Why the JLPT is Hard

I know I've been lazy about updating this blog, but I have a good excuse. At the end of September, Stef's brother Ryan and his wife Erin came to Japan to visit us. Knowing that I'd never study while they were here, I pushed extra hard in my preparation for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which I am going to take in a little over a month. I wouldn't even have taken the time to blog, were it not for a recent revelation I had: I'm going to absolutely bomb the JLPT.

This isn't such a bad thing. While my grammar and listening abilities are pretty strong, my reading and writing are still coming along slowly.

In order to understand my struggles in learning how to read and write, I need to explain a few things first. Japanese is made up of three different types of writing systems: kanji, hiragana, and katakana. The three systems are used together, and it's extremely common to see sentences that use all three. Kanji is the group of characters originally borrowed from Chinese, which usually represent abstract ideas like "movement" and "feeling", or more concrete things like "tree" and "wheel". When you see a complex group of chicken scratch and squiggles, you're likely looking at Kanji. The following characters are kanji:



Hiragana is a syllabary, which is like an alphabet except that it represents sounds. In English, the letter g, for example, can be pronounced a few different ways, as evidence by these words:

• Dog


• Gerbil


• Tough


• Drought

In Japanese, like Spanish, the letters you write are always pronounced the same. The Hiragana syllabary is made up of vowel sounds and consonant-vowel combinations (with one exception, n, which is its own syllable). The vowel sounds, pronounced very similar to those in Spanish, are a, i, u, e, and o. The other "letters" in the hiragana alphabet are made up of a consonant with those same vowels, as in ka/ki/ku/ke/ko, ma/mi/mu/me/mo, na/ni/nu/ne/no, and so on. The symbols in hiragana are much more simple than most kanji, and they're typically very curvy and loopy:



Hiragana is used for grammatical function words like the Japanese equivalents of to, from, and, and is. Many normal words (like verbs) are written partly in kanji, with the last bit in hiragana. In English, a verb like shuffle can be turned into a past tense verb by adding the letter d to the end, making shuffled. Many other tenses are possible in English, like shuffling, shuffles, and shuffler. In Japanese, the functional pieces of words are written in hiragana. Sometimes kanji characters are uncommon or extremely difficult to write, in which case they can be written out in hiragana. Understanding hiragana is essential.

Katakana is the other syllabary in Japanese, used for words borrowed from other languages and foreign names. It's basically the same as hiragana, in that it is made up of consonant-vowel groupings (ma/mi/mu/me/mo) and the vowels. Katakana characters are typically more angular than their hiragana counterparts:



Like I said before, it's common for a sentence to use all three writing systems, as in this example:



The blue characters spell the name "Mark", so they're written in katakana. The pinkish words are hiragana, and mainly serve grammatical purposes. The black characters are kanji. The sentence reads: Mark is a naughty boy.

Now, on to what I really want to say. Hiragana and Katakana are pretty easy to remember once you've learned them. The main difficulty in learning how to read Japanese is the massive amount of readings that have to be learned. For example, the character "行" means both to go and to do, among other things. The Japanese romanization can either be i or okona (among many other readings, actually), depending on which of the meanings you're using.

For example, if it appears as "行く", it's iku. "行う" is pronounced okonau. The second characters in the two sets are hiragana characters, pronounced ku and u, respectively. However, when paired with another kanji character, "行" is pronounced kou. Kou is the reading originally associated with the Chinese character. There are often multiple ways to say the same thing, with differing levels of formal-ness. Erabu, which uses the Japanese reading, means to choose, and uses only one kanji. Sentaku suru, which is a compound of two kanji characters, also means to choose or make a choice, and even uses the same kanji as erabu for its first character. The second one, however, sounds a bit more stiff, and would be used in more formal settings. In order to pass JLPT, I'll need to study thousands of words that I already know how to say in a simpler way.

