Few days ago, I received an email from the SunAcademy with housing info. Finally. My to-be educators from SANC endowed us with information as to what we will be calling our otaku for the summer. I got so excited to see my Tokyo-studio (man, I had no idea this was going to rhyme…radically cool….) that I frantically clicked on the link attached to the email. With increased heart-beat, I was hoping for a beautiful English description of my Japanese-home-
swweet-home, somehow not realizing that Japanese characters are not only used in “Japanese the Spoken Language” but also on the world wide web. Well, my initial shock/disappointment was replaced by a set of rational steps – ok, what do we have here…so there’s a bunch of characters….oh, the characters…I’m not even trying…but oh, what’s that…this looks familiar, I’ve seen that before…it’s KATAKANA!...of course, I can read that one!!!
Well, not really . I have reached the most painful realization of my insufficient linguistic skills – I can’t read/write the piece-of-cake, learn-in-first-two-weeks-in-September alphabet, the despised Katakana. (oh, the sound pierces my ears….). I feel really embarrassed to admit it, but my dear friends, it must be said that despite reaching L2 Japanese, I still can’t read/write the most basic alphabet. (Dear Light Fellowship Committee please don’t judge me.)
I really have no idea what’s going on between me and Katakana. (Sometimes I imagine Katakana as the mean old lady in my hometown’s grocery store – pronounced in the most obnoxious voice imaginable: “is that all, young man!?!”). I seriously have no problems with hiragana – I can read it, I can write it. Quickly and correctly. Yet, with Katakana, I’ve always struggled. I have spent hours and hours filling practice sheets or memorizing flashcards; but despite all my efforts, there seems to be an unbridgeable gap between me and the grocery store lady, between me and Katakana. Somehow, deep inside, I feel that my disliking for the alphabet has something to do with its unelegant geometricity, harsh lines and lacking curves or with its innately alien nature (used uniquely to denote foreign terms, Katakana is so un-Japanese…thus foreign, thus unnatural, thus bad). Or whatever.
Long story made short, no matter what, I just can’t get Katakana right. The moment I run to a sentence containing a Katakana word, I either skip the word (written in the abhorred alphabet it can’t be that meaningful anyway) or dismiss the entire sentence (the purity of beautifully simple hiragana and enigmatic kanji has been tainted after all).
NEVERTHELESS, despite the always reoccurring Katakana failings, I have made a brave decision: I will fight Katakana and will win. I have restarted my practice sheets/flashcards efforts. I have set my mind on a seemingly simple yet, at least for me, quite challenging goal – mastering the geometric tyrant, Katakana.
It’s been only a week that I’ve engaged myself in achieving the ultimate victory over my only enemy, yet I can already feel that despite unequal forces, I shall overcome. With multiple voices singing in unison ‘yes, you can,’ I see the light at the end of tunnel. In the same way, as I’ve dealt with the feared grocery store lady, I shall not fail in my wrestle with the alphabet. Once in Tokyo, I will be the most impressive Katakanist, the city has ever seen.
“Is that all, young man!?!”
“Actually…, could I get a change for five hundred euros…and also, could you please pass me the 50-pound bag of apples…and by the way…this yoghurt has just expired, that’s half price, right?....you take coupons, Mrs. Katakana, right?”
Whatyaa’re gonna say to thaaat, grocery store lady?
Today, I’ve spent more than four hours reading the Light Fellowship blogs. Some of them are more boring than the 86th episode of Indiana Jones and the Egyptian Skull. Some of them are super fun. So, I have made two major decisions. Number one – my blog will be super fun. Number two – my blog will be original. Oh, yeah. Here’s my multi-fold strategy for making my blog the kinda blog that people check every morning before the NY Times website, the sort of a blog that makes the blogger look cool and sexy, careless but sophisticated:
a. I won’t be covering the basics. I’ll let my Light fellows do it. I’m sure there’ll be at least one person to cover extensively housing, transportation, getting a cellphone, etc. I’ll be writing about the cool stuff.
b. My blog will be as much Nihon as possible. I will be hanging out with real Japanese kids. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it. But I know I will. If I go clubbing, I wanna go where nihonjins go, I’ll be eating where Nihonjins eat. And by the end of the summer, I will become a Nihonjin!!!! Well, maybe not exactly. But pretty close, nevertheless.
c. I will write about struggles. No one wants to read about the amazing linguistic advances of Rene Bystron. Instead, people wanna see him struggle in classes, on the street, when meeting a hostfamily, when tasting an unknown tabemono. I will write about how I’m still the dumbest kid in the class. I will write about how I think it’s impossible to fit a three-digit number of Kanjis into my head. I will write about how I probably won’t understand a word of what the sensee are saying. And if, due to some strange incident of a major gain in psychic powers, I won’t be struggling, I’ll still make up stuff. Cause since the creation of horror movies, everybody loves to see a stuck-up Ivy leaguer fighting to survive.
With such a grand strategy, I cannot but succeed. So….ladies and gentlemen, say bye to NYtimes, and get ready for the Summer Wave in Tokyo.
Nothing gets me into a real party mood as Japan – I love Pizzicato Five and its odd cover-versions of French chansons from the 60s; I can spend hours watching Miyazaki’s movies or reading Murakami’s books; I am willing to pay a fortune to get Heidi Slimane’s newest edition of Vogue Hommes Nippon; I think that Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons offers the coolest goodies EVER; and last but not least, I’ve just finished my Salmon skin roll.
My fascination with Japan always was and always will be. As a kid, I wore a kimono during Mardi Gras. At boarding school, I spent all my allowances on Kurosawa’s movies. At college, I had my first date in a sushi restaurant.
welly, welly, welly, well. I must admit that I haven’t dared to take the final step toward turning my life into the ultimate BIG-IN-JAPAN freakshow – i.e. taking Japanese. Haven’t I? During the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I decided to break the line, be a big boy, and take the allegedly most difficult language ON THE PLANET.
Now, I’m probably expected to say something along the lines of – it wasn’t that difficult, with a little bit of effort anyone can do it. NOT TRUE. My dear friends, I have struggled in my Japanese class a lot, A LOT. With a 9:25 class in the basement of Yale’s most derelict building, the Hall of Graduate Studies, aka the Sauron’s Tower, my sophomore year has become a sort of Nihongo-inferno (with more inferno and less Nihongo)….well, long story made short, I was the dumbest kid in my Japanese class, but I’ve made it through the year with no major scars but those on my academic reputation (“Is he retarded? Or still asleep?”).
And now, thaaaanks to the Light Foundation, I am going to Tokyo over the summer. From early June to early August, I will be attending classes – besides other things – in Japan’s capital. And I can’t wait.
To make sure that moments of my crazy Tokyo extravaganza are being reflected upon, I decided to run this blog. As a check on my sanity, I will try to write regularly about my summer adventures in Japan – about vending machines that sell all kinds of crazy stuff, college girls who dress like they just graduated from 3rd grade, poisonous tabemono that makes one scream with pain and, not to forget, clubs that turn Serge Gainsbourg’s La Javanaise into a fast-paced techno hit. In short, all that I will find in miso soup. And trust me, there always is something in miso soup.
I’m so ready for the summer wave in Tokyo….cause after all, who wouldn’t when Japan is so
like totally smokin’
