokyo DisneySea! First impression: it’s gorgeous. And it really, really is. It had only opened five years before at that point (I didn’t notice the “Five Year Anniversary” overlays at the time) and the theme of the park is exploration, adventure, and the sea, and it takes a lot of inspiration from the Jules Verne oeuvre. It’s based on ideas for a Long Beach park that never materialized (meant to be called “DisneySeas” but the plural distinction disappears in Japanese and now even the English branding says “DisneySea” instead) and also some of Disneyland Paris’s Jules Verne-filled Discoveryland. (Incidentally, it’s often referred to as just “Sea” [シー] in Japanese, the way Disneyland gets shortened to “Land” [ランド].) It encompasses a lot of lands that represent things like a Mediterranean/Venetian/Italian harbor, an American waterfront, an Aztec temple, Arabia/Agrabah, and a futuristic “Center for Weather Control.” A giant mountain in the center of the park (surrounded by Jules Verne-themed rides) and a big globe of the world fountain are the symbols of the park. The theming is all so well done and it’s really a beautiful park that it’s a joy just to stroll through.

Host sister and me outside the globe at the front. Yes, please enjoy the star over my face; I haven’t decided how far to take this anonymity thing but no pictures of my face is probably a good place to stay for now.

That day I quickly discovered that my host mom is scared of roller coasters and thrill rides! She bowed out of almost everything more than moderately intense, but encouraged my host sister to go with me anyway, except for the rides she wasn’t tall enough to get on. I love theme parks and water parks so I don’t understand that at all! But I was super thrilled to ride a version of the Indiana Jones ride from Disneyland, one of my personal favorites; this one is called Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (this was before the fourth movie came out, so it was obviously based on an idea they’d had kicking around for a while). Maybe it was because the central room didn’t have flames but instead sort of spooky ghosty smoke, but I didn’t think it was as intense and thrilling and therefore not as good as the California one. Another ride that’s totally cookie-cutter and not worth it is Raging Spirits, which is just an ordinary roller coaster with loops with some Central American theming slapped over it.

Journey to the Center of the Earth was also interesting, because it starts out very slow and then at the end you start zoooooooming through! I also enjoyed Aquatopia, where you twirl and progress across invisible tracks on the water’s surface–so cool. My favorite though was the StormRider show, one of those 4D simulator theater experiences where you pretend to be chasing a storm so water falls on you from the ceiling, wind blows, etc. I fell in love with the voice actor they got to play the lead guy, Captain Davis! And I’m not the only one, I totally found pages online of Japanese girls squealing over him. He’s dreamy!

Since this was the first day I had really been out and about in Japan and moving among crowds, it was my first experience feeling completely and totally–not to mention OBVIOUSLY–out of place as a foreigner in Japan. I could not help but be conscious of how everyone around me looked Asian and I was the only non-Japanese around. But it was also the first time I experienced the high level of Japanese service. I had a pair of pink gloves with me, and at one point while walking around the Mysterious Island area I noticed I had dropped one of them. My host mom quickly flagged down a cast member, who got on her walkie talkie and put out a notice to the other cast members to look for a missing pink glove. Within a minute someone was running up to us with the glove, having picked it up from the ground where it had fallen earlier on our path. It was amazing! I was so impressed. I also noticed the demographics of everyone else there: groups of schoolgirls in matching mouse ears, couples on dates… and realized how differently Disney is perceived here. It’s no wonder there’s a special Christmas Eve price at DisneySea aimed at couples wanting a romantic date!

Mediterranean Harbor/American Waterfront areas

I also had a jarring moment where my Japanese abilities were not up to par; in the Arabian Coast area (sort of inspired by Aladdin) I rode the Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage boat ride with my host mom and sister and I could not understand the vast majority of what the audio-animatronics were saying as we floated by. So much of Disney is in English that until that point my Japanese comprehension had not really been tested, but that definitely made me realize I wasn’t as good as I thought, and it was a little strange to be riding a Disney ride and not understand what was going on. It also didn’t help that I don’t know the story of Sinbad at all. We had lunch in the Arabian area–curry and naan! Yum!

Arabian Coast

We also took in some shows, first something called Mystic Rhythms in the Lost River Delta area that I thought was SERIOUSLY cool, and then The Little Mermaid show, which surprised me in that all the dialogue was Japanese but the songs were English and the actress playing Ariel lip-synched everything. (Later, in the fall, I met the girl who probably played Ariel when I saw the show, just randomly around Shin-Urayasu!) The other thing I noticed about the park was the different popcorn flavor stands (these are at Disneyland too, like honey popcorn by the Winnie the Pooh ride). Each land has its own flavor of popcorn sold from only one stand each: chocolate at Port Discovery, cappuccino at Mediterranean Harbor, strawberry at American Waterfront, coconut (yuck) at Lost River Delta, curry at Arabian Coast, ??? at Mysterious Island (I’ll have to figure this out someday), and sea-salt at Mermaid Lagoon. In the summer you can also get sea-salt ice cream, just like in Kingdom Hearts! It was winter, though, so I didn’t get to try it and I was a little sad. That’s still something I have to do.

Mysterious Island area, looking down into where the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride is, which we did not do that day

My host sister and I outside the harbor on our way out.

I really had a wonderful day with my host mom and sister, and it was a great official second day in Japan for me.

The first Disney experience I had upon my return to Japan the following fall came mid-September, when I went with my former host mom and sister (who I did not stay with that fall, but I had several weekend stays with them) to Ikspiari, the Disney-owned shopping center around the entrances to the parks (it’s kind of like Downtown Disney in California). In some ways it was a little disappointing to be so close to a Disney park but not go in it, but I still liked wandering around the little mall area and eating some Indian curry with naan in the food court. Probably the greatest takeaway from that day was sighting Gothic Lolita Minnie Mouse paraphernalia!

Finally in October I got to try out the real Disneyland, again with my host mom and sister. I came over for a weekend stay and we went to Disneyland on Saturday. It had the Halloween overlay so all of that was incredibly cool to see for the first time, and we took the chance to get some pictures outside the Mickey in Halloween-colored flowers at the front.

Host sister and me.

But right away I was a little confused… the entrance looks completely different!

What is this Victorian-style building???

In contrast, this is what the entrance looks like in California:

So I was really not prepared for how different it was! And it didn’t stop there… we walked through the entrance only to come upon, not Main Street like I was expecting, but a place called World Bazaar instead! Whaaaat?

And the California original for comparison again:

Apparently the décor inside is still supposed to match early 20th-century America, just like Main Street, and the main thoroughfare that goes toward the castle actually is called Main Street, but the land doesn’t have that name. But… there’s that giant Victorian-style conservatory roof over everything. It’s to shield everyone from the elements, which I’m sure is nice on rainy days but it feels super strange to enter Disneyland into an enclosed space that feels like a greenhouse. Seriously.

As I studied my map, other frightening differences emerged. Frontierland is “Westernland.” There is no New Orleans Square, its rides absorbed by neighboring Fantasyland (Haunted Mansion) and Adventureland (Pirates of the Caribbean) instead. (Even though the restaurants and New Orleans backstreets still exist!) But those were pretty minor things. Tokyo Disneyland hovers between big discrepancies with the LA park and being almost a carbon copy of it. It’s hard to decide which it is.

The other interesting thing I noticed is how English is still the default language. Not on the rides, most of those will have Japanese dialogue of course, but for names of things (restaurants, ride names), signs (English in larger font, Japanese translation underneath), and so on. Plus, I realized how steeped in American culture Disneyland is, and how foreign some of that might seem to Japanese visitors. Maybe, to them, Disneyland feels like “American Culture Park”??

The paths have also been hugely widened to accommodate the huge amounts of crowds that often descend on the insanely popular park. It feels super weird to be walking on giant paths when you’re used to smaller ones you have to squeeze through on busy days. Since we went on a Saturday, we definitely dealt with some crazy crowds. My host mom had to plan out and regiment the entire day so we could maximize our time, and we had a jam-packed schedule as full of (Fastpassed) rides and shows and parades as possible, and we still didn’t get to do everything. I was really impressed by she totally took over and plotted out everything though.

Once again my host mom bowed out of most of the roller coasters/thrill rides, and my host sister went on as many as she could with me unless the height restriction kept her out. Rides: Space Mountain (in no way comparable to LA’s which is the absolute best), Gadget’s Go Coaster (kiddie coaster in Toontown), Pirates of the Caribbean (which TERRIFIED my host sister, which I was not expecting!), Tiki Room, Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse, Country Bear Jamboree, Mickey Mouse Revue, Castle Carrousel, Splash Mountain (which scared both my host mom and sister), and Haunted Mansion (with the Nightmare before Christmas overlay–my first time to get to see it!). Some of those rides have since been removed from the U.S. park(s) or altered so it’s like going back in time to get to ride on them. In some ways going to Tokyo Disneyland is like going to 1980s U.S. Disneyland. Ah! I just saw they closed Mickey Mouse Revue in 2009 (and it’s now Mickey’s PhilharMagic just like at Disney World). I guess I’m glad I saw it while it was there!

