My Brain It Does Not The Working

Something about summer turns me into an idiot. I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a new post, but said brain keeps rolling over like a bloated goldfish. So here are some things I've been thinking a lot about lately, interspersed with pictures of my struggling gardening attempts (when I get home and upload them, that is).

My apartment: It takes a long time to settle anywhere, and I've had to work around some terrible furniture and a giant television that I never use. The humidity has ruined my wallpaper in the living room. This isn't a surprise; I made it myself using 100 yen shop duct tape and white construction paper. It seems that my apartment is not only in need of a thorough cleaning, but some rearranging and redecorating as well. I will be getting rid of a table, a desk, that TV, and an old yucky carpet within the next couple of weeks. This could be an exciting simplification of my possessions.

Foreigners: I paid a visit to the JET Programme Forums to promote the Ganbatte Times to incoming JET participants. One of the more active newbies was excited about her placement in one of the most remote locations in Kyoto (which doesn't seem to hold ALTs for long). She wrote the following.

My boyfriend lives in Kyoto city. I think I may go into the city once a month, but I think for the most part he will visit me. For one thing, my apartment is bigger LOL. I'm excited about my placement... especially with it being isolated. Gaijin tend to ruin my Japanese experience :p

Gaijin is a shortened, casual (or rude, depending on context) version of gaikokujin, which means "foreigner." At first I thought, You pretentious little chit. Japan can ruin your Japanese experience. You are gaijin. And no matter how fluent your speech, how Japanese your boyfriend, or how comfortable you may be in the countryside, at some point you'll want nothing more than to talk to someone who shares your home culture and language.

I felt justified in this superior indignity for a couple of hours. What a thing to write on a forum for foreigners in Japan, that foreigners ruin your experience. Then I got on a bus, watched a bewildered white couple carrying tourist maps board, and mentally shook my head. Lordy forbid if someone mistook me for one of them.

Turns out that I understand that girl's comment to some extent. I mentally distinguish myself from gaijin, who are tourists and loud or rude or who wear spaghetti-strap tops. A Japanese person may use the same word for us both. On realizing my prejudice, I proceeded to ponder whether or not I've ever ruined someone's Japanese with my foreignness.

Movies and The Future: The long-awaited world premier of my silent film, Pistachio Thief, is close at hand. On Sunday morning I filmed another short movie (untitled, but based on muppets, Sesame Street, an old commercial for Mercury, and sitting in the office with Kim-Chi and Paulette). I'm working on scheduling the film date for the silent movie sequel, Pistachio Thief in Love.

What does this mean for my life? I have no idea. I'm secretly hoping that someone bored and important stumbles across it on YouTube, thinks I'm brilliant, and gives me tons of money to do stupid stuff like that for forever. I may have worried in a previous post that I wouldn't be able to do stuff like this once I have to get a serious, no-clowning-around-in-your-pantsuit-missy job in the states. Then again, when would I ever surround myself with a bunch of fuddyduddies who wouldn't be willing to take part in my film-making? Let's be real, here. Also, when would I ever get a job that requires daily pantsuits?

My Body: I think my body registers stress before my brain does. This is probably common for a lot of people, but when my brain is fighting to accentuate the positive (Doris Day) my body compensates by hibernating. I lost my weekends to Japanese classes and travels (church doesn't count as a loss, but that transit time, oy) way back at the beginning of May. The beast of a Spring/Summer holiday schedule means that between May 6^th and July 17^th there is no vacation whatsoe'er. In addition my teaching schedule has intensified, as has sexual harassment from 1^st graders and my tolerance thereof. Not sure if those are related.

In a nutshell, my brain is skipping like a squirrel on crack made of bubblegum and cotton candy. It cheers "Yay yay yay yay only a month before I'm on my way to Trinidad yay yay I can do it I can survive yay! Nooooooo meltdown!" My body flips my brain the bird and sleeps through four alarms, three days in a row. I made it to all my schools on time, but that one day at the office when I walked in at 10:30, that was not a good day. How am I still employed?

Books: I'm writing one, with pencil and paper. I'm not saying anything more because just admitting it embarrasses me, which is due to a long association of the open love of creative writing with pretention and d-baggery. Also, I almost deleted this part when I remembered that sometimes people in Japan read this. That's just how badly I do not want to talk about it.

 

This took me three days to compose. My brain is starting to cave in.

Bleeding Japanese

I resumed taking Japanese classes in May. The plural indicates correctly that I am attending more than one class. Good friends and neighbors, I am taking two classes on the same day. The morning class is a conversation course at the Kyoto Prefecture International Center in the Kyoto Station building. The other is a Nihongo Bible Class at my church, which uses the Bible (shoulda seen that one coming) as a text for learning vocabulary and grammar. Goodbye, weekends.

When I talk about my Saturday schedule the reaction from my audience is usually the same. It’s something along the lines of Wow, your Japanese must be [getting] really good! Though I usually laugh and say no, no, no, I do admit that I can tell my listening comprehension is getting better. Being in two classes with foreigners who are better at this language than I puts me right in that Zone of Proximal Development on which Vygotsky placed so much importance (yeah, still using that education degree for something). Listening to them speak and, just as importantly, listening to the teacher explain their mistakes (nonexamples. Ed. degree comes into play again) both reminds me that I have a long way to go but encourages me to at least open my mouth once in a while.