See, the JLPT has four levels, the easiest being level 4. Level 1 is nearly impossible to pass if you aren't Chinese or Korean, since it requires knowledge of multiple readings of at least 2000 kanji characters. I'd need a bit more time than what I have to pass level 1. Level 2 is a beast in its own right, but you only need to know the readings of around 1000 kanji. I've been studying like mad, to the point where I remember the meanings of about 900 kanji characters. Unfortunately, most of those characters have two or more different readings, and I've only studied one of them.

In preparation for the test, I've looked at some practice tests online, as well as example sentences. I can generally read the reading comprehension paragraphs just fine, and can even answer the questions with a passing score. The listening portion shouldn't be impossible, either, since I have a pretty good ear and a solid grasp of Japanese grammar. The portion of the test that will absolutely kill me is the part where I have to identify the hiragana spellings of kanji compound words. It's basically impossible for me at this point to keep all the sounds sorted in my mind. I just need more time to study and learn the readings.

Even though I'm positive that I'm going to be completely destroyed by this test (which I've already paid for), I'm not discouraged. I took the practice tests for the Level 3 test, which itself requires a pretty deep understanding of Japanese--and they were a piece of cake. I could've signed up for the level 3 test, but that ultimately would've been a waste of money, since my goal is to reach level 2 by the time I leave. Also, I wouldn't have needed to push myself so hard to study for the test. Instead, I'll continue to prepare myself for the level 2 test, knowing I'll be better off when I take it again next year, since I got off to a good head start.

I'll continue to study hard, but now that I know I'm going to fail, I can take a few moments here and there to keep everybody informed through this blog. Next time, I'll write a bit about Ryan and Erin's visit.

JLPT Application

Today was not good for my confidence.

I'm studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which I'm hoping to take in December. In order to take the test, you have to purchase an application form that's only sold at specific bookstores, the closest of which is found in Matsuyama. After my language course, I tried to go to the book store to buy it, but they said that they didn't offer them there.

A couple days later, I called the store to confirm that they didn't offer them, and they said that they planned on getting their shipment during the first part of September. When I called back today, I couldn't even communicate with the employee on the phone.

First, I asked if they had received their shipment. The lady put me on hold, and when she came back to the line, asked me if I reserved one. I told her I hadn't done anything yet, since the store clerk I had asked in person said they weren't even offered there. I told her I wanted to apply, but I just wanted to know if they had received their shipment.

She put me on hold again. When she came back the second time, she asked for my name and phone number. When I gave them to her, she put me on hold again briefly, and then came back to tell me that she couldn't find my name. She asked if I had registered with them, to which I again replied that I had not yet done anything at all, and that I was calling right then to ask if they had the application forms so that I didn't make an expensive trip to Matsuyama for no reason. When she seemed confused at my request, I dejectedly hung up the phone.

Why I couldn't get a yes-or-no answer is beyond me. It's possible that I didn't say things as succinctly as I should have.

But, lest I let my frustration with Japanese communication consume me, I just now called another bookstore in Matsuyama that supposedly offers the applications, and found out that they expect them to arrive in two or three days. He took down my name and number and promised to call me when they came in. It was an effortless conversation, and everybody was happy.

With the second guy, I gave minimal information and let him fill in the blanks. Sometimes I forget that this is the preferred method of communication in Japan. When I give unnecessary information like "I came in the other day to ask about the applications, but they weren't in stock," people don't really know how to respond. While I think I'm showing off my ability to speak Japanese when I give wordy answers, it actually goes a lot farther to prove that I don't know how to communicate in a Japanese way.

Weekends are great

This Monday, I started a two-week intensive Japanese course in Matsuyama. Each day, I take a train out there at about 11:30 and attend class from 1:30 until 3:30. I bought train tickets in sets of 6 so that I could save a bit of money (10%) on the train fare.