Restaurants/snacks: Café Orleans for lunch, Queen of Hearts (or アリスのところ [Alice's place] as my host sister kept calling it) for dinner. I love the original Café Orleans so I probably pushed for us to eat there. Sadly, it is horrible here. It focuses on crêpes and pita sandwiches (not exactly the cajun fries and Monte Cristo sandwiches with mint julep that I’m so fond of!), so I tried a sausage-and-cheese crêpe. It was quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever ordered and had to eat. I had to scrape off a ton of sauerkraut (since I don’t like it, which is my own fault) but the crêpe was soggy and the sausage–AKA just a hot dog–and fakey cheddar cheese sauce completely unappetizing. GROSS. Queen of Hearts was a buffeteria-type place with tons of Alice in Wonderland theming, although sadly not much that extended to the food; I got rotisserie chicken, and was impressed by the Alice theming MUCH more so than the food. For a snack, we also had honey-lemon churros at one point! No flavored popcorn though.

Parades: Scream and Shout (Halloween parade); Electrical Parade. Scream and Shout was amazing. The costumes of the dancers between floats were nothing short of eye candy. I took so many pictures, everything looked so cool!

Electrical Parade was not new to me but it’s always a great parade. Some highlights:

Shows: Kooky Spooky Halloween, a light/fireworks show that took place around the castle (more info on the show a little down the page here). During the show a central viewing area with rows of seats is set up, but clearly those are limited so there is a lottery. At some point my host mom left me with my host sister and ran off to try for tickets. And she got them! So we got to sit in the seating area and watch the show, although my host sister was conked out by that point and fell asleep during it! It was a very full and long day, we had been up since 7:30 a.m. and we probably left the park around 10:30 p.m., and she was seven years old, so I do not blame her one bit. So much fun though! But I have not been back to Tokyo Disneyland since.

A month later I managed to make it back to DisneySea, this time with friends. I’d convinced my classmates in my Japanese class to join me, although I’ll admit my reasoning was mostly because I wanted to ride the new Tower of Terror that had just opened. Our classroom was on the fourth floor or so of a building on a university campus, and on nice days we could see Disneyland in the distance from the window at the end of the hallway (I could also see the Disneyland fireworks from the balcony of the apartment I lived in), so that put the thought in my mind a lot. We had a fun day together! It was in November on a Wednesday (which we always had off from school). Finally, after passing by it countless times on the way to Tokyo, I got to get off at Maihama Station! And ride the Disney monorail for the first time! Although I was shocked to learn it cost money, after years of riding Disney monorails for free. It makes sense of course but I was so surprised at the time!

How cuuute is the monorail?! Mickey-shaped windows and straps!

We got in the park around 11 a.m., got Fastpasses for Tower of Terror, and our time wasn’t until 6:30 p.m.–that should tell you how legit Japanese people are about something new opening. Although otherwise the park was pretty empty since it was a weekday. While we were in the area we made reservations to have lunch at the Sailing Day Buffet–excellent choice (not my idea, shockingly!), and great value too. It was absolutely delicious and there was caramel ice cream!

Rides: Indiana Jones, StormRider, Journey to the Center of the Earth (twice), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (kind of claustrophobic since each tiny submarine only holds six people! Okay, I’m not going to lie, I actually did get legitimately freaked out on this ride even though it didn’t feel like we were actually moving around under the water at all), Aladdin carousel, DisneySea Electric Railway (on a whim; it was boring), and finally Tower of Terror. It was cool to see how it had been reimagined and given an entirely new storyline from the previous incarnations, but it was also not as intense even though–hilariously–there were over-the-shoulder restraints in the ride as if it was. For dinner we went to the Planet Hollywood in Ikspiari, which yeah I’m sure was overpriced and tacky, but it was American food we’d been craving for a while so it was really satisfying. I had a turkey sandwich, and I hadn’t had turkey in so long by then! Also a grasshopper cocktail, which was like a minty alcoholic milkshake! Really good!

It was a really fun day! I am so glad we went. Some pictures of the day…

This is what happens when you go with boys.

Tower of Terror lit up at night with fountains outside it.

I also visited the Tokyo Bay Hilton on Disney property a couple times in December since my host sister was part of “Mickey’s Junior Chorus” which performed Christmas songs there. Once we got the buffet while we watched the performance, which included a dessert buffet!!! It was amazing. Another time we picked out pastries and desserts (loading them onto a tray of course, as Asian bakeries do!) from the pâtisserie inside the hotel.

The thing that surprises me now is that I’ve looked into if any new rides have opened at either of the parks, in anticipation of visiting again… and none really have! DisneySea has added Fantasmic! which is cool, and in Disneyland there’s a flying carpets ride and Turtle Talk (don’t care about either of those kiddy things though), plus Toy Story Midway Mania is supposed to open, but the it really looks like the last big ride addition was the Tower of Terror, and that was back in 2006! It seems like Disneyland and Disney World are always changing and adding stuff so I don’t really understand why the same isn’t happening here. DisneySea in particular I feel needs to be fleshed out a bit; on an ordinary day you can complete the park in half a day, easy. It’s beautiful but it suffers from not quite enough to do. Then again, maybe I just need to go by myself when I’m free to linger as much as I please. For one thing I feel like I’ve barely explored the Mediterranean Harbor area. Definitely when I went with my friends (including several hyperactive boys) lingering was not encouraged, and my host mom liked to schedule things out a lot too.

Oh, and another interesting thing is comparing the prices of season passes between the Tokyo resort and the original California parks. It’s an astronomical difference. For the California parks, annual passports start at $200 a year and go up to $500 a year depending on the benefits you want to add. All give you access to both parks. For Tokyo… an annual passport to both parks is a whopping 80,000 yen or $982 according to the current exchange rate. $982!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For one year! My jaw dropped when I first learned that. Unbelievable! Annual passports for just one park or the other are 52,000 yen or $638 in comparison. So in Tokyo, you can buy an annual passport for just ONE park that costs MORE than the highest-level annual passport to BOTH parks in California. Un-freaking-believable. I don’t know how they can get away with charging so much; I definitely don’t think the value is enough to warrant it. You would have to visit one park more than eight times to break even on what you paid for the annual passport (for one park), while in California you’d only have to visit twice (on a park-hopper pass each time) to get back what you paid for an annual passport (to both parks). Once again: I don’t know how they get away with that.

That aside… writing this all out, of course I really want to go again now. There’s so many corners of each park I have yet to explore, so many restaurants yet to dine at, and so many rides to go on again now that my Japanese listening comprehension is better. I’d love to go with my sister sometime and try to go on a weekday so we can maximize our time and hit a lot of stuff. I will get my next Disney fix at the end of the summer when I go to the California parks after the second gate has seen a complete makeover, so I’m really looking forward to that (I will attempt to go to everything new in both parks in one day while also hitting old favorites, possibly with family members in tow. We will see how that goes). The last time I went (to Disneyland in California) was Dec. 2010 with Kirk and we went on one of the busiest days of the entire year since it was the first nice day after Christmas. The park was jam-packed with crowds and we both managed to have a very fun day even though he usually hates waiting in lines (which is usually a big part of theme parks so he’s not super fond of them in general) and all of that was compounded by a thousand that day… and despite all that he told me he had a great day… that’s a Disney miracle right there.

If you have a question to ask me related to Japan, or even Japanese language study, please do! I want to write more of these travel memory-type essays but I think I’d do better if I could have a prompt.

Translating “hanami”

It’s the time of year for hanami in many places–the cherry trees at our local arboretum bloomed last month, but Japan’s are now in full bloom, or will be soon, or just bloomed depending on where in the archipelago–and I am simultaneously happy and deeply jealous of everyone taking advantage of it. Unfortunately, while I know all about it, I have never attended hanami. It is absolutely something I want to do and will do as soon as I can, but I have never been in Japan in the springtime and somehow have always missed opportunities to participate in any of the makeshift hanami events held near me stateside. My senior year of college the Japanese TA and some Japanese students held a faux-hanami under blossoming (not cherry) trees on campus, but it wasn’t quite the same and I didn’t attend it. This year I was planning to go to a combination hanami-3/11 commemorative event under our local cherry trees, but it got rained out. Next year it’s happening though–my first hanami, in Japan, will take place! And it will be great! Because what’s not to love? Hitting up the conveni, then drinking and snacking under a canopy of gorgeous cherry blossoms. Ostensibly contemplating the transience of life, but more just enjoying a fun time with friends (perhaps coworkers). I love the whole idea of hanami and it is sooo frustrating that I haven’t gotten to do it yet.

Since I can’t discuss my personal hanami experiences, I’d like to talk about how we commonly translate the word hanami into English… and, okay, why I think that way is wrong, and my suggestion of an alternative. Also, the other possible -mi events/actions! I find them all pretty fascinating. For example, I may not have ever been to hanami (yet!!) but I have been to tsukimi, many times.

The word “stargaze” first set me off on this path. It’s interesting but there’s no word for “stargaze” in Japanese; apparently everything else can be looked at and get a special term–the moon, cherry blossoms, even plum blossoms–but not the stars. In any case, wouldn’t you say this is our go-to term in English for an activity centered around looking at something? “-gaze”? So why shouldn’t we translate the 見 (mi; look) in 花見 (hanami), 梅見 (umemi), 雪見 (yukimi), and 月見 (tsukimi) as “-gaze” too? Blossomgazing, snowgazing, moongazing? I know it sounds a little strange, but so does “flower viewing” or “snow viewing” or “moon viewing” to me. “Viewing” just seems too much like a dry literal translation. I also don’t like “flowers” instead of “blossoms”; in this context 花 (hana) refers directly to cherry blossoms, not flowers in general. I vastly prefer what I’ve come up with… even if I’m the only one who chooses to use it! Yes, I’m stubborn; see how I chose to write conveni instead of conbini because it’s more accurate to the English word it came from. I do what I want!

