A Very Motivational Party
March 28th, 2007 by MarkLast night, Rika threw a dinner party over at my place. Since she and Martin already sold most of their things, including their refrigerator, to the Tealit vultures, she had to make the food over at my place. I’ve been really busy with work recently… but hey, they’re leaving and the party needed to be thrown. I wasn’t that thrilled with the idea initially, but in the end it turned out better than I possibly could have expected.
About twenty minutes past seven, I got a phone call from Tomi, a Japanese guy doing a master’s degree at Taida. He was already at the MRT station, so I ran out to go meet him. I still hadn’t heard any word from the others, so we went out and bought a few drinks before heading back to my place. The interesting thing with Tomi is that we share three languages- Japanese, Chinese, and English. Interestingly, Chinese, the one that isn’t native to either of us, is the one that is easiest to communicate in. My Japanese used to be quite a bit better than my Chinese, but it’s been on a long and steady decline ever since I moved to Taiwan. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a very similar story to tell about his English.
Soon, Martin showed up, along with Rika and her American friend, Anne. After buying a few groceries, Rika got to work in the kitchen. All I can say is that cooking is her “favorite hobby”, and it shows. The meal was absolutely fantastic. I mean, really, really amazing. Contrary to my fears, the evening went well. Not once did the fact that we were speaking three different languages wreak the conversation. In fact, it went a heck of a lot better than the last party I hosted.
The key was Anne. She did the JET program right after college. It’s the same program that I tried to get into, actually. They recruit teachers from their home countries, and send them to public schools in Japan. Anyway, she spent three years there, learned a ton of Japanese and then came to Taiwan, learned a ton of Chinese and is now studying for a master’s degree at Taida, just like Tomi. Basically, she’s exactly what I could have been- really tri-lingual in Japanese and Mandarin.
At first it was a bit discouraging, being confronted with how much I’ve lost. Japanese was my passion in school. I was already close to graduating with either a linguistics or a math degree, when I took my first Japanese class. I loved it so much, though, that I worked through the whole degree in just two years. I never studied abroad, but I had Japanese conversation partners, a Japanese roommate, a ton of Japanese friends, and a big stack of textbooks, dictionaries, movies, and passion. By the time I graduated, I was mostly fluent, and now I’m not even remotely close.
It would have been easy to be bummed out, being thrust into this situation. But, that’s not what happened. On the contrary, I found it downright inspirational. In the grocery store, I heard Anne asking Rika about various kinds of mushrooms we were buying, and I suddenly had two realizations. The first was that she was still really into learning. That made me smile. The second realization was that I understood quite a bit of what they were talking about! Words I haven’t been able to recall in years were suddenly coming back to me! It wasn’t reliable, but I was hearing more and more things I could understand.
After getting back to the house, where Tomi was, it only got better and better. For some reason, I could understand even more of what he was saying than I could of Anne and Rika’s conversation. It turns out that he’s from Kyoto, just like my roommate was in school. No wonder the accent was so familiar! Suddenly, the idea of regaining my lost Japanese skills while still in Taiwan didn’t seem as unreasonable as I had thought.
I didn’t stay up as late as the other guys did, but I felt a certain sense of motivation that kept me awake long after going to bed. What a perfect series of events. John B’s been posting great stuff on his own Japanese learning journey, I met a Japanese guy from my old roommate’s hometown, and then found myself inspired. It is so time to がんばる！
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March 31st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Don’t you feel cool being a trilingual? I am envious and fascinated.
Why don’t you read in Japanese for fun? For example Haruki Murakami was such a hit in recent years. You could read his novels in original language. Per my opinion to read in one’s native language after university is just waste of time. Foreign literature offers huge amount of art works and new ideas. What about watching movies? For sure there are a lot of Japanese movies in Taiwan. Probably you could understand Japanese part of ‘Babel’ and ‘Lost in Translations’.
Is “Taida” Taibei Daxue? National Taiwan University?
March 31st, 2007 at 6:17 pm
When I moved to Taiwan, I was kind of dumb. I had this idea that learning a language was like riding a bike, i.e., that I’d never forget one once I learned it.
When I first came to Taiwan, reading novels would have been a bit difficult, unless they were online and I could use a tool like Rikai. I was at a level where I could understand news about things I was interested in, such as basketball or computers. I used to watch a lot of Japanese movies before I came here, and that definitely would have been an option, though. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it. So now my Japanese sucks and I can’t make use of those resources… for the time. Lost in Translation was an interesting movie, though.
Táidà is 台大. That means Táiwān Dàxué, or Taiwan University. Taiwan National University is fine, but everyone I know just calls it Táidà.
March 31st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Oh, yeah.
I might feel a little cool, but I’m surrounded by much cooler people. Just on my blogroll, John, TC, Poagao, Range, and Patrick (the nebulon fry) are all clearly more impressive language students than I am. Additionally Brendan, David, Franc, Darin and Angelica (Battle Panda) have each done much better than I have at at least one language. Actually, I think Brendan’s Chinese ought to count double. At least.
March 31st, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I want to learn Japanese as well. I have always wanted to learn it, as far as I can remember. I wanted to do an internship in Japan in 1995-1997, but it never worked out.
I actually want to brush up on my German. I’m fluent, but I need to practice it. Once I am back studying, I think it will be easier than right now. We are still adjusting to Taipei.
I learned that Shida is NTNU and Taida is NTU, right?
March 31st, 2007 at 11:50 pm
That’s right. The only people I ever hear say “NTNU” or “NTU”, though, are Taiwanese people who have an obsession with using no Chinese at all when speaking to a westerner. All my foreign friends at Shida called it Shida, and my friends at Taida called it Taida. So did people on the street. If you say “NTNU” to a normal Taiwanese person, they’ll likely have no idea what the heck you’re talking about. That’s what happened to me during my first week as a student there, at least.
Based on my experience, learning Japanese is way easier than learning Chinese. Maybe even twice as easy. I think you’ll do well.
April 2nd, 2007 at 11:06 am
“…TC, Poagao…”
While I may have schizophrenic tendencies in this regard, I still think I’m pretty much just one person.
I’m thinking of trying to pick up a bit of Japanese as well, and improving what little Spanish I can muster. Russian, I think, is a lost cause. All the fluency I once had has left me, and I don’t see myself using it on a regular basis. It’s kind of too bad; it’s a beautiful language, but the grammar is rather complicated.
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 am
Twice as easy, that’s not so bad.
Yeah, I got the Shida and Taida thing after I talked with one of my students and recognized the tai and da characters on the sign for the NTU Hospital.
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:36 am
TC, Poagao, and the rest,
Oops. I guess I need to edit my comments a little more carefully. BTW, when did you pick up Russian? Did you ever live in Russia?
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 am
I never lived in Russia, but I learned some when I was growing up, took a few classes in high school. I managed to win top honors at the state Olympiada and got third at the regional in Cincinnatti competing with students who had more language-studying background than I did, but that story I’ll save for my own blog some time.
April 4th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
[...] hand, I’m not at all certain of when or how I’ll leave. I remember being shocked at Rika’s party, when her friend Anne said she was definitely planning on moving back to the states to settle down. [...]