Turning Japanese, I think I'm Turning Japanese, I Really Think So.

In April, I started Japanese classes. I certainly haven't learned every nuance of the language in a mere 2 months, but I have greatly improved my ability to bumble my way through the occasional very brief conversation in Japanese. And I know all of my katakana and hiragana characters. The more complicated kanji that sometimes represent whole words, on the other hand, still elude me.

Once I learned all of the katakana and hiragana characters, I started reading every little sign and billboard I saw. It reminded me vividly of when I first learned to read as a child and would call out what was on every billboard as we passed it driving around the city and on family vacations. The first time we went out to eat after I'd learned my Japanese alphabets,  I sat at the table reading off every drink on the cocktail menu, slowly and tediously. Dustin was quite embarrassed. He told me it was like being in a restaurant in the U.S. and overhearing the person at the next table saying, "Mar... marti... martini! Scr... screw... screwdri... screwdriver!" I've since made sure to read my menus silently.

Besides learning a bit of Japanese, my Japanese class has given me a great sense of empathy for my own students. Now, when they stare back at me mouths agape with bewilderment, I can remember back to Tuesday morning when I had the same expression on my own face. When I first started teaching at Peppy, it was easy to find the students' utter lack of understanding at times very frustrating. Trying to learn Japanese, which is so very different than English, has shown me what a difficult task it must be for my young students to tackle English. It's become almost automatic to slow down my speech when I'm teaching.

I've finally reached the point where I speak in Janglish (Japanese/English) most of the time. The grammar and sentence structure are typically English, the vocabulary and the occasional verb are in Japanese. For example, instead of "We're riding our bikes to the train station." I would say, "We're riding our jitensha to the eki."I can make a few intelligible sentences, but I mostly speak in broken Japanese at the moment. By this time next year, hopefully, I will be tackling kanji and be able to have conversations that don't center around what time things occur and where things are located. Ganbatte, me!

In other evidence that I'm assimilating to the Japanese culture... My boss just got an iPhone and he was much better at exploring it and figuring out all of the wonders it holds than I was 7 months ago. I love my iPhone as much as one can love a phone, but I was always pretty disappointed that it didn't have the almost imperative fancy emoticons that all other Japanese cellphones come with. After having his phone for less than a week, my boss found the emoticons under the international keyboards (Check the "emotiji" option under the Japanese keyboards if you've an iPhone of your own and want to be more Japanese.) and shared his discovery with me. Yippee! All further SMSs and e-mails will certainly be sprinkled with the little pictographs, no matter how little sense they make. I will find a time to use the picture of the Russian flag or the blood-filled syringe. I just know I will...