Speak

Cor, Japanese is tough. Six months down the line and I rarely feel as if I am making any progress. It took me ages to get any kind of grip on hiragana and katakana, the two Japanese syllabaries, and I still struggle with them. It’s made me realise how much I personally rely on the written form of language when studying a different tongue. When hearing something for the first time I need to be able to make a quick connection in my head with how it would look written down in order to be able to recall it at a later date. I just can’t do that quickly enough in Japanese at the moment and as a result it’s been pretty slow going.

At least, that’s what I tell myself when my teacher laughs at me in that oh-so-polite Japanese way. The truth is, I could be working a lot harder at it. God knows I packed enough study guides as part of my ridiculously low baggage allowance when I first came over. Good space that might otherwise have gone towards Shredded Wheat. What a waste.

As a result, I still enjoy plenty of tortured half-conversations with people I work with, students, randoms at the supermarket. There is an art to them. I used to be content to try to muddle through with my basic Japanese, and whatever English the other person might speak, complemented by an awkward pause and a nervous laugh somewhere along the line. Now, however, I strive for so much more.

Any gaps in the conversation now are heartily seized upon by myself as an opportunity to introduce some highly elaborate and completely inappropriate English. It is remarkably liberating, and if done with plenty of enthusiasm and a large enough grin actually helps to keep things trundling along. A lull in the chatter about japanese food and how cold it is can be livened up with a comment about how I nearly killed myself cycling to work the other day. It won’t be understood, but if you do it with enough conviction, you’ll get a response of sorts.

This really comes into its own during English classes. After the class has gone through their “Good morning Tom sensei” ritual and they’re settled into their work, it’s nice to go around checking how they’re getting on and throwing odd phrases at them. A student chatting away to his mate and not paying attention to the task at hand can be met with “Get a shift on matey”. A group working away at the back can be greeted with something like “All right then lads and laddesses, how goes it?”. The class troublemaker can be fixed with a glare and warned that “I’m on to you fella, I know your game”. Waggle your finger, shake your head, slap your hands to your face, it all adds to it and helps get across the general sentiment. Obviously, the more cockney you can insert into these pronouncements the better.

I started to embrace this during my second week of teaching here. I let my guard down in a moment of frustration and let slip an “Oi!” when trying to keep a class quiet. I was mortified at first when the kids all shouted it back at me and laughed their heads off, but I’ve embraced it now, and “Oi, oi, oi, oi, oi!” has become part of the daily routine and a springboard towards ever more extravagant language in the classroom and in conversations with Japanese people.

I get far more out of the whole thing than they do, but that’s as it should be.