There’s also an interesting phrase that applies when it comes to hanami: 花より団子 (hana yori dango). This means “the dango more than the [cherry] blossoms” and refers to when people attending hanami care more about the dango and other snacks and drinks than looking up at the blossoms, the reason the event is happening. (It’s also a figurative metaphor admonishing those who value practicality, the food, over beauty, the blossoms–or, if you prefer, championing practicality over beauty.) I think we’re all probably guilty of enjoying one (or in my case, the thought of one) more than the other. It’s also interesting that the dango is a traditional snack for these sorts of -見 events; there are tsukimi-dango just as there are hanami-dango. Mmm… dango. When I do finally get to attend hanami in Japan, you can bet I am going to buy some hanami-dango and some sort of hanami/cherry/spring-centric-flavored canned chū-hi and do it right!

My little sister is currently an ALT with JET in Kyūshū, and I got to see some of her pictures of her local park covered in drop-dead gorgeous cherry blossoms; she also had a hanami there with friends in a nearby park. I can’t get over how beautiful it looks!

I wrote this as part of the April 2012 J∙Festa!

Strengths and talents

Something I think a lot about is personal strengths and talents–one’s forte (or in Japanese 得意). I believe everyone has at least one, and you should figure out what it is and base your life around it. Ideally it’s something you can build a career on, but in some cases it isn’t, like if your talent is charisma and the ability to manipulate social situations to your benefit (ha, that sounds evil! But I actually do know someone who I feel has this talent). For this reason, I tend to prefer people who have found that strength and are doing what they love, and I’m working hard to be able to say I’m doing the same. (I kind of can now, but not completely.) I’m aware this belief is a little presumptuous and first-world-problems; obviously, not everyone has the means to be able to see their talents through to the fullest. Or some people just can’t find a way to do what they love, career-wise, because they aren’t cut out for anything lucrative. And I get that. But sometimes, there’s a degree of lack of trying that plays into it as well, and that’s what I primarily don’t like. If you’ve tried your hardest to figure out a good way to monetize your natural talents, and you’ve sunk time into research and contemplation and experimentation, and in the end you just can’t find a way–okay. At least you made an attempt. But if you haven’t exhausted every option you have, you owe it to yourself to at least try. Life is so much better–for you, and for everyone around you–when you’re able to live your passion. Again, I know this is all going to sound arrogant, patting myself on the back, and like I think I have it all figured out. I don’t. I’m struggling with this myself, and have for years. But I think this is one way to find happiness, so it’s worth exploring and advocating.

First, talents. It did take me a while to discover my own. After all, sometimes what you love to do is not necessarily what you’re good at. This is the case for me and art. I have given up on art by now and almost never draw or anything, or even do photography which I used to love (although that’s really because I lack the time and a good camera to fully sink into it–someday I want to build my own darkroom though), but in elementary and middle school I really tried to be good at art. I tried so hard in elementary school to get the art teacher to let me into the higher-level after-school “gifted” art classes–which may I point out the majority of my friends were in, which was so frustrating and jealousy-inducing for me–but she rejected me at least two times. LONG TANGENT/RANT TIME: I submitted to her a portfolio of what I thought was my best work, but basically she told me (maybe not in those exact words, but this was her gist) as nicely as possible that it wasn’t creative enough for what she wanted. I applied again and she rejected me again. She also turned down my application to join the newly created after-school “pet patrol” that went around to all the class pets in the school and fed them (she was in charge of it). God. I was like obsessed with every single pet at my school, all the teachers who owned those pets knew me and liked me, a job on that “pet patrol” would have been made for me, two of my close friends were in it, and yet she wouldn’t let me in. It was ridiculous. I think she had something against me, probably dating back to first grade when I would purposely misbehave so she would give me an assigned seat next to the real perpetrator of misbehavior in our class, a boy I had a crush on. I was a really crafty kid. If there was a way to get what I wanted, or a way to be closer to someone I liked, I would do it no matter the personal cost to me, even if it involved tricking people.

Anyway. So that’s what happens when you love to do something but you have no natural talent for it and that makes you too frustrated to put in the hard work it would take to overcome it. But sometimes it’s the case that what you’re good at is not necessarily also what you love to do. This is the case for me and history. I hate it. But it doesn’t hate me. For whatever reason, I seem to be able to do it; I get good grades in it. When we took IB exams at the end of high school, I got my second-highest score not on English but on history. And for some reason teachers have always liked my history research papers, even though I haven’t always enjoyed writing them. Maybe it’s because history is largely essay-based, and I’m a good writer. Who knows.

And sometimes there are things you feel like you might be good at but you’ve never gotten the chance to pursue them. I feel this way about acting. I’ve always been kind of a dramatic person, drawn to theatrics… maybe not a good trait. That should make it obvious why one of my more thoughtful elementary school teachers recommended to my mom that I enroll in some sort of acting/theatre program. So around third or fourth grade, I did–I became part of a summer children’s theatre program that took kids and placed them in a play that could accommodate them. There were maybe 30 kids and we were given different supporting group roles (such as “three cowboys”–I was one of the three–or “crowd of people” and so on) and had choreography rehearsals, etc, before the final performances. It was some sort of wild west story. Adult actors carried the play and then the kids came in with secondary roles; I don’t think any kids had any lines. So I did this summer program–disappointed as I was that 1) I had to crossdress and be a cowBOY; 2) I just walked on, I didn’t have any lines–and then that was it. I never pursued it further, and my mom never pressed me to (since she believed in not forcing kids to do anything they didn’t want to, which I can see, but sometimes kids don’t know what’s best! It’s for this same reason that she let me quit ballet and tap dance after one year, when I think she should have pushed me to give things more of a try before giving up).

I think I was disappointed that I hadn’t gotten to do any real acting that satisfied my dramatic, attention-seeking urges, and maybe also I was scared of what might happen if I really put myself out there, so I didn’t do anything more with acting. Well, actually, in fourth or fifth grade I organized a play for the talent show with some classmates (something about a castle/princess, not sure if it was original or adapted–it was a class project and then it seemed only natural to me that it get performed at the talent show too so I sort of browbeat the people in my group into doing that and did a lot of the work to make it possible (making the scenery, bringing the props, organizing rehearsals and helping with costumes)–funny thing, at least two of the actors went on to join theatre and act in plays). But while I had opportunities to start taking theatre classes in middle school as my elective, and I really should have because I loved going to all the plays (I went to every one from middle school through college) and I idolized a lot of the people in theatre and the teacher seemed fantastic, I didn’t. I wanted to take art instead, but then I was forced to realize I was bad at it, and then I decided to do band to be near a friend and near a crush (stupid reasons). But also I was too scared, and I still am too scared, too afraid I’ll be bad at acting even though I have a feeling I might have some natural talent for it that just needs to be honed. Which is why I should have started it when I was a fearless, fully confident and secure kid (I used to think the world of myself as a child, haha) and now it’s too late. Maybe I’m a frustrated theatre kid.

And, of course, sometimes it’s the case that what you love to do and what you are good at is not something you can turn into a career. Maybe due to timing (of a few years or even of centuries; maybe your abilities would have been better appreciated in a previous time–or a future one), geography, the economy, and other things you can’t help. Maybe due to the fact that all those factors notwithstanding, it’s just not fodder for a career. This is really the worst situation of all. I don’t like thinking about it.

In any case, I did eventually stumble upon my real talents. Finally, at the end of freshman year of high school, I realized that I was–in all vanity, I admit, though it actually was a legitimate surprise to me when I finally noticed other people had a harder time than me–better than most other students at Spanish, my one foreign language at the time, and maybe I should try learning some others. Maybe someday I could turn it into a career. So I added French, then Japanese in college… and the rest is history. Prior to that I knew I was also good at English and writing too, but the pool of competition was bigger there. In any case, I’m lucky–I finally figured it out. Of course, the real test is in turning it into a career.

On that note… my first summer at TOKYOPOP as an editorial intern was actually funded by a program at my school that provided a stipend to 60 successful applicants, allowing them to conduct an internship in a desired career field. I even got a travel allotment too (some people’s internships were in other countries!). (I think the program, a true pre-recession relic, has run out of funding now, which makes my memories of this whole thing take on a tinge of was-I-really-so-lucky did-that-really-happen unbelievability. I mean, needless to say I couldn’t have afforded/justified doing this without the grant.) As part of the program, we went on a retreat at the start of summer to properly prepare us mentally for the internship, ensuring that we’d view this as a true trial career and contemplate whether it fulfilled our abilities as we progressed. (During the summer we had to keep a journal with an entry for every day of work, and upon our return to campus in the fall we had to attend a semester-length course that would have us contemplate our experience, our goals, and our career. Yes, this money came with lots of strings attached!). Prior to the retreat we were asked to take a strengths quiz and bring our results with us, where we’d discuss them. I really love this sort of thing–taking quizzes, discovering my strengths (it’s why I’m such a sucker for Myers-Briggs)–so I was overjoyed and have cherished my results ever since. Here is what it told me were my five strengths.