Since I missed the deadline to sign up, I wasn't supposed to get in to the class, but one of the people had mercy on me and sent me an application. After faxing in a written placement test, I had an oral interview over the phone. I got a call a few hours later notifying me of my placement. Of the five levels that are offered at EPIC, I'm in the top level. While I was excited to be placed in the most challenging course, I didn't really know what to expect.

The class is pretty packed. There are about 32 of us, though we English speakers are in the minority. About 10 of the students are from South Korea, while six or so come from China. Two or three people are from Germany, one lady comes from Singapore, and one girl is from Argentina. The dozen of us that remain are from English-speaking countries like the U.S., Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. Amongst the English-speaking foreigners, I feel pretty confident about my abilities. Most of them have a lot more experience with familiar speech than I do, but that's in part due to the fact that most of them have been here at least 3 years. Some have been in Japan for six or more years.

Many of the Koreans haven't been here for even a year, yet their Japanese is impeccable. Korean syntax, from what I've been told, is much like that of Japanese. So, while we English-speakers have to think backwards, the Koreans only have to convert their Korean vocabulary into Japanese. One girl has been in Japan for five months and is basically fluent.

The Chinese have a huge advantage with writing, since Japanese borrows its symbols from Chinese. They still have to learn how to pronounce what they read, but they generally already know the meaning of kanji compounds they see. Pronunciation differs greatly between the two languages, though, so many of the Chinese students struggle to speak clearly.

One of the Chinese students is a tactless 17-year old know-it-all. He likes to show off his kanji ability, which is unimpressive to me. Of course he knows how to write the Chinese characters--he's Chinese! At the end of one class period, when our teacher asked us to write down what we all learned, he asked, "And what if I didn't learn anything?" Seriously, if this is too easy, then don't come to class.

After each of the first two days, I felt pretty confident. I understood pretty much everything that we discussed, and held my own with the speaking parts after some initial jitters. After the third day, though, I wanted to quit. I ended up at a table with the annoying Chinese kid and no English speakers. The three Chinese speakers at our table just conversed amongst themselves in Chinese, and I was left to communicate in Japanese with a Korean girl. She was pretty helpful, but there were times when I didn't quite understand what was expected.

Truthfully, the kanji characters were what threw me off. I know how to write about six hundred characters, but you need to know two to three thousand before you're really literate. I couldn't keep up with the people at my table, who didn't take time to discuss what was expected of us since they inherently knew by looking at the sheet. By the end of the day, I wondered if it was worth it for me to suffer through the remaining classes if it was just going to get harder from there.

Talking to another American, a guy from Oakland named Mike, I decided that it didn't matter how much I sucked in comparison with the Koreans or the Chinese. I resolved to sit with other English speakers, and to study the material before class. They don't want us to study the material ahead of time, because they want to test our listening comprehension. If we know what it says ahead of time, we have an unfair advantage. Hogwash, I say.

I'm taking this course so that I can learn. It seems like the teachers expect us to already know the material, which doesn't make sense. Why would we take a class if we already knew all the material? So I'm reading the material ahead of time. The more I study it, the better I'll remember.

I've learned a smattering of useful phrases and have greatly strengthened my understanding of Japanese honorific speech. The stuff next week should be even more useful. I'm glad I stuck with it, because I've done well on both of the days that followed the miserable one.

On that miserable day, I came home in a bit of a funk. Luckily, I was going to go out with Lisandro, a Dominican guy that I met at the store by our house. We had tried to set up a time to hang out, but it kept falling through. When I got home, though, I soon realized that I was going to have to cancel on him yet again. Kelsey had fallen and bitten through her upper lip, and needed to be taken to the ER. Dang it.

I'm sick of hospitals. Sister Ochi from church picked us up in her car and took us to the Central Hospital, which was the only emergency hospital that was open that night. Each day, a different hospital takes its turn as the regional emergency hospital. It's a bit confusing and inconvenient.

