Ohio, Japan
Copyright 2010 by Sandra Katzman
I teach English and struggle to learn Japanese. Episodes of fluency are countable.
To students at Osaka University of Foreign Studies I bring in a Darwin essay about collecting beetles as a college student. The students couldn’t read it. Stony looks met my apologies and we moved on to an alternate plan, short poems in English and Japanese. Their faces warmed as the pages rustled in the Spring evening. Each chose a favorite and in English eloquently defended the choice. Why couldn't they understand Darwin, with its correspondence to the Japanese fondness for beetle collection?
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On the train I studied a Japanese conversation about a barbecue at the beach.
A high school girl pronounced a word she saw me ponder. "sanka-hi."
The next word was money, so I guessed aloud, "Food money?"
She shook her head no, and unsuccessfully tried to supply the English.
At home later the dictionary translated, "participation fee." No wonder she could not translate.
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I would travel by Shinkansen on the last day of Golden Week, the long Spring holiday, for a class the following day. So I wanted to travel on a holiday Monday. The train would be crowded. I can get around Japan unless there is an irregularity in my schedule. Where could I buy a ticket, I wondered, if not at the familiar Shinkansen ticket office in the gargantuan Tokyo train station? Perhaps my one-exit, one train, one language, tiny local station would oblige.
It was, after all, a Japan Railway (JR) station, not a private railway or subway. The Shinkansen was also operated by JR, a semi-private company. I carefully calculated travel times, not realizing that I would be taking the same train as usual, only one stop further down the line. Thus prepared, I spoke in Japanese to the ticket master, nervous in the sudden realization that any day and time would make sense to him. He did not know that I taught a class in Osaka on Tuesday morning at 9 am. The mere transaction of buying a ticket would not guarantee timely arrival. My money could buy the wrong ticket as easily as the right ticket. I wanted to delay the moment of the ticket being passed over the marble slab through the little glass window, and the ticket master asking, "yoroshi desuka?" (translation: "is this right?") I was not at all sure that it would be alright.
He awaited my slow formulation. A Japanese woman in line leaned past me, translating my Japanese into real Japanese to the ticket master. Was this anger I felt at her aggressiveness? Jealousy of her bilingual ability? My ignorance and obstinacy offended me.
Tickets in hand, I thanked her. Yes, we agreed, the tickets were right: travel tomorrow afternoon and return the following evening.
"You could speak slowly in English," she suggested.
Walking away, I realized that she meant I could have spoken to the ticket master in English. Was she being sarcastic?
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When he has time, Maeshima teaches me kanji in exchange for instruction in English. Soon he will retire as the teacher of Chinese at the National Defense Academy. The lesson's been cancelled this week and so perhaps by way of apology, he asks me to go out to dinner with him and his wife, who is Chinese. She doesn't speak English at all, he says. "It'll be the language lesson," he laughs.
We eat at a Korean barbecue restaurant. I speak mostly low-level conversational Japanese with gracious hosts whose son has just been accepted for a medical residency at the University of California in San Diego which they hope to visit next summer.
This summer's Maeshima's annual trip to China with students will probably be cancelled due to the SARS outbreak. Invited, I had looked forward to travel beyond Japan, where I've lived for seven years.
When I resort to English, his wife turns to him for translation. I recognize the gesture: it punctuates conversations where only one person is bilingual.
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I went for a kanji lesson. In the office of Maeshima-sensei sat a junior who had been in my freshmen English class. Maeshima was talking with another Japanese teacher and told the cadet to help me. She provided answers to the blanks in my book, a schoolbook for third graders. Maeshima then gave us a Japanese -English phrase book. The junior read a sentence in English, and I translated to Japanese. She was in the office for a lesson in the game "go".
I remembered the cadet well but did not recall her name and leaned forward to read her nametag. She said she was studying an African language, hoping to visit Arabia in the summer. I recalled her word perfect rendition of the Japanese constitution in English during a contest she had lost tearfully. She seemed unaware of her lingual gifts.