Maximizer
Excellence, not average, is your measure. Taking something from below average to slightly above average takes a great deal of effort and in your opinion is not very rewarding. Transforming something strong into something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling. Strengths, whether yours or someone else’s, fascinate you. Like a diver after pearls, you search them out, watching for the telltale signs of a strength. A glimpse of untutored excellence, rapid learning, a skill mastered without recourse to steps-all these are clues that a strength may be in play. And having found a strength, you feel compelled to nurture it, refine it, and stretch it toward excellence. You polish the pearl until it shines. This natural sorting of strengths means that others see you as discriminating. You choose to spend time with people who appreciate your particular strengths. Likewise, you are attracted to others who seem to have found and cultivated their own strengths. You tend to avoid those who want to fix you and make you well rounded. You don’t want to spend your life bemoaning what you lack. Rather, you want to capitalize on the gifts with which you are blessed. It’s more fun. It’s more productive. And, counterintuitively, it is more demanding.

Input
You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information-words, facts, books, and quotations-or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don’t feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It’s interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

Empathy
You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through their eyes and share their perspective. You do not necessarily agree with each person’s perspective. You do not necessarily feel pity for each person’s predicament-this would be sympathy, not Empathy. You do not necessarily condone the choices each person makes, but you do understand. This instinctive ability to understand is powerful. You hear the unvoiced questions. You anticipate the need. Where others grapple for words, you seem to find the right words and the right tone. You help people find the right phrases to express their feelings-to themselves as well as to others. You help them give voice to their emotional life. For all these reasons other people are drawn to you.

Learner
You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered-this is the process that entices you. Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences-yoga or piano lessons or graduate classes. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time and then move on to the next one. This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential. The outcome of the learning is less significant than the “getting there.”

Intellection
You like to think. You like mental activity. You like exercising the “muscles” of your brain, stretching them in multiple directions. This need for mental activity may be focused; for example, you may be trying to solve a problem or develop an idea or understand another person’s feelings. The exact focus will depend on your other strengths. On the other hand, this mental activity may very well lack focus. The theme of Intellection does not dictate what you are thinking about; it simply describes that you like to think. You are the kind of person who enjoys your time alone because it is your time for musing and reflection. You are introspective. In a sense you are your own best companion, as you pose yourself questions and try out answers on yourself to see how they sound. This introspection may lead you to a slight sense of discontent as you compare what you are actually doing with all the thoughts and ideas that your mind conceives. Or this introspection may tend toward more pragmatic matters such as the events of the day or a conversation that you plan to have later. Wherever it leads you, this mental hum is one of the constants of your life.

I would say… yes. This is all quite accurate. Empathy surprised me at the time, but since then I’ve come to realize it’s really true. I can always sort of sense what someone is feeling. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, as sometimes it’s not a good feeling and if it’s my fault the other person probably wishes I couldn’t pick up on it but I can so it makes me miserable too. Or even if I can pick up on a bad feeling, I may not want to do anything to fix it (if I don’t like the person, etc) so I end up feeling like a terrible person. But I really do rely on my instincts and ability to 空気を読む (KY!) a lot, it’s true. Observing and picking up others’ emotions is like second nature to me.

All the same, I find that the people I’m closest to are also the ones who are maximizing their strengths and talents–who have found them and are putting them to good use. People with day jobs, people who are floundering and won’t put in the time/effort to figure out what they really want from life and then pursue it, people who drift along in life and sort of fall into things, or get pushed into things by others, and then wake up years later and go “What happened?”–those are not my people. I just don’t understand them and moreover I have a hard time feeling sympathy for them. At some point, we have nothing in common. I can’t comprehend why they won’t pursue a career–or something, anything that’s both lucrative and fulfilling, which yes is not easy but I believe attainable for anyone given enough effort, time, and research–and I sense jealousy towards me from them. (I’m sure this all sounds terribly narcissistic and superior.)

But Aro’s dad is always telling us the same thing. He’s so glad that both of us, and a lot of our friends, are pursuing careers that utilize strengths and talents as opposed to soul-sucking day jobs–even if we’re not there yet, just the fact that we’re trying is enough. To this day I don’t understand people who are content to work day jobs and then go home and pursue their “real” interests and hobbies. Follow your passion instead!

結果

Well, I guess I should report some news, even though it just makes me nervous. I did get accepted to the program that had the Japanese screening test I was studying so feverishly for during January and February (only to discover that the exam was quite a bit easier than I’d feared). And if that meant I was going, I’d be thrilled. Unfortunately, it’s very expensive, and I’m not in school–I can’t take out student loans. And I didn’t get the one scholarship I was eligible to apply for as a non-student (even though of course they awarded almost exclusively to people who are grad students anyway–great!). The program does, apparently, apply on your behalf to a host of other scholarships, so fingers crossed that something results from that, even though I won’t know until May/June. I moved home a year ago and managed to get a series of raises so I could save money over the past year for just this purpose, but it won’t be enough to cover everything unfortunately. I am currently nervewracked over funding results, and feeling annoyed that everything seems to favor grad students while leaving me totally out in the cold, even though they can take out loans and I can’t! And isn’t wanting to be a translator and not a professor a good career path, too? Doesn’t that deserve rewarding too? I know, I’m whiny. My apologies if you are an academic grad student reading this; I am just jealous.

Part of my Japanese-study plan from the start was to do a summer program prior to the program in Japan. Of course I wanted to find out if I could do the program in Japan before committing to the summer program, but they were going to take away financial aid awards if we didn’t give an answer by March 30. I was forced to decide and I decided yes. I paid a deposit and I bought plane tickets. But it is nervewracking. I was awarded half of the cost of the program (which includes room and board) in financial aid, and I was waitlisted for the full-ride scholarship, but if I do have to pay the other half it is going to take money away from the program in Japan. So while part of me is excited that I am going to attend this great program and increase my Japanese skills, the other part of me is terrified that I have made a decision that involves quitting my job without solid plans for what will happen after the summer. This is so not how I operate!

The program is also in a very nice location which will be a great place to spend the summer, and it’s close to a city where one of my friends from studying abroad in Japan lives, so I get to spend the week before the program starts visiting her (and exploring two new cities I’ve wanted to visit for a long time–one in Canada, where I haven’t been yet, so I get to check a new country off my list!). I also get to spend the week after it ends visiting some of my favorite relatives in a city I love. Those things are very exciting and I’m looking forward to them, even though the idea of spending money I saved so carefully, after quitting my job, is frankly terrifying.

Not terrifying enough to put the brakes on everything, though. I gotta get out of here. I have a good life and job here, and my boyfriend and I finally live in the same city so our relationship is amazing right now and we’re loving it, but I’ve been saying I’d return to Japan since I graduated college and that was almost four years ago. If I stay too much longer, I’ll never do this. I need to go have adventures and build myself a new career before I’m ready to settle down.

So, accepted to the program, but might not be able to afford to do it. In that case, there’s plan B: I don’t get to do the program in Japan this year, and instead I depart for Japan in the early fall to be an English teacher. I work for a year, saving money, and re-apply for the program and the scholarship the next year and hope it all works out then. Not exactly something I’m dying to do–I have rejected all thought of a teaching career for a long time now, and I turned down JET in 2010 partially because I just didn’t want to teach. Also, this would be an extra year away from my boyfriend (but the idea of staying here and working and saving instead, after I’ve already done that for so long, seems just as soul-sucking–at least there I could be immersed in Japanese too). However, it is the best way to get a job in Japan from the US. At a level where I feel fairly confident I could pass N2, it also feels like my Japanese is good enough to get a legit non-English-teaching job there, but most likely not from outside the country. Anyway, so I don’t want to do it, but it’s the best plan B I have, and who knows, I may end up not hating it. Anyway, I actually already have a job offer on ice from one of the lower-paying schools, and I have an interview with a much better one this weekend. That interview will involve videotaping me giving a demo lesson. Ummmm, yikes. Frightening. I keep hoping I will be awarded a staggering sum of money this week so I can cancel, but… I don’t think that’s likely, so I am going to suck it up and do it. I am naturally on the shy/introverted side, but I call people on the phone and interview them for my job and have for years, so I have gotten better about talking to people. I can probably do this. I just don’t want to!

As for studying Japanese, it’s mostly done through translating these days, though I try to get through a chapter in each grammar book on the weekends and drill at least some vocab daily. Also writing long emails to my Japanese friend Yuuho, although those are intermittent now that she’s getting ready to move to Australia for a year. And get this–she has no job or place to live lined up!! This is just soooo not something most Japanese people do, ha ha. She’s been out of college a couple years, was working in a Chinese restaurant, has a long-distance boyfriend, pretty good English, and I guess just wants a change? And she said Australia is one of the only countries where you can do a “working holiday” visa as a Japanese person (and probably one of the only English-speaking ones too). I am puzzled why she didn’t pursue a legit office job after graduating college, but who knows. Maybe because, as she told me, she loves Chiba more than Tokyo, and maybe she wanted a chance to work abroad like this. Anyway, I’m following my heart in the same way, so I can’t fault her too much. I am really enjoying emailing back and forth with her though, and I just wish she was going to still be in Japan when I got there. I need to try and reconnect with some of my other Japanese friends before I arrive, but how…? (it’s still weird to think of “going to Japan this fall” as a real thing, since I am not yet able to visualize exactly where in it I’ll be headed or under what circumstances, but it is something that needs to happen otherwise quitting my job will have been pointless, so I should start thinking of it as real)

Best/worst of my Okcupid messages

So, I’m happily taken and all, but the other night I was in a group Skype chat with most of my closest local friends (including some who have moved away) and the recent dating escapades of one of them came up. I encouraged him to spruce up his Okcupid profile to improve his chances of finding someone better, and in order to see his profile I had to log in to my account… which is largely dormant but for some reason I enjoy answering those stupid questions… and I thought I’d see what ridiculous messages have accrued in my absence. It says right on my profile “Seeing someone” and under “Contact me if” it says the effect of “I’m taken, so it’s not a good idea” and has for YEARS but I continue to get messaged by dudes who clearly don’t read. If I were on the site to date that would be automatic disqualification. If all you did was look at the pictures, skim the profile, and then send me a generic message? No.