Luckily, she didn't need stitches. The doctors put a special adhesive bandage that was supposed to be strong enough to stay on long enough to heal. She took it off before we even left the hospital. They replaced it, but it was off before we got home. It's getting better on its own, and should be all healed within a week.

Last night, I finally got to meet up with Lisandro, who's quite a character. He was a big-time baseball prospect back in the Dominican Republic until he got injured and had career-ending surgery. He gave me some salami and a slice of lemon for added flavor, which I ate while we chatted back at his apartment. He offered me a glass of Tang-like liquid, which was offered to me in a washed styrofoam Cup-O-Noodles container. I did my best not to cringe.

He told some really funny stories, and introduced me to one of his coworkers, who's also from the D.R. They work together building car parts here in Imabari. They come for a few months at a time, return home for a month or so, and then come back again.

He seems like a pretty nice guy. It's nice to have someone with whom I can speak Spanish. He invited me out again tonight, but I had to turn him down so that I could spend time with Stef instead.

Stef and I got to go on a date for the first time in quite a while, and for only the third time since we got to Japan. Heidi, one of the new teachers, stayed in our apartment while the girls slept. Stef and I rode our bikes to a sushi boat restaurant, where sushi goes around-and-around like a conveyor belt. It was eco-night, which meant that all the plates were only 100 yen each. We both ate a ton of awesome sushi, and we didn't even pay $15 for the whole meal. We grabbed a frequent eater card, which we hope to use in the future.

After dinner, we got some ice cream and talked for a little bit. It was really nice to spend time with Stef. I'm glad that we have people who are willing to babysit now. Hopefully we'll get to go on more than two dates this year!

Nu riqi'l a t'uqok al xajäb

My food smells like shoes.

No, not really. But if I wanted to say that to someone from the Guatemalan highlands, I'd say Nu riqi'l a t'uqok al xajäb.

When I was living in Guatemala, I learned some really obscure phrases--both in Spanish and K'iche'. I always got a kick out of surprising people with random phrases or funny slang terms. Anybody can say saqarik or buenos dias (both mean good morning), but most people aren't prepared to hear a large white man say puro utz pin pin, wachalal, which is the K'iche' equivalent of friggin' sweet, bro.

Here in Japan, I've learned the basics necessary for everyday communication. But only studying the basics leaves a void in my heart that can only be filled with off-the-wall phrases like むちむちした太腿 (cottage cheese thighs).

Over the last few weeks, my vocabulary has grown immensely. Unfortunately, most of what I have learned recently is stuff that I wish I never had to learn. Things like:

血圧	blood pressure
輸血	blood transfusion
心外膜液	pericardial effusion
利尿剤	diuretic
治療	treatment
効果のない	not effective

The list goes on. Granted, many of those phrases are good to know--they're just not the ones I had hoped to learn. Now that Mia's home and healthy, I can go back to learning things like 僕の食べ物は、靴のような匂いがする. Or, in other words, my food smells like shoes.

EMEPGENCY. LANGUAGE VIOLATION

Yesterday, in my infinite wisdom (I looked outside and saw that it was raining), I wore a jacket to work to avoid the misery of being drenched in rainwater from head to toe. When I got to school after the 30-minute bike ride, the rain had only soaked me from waist to toe. From head to waist, I was drenched in sweat. So I wasn't just soaked all over—I also smelled like a seventh grade locker room after P.E. all day. Now, on to what I really want to talk about.

The Japanese language borrows heavily from western languages. Many words can be expressed not only in Japanese, but in pseudo-westernese. Part time job can be referred to as either its Japanese-ized English equivalent, paato taimu, or its German equivalent, arubaito. There's mostly likely a Japanese term for it as well, but I'm too lazy to look it up, and the western terms are more common. Other commonly used English words include basuketto booru (basketball), biiru (beer), pen (pen), and juusu (juice).

