On Brushing Up

Well, we’re back, and THAT was a hell of a vacation.

As some old-timers might remember, I studied Japanese in high school and college, for... a lot of years. And then I kind of burnt out on it and just bailed. Like, I’d been considering taking a minor, but I noped out of that at the end of sophomore year and ended up studying abroad in Cork instead of Japan.* And then I didn’t really do much with the language for the next 15 years.

Anyway, my Japanese was hella rusty! But better language facility makes a better trip, so I spent a couple months brushing up with Duolingo.** And that felt helpful, but I still didn’t really know how things were gonna go by the time we left.

But somewhat to my surprise, a lot of my Japanese came back, and it was really useful for the entire trip! I mean, 3/4 of my vocab and 4/5 of my kanji were gone, but my pronunciation and grammar and kana were all in perfectly good shape! Plus more words and kanji came back over the course of the trip (and even when I didn’t know a character, I still had enough of a working model for learning kanji that I could hold an unknown one in my head for a good part of a day).

So like, our minshuku in Kawayū Onsen was managed by what seemed to be a family (plus some extra help) with varying amounts of English, and they kind of triaged guests based on how much Japanese they could get away with. And after a couple interactions they were like, “k cool, that one dude can go handle someone else and we’ll just pass you off to Mom.” 😂

It was very fun and satisfying, and also I’m glad I could return the favor for the various times Ruth has had to Spanish for me.

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* Idk, I was getting pretty decent when I quit, but I hit that point where the only efficient next step was to immerse myself and spend six months doing almost nothing else, and I ran into some motivation problems — like, now that I know this culture slightly better, do I still love it enough to be spending that much time with it? Would doing so give me a break from the things that drive me most nuts about my home culture [the sexism, the racism, the consumerism], or would it just be the same song at the same volume, at a venue where I’m a guest and don’t really have the standing to chew out the DJ? I still have very complicated feelings about that decision and everything around it, and internally rehashing it all was part of why I was feeling some anxiety before our trip.

** Ruth, for her part, learned most of the hiragana and a few phrases, and also crammed some lectures on Japanese history because she wanted some gestalt context. Have I mentioned here before that I really admire her approach to intellectual problems?