T-Minus Two Days....

This is the third blog post I've attempted to write here, knowing full well that whichever one I get around to finishing would probably be the last one I'd publish before heading out. Nonetheless, I figure that I should get around to posting something on here since, after all, I managed to do so on my other blog over at Giant Bomb. But what to talk about? In the previous versions, I attempted to use my trademark rambling to once again be one-track and discuss specific topics. Maybe it was the time of night or something, but none of those ever really worked out. So let's go for something a bit more anarchic this time and just talk about what's going through my mind now that I have less than 48 hours before I leave this house and once again embark on an international journey. What purpose this will ultimately serve is beyond me, but, really, when has that ever been a concern of mine? With that said, let's go through each of the main thoughts one by one and take it from there.

I still have a long, long ways to go with Japanese, yet already I'm at a point where I can't turn it off.

I think one of the main signs that you're really embracing a foreign language is when your mind is able to automatically switch to it when even the slightest triggers provoke it. Most anything can make it happen. A store sign telling you that they've restocked. A passing conversation about trivial things from ordinary life. A book title you glance at on a shelf. You don't have to be anywhere near fluent to enter that mode of thinking in the other language; you just need to be eager and willing to learn new things from the world around you. In my case, I can't look at ordinary Japanese characters without assigning meaning to them, nor can I listen to native speakers and easily dismiss them when I'm unable to comprehend everything. I've already reached a point in my life where Japanese really is a part of my daily life, so in turn, it's natural for me to more or less have my faculties for it turned on 24/7. Sometimes I may skip more complex text if my mind is too tired and I don't wish to strain it further, but in the end, my modest Japanese comprehension is a specter that is bound to hang around my constantly. And just like when it happened with Mexican Spanish, I'm nothing short of glad it's there to stay.

Going over to Japan for the first time as a non-native speaker is a scary proposition.

I'll open admit that there are times when I get really nervous about the proposition of spending an extended period of time in a country whose language I can't speak as well as the natives. One of the main reasons why Australia was the first country I visited abroad was precisely because I didn't want to worry about language and potential cultural barriers at the same time. Now that I'm older, I'm willing to go more and more outside my comfort zone, and going to Japan and using my Japanese in a realistic, non-academic environment is bound to push what I find to be comfortable. After all, as much as I may malign my home for being dull and unchanging, like a lot of people, there are also times where I take comfort in knowing that some things are constant and familiar. The fact that I don't have that luxury in a place like Japan, at least for now, is a bit of a scary proposition. But I also know that environments where things are stagnant and don't change aren't conducive for personal growth. It's with that knowledge that I'm ultimately okay with and even thoroughly excited to spend a lot of time in Japan. I always learn the most about myself when I'm on adventures I choose to have myself and I have no doubt that this trip will be true to that once again.

I studied what I can, but in the end, the true studying comes from just using Japanese there everyday.

I got about halfway through my Japanese textbook review before I ultimately ended up calling it quits. Originally, I just wanted a brief break while I work on the latest Shin Megami Tensei installment for the DS, a game I liked quite a bit. But the more time I went by, the more and more I realized that I could only push myself so far before the regurgitated knowledge would be too redundant to be worth covering again. It's an issue I tend to run into quite a bit during finals season; by the end, the knowledge has typically been discussed and re-discussed so much that it does me no good to try going through it yet again. Such was the case again with Japanese, although to be honest, I'm not worried. In the end, I still have a lot to learn about the language anyway and, apparently, I've already covered a considerable amount of ground for an upcoming second-year student. Any deficiencies will probably be addressed quickly enough as I encounter them in the field and it's the only real way to do things anyway.

I hope my conversational skills go up a notch or two while I'm there.

The main stumbling block which prevented me from reaching practical fluency in Mexican Spanish was that I simply didn't have enough conversational practice, a huge necessity when learning any language since that's where the nuances genuinely come to life. I had a theoretical understanding of the majority of the grammar points, but in the end, just reading and writing fluency can only do so much good for you. That's why I was glad the way the Japanese curriculum was executed this past school year was significantly different compared to Spanish; conversational practice was a must virtually every day and as a result, I became a lot more confident in my Japanese verbal abilities in just a few months than I had ever been with half a decade of Spanish studies. Now with this upcoming trip to Tokyo, I hope some down-to-earth field testing of my verbal skills will push me to express myself in the language more naturally as time goes by. From my own experience, a month can suprisingly do a world of good for verbal fluency. When I went to Australia, I became very good friends with a Chinese student, the only member of the group who didn't speak English natively. He went from being able to barely string cohesive sentences slowly to confidently being able to carry on conversations with everybody by the end of the trip. Granted, the guy was a bit of an English prodigy in his homeland to begin with, but I still hope I get to experience something similar with Japanese over the course of this trip. I don't want to be limited to being able to express myself well with only words again and I intend to try my hardest to make sure my verbal skills match my written ones eventually.

Man, that exchange rate is a real jackass.

Tokyo is already considered a city with very high standards of living to begin with, something I don't necessarily have a problem with because I imagine my bargain-hunting skills will come in extremely handy. Rather, the more irksome issue is more of an economic one; even since the world economies entered a recession, the exchange rate between the yen and the US dollar has been a depressing sight to see. The fact that I ended up exchanging my money a few weeks ago to prevent further loss of money, rather than the usual idea of getting the most bang for your buck, is probably indicative of how poor the state of the exchange rate really is. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and hope for the best, although suffice it to say that it's not an easy thing to swallow at all. I exchanged a lot more money than I'll probably need in the end, so I'm not worried about coming up short and having to exchange more at the last minute. I just can't help but wish the economy was in a better condition; being able to get more yen per dollar would be more financial reassurance, if nothing else.

It needs to be Saturday already.

It's Thursday and summer break has been going on for well over two months. I'm typically an extremely patient fellow, but now that I'm getting really close to flying out, I'm wishing the day would arrive a lot more quickly than it seems to be. Irony is a real jerk sometimes.

And with that said, I think we're done for now. It's 7:43 in the morning, so after all this writing, I'm not particularly inclined to write a conclusion. You probably know how I write these things by now, so feel free to just make up the remainder of this blog for yourself.