My route

And one more today about my route. My route here and away from here. From America, to Canada, to Japan, and eventually, after repeating the first two backwards, to France.

Over the past few weeks I've been really focusing on too much, and really focusing on whether to return to Japan next semester or to go to France. And I'm trying to console myself for having decided to do the second. Well, to convince myself that I made the right decision anyway.

But even more than that I came to debating on whether I had spent my time in Japan the right way. One thing that sticks out in my mind is that barbecue we had about halfway through this semester, the barbecue that ended up giving me ridiculous food poisoning; well, more specifically, something this girl said to me there. I was floored by how fluent she was at Japanese, and told her so. She said something along the lines of "if you want to get good, just completely immerse yourself; just watch Japanese TV, bring your 電子辞書 (denshi jisho, electronic dictionary) with you all the time and look up words you don't know, listen to Japanese music, and keep speaking with Japanese people." So I was at some point thinking to myself, well, why didn't I do that?

I'll agree with one thing: I probably should've bought an electronic dictionary. But always operating on the knowledge you already have in your brain is the way I'm used to learning languages, so I don't think I would've carried it around with me all the time like that anyway. I at least should've bought a dictionary that goes two ways instead of relying on both this stupid Japanese-to-English-only dictionary that I for some reason bought a long time ago, not noticing that it didn't go the other way, and on jisho.org, which requires me to turn on the computer any time I want to say an English word in Japanese that I haven't before.

So that's okay. But what about full immersement in the environment? Wasn't I too eager to cling to my old familiar lifestyle? Frisbee, my regular music playlist consisting largely of American songs (but with a decent international selection including Japanese music), no anime, no new Japanese music, no manga, what's up??

Well, you know what? When it comes to the media, I can get keep up with that anywhere around the world through the wonderful method of piracy. (Well, that's obviously what everyone else did before they came here, and what they're still doing now.) Anime and manga weren't my thing before, and watching TV and reading have become less of my thing, so would I really learn anything by forcing myself to watch anime and read manga? As for the music, I looked at what I've been missing lately, and, well, it's really just generic as always. I think I might've found one more good song from Mr. Children, but apart from that, like my mom says, "forget it."

And as for wishing I hung out more with my Japanese friends-- well, I've found myself in the most unique social situation I think I've been in in recent times. There's no other place I know of that really brings together international students and students of the host country so well. Also, I'm not usually this social, as far as hanging out with large groups of friends goes. I had to be shy eventually at one point. That happens occasionally. Usually my tendency is to eventually hang out more with one small, small group of people than with anyone else. But that didn't happen this time, really. Not enough time for that to happen.

That's the reason that had me wanting to stay the year the most: for my friends. If that wasn't obvious already, which I hope it was.

But in any case, my mom is really social, while my dad is basically the opposite although he sure loves to talk sometimes. I'm a combination of the two. It's understandable that I would mess up somewhere along the line. My social situation will probably not be nearly as easy in France, where I have to go way out of my way to meet French people my age (do they play Ultimate over there? that's basically how I met everyone I'm friends with here), and where instead of enjoying speaking the language they're there to study the people there will probably be like "ugh, I'm SO tired of French" all the time instead. I hope not. That was one of the things that was so relieving about being here: I, of all people, would get tired of speaking the language before anyone else. Japanese was fun to speak and you can always speak it here without bothering anyone. 日本だから日本語で話すことだ。 (nihon dakara nihongo de hanasu koto da, it's Japan so you speak Japanese) And I enjoy speaking French more than I enjoy speaking Japanese because I'm better at French and so I can make jokes a lot more easily and much better, much more ridiculous jokes. Thanks to Marius for years of practice, albeit most of it in purposely bad French. But yes, that's one thing that's good about France, among many others that I don't want to miss.

I don't want to miss Nihon either. But I'll miss you. And what Nihon means to me is not just the geographical concept of country nor the concepts of culture and traditions and language but more like the total, amazing experience I've had here with all you people and everything you guys have done to make this dream of awesomeness come true for me. And I'm wordless.