Unilingualism is Boring

Living in a foreign country where the language of majority is a world away from my mother tongue, I am forced to think about the importance of language on a daily basis.

Language has always fascinated me, and it has always been one of my biggest interests. But the relationship I have had with language is somewhat of a love-hate one, because as much as I love learning things about language and learning new languages, it's not something I'm particularly good at, and it takes me longer than most people to achieve any sort of proficiency. But that's not what this post is about.

When living in Montreal, the language of the majority was, once again, not my mother tongue. So although I would speak English with my friends and family, listen to English music, watch English TV, and be an all-round English person, the world outside my front door was conducted in a different language altogether. And because of this, I believe my sense of language is a little warped.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though.

A few months ago, a French friend and I were walking around Tokyo and talking about the annoyances of being automatically assumed as English-speaking Americans just because we're white. According to her, such assumptions are upsetting because she's not supposed to speak English, because she's not even from an English-speaking country. I, on the other hand, am supposed to be a bilingual individual.

The more I think about it, the more she really has a point in what she was saying.

Growing up in Montreal, I have become dependant on two languages. I am significantly more dependant on my mother tongue, however, I am incapable of limiting my thoughts and emotions to one language. There are some things I can only say in French, and others which I can only say in English.

But these last few months, because I have almost no French-speaking friends, I have had to think more in English than ever before, which is sort of weird.

At the same time, much like things were not in English back home, because of my constant exposure to Japanese everywhere I go, I'm having a lot of trouble expressing myself in English these days. I watch TV in Japanese. I listen to Japanese music. All the signs around me are in Japanese. People speaking in the street are speaking Japanese. Although the output is still mainly English, the input is almost exclusively Japanese. Due to the lack of exposure, English words are no longer readily-available to me, and my brain thinks in Japanese sentence structure. With my friends here, I jokingly speak Japlish and get my message across quite well, but when it comes to speaking to friends and family back home, all of a sudden I feel somewhat distressed.

I remember back in my Language Acquisition class back in university learning about kids who could hear, but had two deaf parents. Even if they left the TV on all day, that would never be enough exposure to a language to make it the child's mother tongue or for the child to really acquire it. This being said, I feel like that's what's happened to me all my life. I was never exposed to enough English for me to be able to rely on it 100% to express myself. There has always been another language in my life to provide a supplementary list of vocabulary.

I wonder if it's possible for someone who has been exposed to multiple languages since childhood to fully rely on one language. I feel like my English is not 100% as natural as the English that my friends speak and there are a lot of commonly used English words and expressions that I honestly do not understand. But because of my abilities to use other languages, I believe that I haven't quite missed out. Because if you combine all the words I know in all my languages, I must have enough to make up one complete language, right? Who says my way of speaking has to be comprehensible by others?

Good Morning, Tokyo

I live near three private boys' schools and a university, so I get to witness the evolution of boy to man every morning when I walk to the train station. It's wonderful. And by the time I hit the station, I enter the endless sea of salarymen... and if I'm lucky, I'll encounter a host or two... Oh, I love you, Tokyo~!

It'll be even more wonderful once the university starts up it's classes again. The guys who go to that school are particularly good-looking.... or at least the ones I've seen so far :3

Talking about boys and school, every morning I see a man walking his son to the elementary school near my place. The kid must be a new student, because he has a little yellow paper pinned to his hat. It's also pretty rare to see little boys accompanied by a parent on their way to school. Even though some of them are as young as 5 or so, most of them go to school on their own, and on the off chance they're with a parent, it's almost always the mother who goes with them. Either way, I think I had seen them last week too, but since Monday, whenever I pass them, they say "Good Morning" to me, in English.

The first time the father greeted me, I was completely caught off-guard. Usually the only strangers that greet me in English are sketchy people, so I have a tendency of just walking right by them without second thought. I sorta hesitantly kept walking, turned around, and just said "Good Morning" back, which seemed to excite the little boy.

The last couple of days, both the boy and his father have given me a "Good Morning" greeting. The boy seems so happy saying it, it's really cute. And that's coming from someone who dislikes kids. Does this mean I have a heart after all? lol

I like little things like that though. Small actions that yield happy results. Everyone is always so caught up in future plans and bigger pictures that we often forget the tiny things in life that make us smile. But right now is the time to smile and find these things, or else we won't have the strength for whatever's on tomorrow's menu.

