For the time I’ve been living in Japan it has been a great experience and my Japanese language ability has improved significantly. That said, sometimes there are days when I just want to wallow in a trough of English. The Internet, instant messaging, and Skype are all great for that. So are books.
In my adventures on the web recently I found a number of blog posts discussing dealing with the Japanese language as a foreigner in Japan that really hit close to home. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been loving learning a new language, it’s a valuable skill, fun to use, and honestly I believe it makes you smarter. Sometimes you need a break though.
On the blog “I Eat My Pigeon” (was it good?) in a post entitled Someone’s Knocking at the Door the author writes about the feeling of wanting to avoid surprise situations where you have to use Japanese. Those can be the worst as you can’t prepare in advance for the vocabulary you’ll need. The author writes:
Phones can be even more deadly. In face-to-face interaction there can be hand gestures to help you fill in the blanks, but on the phone, confronted with a disembodied voice that uses only the most polite business Japanese (which, remember, you only recently learned). So you flounder and pick out words: ADSL Company. Excuse me. Because. Excuse me. Therefore. Friday. Excuse me. Do you?
I’m sorry, do I what now?
I think most people that have lived in a foreign country in a language you are still learning have felt this way at some point.
Nick Ramsay, on his blog “Long Countdown”, writes about the pains of making sure your name matches on all documents in Japan in the post What’s my name? Basically, the problem is the confusion about people from Western countries and their tricky first-name-first and last-name-last naming convention and the intricacies of having a middle name. As you may know, in Japan family (last) names come first and first names come last. People do not have middle names. So when a fresh foreigner goes to get their gaikokujintourokushou for identification (lovingly known as the “gaijin card”) when they first get to Japan it basically sets the course for everything else that follows.
Nick writes:
The problem arose right at the beginning when immigration decided, based on my passport, that my name is officially Ramsay Nicholas Hannant, and City Hall put that on my alien registration card. Can you imagine how confusing it is to be recognised as Last name, First name, Middle name?
I can’t count how many times I’ve had to rewrite forms at banks and post offices because I got the order “wrong”. When we applied for a mortgage, I had to open a completely new bank account because my existing one was opened without using my middle name, and apparently this was impossible to rectify.
On my gaijin card my name is also last, first, middle. I’ve also had to redo plenty of paperwork because the name isn’t exactly written in the same way when comparing various documents. Though compared to Nick I’m lucky because all three of my names are quite short. Nick apparently has a hell of a time filling in any forms because the boxes to write in your name are nowhere near long enough to fit his name in Japanese characters. As a fun side note, on my gaijin card my place of birth is “Las Vegas, Houston, USA”. Sounds like a great place.
Although there are periodic challenges, facing and overcoming them are a significant part of the reason why I came here.
