Let 'er Fly And Hope For The Best

My four-year old and I are currently wrestling for TV time. He's watching all of the prescribed language building shows that teach him how to sound out words, spell, and build sentences. I, on the other hand, am struggling with learning the Japanese language and prefer to watch NHK, the Japanese news network. I'm also working hard sounding out words, spelling, and building rudimentary sentences. Right now I think my son is winning as he can spell just about any word that he can sound out, while I inadvertently offended someone in a Japanese restaurant the other day by blurting out the wrong noun-adjective combination. I take solace in the fact that I speak Spanish as well, so I'm one up on him :)

All this is to say, I marvel at how quickly my son can pick up the idiosyncrasies of the English language. He makes me laugh with all of the stuff that he comes up with. My battle with Japanese is not as colorful, but probably just as humorous to a native speaker. Like most adults learning a new task, I over-think things, being afraid of making mistakes makes me hesitant and unsure. Kids don't think at all, and they're quite happy to make as many mistakes as needed, free from the social pressures of being correct and proper all of the time. They just let it fly and hope for the best. I'm envious.

This Is Gonna Hurt A Little

Protective blast-wall covered in Arabic sits behind some plastic flowers at a check point. I'm sure it says something about "deadly force is authorized".

One of the many things that I bounce around with is the Japanese culture; at least what I envision it to be. I’m not sure what has attracted me to it for almost my entire life; maybe it’s the whole warrior-monk, search for spirituality, samurai thing. Who knows? Frankly I gave up trying to analyze the reasons for the affinity many years ago and am just going with it.

As part of this “interest” I’ve dabbled in such pursuits as Aikido, iaido (sword drawing, cutting, and return techniques), shodo (calligraphy), shakuhachi (bamboo flute) ikebana (flower arranging), haiku writing, sake (rice wine) appreciation, and the Japanese language as a whole. As you can imagine, this has been a great source of entertainment for my wife, only tempered by the fact that she is an aficionado of the culture as well.

I’ve played around with learning the language since I was in college in 1985 and it’s always been an uphill battle. During my military career The Army spent tons of money and time trying to force Spanish into my noggin, with limited success, so Japanese has been a bit of a challenge. I've never attempted formal classes as it's been hard to schedule them, so I've sort of gone about it on my own using books, CDs, and anything else I can get my hands on. My Japanese language library at home rivals anything that Barnes & Noble could offer.

Lately I’ve discovered several outstanding on-line language resources and have delved back into this painful practice once again. I’m finding that it’s a fairly productive way to spend my time while deployed; better than sitting around watching DVDs. Of course Arabic would be the obvious choice while plunked down in Iraq, but I find the language guttural and not very attractive, to say nothing of the culture.

I’m happy plodding away with Japanese. I’ll never be able to attain the heights that I have in Spanish, but it’s a good mental exercise and I enjoy the challenge. Again, I’m sure my wife will be looking on with great amusement as I continue to struggle.