In my dream, I was in the living room of the house in Berne. My parents told me that Chris had died in 1997. I started getting angry, then shouted. I was shouting, “Don’t you understand, I don’t have a family any more.” I was shouting and carrying on so much, that I began to froth at the mouth as if I had rabies. I could not control my emotions, nor my body, and I started shaking violently.
I woke up with the sunlight streaming through my balcony window, and birds and crickets outside in rice fields.
Who needs psychologists when all you need is a few good nightmares.
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
I didn’t know the term “freeta-“ (from “free arbeiter” with “arbeiter” meaning “worker” in German) until I had lived in Japan as a teaching assistant for several years. Yet it occurred to me that that was the lifestyle I had been living after undergraduate school, even during the two misguided years of my creative writing master’s degree program when I worked at a nearby mall (at a software store that told me to lie to customers about software availability).
Not working as a full time worker but at a series of temporary part-time jobs, I felt free from restraints but had little money and even less chance of anything resembling a stable work life.
When you’re 22, this doesn’t seem that bad. You think it’s okay, that your whole life is ahead of you. That you’re still finding your feet.
By 27, it’s unsettling. That’s why I made the move to Japan, to take a risk and try my hand at teaching.
What got me through the “Hard Years”?
Guinness. Probably because I simply don’t know any better. It nearly derailed me. I was a ronin, awash on the waves of life. While floating from one job to the next in Boston.
In the end, maybe it was my colleagues and students in Japan that finally got me out of my morass. After making the move here, even though on the surface it was a temporary three-year contract, I needed to help someone else. Think outside myself, outside the box. and eventually, decide to make it a permanent lifestyle.
After all, helping others really does, in the end, help yourself.
Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?
I studied French from junior high through first year undergraduate.
I can’t speak it. I tried, but my teacher (MA from Tunisia) had to use a book based on Parisien French, even though my hometown is a stone’s throw from Québéc (not Paris!).
After failing to learn how to speak French, I switched to German in second year college. Borrowed money to go to Germany for a month that summer and met long-lost relatives.
Kinda could speak German. Forgot how to do so after leaving college. Nobody to talk to (and no reason to use it).
In my MFA program, I got bored by the “creative writing workshops” (wherein my classmates enjoyed sniping each other’s works). So I took up Irish Gaelic. Borrowed money (again) to visit An Gaeltacht (Conamara) near Galway, Ireland.
Marginal fluency. For a year. Forgotten just as quickly.
Two years later, I moved to Japan. Studied Chinese characters and Japanese grammar on my own primarily, with help occasionally from a Japanese colleague where I taught and a Japanese friend I made who ran a private English cram school.
After over 26 years, by far my strongest “second” (fifth) language.
So. How has language learning affected my life?
How has it not?
I am a language teacher. I am also a failed language learner. This has made me acutely aware of how hard it is for my Japanese students of English to use English, when on a daily basis they really have no need to do so. I respect them to no end.
Learning another language is hard. It’s especially hard when there’s no real reason to do so, when there’s no one to talk to in that language.
When it’s not really a part of who you are, as a person.
I had thought that, given my ancestry, French, German, and Irish would be good to learn. Turned out that wasn’t enough. I needed a real reason.
Someone to talk to.
I am now married to the love of my life, a Japanese woman who, like me, loves learning and teaching language. We have two wonderful daughters who likewise enjoy learning language.
Because we have a reason to learn them. People.
It’s all about people. Language is people. Not translation software, not AI. People.
Six small satellites developed by universities and other organizations carried by the vehicle also were believed to be successfully separated, JAXA said.
I feel as if I have two personalities, one which speaks English and one which speaks Japanese. The one which speaks English can never get past being a high school geek. The one which speaks Japanese cannot get past being a “strange foreigner.” The only time I feel comfortable now is when I am teaching. Only there can I be an actor and change who I am any time I want.
It’s been several months since I last posted…too much work and no play!
Until this past Sunday. Whew.
After a morning lecture about ancient Japanese myths and “deliberately forgotten” kings (maybe), I was grateful to be able to take a quick power nap…
…so that the family could go up a nearby mountain and watch the Geminid meteor shower. (By “mountain,” I mean about 640m/2100ft.)
After a brief lecture/quiz by a staff member at our local culture center, we stayed outside, lying flat on the ground, for over an hour. And, yes, it was cold, despite the sleeping bag and thermal underwear. I saw three shooting stars. Not nearly as many as I’d hoped.
After we got home and took evening baths, the kids went out on our second-floor balcony and found out that the night view was even better at home than on top of a mountain! At least they knew what to look for, thanks to the culture center event.
And by “meteor,” I mean the size of grains of rice. Look to the eastern sky, just a bit to the northwest of Orion, to find the Twins (Castor and Pollux in Greco-Roman mythology).
For more on the origins of the Geminids, check out the JAXA mission to Phaeton, the parent body asteroid. It’s DESTINY!
Nineteen years ago, my wife and I went to Hiroshima by high-speed ferry boat, on our way back from visiting her parents in Kyushu. Her father’s family comes from Hiroshima (although her father was actually born in Dairen/Dalian (大連), China) and her uncle and his family still live about an hour’s drive north of the city.
(Update from 2020: We visited Hiroshima with the kids for the first time last January, for New year’s 2023.)
The researchers argue that “if” trees could be planted on Mars…
OK, just stop right there. I’m pretty sure Mars will struggle to support even grass, let alone trees.
And the argument that, due to a lack of oxygen, flammable wooden structures in space would not be in danger strikes me as a bit ludicrous…surely there would be oxygen inside the wooden structures?
And, you know, I do think I’ve seen this before some where…nah…
West Japan Railways (West JR), one of six companies that make up Japan Railways Group, has unveiled a giant “humanoid robot” to work on heavy machinery on its lines…
Interesting that in English the official name is West Japan Railways Company, while in Japanese it’s JR Nishi-Nihon Guruupu (JR西日本グループ), which means Japan Railways West Japan Group. It’s one of six “companies” that comprise what used to be “National Railroad” (Kokutetsu), owned by the government.
JR West is renowned to be badly run and somewhat corrupt. I wonder about this “robot” project. With the increase in “human accidents” (ie people hit by a train), I think it’d be better to hire more workers than to reduce staff and have the top level desk jockeys pocket the…
