I’ve spent the last two years in japan as a masters student, and managed to get myself to a comfortable N2 level. I still make a bunch of really basic mistakes (if asked when I fancy dinner, I’m liable to respond that in about three weeks would be good), and both my grammar and keigo are dire, but I’ve been living with my girlfriend for the past eight months or so (we communicate primarily in Japanese), and I’m pretty comfortable at getting my message across, at least with her.
That said, Japanese is still incredibly frustrating. Whether it’s stupid mistakes, endless anki failure or my godlike ability to fuck up counting just about anything in every way conceivable and about fives which aren’t, setbacks are common and progress is slow and painful. I am constantly self conscious about my issues, my mistakes, and my inability to comprehend whatever the cashier just said. Living in a country where you aren’t properly fluent in the language has a certain embarrassment attached to it.
I’ve come back to England for a trip with my girlfriend though and my god it’s felt amazing. Translating simple stuff like menus and then putting in her order for her, nursing my beginner friends through simple Japanese conversations or making a room laugh and then turning around and explaining the joke in a different language. The shame and the pressure is all gone. I genuinely feel like divine being. A true bilingual gigachad.
No one knows that my explanation was in fact the most stilted sentence devised by a non artificial source of intelligence. They don’t know that my girlfriends question was checking I didn’t mean central after I explained that I was joking about how high pint prices are in the double-suicide of London. And she’s just extremely happy to have someone to translate and guide for her. The incompetence she’s used to, but the competence, now that’s a shock.
It culminated when I went for Japanese curry with some mates after the footy (note: moderately wobbly) and one of the lads offered to pay for the meal if I ordered in Japanese. I felt a bit bad for the Korean lady who managed the place, but it dawned on me that I’ve made it to YouTube fraud levels of Japanese. Just the fact that I can order food in Japanese felt good. In Japan it’s the absolute barest of minimums, literally basic survival level stuff. In England, it’s magical, like I’m some wizard from some far off land with knowledge of mystical incantations. The curry was mediocre though, it turns out Mark does not in fact know a curry place that’s “as good as the stuff in Japan”.
Any time I see a Japanese person, or hear Japanese being spoken, I make a comment as loud as I can to my girlfriend in the vague hope they may hear and validate my existence as an elite member of the esteemed vaguely-conversational-in-Japanese club.
God I’d be such a prick if I actually lived here.
Anyway, I’m flying soon, so it’ll be back to a three week backlog of anki reviews and quietly sobbing in the bathtub, recalling how earlier that day I told my girlfriend very loudly in the conbini toiretto pēpā ga aranai
by _9tail_