Learn the language.

I was recently asked about my time abroad and my experience in learning the language.

Having lived in Japan for three years and with a slight head start than the typical American due to being stationed in Japan 10 years prior in the military, being married to a Japanese woman whom I met in California and studied Japanese for two semesters in college (I could recognize the basic alphabet and knew basic vocabulary and grammar). Within my first month in Japan, I was riding a bus to a nearby shopping mall and met a foreigner and predictably, struck up conversation. He mentioned that he lived in Japan for seven years and it took him until the 4th or 5th year until he could understand what he read in the newspaper and could be conversational in a professional setting. There is alot of truth to this having actively studying Japanese while I was in Japan. There are ways to accelerate this which is by studying at a language school or university and practicing and not worrying about making mistakes. Also, the younger you are, the more likely it is for what you take in will stick.

While Japanese is one of the most difficult languages for a Westerner to master, after a my first year in Japan, I had progressed by leaps and bounds. I was able to find things out at the grocery and department stores, maneuver my way around the Yahoo Japan website, send text messages in Japanese from my cellphone, follow the weather on NHK news and knew which parts of the train were cooler than others and for women only. More importantly, I was able to do my job more effectively which was presenting English and American culture to Japanese elementary students who never had any exposure to a non-Japanese person until they met me. Teaching English in Japanese may seem strange but is par the course in Japan.



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