If you’ve ever heard someone speak rapidly in another language, it is an exercise in learning inflections. The rise and fall of their intonations, the dull tones and light breaks between emotional outbursts, the flat replies of sarcasm, and the half-grin sounds of witty replies. These are all distinguishable in one way or another, even if you can’t understand what they are saying.
For me, life in Japan has been like this evolution of sound. Things came all at once several months ago, a stream of unintelligible sounds and data that rocked my mind. When people spoke, it was a stream of sound, roaring like an unchecked river, uncollected and untamed, brutal to my unaware mind. As time passed this roaring became a light trickle, and every now and then, standing on the banks, I would see the riverbed beneath the stream, moving so slowly I could even reach in to pick out some rocks. These breaks, or trickles, represented the moments my mind learned a few cultural tricks, or a bit of language that allowed me to breathe easy.
Then there would come a moment of pain. A moment of frustration wrought by the inability to express myself to communicate with another adult, like the feeling of helplessness in a doctor’s office as he explains things in a stream of sound. They crash, they rage.
Eventually, I could hear words. The stream was no longer unintelligible. When people spoke, even rapidly, I could hear what they were saying. The meaning of course, was lost. But that rush, the sense of despair with the coming of the flood, was gone. On television commercials, in the train or walking on the street, I could hear snippets of conversation…
ことばわ。。。
そですね。。。
何?
ほんとだよ。あのひとわ。。。
Even when people chat near me, I can hear what they are saying, though I am not at the point where I can understand everything. To previously escape this Japanese stream, I would wear headphones, hide in my apartment, and watch all the English media I could handle. My mind buckled under the pressure of my inability to understand what was around me. But now, it seems, I am starting to breathe. When the people around me talk, little lifebuoys pop up through the stream coming from their lips, little things I can hang on to as the days go by. I can use more words and light expressions, and sometimes, in brief moments, there is no stream, and I am standing in an empty riverbed, with nothing but the smooth stones underneath to keep me company.
Maybe the day will come when I am in this riverbed all the time, when I will need no lifebuoys to keep me up as I face the raging torrent that is the Japanese language. When that day comes, how will I breathe? how will I think? I do not know. But I can already see my feet, bare and damp, stepping on the smooth stones, feeling the slightest hint of dirt between my toes. I will smile.
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