WITH FEAR AND TREPIDATION

Started learning conversational Japanese. It is proving as hard as I fear it would be. This coming from someone who is terrible at heiroglypic languages. Teach yourself: Instant Japanese. 45 minutes a day in 6 weeks. It is more like 2 hours a day in 3 months. I remember exactly how much harder I had to work than the next person, on my mandarin in elementry school. I remember at grade 8 finally justifying to myself (and I am pretty proud I had that much depth to think about it) that the pay-off in studying mandarin just was not worth it at that point in time. Spend 4 hours labouring over my mandarin at the expense of my other subjects, knowing that for my efforts I might pass, or forgoing mandarin and acing my other subjects, which I did. I'm glad I did that and it's ironic that I ended up reading English at the university. Even more ironic is that after running away from the problem, I have to face it honestly and squarely again. Well, there's only so far Jonah can run away from Nineveh and The Chilibuddy can run away from this...

Knowing just how hard it is for me, this weakness, this thorn in my side, I have to make the extra effort to work on it, driving the friends around me up the wall whist I'm at it. Every meeting is an opportunity to practice thinking and speaking in Japanese. But for their sanity, I shall have to save them my burden and wait till I am fully immersed in Japan before I can hope to learn through acquisition. Meanwhile, the poor friends who have to put up with my pained attempts at nihongo.

Just think guys, you are playing an important role in helping me fulfil my purpose in Japan!