Five classes into my reintroduction to Japanese, I’m learning some interesting things. Some of these things have very little to with the language, but rather the process of learning. I’d been out of the learning game that I’d forgotten that the subject matter isn’t the only thing you learn in school--you also learn quite a bit about yourself. Thing such as, you know, how much you can look like a prick when congratulating yourself against the backdrop of a family in existential crisis. 

First of all, I’m really learning Japanese. I really can say some useful things, and I can pick familiar words and phrases out when watching Japanese news clips and TV shows on YouTube. I started doing this because Japanese is naturally spoken quite fast, and I’m learning to read and speak it quite slowly. Unless I train my ear to hearing it how it’s normally spoken, on the streets of Japan I’m just not going to be able to keep up.  

I can understand maybe one common word in fifty. That’s not great, but it’s better than what I could understand three months ago, which was absolutely nothing. Hearing that one familiar word or phrase is still a new feeling, and it’s like striking a little bit of gold. Just the other day I experienced a great feeling of accomplishment when I picked out the word for lawyer (“bengoshi”) from a TV clip about a girl and her family who risked being deported from Japan, so much so that I momentarily forgot about her plight. There I was, high-fiving myself and laughing, while on my computer screen a very somber filipino family brooded, the girl looking like she was about to face a firing squad, speaking impeccable Japanese about how her bengoshi was advising her on a last-ditch effort to remain in the country. 

I can still memorize things. I am immensely pleased at this bit of good news. I want to shout it from rooftops. I hardly try to remember anything anymore. Computers, PDAs, cell phones, and even cars do all your remembering for you. You don’t have to remember exactly what was said on the Internet it--get the gist, and bookmark the page. Scan, scan, scan. Come back later for clarification. I hardly remember anything I read on the Internet, but I have it bookmarked somewhere. 

I have flash cards to thank for my memorizing. Flash cards really do work. I have about thirty words and phrases to remember a week, and it’s been seven weeks now. I memorize them all, and I have about 80% retention after 24 hours. Whether any of it settles in remains to be seen. Regardless, I consider this all very good progress indeed for someone in his mid-thirties. 

Past Japanese classes have proved very useful in advancing learning. It’s like finding an old road and deciding to build a new road on top of it. I have a background in everything we’ve learned so far, of varying familiarity. It all helps, a little bit. I did, however, learn of a rather large, gaping hole in my understanding of the language.  I knew words such as “otosan” (father) or “okasan” (mother), but apparently those terms could only be used to describe individuals outside my own family. I was astonished to discover that there is a whole different set of words used to refer to members of your own family. 

I sat at my place at the table, silently rocked by this revelation. What the hell? I learned the words for family members in elementary school, then again in high school. I trusted the school system to give me a honest education. Why would they have taught me, all those years ago, how to speak about any family but my own? It didn’t make sense, but apparently that was exactly what happened. 

This was bullshit. 

I remained at my seat, struggling to remain calm. After a few minutes of befuddlement and anger, I resigned myself to the situation. There was no explaining the past, only dealing with the present. I would roll with the punches. It was to be expected that there would be two, or perhaps three words for mother. I thought up tricks for remembering these new words. 

“chichi” (father): I thought of my father as a Puerto Rican golfer wearing a pork pie hat. 

“haha” (mother): I pictured my mother laughing. 

“ane”’/”ani” (older brother/other sister): There is a Takeshi Kitano movie where one of the main characters calls his older brother “ani”. This was at a time when I was not too interested in things Japanese, and saw it because it was a Yakuza movie set in Los Angeles, and co-starred Omar Epps. There’s a great scene where Kitano nearly gouges Epps’ eyeball with a broken bottle. Then they become friends. 

“Ane” becomes much easier to remember when you can remember “ani”, which you remember because of Omar Epps. 

“ototo”/”imoto” (younger brother/sister): I thought of a younger brother stubbing his toe on a door. I thought of a little girl on a motorcycle. 

“otto” (my husband): I thought about Otto von Bismarck--him being the only person named Otto I could think of--and imagined him with his wife.

“tsuma” (my wife): This sounds like nothing in the Western world. Nothing could help me with this. I was on my own.

“musume” (daughter): I thought of a little girl eating Muslix.

“musuko” (son): I had a slight problem with this. “Musuko” sounded feminine. I’ve known a lot of Japanese girls over the years whose names end with “ko”. There was a certain disconnect here. So...I remembered this as the one with the ironic disconnect. 

There. Memorized. Done. No matter what else would happen, what miscarriage of learning occurred in the past, I wouldn’t be stopped. I would laugh, make light of it, and crush it. Next.

I would crush it all. In possibly the last attempt to learn a language of my life, I will not fail. I will, as a matter of fact, prevail. I will draw on the entirety of my personal experience, from Otto von Bismarck to Omar Epps, to claim it.

Japanese is mine.