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Will I ever be fluent? Some students of a second language progress rapidly--one student says his nickname is "TOIEC boy" for his high scores on that test. On the other hand, some students seem stuck at an intermediate level of competence.
I have heard Americans who are fluent in Japanese, but I cannot say with any confidence that I will become fluent.
Some American teachers amaze their students by breaking into fluent Japanese. I have seen elementary school students awed into compliance.
My students interact with my attempts at their language. A student impatiently translates my "tatoeba" into "for example." Others correct my spelling, chanting "u" with the unmistakable intonation of "you forgot to write this letter." The missing vowel seems insignificant to my American ear. Parents-- "ryoushin" -- the "ryo" sound extends through the space held in the text by "u."
Japanese learners of English, correspondingly, mispronounce as long vowels "daa-to" for date, "noo-to" for note.
the evening class at Gaidai of English majors starts reading a detective murder mystery about a bank robbery. "Sniff out"--a student asked for the meaning of this term.
A student suggested the parallel term in Japanese for "sniff out" is the word for smell--"kagu"-- and the student said that the term had a similar animal feeling.
The robber hops from a bath with an inspiration from heaven, re-translated--into Japanese--I recognized "heaven." One student among six knew of Archimedes, from a book, he said.
"Eureka"--was that Latin? someone asked. I didn't know.
We killed time in easy maxims. Japanese of "time flies" was offered. Like an arrow. I recognized "ari", arrow, from a camping trip to the Japanese Alps where one pointy mountain has that name.
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The boy with fingernail polish sat with his buddies in class of 40 students. Ten- percent were male students in Sugino Fashion college, a four-year vocational Tokyo school. These guys wear ear and nose rings. I wanted to talk about the nail polish: why a dark color? Did people comment?
But I continued according to the book. The book later had a lesson in the book about personal ornamentation.
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Do not explain humor. But educational tapes include laughs which students mimic, then laugh.
I wonder about the publishers’ decisions to include the laugh, imagining the discussions at the audio division meetings.
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I stay Monday nights at the guesthouse in Osaka university. Hungry for English, I read the room’s notices. The Toshiba desk lamp: "Makes a good idea cross your mind." The Kleenex box balanced atop the big heavy round glass ashtray: "HOXY will always offer you a rich and comfortable life with paper."
Life with paper has a long tradition in Japan. Paper kimonos were worn to prostitutes' houses by patrons only once, and left there, but not because paper was inexpensive. Umbrellas were made of paper strengthened by the juice of persimmons. The museum curator at the Fashion College had explained this when I visited with Chieko, a fellow teacher at the Fashion College who is translating the school’s Web page into English.
Irritated by incorrect English sentences on the bags of a bakery, Chieko told me, "I stopped buying bread at the shop."
Chieko and I talk about the geography of Japan. A character in the bank robbery story is "heading West." But my mental map of Japan must be askew, as I found when a student drew a map on the board. I had imagined Japan's main island as long and vertical, north-south.
Chieko says, “I also have the image of Honshu vertical. I remember an elementary school geography textbook said that Japan is vertically long. I wonder who is in the majority: those who think Japan’s vertical, or those who think it's horizontal."
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I showed students a photo from a newspaper and read the caption. The photo depicted a mother holding a sleeping baby in a sling around her neck, captioned by "Travel on a holiday. Waiting for the bullet train in Tokyo Station."
"'Bullet train?' What is a bullet train?" asked a student at Osaka University of Foreign Studies.
I draw a bullet on the chalkboard. Surprised by this lag of terminology I recall a Japanese asking, "'Chopsticks?' What is a chopstick?" The picture sufficed but I couldn't remain wordless. It was, after all, an English conversation class.
I wrote "Shinkansen" on the chalkboard.
"What does it mean?" I asked. "New track?"
"New train track," the understated prosaic translation came back.
We read the news article, which was about working mothers.
"What comes to mind when you look at this picture," I asked.
Silence.