Here's a quick guide for Japanese vowel pronunciation to help you understand my romanizations:

Japanese vowels are basically just like Spanish ones.
a = ah, as in the Bostonian “go pahk the cah”
e = eh, as in “eh, you go pahk it yaself”
i = ee, as in “beets beets, sugar beets, beets sugar beets beets beets”
o = oh, as in “oh noh you (Trevor) dohn't”
u = oo, as in “Scooby Doo went scuba dooving”*

*It's actually a little more complicated than that—closer to a French u sound. But that's not really important right now.

Japanese consonants, while close in pronunciation to Spanish consonants, are similar enough to English consonants that we can use English to describe them. Each vowel (a, e, i, o, u) or combination of consonant-plus-vowel (ta, ka, pi, bu, etc) counts as one rhythmic beat, or syllable. Two consecutive vowels are each enunciated, instead of being blended into one syllable like we would in English with the ou in mouth. In paato, the vowel is held out for two syllables instead of just one. So, paato taimu is a six-syllable phrase (pa-a-to ta-i-mu) in Japanese, instead of the two syllable part time that we have in English.

The sixth graders are learning to read words made from roman characters--what we simply know as the alphabet. The teachers are all pretty good at reading English letters, even if they don't always pronounce them correctly. There are many reasons why they should learn how to read the alphabet. Internet addresses, for example, are generally written with roman characters, so it's important that they learn how to read them even if they don't plan on learning English. If they go anywhere outside their country (except probably China), they will most likely have to be able to read roman characters in order to properly understand and navigate their surroundings.

This is a reality the Japanese government understands, so they teach kids the alphabet in grade school. Their whole country is flooded with roman letters, so there are plenty of opportunities for practice. Because of the ubiquitousness of letters, they typically know how to pronounce them with crude Japanese pronunciation. In teaching correct pronunciation of English letters and written words, the problem lies in making them un-learn everything they've acquired while living in a place where most people don't know how to pronounce things correctly.

Today, the sixth graders brought papers with English words that they had seen around them, whether at home, on their clothes, or out in public. They hid the words, uncovering one letter at a time while offering three hints so that the other kids could guess the word. There were two problems with this game. First, most of the English words they chose weren't English at all, but brand names written in roman letters. Second, the kids were asked to give hints in a language using grammar and vocabulary that they hadn't yet learned. It's one thing to ask a Japanese kid to get in front of the whole class to speak a language with which they don't feel confident. It's another thing entirely to expect them to do it with words they haven't yet learned. That said, the kids did really well, in spite of the difficulties.

Some of their words were curious, while others were downright hilarious.

First, the acceptable ones:

Baby Mickey and Friends, Sesame Street, Converse: sure, they're proper names of products, but they generally have some lexical meaning outside of their brand name-ness.

Second, the non-English:

Nintendo, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba: Japanese brand names of Japanese electronics.
Marlboro, Nescafé, Nike, Adidas: American brands that have no meaning outside of being proper names.
Burcmüller, Zaturn: I have no idea what the first is, but it's most likely a German surname. The second is apparently the name of a roller coaster at the Japanese theme park, Spaceworld.

Next, the misspelled English:

Gorden Retriever, The World of Goldn Eggs, Emepgency: While it's entirely possible that some of these were merely misspelled by the kids who copied them down, it's highly likely that the source material was wrong. Japanese companies don't usually have copy editors to check their English spelling or grammar.

Last, my favorite:

Cannabis World: I kid you not. It wasn't as if the girl who wrote this one had seen it at a store—she actually owned a little kiddie pencil case bearing those words, complete with Jamaican colors, peace signs, and marijuana leaves. She had no idea what it was. How do you explain what marijuana is to kids that are better off not knowing? How in the heck am I supposed to help her come up with three hints for that? I just gave her a new word instead.