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to post some of the silliest messages here and mock them! That’s always fun. Typos and weird punctuation, unfortunately, completely retained.

The “So generic it feels custom” faux personalized mass message (but fails because it gives away that you didn’t read that I’m taken)
- “We r so close yet so far!!! Wud u like to have a minimum distance between us?” (whaaa?)
- “Hello beautiful how are you? Just wanted to message you and see how you were doing “
- “Bonjour! How’s it going? Having a splendiferous day? “
- “I’m willing to bet that you’ve gotten about 1000 emails from guys saying something like “omg, ur hot..lets sex” or “my name is Steve I love holding hands and cuddling” lol. If that’s what your used to then this email is refreshing. I’ll let you know right off that I’m not your average guy. I’m 27, can make anybody laugh, green eyes, tall, athletic, a business owner, i love to travel, work out, hit up the lake. I’m a nice guy but I know how to be bad. If you are a girl with intelligence, sensuality, and a sense of humor, feel free to message me” (this might work on some girls but nothing about it is customized to me, so you know he’s sent it to at least 10 or 20 others)
- “wow you are really pretty”
- “Hello pretty lady. How u doing with this lovely weather going on lol? By the way my name is [redacted]. I was just broewsing ur profile I see what I like what u putting on ur page. U can review mine but didn’t put lots of thing about me cuz I don’t really like to type all that. But if you intersted of a gentelman like me who is treat u well nad take care of you like an angel you are the right page!!! Well idont want ur eyes getting hurt so if you like what you see get at me inbox and will see where we should fallin into. Anyways thanks for reading and understand what I came from.” (hilarious typos, and again, classic mass message)
- “I’m [name] and I really liked your profile, you seem really sweet and I would love to get to know you better. Home to hear back from you soon!”
- “Hey, how’s the online dating working out?” (is this supposed to be a neg?)

The “let’s riff on Japanese stuff/Japan because you mentioned it in your profile” message
- “We share a lot of our nerdy/geeky interests, and you seem like you’ve got a lot of energy for literature and the like =) I’m also minoring in Japanese here at [local university]! I’d love to hear back from you! You seem really interesting!”
- “First off I must say, being able to work with TOKYOPOP is crazy. I don’t read much manga myself, but I do enjoy animes and other nerdy junk. Anyways I can’t judge you solely on a persons profile, so I was wondering if you would like to talk sometimes. If you aren’t interested let me know,….. if you are cool. Nice to meet you”
- “wow you are sexy!!! r u real? haha mangas and such!!! “
- “what mangas would you recomend? im reading Bleach(i know) & Berserk” (“I know” indeed)
- “I think freckles are cute Will you teach me Japanese?”
- “What Anime do you like to watch?”
- “So you like anime?”
- “the ice has been broken. yo im [name], apparently we both like anime.” (yo)
- “Konnichiwa, genki desuka? What’s your plan for the weekend? I need to clean my old apartment. How’s your learning Japanese? When you have time, you should practice Japanese with me. We can be fun chat friends too =) Takeshi” (well, apparently this guy was actually Japanese)

The futile message that at least shows you read
- “Ugh you have a boyfriend. You are definitely my kinda geek. Just throwing that out there.”
- “Too bad that you are taken, you seem rather adorable..”
- “Dump your Boyfriend: Who are you kidding? You have a boyfriend? If you got to meet me…you would fall in love and you wouldn’t have to spend your time on the internot.”
- “Dump him, he cant treat you any where as nice as I would.” (after these messages I had to put a thing on my profile saying no, of course I’m not going to dump my boyfriend for you!)

The random
- “Do you watch any TV shows?” (for a while my favorite TV shows was the one thing missing from my profile. But when that’s ALL you say in your message…??)
- “Happy Saturday!”
- “david sedaris” (I mention him as one of my favorite authors in my profile. But that was seriously the entire message)

Ugh. Looking at all this, I can’t help but be reminded of that scene from When Harry Met Sally, after Harry and Sally have a crisis and call their friends (a live-in couple) separately. Carrie Fisher’s character (I remember the important things about one of my favorite movies, obviously) hangs up with Sally and her boyfriend hangs up with Harry, and they turn to each other in their bed and say:

Carrie Fisher’s character: Tell me I’ll never have to be back out there again.
Her live-in boyfriend: You’ll never have to be back out there again.

Upheaval

Not much to report; I’m currently in “waiting for results/on pins and needles wanting to plan my future” mode. Also, “hoping money would magically rain down from the sky” mode. Doing a couple Japanese textbook lessons every weekend, some Read The Kanji every day, and translating a lot in my free time (neverending pile of things to translate). I’m happy though that translation has gotten so much easier and faster since I increased my level. It’s amazing! But I’m also having to work hard to get my fitness levels back to where they used to be before I took my studying break. It’s like I traded increased Japanese ability for decreased muscle/strength/endurance. But, super worth it and I’d do it all over again.

(One small note about gym stuff… remember how I said I probably wouldn’t still be doing Pilates if not for my amazing instructor? Yeah, well… she quit! The gym changed up the times for the classes I had with her, and took away a few others I wasn’t attending, which really pissed her off and made her feel unappreciated (she protested, as did many of her regular students myself included, but it didn’t help)… plus attendance dropped since all the changes made things more inconvenient… and I guess it wasn’t worth it for her gas/time-wise with less classes to teach a day… so she quit this location! Nooooooo. I totally understand her decision but I still hate it and I’m mad at the gym’s stupid management. I hope they’re sorry now. I got to have one last class with her, which I didn’t realize would be her final class here, and then the next time I went there was a sub, and there’s no permanent replacement yet. I’d like to say I’m still going to go, but… probably not. However, I’m trying to change up my weekly workout routine to compensate for it, and still get in some ab work on my own every week anyway. And at least I’m going to yoga 2-3 times a week. But–sigh. I’m going to miss her!)

First, a little follow-up to my entry talking about how hard it is to make and keep real Japanese friends in Japan, instead of just sticking close to the other foreigners/ex-pats there. Right after I wrote that I came across an article Debito Arudou wrote on the subject, and the follow-up piece with readers’ responses. Not a real fan of Debito Arudou (especially the fact that he makes a point to call himself by his naturalized Japanese name instead of his birth name; I just think that’s stupid even if it is his legal name now) and in general he’s a fault-finding whiner but in this case he’s more or less got it right. It’s an interesting read in any case.

Thinking about how irritating it is that in Japan you’re often considered more of a “foreigner” representative archetype than an actual human person, I’ve noticed there are some parallels when it comes to, of all things, feminism/sexism. One of the points there is to get men to view women as whole and complete people, humans, not “women.” Don’t ask “how do I talk to girls”–just talk to them like you would any other human being. They are people, not a monolith representing “women.” It’s the same with how many Japanese view foreigners–you’ll always get asked where you’re from (what’s your nationality), it will be assumed that you speak English (and you will either be avoided in order to dodge the possibility of having to speak English, or you will be accosted for free English conversation lessons), and many conversations will revolve around your country and the differences between it and Japan (with many subtle reminders of how Japan is unique and better–four seasons, anyone?!). For once I would love to see a Japanese person just ask a foreigner, “How’s your day going? What have you been into lately?” instead of, “Today is so cold/hot, I bet it never gets this cold/hot where you’re from!” and making almost every conversation about your differences instead of your similarities as humans.

Anyway! I had shabu-shabu recently with some friends and friends-of-friends; the dinner conversation should have been entirely in Japanese considering the four Japanese people there and three of us able to converse in Japanese, but everyone wasn’t spread out well so it wasn’t as immersive as I would have liked. The shabu-shabu was delicious though, of course, and I got to try out a new restaurant which is good but a little too far for me to want to go again. I also noticed something that bothers me: the advanced Japanese learner who nonetheless has a terrible speaking accent. Terrible. Just horrid. He can express himself quite fluidly, call on the vocabulary he needs easily, but his pronunciation is unbelievably awful. It hurts to hear. I seriously don’t understand how anyone can get to that level and never think to put serious time and effort into fixing your accent. Maybe I’m just biased because it comes easily to me, I mean I do know how hard it is to improve an accent (hello, French), but at least try. It gives the rest of us a bad reputation.

A friend also turned me on to this article and, by extension, Michael Erard’s book Babel No More where he studied hyperpolyglots, people who have studied 10-50 languages. (She sent it to me with the note “This is you! He should have interviewed you!” but I fall pretty short of those criteria!). I really have to disagree with that approach. If you haven’t mastered a language, to me, it’s not really worth it. Don’t say “I know [x]” if you couldn’t actually hold a real conversation with a native speaker. Because I feel like these people really aren’t mastering the majority of these languages; there’s just entries on a résumé. So to me that sort of thing really isn’t as impressive as it seems to people who don’t study languages, who only have high school French under their belt. As I said here, it’s really not that great to be a jack of all trades if you’re not a master of at least one. I’d rather focus on complete fluency in one of the most difficult languages to learn as a native English speaker, thank you. That’s what should be truly worthy of admiration.