I prodded. "I see a baby who can sleep even in the busiest train station in the world. Is that what you see?"
The students weren't thinking of the baby, but of "a tired mother."
Chieko agreed with the students. She knew the situation. "Is this the mother and the baby on a holiday, right? It's really a happy occasion for a Japanese mother, especially if she has a mother-in-law in her married family, where sometimes she feels tense. She wants to show her baby to her own parents. So however heavy the baby is, and however she may be tired after work for the week, she ties her baby around herself and gets on the train. This is my story of this mother. What do you think? Actually, this was about my own mother when she was a young wife and a full-time worker."
The bullet train travels fast, but the name doesn't. Students told me that there is no nickname、no abbreviation.
A class leader set the topic of "habit," and he stopped as I was ranging from "habitation" to nun's habit.
"Stop!" Masaaki said. “That’s not what I mean.”
He meant "mannerism", a few examples from the English club of graduate electrical engineers made clear. Each person gave an example of a habit.
Foot tapping.
Touching one's face or hair.
“Pigeon-toed stance of women,” I said.
They explained that a kimono was difficult to walk in without the front flapping. A pigeon-toed stance kept the kimono closed.
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At the Fashion College, the fashion chapter appears in the general subject English textbook.
"Any new words?" I ask after a first run through of the tape dialogue about ripped jeans.
"’On purpose,’" the responsive student needs to understand.
I attempt a mime.
The student understands, giving back the Japanese translation, "Wa-za-to."
I write in a phonetic Japanese script. Let’s see. Wa. Za (Sa; add the accent to change it to za. I can't recall how to write "za" at first but after a pause, success. Applause). To.
We go back to the tape and the students repeat the dialogue about fashionably ripped jeans. To my disappointment, the students do not mimic the sound of "rip".
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At Gaidai -- Osaka University of Foreign Studies – homework was a few sentences about earthquakes. The students were from the area hit of the 1995 Kobe quake. They had been 12 years old.
Their recollections ranged from losing friends crushed in falling houses to being momentarily paralyzed by the noise of falling plates from the kitchen.
Some students wrote of having forgotten about earthquake preparedness until this day in their college lives. No longer children, they hadn't practiced earthquake drills and realized they didn't know the escape routes of their new collegiate surroundings.
They had volunteered to alleviate at least “a small sadness” if the earthquake had not directly affected them.
One student drew the kanji for a thought she couldn't express in English, followed by sentences describing how we should be kinder to the earth. Returning the papers I suggested that the kanji might mean "vengeance" and an electronic dictionary search confirmed the notion.
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I can read the headlines of the news ticker on the Shinkansen on my way home from Gaidai at the front of each car scrolling one line at a time. "Hamas." "Israel." "Death." These are easy words. There is a phonetic script for foreign words. These are easy to sound out, once you know the alphabet of katakana. The kanji for Death is among the first 300 Chinese characters I have mastered reading.
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A newspaper story says 6000 new words are in the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
In group discussion after reading the article, the students to my surprise provide a plethora of new Japanese words.
"Blackface" describes girls with strong facial tans. I contrast the Japanese word with the English word they readily find in some electronic dictionaries. Another new Japanese word they report is "mail-tomo" for an email friend--someone known only by email. Tomo is the short version of “friend.”
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The junior college freshman wears a light blue turquoise nail polish.
“That’s nice nail polish,” I say, in the book pattern of compliment on personal appearance.
“Thanks,” he says, adding in Japanese, “I painted them yesterday.”
“Oh, same as me.” I hold up my pink polished nails.
He excluded the index and thumbs from polish.
“How long will it last?” I ask.
He doesn't reply.
“A week?” I prompt.
He shakes his head no, pointing and making a gesture of chipping that could have only come with experience.
I think about suggesting a topcoat. But time is up for the class, and each phrase I contemplate includes “imaginaries:” could, if, should.
The color is becoming to him, with the fresh mat finish and simple blunt shape of nails. His responses are straightforward and guileless. Restricted fluency may unwittingly have such an effect when heard by a native speaker.
