The honeymoon is over.

I was looking at my draft folder in my email account the other day and came across this email that I started about 2 weeks after I first arrived in Japan:

Nah nothing specific happened, just things sinking in. As shitty as I felt last night never once did I regret my decision of coming to Japan. I mean how could I? I am completely enamored! Just the semi-regular occurence of self-pity. "Oh God, why me?" kind of thing. It is hard not having the remotest smidgen of something familiar-well ok I found where they hid the Oreos. To put it simply I was overwhelmed...

I have no memory of what prompted me to write this but looking at it now makes me realize how much has changed since it was written. I remember being extremely happy at just being able to sound out the words I saw around me - I didn't know what they meant but hell I could read them. I remember ordering a dessert from a menu in celebration of the fact that I could read and understand 'banana cake.' Those of you who have studied Japanese know that this isn't a terribly difficult thing to do since it basically says 'banana cake' in katakana (the writing system for loan words) on the menu - so all it takes is a little bit of memorization and the ability to repeat the word a few times for your brain to connect it with the English equivalent. Sometimes connecting the katakana word with the original English gets a little hairy because of all the extra vowels and consonant changes thrown in - they're also a bitch to say out loud because I feel like I'm faking knowing Japanese...anybody who has ordered English Breakfast tea at Starbucks here knows what I'm talking about...just think of when you 'fake' speaking Italian and add an 'o' to the end of every word...that's how it feels to pronounce loan words in Japanese. Katakana drives me crazy especially when it comes to my students - this is the pronunciation they use to produce English words (watch this clip if you wanna get an idea of what it sounds like). You can almost always tell when Japanese students have studied abroad because they don't speak katakana English anymore.

Since my Japanese reading has improved I'm longer excited by the fact that I can read a menu -Now that the novelty of being able to recognize and read hiragana and katakana has passed I now get frustrated by the fact that I can't understand all the words I read or that I can't recognize most of the kanji (the Chinese characters) I see. I feel this constant pressure to improve my Japanese - sometimes I get so bogged down by what I don't know that I forget to celebrate what I do know. My Japanese level nevers seems adequate enough.

The one area that I'm the most down on myself for is speaking. I become so self-conscious when questions are directed at me I can barely formulate a reply. I keep telling myself that I just need to get over it but I have yet to. Doesn't help when I count every little mistake as a huge failure on my part - one thing I stress to my students is that Mistakes are ok! but it seems that I hold myself up to a higher standard. I bought a new Japanese learning book the other day called 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese. I've only read the first two chapters and it's already challenging me to change the way I think about learning and speaking Japanese.
It's also making me realize that my expectations are too high. The following point in particular hit home:

To not know or to have forgotten a specific word is not a problem exclusive to foreign speakers. To feel ashamed and be hesitant about explaining a concept with other words, however, is.

Instead of feeling ashamed of what I don't know, I should be proud of everything that I do know. Japanese people certainly don't expect me to know what I do. While out celebrating my friend Mik's birthday the other night we accidently met up with two Japanese woman who work at Asia University. They eventually joined us at our table. Sachiyo sat down next to me and proceeded to practice her English on me. She asked me how long I'd been in Japan. I answered. She then asked me if I could speak Japanese. I replied in the affirmative. She proceeded to point at objects and expected me to supply the Japanese word. When she pointed at her umbrella, she was extremely impressed that I knew the Japanese word. Come on lady! I've been in the country for almost three years and you're surprised I know the words for table, umbrella and beer. Please at least challenge me a little - point to an astray it might take me an extra two seconds to pull that one out of my hat. It's insulting. I feel like a trained monkey - Oh look. How cute! A gaijin can speak Japanese. Is a normal English conversation too much to ask for? Or hey even better, how about you give ME the chance to practice MY second language?

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated and critical over things that I used to find amusing. I no longer enjoy being called cute (kawaii) over and over during the course of one conversation. If the word is accompanied but a pat on the head or unneccessarily drawn out in a high pitched voice there is a chance I might become violent. When I sneeze in class, it's followed by a chorus of kawaiis. If I see another girls' ass cheek because her skirt is too short or if I see her drape a hand cloth over her lap while she sits for the same reason - I might not be able to bite back the scathing remark that all too quickly jumps into my head.

Now that I've made the shift from learning to survive in a foreign country to living in a foreign country, the whole game has changed. And I guess that's what I'm dealing with now - I'm experiencing 'growing pains' as my friend Karen would say. Living in a foreign country forces you to grow as a person; it forces you to question things that you've always taken for granted. It makes you realize what you are willing to compromise and what you absolutely will not give on. This whole 'change' has consumed me these past few months - and it's not over yet. Good thing I'm into challenges. Like I said to my friends in my last email: I didn't move to Japan because I thought it would be an easy ride.