What I really want to discuss though is the recent changes at my job. There’s been a lot of upheaval and weirdly I’ve emerged from it as the most senior person in my department in terms of longevity with the company–but I’m not the boss! That’s okay though, I don’t want to be. When I quit my other job to come back to this one, I was excited to work with my boss/managing editor, who had been such a great mentor for me since 2009 and also just a wonderful, warm, and sweet person. She was also eight months pregnant when I returned. We only worked together in the office for a few weeks before she had her baby and went on maternity leave. She swore to us she’d be back in December… then it became January… then on the day she was supposed to start back, we got an email instead letting us know that she had decided to make her maternity leave permanent (though still do freelance work for the company, mostly PR stuff) and as her replacement we were going to bring back my former co-editor, who had quit to go work somewhere else about a month before I did! Who was also someone I had grown close to as we’re pretty similar and we had gotten together a couple times since she quit. So it was very much a situation where the good news canceled out the bad news, even though we were all sad about the bad news. (It also turned out this had all been planned since Christmas!!)

I wasn’t upset at all at that my boss didn’t approach me about replacing her. When I was re-hired, I found out that she had also been in touch with this same girl, who had turned them down (even though she was unhappy at her new job just like I was), so they re-hired me instead. I’m fine with that. She’s an excellent editor and writer and she has a master’s degree in journalism, so it makes perfect sense that she’s the person they would pursue first. She is further along in her career than I am and it doesn’t hurt my feelings at all. It was the same here; she’s the much better choice for the job. It was also sort of a direct hire situation where my old boss went straight to her (“If I quit, would you consider replacing me?”) and they worked it out amongst themselves; no one else was considered for the position. And also, I don’t want that job, I don’t want to be the boss. I’m only 26! I’m very happy right where I am.

So that happened, she started in January, and things have been great with her in charge. Then, in February, another co-editor made an announcement: she and her husband were very likely about to adopt! This was someone who had been hired to start the same day as me, and had worked part-time (three days a week) ever since. When I came back we became office roommates and as the person with the most longevity in editorial she acted as interim managing editor during my boss’s maternity leave. It turns out that after years of trying for a baby, they had decided to go the adoption route at least to start. So very soon everything worked out and a pregnant girl chose them and they adopted her baby; she went into labor at the end of February and just recently we found out that my coworker’s maternity leave is also going to be permanent. We had hired a replacement just in case anyway, so that’s another full personnel replacement. Fortunately, I really like the new editor we hired and I think she’ll be a great addition to the staff.

And as if all that weren’t enough, we had another change: someone got fired. Well, it needed to happen. This was someone who was hired a couple months before I came back, to replace both me and the other girl who left (who’s now managing editor!). At my boss’s baby shower in September, I asked her how the new girl was doing. Her answer: “She’s good… she’s okay…” in an optimistic but not enthusiastic tone. After she went on maternity leave, it fell to me and the other editor (the one who adopted and left) to read and review her editorials after she wrote them. I quickly noticed several glaring red flags. It wasn’t that she was a bad writer… but there were a lot of details she wasn’t getting right. Consistently. I’d point them out one time, they’d pop back up the next. And sometimes the way she put the editorial together just didn’t make logical sense and I’d be moving around chunks of text to rework it. She would also frequently send me the wrong file, the wrong attachment, or no attachment. There were lots of mistakes to revise, constantly. It took time! I tried to remember my recent experience and give her positive feedback too. But it was hard when she needed so much work, and when she couldn’t remember to implement the changes we were asking her to absorb. (She also missed a lot of work for what I felt were trivial reasons, and this was after she’d taken time off shortly after she first started to get married and go on her honeymoon! I kept thinking, “You’re already on thin ice, why are you damaging your standing at work further!”).

She sensed that she wasn’t quite getting things, and cornered me one day while I was proofreading to ask if I thought she was doing a good job here. I told her I was too busy to answer her, and hoped she wouldn’t ask again. I also didn’t really like her on a personal level. She was nice, but also the type to talk big and never follow through, and the type who seems to make bad decisions in general (like deciding to foster a very needy adult dog–sorry, but you’re never going to get rid of that dog! Or telling me she wants to lose weight and then grabbing fast food for lunch every day), and I always lose respect for people like that. She also radiated insecurity and neediness, the type whose problems can easily transfer onto you, and I can’t be around people who are going to contribute to my anxious tendencies when I’m trying to be as relaxed and anxiety-free as I can in general. (I often have to tell myself, “Other people’s problems are not your own and you can’t make people behave the way they should. Don’t sink your mental energy into issues you have no power to change.”) I pointed out my misgivings about her professionally to my co-editor, and I pretty much knew she needed to go and wanted her gone, but we sort of agreed there wasn’t much we could do until our managing editor got back. Then she never got back, and I wondered if the new managing editor would notice the same things. I hoped she would, but I had pretty much given up on thinking it would happen when one day it did. She got let go, and it was messy–I heard her bawling loudly in my managing editor’s office. She left in tears.

Weird things have come to light since she left. She was 30, and this was her first full-time job (that probably explains all the absences). She had ADD and wasn’t taking her medication. She left an unacceptable amount of unwritten profiles, meaning she was way behind on her work and had been wasting a lot of time every day. In the end she benefited quite a bit from lacking a true supervisor for a long time. She probably would have been gone much sooner if that hadn’t been the case. So I’m glad she’s gone, since I wasn’t fond of her personally or professionally, but I do feel terrible for her–this happened the week before her birthday–and I have a feeling she’s going to be unemployed for a while and I just truly pity her. I’m full of conflicting emotions about this, but I am very happy that my managing editor recognized the same things I did and made a very tough but right decision. She also hired a replacement who starts next week.

So since October when I re-started here, the composition of my department has completely changed until I am the only one left who has been here the whole time! Ha, just a little ridiculous. But all the changes have been good, or good-but-sad, so it’s all right. Just, wow! No wonder I’m a “senior editor” now (got a promotion in name only).

Practicality

First off, results came in today and I didn’t get the full ride scholarship I had been desperately hoping I could somehow beat the odds to receive. I was overlooked for academics who will likely waste their useless degrees working retail, not becoming esteemed professors and authors of valuable books on Asian culture. Yes, that sounds petty. But I don’t get it. I want to do something practical and useful, I’ve done many things to distinguish myself and I’m active in my local Japanese community–the president of our Japan-America society even wrote one of my letters of recommendation–and I’m passed over for people dabbling in nothing at all of any good to society (for the most part). Aside from the Ivy League names dotting the list (which begs the question, why do these people need funding again?), a lot of the successful recipients sound more like indecisive dilettantes, picking up one degree and then another in a totally different field because they can’t figure out what to do with their lives. How, exactly, are all these master’s degrees and Ph.Ds and detailed research proposals in Japanese ceramics in the 1600s and so on going to be used in concrete careers? Is that really behavior and life choices that should be rewarded and funded? Well, whatever, enough bitterness. I had suspected I wouldn’t be chosen for those reasons and I was right. I am just sorry they couldn’t see what a great candidate I am and how much choosing me would have enriched their foundation. Maybe that sounds narcissistic and entitled but I truly believe that. So, back to square one, back to worry over whether I’ll be able to do this. I really need funding.

Moving on… a side effect of resolving to read more Japanese new articles has been increasing pessimism about Japan and, by extension, my desire of basing a future career around Japanese products/goods/language. Besides the fact that all eyes are on China these days to outstrip Japan as the major Asian superpower (so I should really be learning Mandarin instead, but I took two weeks of it and really wasn’t feeling it–I love Japanese instead!), Japan just seems headed downhill. Soooo many cultural problems that those in power are sluggish at best (disinterested, close-minded, stubborn, and inactive at worst) about fixing. For example, if something could be done about women in Japanese society, I feel like so many problems could clear up, including the declining birth rate (because it seems to me that many Japanese women want to stay independent and not virtually enslaved to a husband and family, so they are choosing not to marry and procreate. So if you want the birth rate to go up, take measures to make marriage and motherhood more appealing to those women). Maybe I’m just going to sound like a presumptuous foreigner here, but I’ve been reading up a lot on this lately and I haven’t come across anything to disprove this. If society’s perceptions could change to accommodate viewing women as capable of pursuing careers independent of marriage/children–and to accommodate views of men as doing “women’s work” like shopping at the grocery store, cooking for the family, caring for the children, and doing the housecleaning; just anything to shake up these staid prescribed roles–that would do so much good. My sister teaches English and reports that so many girls, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, don’t dream very big: “Preschool teacher” and so on. No one wants to be a scientist, an engineer. Girls don’t want to stand out in class, either, and let the boys take all the attention for getting answers right. At companies it’s the norm for women to do administrative work and for men to do all the real professional jobs. I wish that would change so much! It would benefit society immensely to show women that career and marriage/motherhood are not mutually exclusive, that you can have both, and that you can dream as big and be as smart as men. And I look at the Diet and I just can’t see that group of old-fashioned fuddy-duddies doing anything that would help that.