The homeroom teacher's example word for the game was the English “word” DVD. The v sound doesn't exist in Japanese, so to distinguish v from b, they say bwii (sounds like bwee) instead of vii. Dii bwii dii. I followed the incorrect pronunciation with the correct one. Here's how the dialogue went:

Teacher: Dii bwii dii!
Class: Dii bwii dii!
Me: D V D!
Class (correctly): D V D!
Teacher: One smore! (Should be once more) Dii bwii dii!
Class: Dii bwii dii!
Me: ...

I constantly have to fight incorrect pronunciation from the teachers. I feel really bad for them, because they didn't ask to be forced to teach English. They feel much more uncomfortable than I do. Sympathies aside, it would serve them well to try to model their pronunciation after the native-speaking assistant teacher. The kids haven't yet been fully corrupted, so they can often mimic my pronunciation. I like to draw simple diagrams of the mouth and speak in exaggerated tones so that the kids can see how to produce the sounds of English. Most of them pick it up considerably well. The teachers, on the other hand, just can't go against what they've had incorrectly ingrained in their brains for years.

One of the biggest problems I encounter is the prevalence of waseigo, which is the Japanese term for words that have been either altered or mixed from their English roots to take on different meanings or pronunciations. For example, a teacher once asked me something about some other person's charm points. I didn't know what to say. Did this person have a level-34 Charisma in the Dungeons and Dragons of life? I eventually figured out that charm point meant something like positive characteristics.

Other words are chopped off for convenience, like the convenience store, which is rendered in Japanese as konbini. Other include waapuro (word processor goes from waado purosessaa to waa-puro), pasokon (personal computer goes from paasonaru konpyuutaa to paso-kon), and dejikamu (digital camera changes from dejitaru kamera to deji-kamu). It's often difficult to know what people using waseigo are talking about, because we don't know what words they're changing.

Others make sense, but still sound strange, like beebii kaa, (baby car, meaning stroller or baby carriage).

Japanese people often refer to all sorts of companies as meekaa, meaning maker, while in English we might say brand or company. Sure, with cars, we sometimes we'll say make, or possibly even maker. But it's not common to do so for chewing gum companies, clothing, or video games.

This aspect of Japanese can be charming, but not so much when it's being taught to the children as correct English. It's not that words like maker and baby car aren't English words, or that there aren't people that would understand what you were trying to get across—the point is that the majority of people with whom you hope to one day communicate probably won't understand what you're saying. People are much easier to understand when they use the commonly accepted words.

For example, if you're searching for the Converse store (konbaasu) and decide to ask a Japanese person who doesn't know correct pronunciation, you might accidentally get led to a store that sells buses full of corn (koonbasu). Ice cream (aisu-kuriimu) is abbreviated to aisu, so if people ask if you want ice, they're really asking if you want ice cream. This is serious stuff here!

Some words change meaning altogether, like manshon, which came from the English mansion. You might get excited to hear that I live in a mansion, only to find out that it's really an old dilapidated apartment building with multiple stories.

If a word ends with a non-voiced consonant plus i or u, like su, shi, chi or tsu, the last vowel is typically weakened, and sometimes altogether omitted. So, words like shaatsu (shirt) and piinatsu (peanut) actually sound more like English shots and peanuts, respectively. There are many words, like juusu (juice), that get it right. The ending su gets weakened an ends up sounding like an s, so it sounds just like juice. But there are also many words that confuse. The English Note textbook that the kids use is full of examples, like the Donut Shop on the town map. In Japanese, donut is pronounced donatsu (like peanut, which became piinatsu). So, naturally, the non-native speaker preparing the graphics for the book writes Donuts Shop instead. My sister Emily likes an anime called Fruits Basket, which makes absolutely no sense in English. The plural fruits comes from the fact that fruit in Japanese is not just kudamono, but also the borrowed pseudo-English furuutsu (sounds like fruits). You don't need to pluralize fruit for us to know that more than one kind of fruit could fit in the basket. Even if the basket was for effeminate men, the same title of Fruit Basket would suffice.

