Metamorphosis

Four month anniversary here in Japan just past a couple of days ago. I'll get the compulsory cliche out of the way - it feels like I've been here forever and yet it's flown by so fast. With that, a restropective and some random thoughts.

In four months, out of the four language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), I'm still the most skilled in reading. Each of the four basic skills has improved substantially, but proportionally, nothing's really changed. I'm still waiting for the day when my conversation skills catch up - for example, reading a newspaper article and then being able to discuss it thoroughly in Japanese. Being able to understand a Japanese television show without the assistance of all those crazy captions popping up all over the screen. I gave myself such a huge head-start in reading it makes me wonder if conversation will ever be able to catch up.

When I first got here I was complaining that everyone was talking with me in English. Now, for sure I understand why. It had less to do with them using me as English sounding-board as it did with the simple fact that their English was better than my Japanese, at the time. When you have two people of different native tongues speaking with each other, the language of choice will invariably and naturally switch to whosever second language stronger than the other's. Yeah, I know it sounds obvious, but I only came to notice this as people began to switch to speaking with me in Japanese as my Japanese surpassed their English.

The big JLPT test is this weekend and this one case where my superior reading skills will come in handy. I did some rough calculations - you need to know about 6000 words for 2級. A rough estimate based on the mock tests I've been writing is I know at least 5000 of those. Assuming I came to Japan with a vocabulary of about 2500 words, that means I learned 2500 words in 4 months, or about 20 per day. It really boggles the mind, because I never put effort into specifically learning vocab - I just learn everything on the fly, as I encouter them in conversation and reading.

Four months, and I think I've stayed here long enough to determine if I want to come back. Short answer: it's a very tough question. I'm living a very satisfying life. A day barely goes by when, during my walk home in the twilight, I don't marvel at the enormous mountains surrounding Matsumoto, take a deep breath in and simply acknowledge how lucky I am to be here. But that begs the question, am I only thankful to be here because it's just so damn hard to get into Japan, in the first place? Do I feel I've invested way too much into learning Japanese that it would be a waste to throw it all away and never come back?