It just seems like Japan is stuck in a rut and things are going downhill and it’s going to start affecting its position in the world soon, and it keeps seeming like not the best idea to align myself with a country and a language whose star is not so much on the rise. Also, exchange rates are absolutely ridiculous at this point in time, making an already expensive venture even more so. It just seems like everything is telling me, “Don’t go, this isn’t wise.” And yet… I just can’t listen. It’s what I want to do with all my heart, and my current career is not enough to sustain me forever, and I’ve delayed it so long already that to wait any longer would probably drive me crazy as well as make everyone around me roll their eyes and lose faith in my ability to follow through on what I say I’ll do. I have to try and it needs to be now. But I wish I could feel better about it; I wish there were better news coming out of Japan. I would love to be wrong about this but I don’t think I am. I also look back on my 2006 self who first went to Japan and I just feel embarrassed; so much I didn’t know even though I thought I knew everything.

On the bright side I’m learning a lot, so that part of my resolution has been successful.

Japanese-wise I keep having it confirmed that all my frantic studying has paid off and I really did launch myself into the next stratosphere of the language. I can read better, for one, and maybe I can listen better too. It feels pretty good. I’ve been able to crack open previously illegible books and find that I can read them pretty easily now. As an example, when I first visited Japan I bought a random volume of BL manga at a bookstore, just because I could. I’d been a BL fan for a long time (still am! Holla). I chose it purely because the art on the cover was good; it was shrink-wrapped (as most Japanese books in stores are) so I couldn’t look inside. When I could open it, I discovered the art inside was nowhere near as good as that on the cover. Shocking! I mean, I know now that everyone knows not to trust the exterior art, but I didn’t know better then. Anyway, so the art inside was bad and my Japanese wasn’t good enough to read it and figure out what was going on; I only had three (easy) semesters under my belt when I bought it. The other night I was sorting through things in my room and I came across it; I opened it up and finally I could read it. So I read the first chapter. It’s crap. I don’t want to own this anymore. If I wanted to buy BL in Japan just to say I did, I should have done my research and actually gotten something good by a vetted author, not a random book off the shelf. I have a lot of Japanese manga I don’t need anymore (most sent to me by TOKYOPOP while I was rewriting them) and it looks like the best way to get rid of them is going to be to take them to Japan and resell them at a Book-Off or something, even if I get peanuts in return. Seems cumbersome but I doubt there is going to be a market for them here and it seems weird to just throw them away.

That little episode–and the larger act of sorting through my possessions for what to keep and what to sell–reminded me to double down going forward on selectiveness in what I acquire. What seems worth paying full price now may be a regretted purchase years down the road as I bring it to Half-Price to get literally pennies in return and have to face the fact that I threw money directly down the drain. I always think I have this in mind and that I’m only buying what I really want to keep for good and then come across all these things I somehow need gone. The worst is when the item is no longer functional in any way but you have a sentimental attachment to it that prevents you from putting it in the trash can.

On another note… my sister is really good about finding things I’d be interested in and sending me links. The other day she pointed me to the (Japan-based) Society of Writers, Editors & Translators and I’ve been going through some of the fascinating articles posted online from their newsletter. I’m enjoying the articles, although groups like this just make me feel intensely desperate and envious, remembering that I’m not a part of that world yet even though I am dying to be. Although I am already a writer and an editor, just not (currently) with anything related to Japan/Japanese.

Anyway, I enjoyed the review of Globish, since the notion of English as the world’s dominant language has interested me ever since my French host dad mentioned, while my mom was visiting Paris and we were having dinner with my host family–and speaking in English for her benefit, some of us less fluent than others–that many French people have/had grown up with the idea that the dominant language in the world is French. Because for centuries, that was true. And it’s very hard for them to adjust to the fact that it’s pretty much English now, hence why a lot of French people (somewhat stubbornly) don’t speak English and expect your French to be very good or they are impatient. Anyway, I took particular notice of this, which begins with an excerpt from the book:

For centuries Japanese was remote, mysterious and separate. But this special linguistic inheritance does seem to have made Japan proud of its culture, as it did in Britain. Paradoxically, a nation that is assertive in business and commerce is unconfident in language and culture…Ever since Commodore Perry’s appearance off the coast of Tokyo in 1853, and long before Hiroshima, there had occasionally been suggestions from leading Japanese that the country should adopt English, or even French, as the national language. Many older Japanese, Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe, for example, are fluent in French, and well versed in French culture, a hangover from colonial days.

This is all either misleading or just plain wrong. As those of us who live here know, the Japanese are second only to the French in taking loving care of their language. Those on the masochistic margins who have denigrated it are arguably no less enamored of it than the linguistic nationalists who have extravagantly extolled it. The first part of McCrum’s last sentence here is incorrect, and the final phrase is baffling.

Ha! First of all, I completely agree, but moreover it made me think: It’s interesting to me that the two languages I’ve focused on the most are also ones highly prized by their native speakers–indeed, arguably some of the most highly prized languages in the world. I certainly don’t hold English in such high esteem or feel as much pride for it as Japanese and French people do about their mother tongues, and I’m not alone. Everyone looooves to repeat that joke about English beating up other languages in alleys and taking their syntax, grammar, vocabulary, etc. If English has to be the dominant language in the world–no matter how convenient it is for me as a native speaker of it–I wish it could be a better, more ideal language. It has so many flaws. And most of us are uneducated about it; I’m still amazed every time I come across someone who believes English is a Romance language (I guess because when learning SAT words, the Latin roots of many are emphasized, so maybe people think that Latin-based vocabulary = Latin-based grammar and syntax as well; it does not and English is Germanic).

I also came across two more articles that address the rise of machine translation and how it threatens translators today, which of course is a topic I am very much interested in. Fortunately, at least in the opinion of the author–someone who also happens to be a California-based J->E translator, AKA my dream, so I’m definitely jealous–the outlook is favorable, which is reassuring.

Still, I just feel like there are so many obstacles keeping me from what I want to do and feel I need to/should do, and sheer desperate passion/fervent hoping isn’t going to make them disappear… I wish I had money!

Catching up culturally too

Well, the Japanese ability screening test I’d been studying for is now over, so I no longer have to spend every minute of my free time studying (or feeling obligated to study). I can get back to my full gym routine (and just in time too–muscles are weakening! Anxiety levels are increasing!) and I can get back to work on song translations and updating my website. I spent the past weekend doing that almost exclusively, and I’m not done yet (I was already behind though) but I hope to catch up soon.

How did the test go? Hmm… I was told it would be post-N2 level, hence the frantic studying, and I’m not sure if it was quite that bad. The test’s difficulty ranged from “super ridiculously is-this-a-joke easy” to “ooh, that’s kinda hard.” I feel pretty confident about the majority of my answers, but I’ve also completely lost faith in my ability to predict if my answer will be the correct one. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m “whaaaat! How is that not it?!” wrong. It’s also difficult to know how you did on a test you’ve never taken before. With JLPT you know what to expect, but this was a test created by teachers I’d never encountered before. It was also strange in that for the listening and reading sections, the texts/dialogues were in Japanese, but you answered in English. It was that way for some parts of the kanji/vocab section too. This made it easier in some ways but it was also a little confusing/unexpected. I don’t feel like I bombed it or anything, but I feel like there might be a lot of answers I thought I got right where in reality they were looking for something totally different. Hard to say! Frustrating.

It will be a little while before I know if I did well enough for my goals… right now I am in a waiting period. And I hate it. I want to know so I can plan and announce, and I won’t know for a bit longer, and I’m worried, worried, worried the outcome won’t be what I’m hoping… it’s not fun. It will be this way for about the next month. In many ways this next month will be huge.

I’m not sure how much of my energy to dedicate to Japanese study from here on out… before this, I would try to dedicate at least a few hours of one weekend day to self-study at home with my textbooks, and usually I’d succeed. Last spring I tried taking the Saturday morning Japanese classes offered in my city–and then there’s a study group that meets at a nearby cafe afterwards, I went to that a few times–but it was too far away and I had a hard time motivating myself to go and to spend the gas. I promised myself I’d get serious about self-study if I wasn’t going to attend the classes, and I’ve definitely kept up with it the past two frantic months (I think my level has progressed quite rapidly and sort of launched me into the next stage of Japanese ability from where I was before, which is good–for the first time I feel like I’m solidly in the thick of N2 and just need to master it) and now I’m not sure of the best way to keep going now. I guess just keep reviewing and making progress in my N2 textbooks, but I also feel like I need more practical reading and listening practice. I’m considering downloading some raw drama episodes and just watching those. I have a lot of things I can read, although with that comes the urge to translate instead of just simply read. I’m also trying to find good reading sources online; my sister turned me on to a blog that’s been pretty interesting. I’m trying to read as much as I can without consulting Rikaichan but sometimes there are just words I haven’t learned yet. The frustrating part about reading is having to consult the dictionary so often, and feeling discouraged because of that–and also not knowing if it’s better to consult it for every unknown word or just press on. As for listening, I think I’ll go with dramas… maaaybe some variety shows I can find online. Dramas based on manga I read/like would be a good place to start, as well as those with theme songs sung by my favorite artists (that I’ve probably already translated). For a while there will be things that go over my head, but I’m hoping over time I’ll understand more and more. I’m not a huge drama fan, I’ve seen a couple series but that’s it, but this will also be good cultural education.