I guess it was good that they were forced to look for letters and get more familiar with the alphabet. It's good that they're interested in English. I just wonder about the practical application of the words they learned. Who knows-—maybe someday, once the Earth has been evacuated due to “man-caused disasters,” and we're living in space, and the Japanese have taken over the new international government, we will thank the Japanese for their attention to detail. I can see it now:

EMEPGENCY. EMEPGENCY. GORDEN RETRIEVER HAS INVADED ZATURN. LET'S PLEASE LEAVE MANSIONS AND FRUITS BASKETS AND BOARD EMEPGENCY SHUTTLE BOUND FOR THE WORLD OF GOLDN EGGS.

Experience vs. Expectation

It's funny how much our actual experiences can differ from our expectations. When I got to Uoshima, I got to spend two days with Ethan, my predecessor. Between packing and paperwork, Ethan could unfortunately only offer me a couple of hours to pick his brain and establish realistic expectations for my stay on fish island.

In the time we did spend together, I got to walk around with him and meet some of the people that he was leaving behind. Even though he hadn't studied Japanese at all before coming, two years alone on the island with no English speakers really strengthened his Japanese. Given that I came to Japan to study the language, I loved the thought of being fluent after two years. I couldn't have been in a better position.

Ethan was in fantastic shape when he left. I believe he was a runner before coming to Japan, but he spent the copious free time in the afternoons and evenings running up and down the hills of the circular island road, training for a marathon. Having been out of shape since the age of six, I looked forward to simultaneously slimming down and exploring the island. I would even join the baseball club and hone those skills.

Attached to Uoshima by a stacked stone foot bridge is a little island called Kojima (Japanese for "little island"), where Ethan would go in the evening to read. I envisioned myself composing music on the cool, rough rocks with the sun slipping below the horizon. Afterward, I could hop in the sea for a nice evening swim.

Life would be nice and slow. We'd learn to be self-sufficient with a vegetable garden. Kimiko Azuma, one of two people on the island who spoke English, worked out a deal with an old lady to get us a plot of land. I wrote a few months ago:

We have a plot of land that's been set aside as our garden. It's actually already a garden, but the owner of the land is hurt and won't be able to cultivate it any longer. It's right by the new house, so that's another factor to consider. It's a pretty big plot, about 40 feet by 80 feet.

We brought all sorts of seeds and bought a book about utilizing space in the garden. We were ready to go; we just needed to wait until planting season.

Before Ethan left, he wrote farewell cards to all the people he had gotten to know on the island. When it was time to board the ferry to leave, a bunch of people gathered around to say goodbye. I wrote a little about this:

His send off was touching. Dozens of villagers met him and the docks to see him off. They all held streamers that were on a spool, giving the ends to Ethan and Sarah (his girlfriend) to hold on to as the boat drove away. They remained "connected" to him even as he rode away on the boat (or at least until the streamers broke). It was hard to watch. I hope that I have as big a connection with these people by the time I leave.

Obviously, I looked forward to the day when my heart strings would snap, and I'd be reduced to a sobbing and babbling fool. Actually, I just hoped to build the friendships that would make it so difficult to leave.

So, I obviously had some grandiose visions of life on Uoshima. But what really happened?

First off, most of my long-term expectations became moot the moment I moved to Imabari. But right from the start, my expectations were off. Coming to the island, I was excited to meet the members of my new community. Here's what I wrote:

The ferry ride was beautiful. I was a little motion sick from all the travel, but it was neat to ride on the top of the little ferry and look down at the thousands of harmless jellyfish in the sea. Ethan said that I should be expecting a big welcome when I got home, but that didn't really happen. Ethan's girlfriend and one lady were running up to the docks when we got there with a sign that said "Welcome Mr. Stout to Uoshima!" Ethan seemed miffed that they didn't have more people there...