Talking about smiles and small things, yesterday I really needed a pick-me-up, and this song made all the difference :) So listen and be happy ^^

Bi-Weekly Update

I wish all the inner monologues I have would just magically write themselves into blog entries so that they wouldn't lose their momentum by the time I sit in front of my computer and attempt to write things.

Oh well. Such is life, right? A series of things you want to say, but don't know how. You spend your whole life trying to express yourself, no? And life is the result of how well you manage to convey whatever message you were meant to convey. Or something.

I've been thinking about what life is all about a lot lately. Not in some religious context or anything, but just how lives work, how they don't, and that sort of stuff. I feel like my brain is in hyper-must-find-meaning mode these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing though.

To help me pretend that there's some flow to this entry, let me sum up my latest thoughts in a cute little list.

1. Love is weird. All kinds of love is warped, and twisted, and so much more complicated and disturbing than you'd ever think.

2. People with narrow worldviews should not leave their countries of origin unless they are willing to learn to adapt. If you aren't living in your own country, don't complain about how things are in said country you're living in. Unless of course you've been kidnapped and brought to said country against your will. But that's not usually the case for international students.

3. Americans in my school who obsess about Korean stuff piss me off. I have nothing against Korean stuff, but why are you going on and on about how cool Korean language/music/dramas/whatever are if you've chosen to study IN JAPAN??? And they go on about how much better all that stuff is than what you find in Japan... Why didn't you fucking go to Korea?

4. How can you live on your own for so long and be so fucking dependant on other people?? GROW THE FUCK UP JEEZ!

5. GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND. SO IS WIKIPEDIA! ARRGH! Don't ask me what something is if it's in your abilities to look it up on your own. I'm not talking about complicated difficult-to-understand shit here. I mean, if you're messaging me on msn/fb/whatever asking me what something is, change the fucking window, open up google, and type your fucking question.

6. If you don't have either tact or common sense, please don't talk to me. We will never get along, and your presence in my life will only cause me anger.

7. Butter-flavored caramel is about a hundred times yummier than you'd think.

8. I love Asian men for so many reasons. Not yellow-fever-bullshit reasons. But because they have style, and don't worry about "coming off as gay" by liking certain things. Fuck, there are so many hot, manly men over here that carry purses, have perfect hair, and wear pink, it's amazing. Today in class, this big manly guy told us about how he once knit himself gloves. I've seen guys in my class feed each other Pocky. Another guy in my class sometimes has heeled shoes. It's wonderful. *happy sigh*

9. You should always be 100% aware of what you're saying and where you're saying it. Everyone has their slip-ups, including myself, but the more aware you are, the less of an asshole you come off as being. Also be careful of words or expressions with double-meanings. The smallest thing will instantly make you sound and feel like the biggest asshole in the world.

10. I think I need to lay off of Matcha-flavored stuff for a bit. I've kinda gone a bit crazy with it over the last few weeks.... I feel like if I don't give myself a break, I might OD then not wanna eat it for a while, which would be tragic.... But I'm not willing to give up my 2L bottle of green tea in my fridge. No, no. XD

That's it for Pinky-transmission right now. Gotta go set up shop in the common room so I can watch my weekly dose of SMAP TV (幸せになろうよ, followed by SMAP x SMAP). See ya~!

Tokyo, One Month Later

How many times can you shake a person before they break internally?

My body is officially unable to stop moving. For the last month I've felt this way, but today has been especially bad.

Yesterday was the one-month anniversary of March 11th's big quake. It was celebrated with another very large earthquake around 5:15 pm.

We had another one of equal intensity I think it was Friday night. And another couple of large ones today too... one while I was in the train, another while I was walking around after school.

The earthquakes of the last few days have been especially upsetting on an emotional level. Things had been getting "better". Aftershocks were starting to calm down, and those we were having were a lot smaller. Then bam.

The news is throwing around the C word again, and I don't like it. Chernobyl, Chernobyl, Chernobyl. They still say it's better than that, but still.... It's not comforting at all.

They also say that these sorts of large aftershocks could be expected for up to a year. Sigh.

I'm trying to stay positive, but I'm just so tired of earthquakes and fear and all this sort of crap.