When I’m at school or the office the adults who speak to me are usually eager to try out their English. Ergo, although I drop phrases in Japanese here and there I rarely use conversational speech. Two classes means that I’m being forced to practice inviting people to my apartment for a party, to convince a reluctant friend to go mountain climbing with me, and to tell a waiter politely that he messed up my order. While I’ll likely never try to convince someone to go hiking with me, at least now I know how to say “it’s good exercise and the air is fresh.” Actually, what I’d say is more along the lines of, “body becomes good and air is good,” but it transfers nicely to explanations on why I bike to certain schools.

My favorite part of taking classes is learning idioms, slang and colloquialisms. That and proper inflection are the best ways to fool a listener into thinking that I’m good at his/her native language. I did it when I was in France; after being told that the use of franchement (frankly) was very natural, I threw it in everywhere. Franchement, I prefer the Romantic and Classical periods in music over the Baroque. Franchement, Americans are not as fat as your television makes them out to be. Franchement, I’d like a croissant.

I’ve said before that I speak Japanese with a Kyoto accent, which already gives me a leg up on sounding natural to the folk here. Still, when I can tell students to quit zoning out in Japanese their little eyes get all saucer-like I feel very, very good about myself. It also helps when an elementary-school first grader repeatedly commands me to show the class my underwear, and I can say, “Eh? Eh? Ears are far,” which means I have selected deafness. That buys me enough time for the teacher to come back in the room and tell the boy to cut it out; he’s being very rude.

It’s clear that the benefits of actively studying Japanese far outweigh passively waiting for my brain to absorb the chatter around me. Still, every time I get on that train to go home on Saturday evening, I feel like my brain has dissolved into a puddle of Japanese and question marks. Kim-Chi mentioned that the movies romanticize learning a language as an adult; it always seems so easy for the foreigner to just pick up whatever they hear. I’m looking at you, Russian Dolls. As though if one just studies for a year, one can form complete sentences and not miss on all the subtle parts of speech between noun and verb. Now, I ain’t no dummy like Dale Peterson’s political opponent, but I feel downright ignorant compared to them folks in the talkies.

The benefits of not being a movie character is that I understand what a gross misrepresentation that “I learned Russian in a year” baloney is. I can remember that it takes a child just as long to learn how to speak its native language properly; even if taught proper grammar children make natural mistakes through age eight or nine. After that most of the improper speech is from habit, which is correctable. I’m still a child in the Japanese language, not even two years old yet. Yes, my brain capacity is much greater than a toddler’s, our levels of comprehension are probably similar. I can say with confidence that I have a larger vocabulary than a two-year-old.

Stormy Weather

I love approaching storms on sunny days. The looming power rolls in on the horizon, slowly and steadily pushing back the the blue sky in sumo style. Thunder follows, rumbling a gentle warning, telling the people scurrying below to quit playing around; it means business. I like how the wind goes before it, curling around trees and bones and chilling the air just a little, just enough to let you know that the tongues of wind come from a gaping mouth of rain. Those invisible tongues shake leaves and rattle wind chimes, sound so cheerful that they're nearly ominous, they clink "Take cover! Enjoy the sun while it lasts!"

I love being able to look into the heart of a storm and see where it drips and moans on the hills miles away; I can say to myself, "Ah, that'll hit here before too long," and feel smug when I have found shelter just before the rain pounds on doors and windows and those unfortunate people who didn't check the weather report or bother to look up.

I love the fresh smell of rain in the distance. It smells like water in a clean glass bottle. It smells like a glockenspiel sounds. It's a smell in the absence of scent, tinged perhaps by whatever collected to form the storm clouds. There's no water whose fragrance is as clear and nonexistent as rain; creek water smells like a creek, seawater smells like salt and everything that used it as bathroom, dew smells like grass. When I smell the rain I anticipate the smell of wet earth and flora, and I inhale again and again to purge my lungs of all the city smells collected within.

I love the darkening sky, how it tints everything a vivid grayish blue, and how it makes colors pop from their concrete backgrounds instead of fading in the sunlight.

There's no sky that affects my psyche like a heavy daytime storm. If I'm seated under fluorescent lights it makes me sleepy and a little grumpy. In the states when driving I used to feel an exaggerated sense of anticipation; would I be braving floods in the near future? Would a tornado form? Would it rain so hard that I'd only be able to see a few feet in front of my fender, and strain my eyes for the white lines on the road and tell stories on the way home of how everyone went 30 miles per hour on the interstate highway? In Japan when I'm walking or biking I get a little adrenaline rush. Can I outrun a storm? Am I faster than the angry gathering of clouds that flooded parts of China and lost little speed on its way to swell the rivers of western Honshu? Can I defeat the sky by finding shelter before the storm catches sight of me and throws wet wrath on my head?

I love marvelling at the awesome power of a storm. It's evocative. It overpowers the senses. It is beautiful and terrifying all at once. Still, common sense snorts at all my purple prose as I stand at the bus stop and stare at the clouds, saying, "Wax poetic all you want, but you should have at least brought an umbrella. Idiot."