As for the language, Uoshima forced me to study Japanese enough to communicate, and I had plenty of free time at work. The teachers on Uoshima were amiable, but they rarely spoke to me in Japanese. Even though I had made it clear that I came to Japan to study the language, they instead tried to practice their English. I didn't really grow until Mia came in the middle of the night.

Dealing with the doctors at the hospital in Japanese forced me to learn how to communicate better. I'm not fluent yet, but I also haven't even reached the 10-month mark. My vocabulary is exploding and each day I get a little better at conversing. I understand almost everything I hear (except TV comedy shows--I'm often clueless to the slang). In Imabari, all my schools have at least one person with whom I can converse. Now I have less time to study, but more opportunities to practice Japanese. I can't draw any conclusions yet, but so far I feel that being in Uoshima was necessary at first, but being in Imabari is better for my Japanese in the long run.

Fitness was also a bit of a disappointment. I dropped from 245 pounds to 220 pounds, thanks mostly to the exercise festival and not having a wife at home for two months. While I lost a good chunk of weight, I'm still not happy with my physique. I never got to play real baseball on Uoshima. The weather was much too cold for me to run around the island. So, yeah, my once-tight pants are now baggy. But I never got to explore the island, and I still need to lose a few.

I went out to the little island a couple times, but never with the intent to compose. I figured I'd always have a chance later. Nope. I only went swimming three or four times, but looked forward to next year's summer, when we'd surely go swimming as a family every few days. False. We'd never get the chance.

Though life actually was slow like I'd hoped, we never got the chance to cultivate the garden. We're glad that we didn't, since we would've had to leave it all behind. Here in Imabari, Stef has some planters full of fruits and vegetables that are in various states of health. The first strawberries are almost ready. The cucumbers (or is it the eggplant?) are dead. Stef's having fun, and it's much less work to maintain planters than a whole forty-by-eighty foot garden. While it's not quite what we expected, things are good on the garden front.

I don't believe I've blogged about my teary departure from Uoshima. That's because it never happened.

I spent most of the last day filling out forms at the town hall office. They told me that the boat would leave at about 9:50, and so I should load my stuff onto the boat at 9:30 or so. At 9:10, they told me that I had to load my luggage. I threw my stuff on the boat, and the other teachers, who had been saying good bye to the townsfolk for the previous fifteen minutes, all got on. They handed us each a ribbon or two and the crowd of people held on to the other end of the ribbons. The boat was off at 9:12. I didn't even get to say a personal good bye to the people I got to know. Typically, ALTs on Uoshima get their own send off. But since I was leaving with other teachers, I was just one of many who were leaving. There was no time for tears.

The boat pulled away, tightening my ribbon until it snapped, severing my ties with the island. I guess it doesn't really matter that I never got to say good bye, because I never got to know anyone on the island (outside of the doctor, the band members, and Azuma-san). Imabari is a great place to live, but I'll always look back with fondness at my time on Uoshima. The saddest part about leaving fish island is losing the memories of experiences I never got to have.

The language

I'm still struggling a bit with Japanese. I'm understanding a lot, and I can say quite a bit now. I've even had multiple effective phone conversations in Japanese. But the sheer amount of implicit information in Japanese daunting.

The other day, I was leaving class after teaching a lesson. Goda-sensei, with whom I team-teach Tetsuya, told me that Maegami-sensei was holding a math lesson for Tetsuya. Nice, I thought.

What I didn't understand was that the Japanese equivalent of "Maegami-sensei is holding a math lesson for Tetsuya" actually means "All of the teachers from the school are obligated to attend this math lesson for reasons that nobody can or ever will explain. If you don't go, the principal with seek you out and give you a look of shame and an invitation (summons) to the aforementioned class."

I sat through the class, which didn't appear to be any different from any other class I've seen in Japan. None of the teachers participated, and everyone just watched Tetsuya's normal, everyday lesson. I'm still not sure why I had to go, but I'm sure I'll soon be blogging about how I didn't know that I was supposed to write a 15-page report on Tetsuya's math lesson.