In the fall, I was asked to write an essay - much like my lesson plans, "about anything" - for the school's yearbook. In the previous year's edition, teachers and administrators had written on topics ranging from travels abroad to the value of reading books for pleasure. All, though, seemed to have an unspoken and perhaps unconscious underlying theme: edification of the students. The essays were not simply about taking pleasure in discovering another culture or becoming lost in Harry Potter, but either strongly implied or outright suggested that the students should do these very same things to make them better people as they develop into adults. With this in mind, I felt pressed to do something in the same vein.
Writing in Japanese, I have found, is quite different from writing in English. The structure of the composition is different, and Japanese writers tend to jump straight into what we might consider deep or philosophical topics without any warning. In magazines, short stories, even speeches from the principal to our students, I found the author to not simply be informing the audience of a point of view, but also welcoming the reader to explore metaphysical topics that might be related to it. It's difficult for me to put my finger on, but the mentality seems to be different from my structure in English; that is decidedly not metaphysical, and usually follows the formula of stating an opinion, leading the reader into the discussion, giving evidence and explaining why it applies, and wrapping it all up by restating the opinion and why I think I've proven it as true. It is a good deal more cut and dry, and much less dreamy.
I was considering this difference when I was trying to choose a topic; what on earth had I done or thought that could interest the students? I was writing for a 16-year-old audience that was interested in sports and movies and friends, not my reflections on my own international travel. What could I write that would both encourage them and interest them? And the most basic thing occurred to me: language learning. It had been consuming my thoughts lately, being a perpetual student of Japanese who was teaching her own native language to others. I had been racking my brain for strategies and activities that my own language teachers had used on me, and thinking about the differences between learning Japanese and learning English. It seemed a perfect topic, because of my own interest in it as well as its relevance to the students' lives. Perhaps I could interest them in English a little bit more if I showed them how I was thinking about all of it?
What further spurred me on was my recent discovery of one of my favorite Japanese authors, Natsume Soseki. I had begun reading him in Japanese, my first time reading Japanese literature on my own rather than being guided in a class setting. I had been so struck by the words and phrases he used, why he chose them and where he placed them; they were so very different from English and yet worked perfectly. Sprinkled among my reading were phrases I overheard from other teachers and students, phrases that were astoundingly creative and beautiful to my non-native ear. I am sure they sounded commonplace to a native Japanese speaker, but to me they were entirely fresh. I wrote them down whenever I heard them, so I would never forget things like a student telling me he "wanted that eye" when he said he liked my blue eyes. In showing them how delightful and interesting the language learning process could be, I hoped that at least some of it would stick to my students, to motivate them even a little to have a genuine interest in reading English.
I don't know if it worked, but it helped me to solidify my own opinions on the subject, and gave me the chance to exercise my Japanese in writing a substantial, if small, essay. Here, for my readers, is the English version. I hope it can convey some of my feelings about why I love language - learning it and using it.
On Language Learning
Before coming to Japan, I gave very little thought to how I used language in my daily life. After living here for four months, however, my outlook is beginning to change. I still struggle with trying to convey meaning in a foreign language - and sometimes to convey what I mean in English! - but I have begun to notice so many aspects of the language I hear around me. I no longer want to only focus on meaning. In my few months living in Japan, I am beginning to notice the subtle beauty of language as well.
The first instance of this was an evening spent trying to read a section of Natsume Soseki's Ten Nights of Dreams. I love Japanese literature because it is so different from its Western equivalents, but had never attempted to read it in its original form. I was curious to know how it sounded in Japanese rather than an English translation. When I began to read, I had a moment of realization. The things that were written in these stories - the melancholy, ominous feelings and the dark atmosphere - could not possibly be expressed so well in English. We simply do not have the words to express such vivid and intense images in the way that Soseki did. With only a few words, he left me with a deep feeling of the heart of his story. I was struck deeply by the clear, beautiful way in which Japanese can be used.
After reading these stories, I went about my daily life with a new mission. I paid attention to the way that my coworkers and students phrased their thoughts, hoping to have a glimpse of what the Japanese ear finds beautiful. As I compared what they said to how an American would phrase the same sentence in English, I was amazed at how beautiful even an offhand, mundane phrase could become. I found myself writing down short phrases that sounded like poetry to my ear, simply because I come from such a different language background. These everyday phrases were things I would never think to say, and would take a paragraph of explanation to translate into English.
Many students of Japanese are frustrated at the difficulty of translating between Japanese and English. Often, explaining a Japanese phrase in Japanese is easier than trying to explain it in English, and it is sometimes quite difficult to express Western cultural concepts in Japanese. The differences in these two languages reflect the deep cultural gap between their respective worlds. Yet, after dedicating time and effort to trying to truly understand the Japanese language and the ways in which it reflects its culture, I think I have gained an invaluable new perspective that is useful outside of Japan. Not only can I look at Japanese culture and see it as something to be learned, questioned, and understood - rather than something mystifying and impossible to understand - I can also look back and my own culture and language, and see the unique concepts that can be so easily expressed in English and yet are so difficult to explain in other languages. I have come to appreciate the beauty of my own language after seeing the beauty of another.
English may seem like another world to many Japanese high school students, and may seem irrelevant in the context of their own lives. Still, studying another language would have given me the same important perspective whether I had come to live in Japan or not. I had the opportunity to look at Japanese with a fresh perspective, and then turn that same critical eye on English as if I were seeing it for the first time. I was able to see beauty not only in my native context, but through the eyes of another culture as well. Studying a foreign language helps one learn to appreciate not only the beauty and uniqueness of another culture, but also the value of one's own.