Vessel

The precious gem of life-in-Japan has grown many facets since I have been here. Hardened through the pressure of experience and the passage of time this once primordial lump of naivety has grown into a glittering stone, casting light in every direction. The complexities of life are being revealed.

Eight months have passed since I’ve been in Japan. (That’s two-thirds of a year gone, Steve). Many of those initial months passed in a vacation mindset with Japanese people appearing as little more than a curious aspect of this foreign place. I’ve really struggled to grasp the reality of their existence as people, as individuals with personalities and humor and family and backgrounds and all the other complexities of the individual life. I live here in this country, yet I live outside of its process, alienated by my inability to communicate. I have long realized the in to this world is language.

Last weekend, for the first time, I tried to use Japanese. Before this I had only ever uttered sounds, muttered laborious incantations like a child translating into pig-latin. English was the language of thought, English was how the world operated and Japanese was only a secret, seemingly impenetrable code that I could only grasp in the way a dog grasps human language.

Yet all of this changed when I dove headfirst into this language’s tempestuous waters. No longer a lever for pellet food, Japanese was now the vessel of human relation.

My speaking partner (my friend, my human contact!) was Yuriko with whom I have been speaking English for the past few months. I have increasingly felt my destituteness in this culture and have grown adamant in my demands to learn the language, so we decided to use only Japanese for the rest of our evening together. And the world changed to color.

We were at the mall when it happened. Because I was sharing the language I suddenly felt connected to the people around me. There was every opportunity and every possibility for interaction. Individuals gained backgrounds as history rushed into the room. Their features gave way to layers of personality. I even gained that veil of self-consciousness that comes when one realizes he is being perceived. The full vibrancy of life was in my grasp.

When we spoke Japanese that day, Japan became real to me. I have now seen this world through the opened door of possibility, and beyond it all of life awaits me.