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A librarian at NDA gives me a ride home Wednesdays. I meet her at the library. She changed her blouse, washed her coffee cup and bowed ceremoniously to her boss. We talked in two languages. A sustained conversation is impossible.
We drive under a pedestrian bridge near my house with a banner exhorting virtue. It has been there more than year.
I recognize the Japanese words for “heart” and “slowly”.
Midori says the injunction means “live slowly.” Don’t hurry. But the sentence is not specifically about driving nor is it stated negatively. The banner over the street reads in Japanese 安全は 心と時間の ゆとりから。English translation: “For an unworried life, heart and time move easily.”
Midori the librarian suggested studying English during our ride. But I held with a mutual friend who pointed out the danger of driving during an English lesson. Also, as I told Midori, it is relaxing and friendly to chatter on the road. I utter a sentence in Japanese.
“A textbook sentence,” she admires.
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The "manner mode" on the train means setting cel phones to the "vibration mode." I imagine it derives from "good manners."
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I finally got a Japanese version of the bank robbery short story "The Accomplice." Chieko helped me find it at a bookstore.
A paperback guide hung over the shelves, but we couldn't find "The Voice and other stories" in the listings. Finally Chieko tried the name of the story. In Japanese, it was published in a small volume called "The Accomplice and other stories."
I recall standing in front of the Matsumoto Seicho books on the second floor of the Gaidai library. I saw there were three shelves by the author. The volume turned out to be missing.
In the bookstore, Chieko opened the book. I said, "The first page says the name of the main character."
"'Hikosuke,'" she read.
It was the incantation of a spell, the discovery of a password.
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Ms Sugino and I have agreed to write a chapter in an Internet "How To" book.
Our chapter, "How to Write Using the Internet to help," will be published in Japanese, both of us contributing content. Deadline is September first, followed by acceptance or rejection. We enumerated and divided the topics. I have the topics how to write book reviews, outlines, summaries, and how to edit.
I presented each topic to a class as a lesson at Gaidai.
For movie reviews, my students critiqued an old black and white movie. For outline, some pleaded against the teaching of English in Japanese elementary schools while others envied classmates who had had the opportunity to learn it early. For summary, they found the main points of a news story about a mudslide I introduced briefly from my minimal understanding of the Japanese TV as "8 people died."
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The only English language station my radio gets is the US military 81.5 am, Armed Forces. An announcement reminded military personnel that employment off base was limited. to certain establishments and stricter enforcement of these long-standing rules would be expected in these days of increased vigilance against terrorism. Jobs such as working in bars and other establishments whose main business is selling alcohol are forbidden, the radio announced. The rationale, said the announcer, was that some jobs were more dangerous than others. Teaching English was safe.
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A professor who is not Japanese enters the guesthouse at Gaidai with two coeds as guides. I have just eaten, and sit with them at table around their bento and my dessert fruit.
He's from China, recalls the Cultural Revolution, now teaches history in Connecticut, and has a daughter in Iraq who is a member of the National Guard called into active service. The young women study Vietnamese and Chinese. After they leave, he settles in for a month research. I show him the TV in a commons room, mentioning it as the place where I first understood the Japanese in a TV program.
"You're on the threshold," he replied, referring to learning the Japanese language.
He, too, was learning Japanese. We watch the TV drama about Seeing Eye dogs that I've been following. A puppy is followed episode by weekly episode into becoming a Seeing Eye dog, "mo-do-ken," in Japanese. This episode involves a man with some disease. He parts with the dog at the mo-do-ken Center, gripping he leash as he explains, "The dog understands what I say," before relinquishing his hold and going into the hospital.
I understood what he said--that one phrase--perfectly.
We watch the last episode of the Seeing Eye dog together the following week with closed captions. He explains kanji, I contribute some Japanese. Neither of us understands the words perfectly.
It is difficult for me to get accustomed to using a language less than fluently. 80 percent understanding would be more than acceptable for me. It is impossible not to feel stupid.