Because in the meantime, I’m trying to get my Japanese cultural knowledge up to speed by reading Japanese news and Japan-centric blogs. I was only there in 2006 so in a lot of ways I’m behind the times. I always scoff at people who focus on Japanese culture over language (because it’s obvious they’re doing it because they find the language too hard) so in some ways this makes me feel like I’m taking the ‘easy way’ out (especially because I’m mostly reading up in English–I plan to move to Japanese after I feel more knowledgeable overall, because news in Japanese is pretty hard) but I have to remember it’s just as important. One thing that’s particularly interesting for me is each year’s top slang/buzzwords. I’ve found 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 (one and two), 2005, and 2004. What struck me when reading those–aside from recognizing which have become such a permanent part of current vocabulary that it surprises me to learn their origins here, and which would be considered so passé by this point–was remembering the ones we’d covered in the conversation classes I took spring 2006 and spring 2008, as well as the ones I picked up living in Japan in 2006. Of course, that very fact reinforces that since those are the ones I know, it means I definitely need to get myself caught up to present times. So from 2007′s I recall KY [空気が読めない] for sure, as well as どんだけ — which doesn’t surprise me that it originally came from Shinjuku Nichoume. I was also struck by this one:

Oubei ka! [欧米か！]: Oubei ka! (“You’re not a Westerner!”) is the catchphrase of comedy duo Taka and Toshi. In a typical skit, Taka acts as if he were an American or European, and Toshi tells him to stop acting silly (like a Westerner) by saying “Oubei ka!” The humor apparently lies in the fact that they are both obviously Japanese, and not from America or Europe.

Wow. That just sounds super racist. Could you imagine if two white comedians went onstage and one pretended to be a different race, speaking with an exaggerated accent and mimicking other stereotypical behaviors of that race, and that was the “joke”? Good lord. As if it isn’t hard enough as an obvious foreigner in Japan, you have to make fun of us too? Unbelievable.

I mean, a definite side effect of reading all these blogs, personal accounts, etc written by westerners in or about Japan is remembering all the bad parts, like how difficult it is to fit in, and how socially you don’t really associate with Japanese people all that often–how most of the time, westerners stick to others in their own foreign bubble, because that’s honestly what’s easiest to do. When I studied abroad I had a lot of Japanese acquaintances who hung out with us because they studied at the colleges we took courses at, and also a lot of them were studying English [and were very good] and wanted to practice with us, but almost no true, close friends. Yuuho is my only close Japanese friend I can think of and it’s only because we’re making an effort to communicate now–we didn’t then. It’s hard not to look down on westerners in Japan who say “I don’t have any Japanese friends/I don’t have any good Japanese friends” (or at least any they hang out with and talk to on a regular basis) and think that they must be lazy, but it’s really not the case–it’s just that it’s inherently so much more difficult to try and really be a part of Japanese society. There is a wall there, for sure, and you get fed up and don’t even want to try anymore. I see why it so often happens that foreigners stick together, especially when you’ve come over with a bunch of other people from your country so your urge is to stay near them instead of venturing out. Despite all that, I really don’t want it to happen again. I still want to try my hardest to make and keep real, close Japanese friends instead of hanging out with only other westerners. Not just because it will give me increased Japanese practice but because I think it’s pointless to come to another country for a limited period of time, with the goal of language mastery, and not do your utmost to become a part of it, even if you’re handicapped from the start because you look different and you’re not fluent and you’re viewed as temporary and a lot of adult Japanese people don’t venture out socially much anyway. I know it will be so much harder and in some ways almost impossible, but I still want to try.

But just in case anyone was worried that I’d end up tempted to live there forever, I don’t think so. Long enough to become as fluent as I can, yes; forever, no. While, don’t get me wrong, there is a lot about the culture that I do like, it really is true that for me it’s the language that’s the draw.

The problem with translation

I love translation (I mean, obviously, considering my career goals). I don’t want to admit it has any problems; there are too many common oppositions to it already out there. I always want to defend it with all my heart against those who say translations are inherently flawed. After all, you can’t have a translation that’s both beautiful and faithful, can you? It’s gotta be one or the other. Actually, I don’t believe that at all. I believe you can have both, and that’s the philosophy that guides me as I translate. Some people dismiss translations as ultimately imperfect no matter what you do–and maybe use that as license to get lazy–but I believe a translation can surpass that, and that you can create a definitive, Platonic, close-to-perfect translation. (Some would say this is naiveté. I will still strive for it.) To that end I try very hard to achieve a balance between beauty and accuracy, in search of the close-to-perfect translation, and if you must lean more to one side than the other, I think that it’s better to have a slightly less beautiful, more accurate translation than one that’s slightly less accurate, more beautiful. There are those who would disagree with me on that point. But while I prefer both, I would choose accuracy as most important any day.

But there is a big issue with how translations are published. Accordingly with my beliefs outlined above, most of the time I disagree with translations made by other people. If I’m just reading it, I might think, “Oh, what good writing, what good English–this flows so well. This person did a great job!” and judge it solely on those merits. And I wouldn’t be alone in that thought. But then… I’ll compare against the original. And just about inevitably I’ll discover all kinds of things left out, embellished needlessly, mistranslated, and so on. Sometimes I can even tell when those things exist just from reading the English. I’m even noticing it in 1Q84, a major work translated 2/3 by a Harvard professor of Japanese! (One example, a character says something like “I felt like children in a Dickens novel, abandoned” and I believe it should have been a singular child–Dickens only wrote about one abandoned child per novel pretty much. In Japanese you often have to figure out based on context if a word is singular or plural).

But here’s the thing… unless you know the source language, you’re never going to discover that bad translation. Knowing only English, you will judge the English, as it’s all you can judge. And if the English sounds good, you will assume–and have no choice but to assume–that the translation must be solid as well. But that doesn’t mean it is! Often it’s not–at all! But well written English is covering that up.

Likewise, a translation could be extremely accurate and faithful, but if it’s not written well, people will judge it a bad translation, and call it clunky and so on. (I’m guilty of this too–I dislike stilted, dry academic translations; the ones of Kokoro and Snow Country stand out to me, though I believe Snow Country contains mistranslations as well. I haven’t re-read Kokoro since learning Japanese so maybe it does too.) That’s absolutely a problem as well; beauty is still important in translations. You simply have to try very hard to get both.

But the real problem is that the publishing house’s editors, same as the readers, are incapable of judging a translation’s accuracy–only its beauty. I saw this all the time at TOKYOPOP. There, freelance translators were contracted to complete a translation of a volume of manga and create a script. Then, a freelance rewriter came along to polish up that English from the translation and make it sound natural. So step 1 was translation (accuracy), step 2 was localization (beauty). (However, this second step wasn’t spelled out to the translators as clearly as it should have been, as many of them–at least the ones I worked with–took it upon themselves to localize as well, when they should have provided nothing more or less than a neat, non-embellished, accurate and faithful translation.)

And that’s all fine if the translator can be relied upon to produce a good–beautiful and accurate–translation. But that’s not always the case. Even professional, experienced translators can screw up–but if there’s no one to catch those mistakes, that’s not good. As the rewriter looking over that manga translation, I’d routinely uncover tons of mistranslations. Tons and tons. But as I was often the only other one in this entire process who knew Japanese, no one would have pointed them out if not for me! Of course, a few TOKYOPOP editors were more or less fluent in Japanese. But it wasn’t a job requirement; it wasn’t a necessity, so many weren’t and things just went over their heads. I firmly believe that if your regular job involves working with translations of [x] language, you must be fluent in [x] language in order to do that job. To this day I don’t understand why this isn’t valued more; why people like me, who can do a QC on these translations, are not in higher demand. I believe anyone who wants to be or is already a manga editor should be fluent or highly advanced in Japanese. It’s just an absolute necessity in my mind.

I imagine it’s the same with publishers of translations of Japanese-language novels like 1Q84, or really any publisher of translations in any format (but it’s probably worse if the publisher puts out translations coming from multiple source languages; the editors can’t be expected to know all those). The only one who’s in charge of the actual translating is the translator, and if you don’t know the language (and most editors don’t), you have NO WAY of knowing if their translation is actually good; if their language skills are actually that good. No way! No way of knowing. That is frightening. All editors can do is judge the quality of the English, which doesn’t equate to the quality of the actual translation. Even if the translators initially pass a translating test–judged by a speaker of that language–before coming on board, they can still make mistakes in the actual job, and no one will be there to catch them. Certainly not in the case of a 900-page behemoth like 1Q84.

So I think one of the worst aspects of the published translation industry is this complete lack of quality control. There is no one to check over a translation once it’s made, and to me that just seems totally reckless and dangerous.

The only solution I can think of to this problem, even though it’s a small one, is to offer myself as a recourse: as someone who will translate with an eye to both beauty and accuracy. At my current job I regularly call owners and founders of various types of businesses and ask them questions so I can write about them; I usually ask about how they decided to get into their industry and start their business. One frequent answer: “I wanted to provide a level of service and quality that I wasn’t seeing in my industry at the time. The lack of it was frustrating to me as a regular customer in search of those services, so I decided to step up and offer it myself.” In other words: if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

I can’t transform the industry all on my own but I hope to at least make some small contribution to the world of beautiful, accurate translations. Unfortunately, translating is also very subjective; what seems both beautiful and accurate to me may not seem so to someone else. That’s probably the reason why I’m not able to ever think someone else’s translation–even one made by pros and experts–is as good as one I could make myself. Which is a problem–I’d love to have a translator I wholeheartedly admire, but I currently don’t. I’m just too picky. But hopefully that’s a quality that will make me a good pro translator myself.

In any case, if you don’t know the source language you’re not capable of judging a translation as “good” just based on how well its English flows.