EIL Intercultural Learning

Well. A bit of background. This post was SUPPOSED to be about "How to Speak Fluent Japanese in Ten Minutes - Success Guranteed!!!!!", and how I've been finding the language so far, but... I just got back from a festival in town with some friends, and I felt kinda pensive. So here I am, in the kitchen of my host family's home (otou-san is snoozing on the couch), laptop on-lap, trying to ignore the fly that keeps FLYING INTO THE DAMN LIGHTBULB. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BREAK THROUGH THE LAMPSHADE ANYTIME SOON, BUDDY!

Irrational anger aside, how am I feeling? Well, I was feeling slightly bleh, but after a great chat with my host parents about... well, loads of stuff, I feel better. But good feelings DO NOT, as a rule, make for interesting reading! So, bleh.

It's not homesickness. Sorry mam and dad - but I DO remember your faces, in case ye were wondering. I do miss being around my friends, though. While I was at the festival it was great! The place was packed, people everywhere, loads of sights and sounds and smells and tastes and... can't quite squeeze touch in there... Textures! There, I got them all. More importantly than that, I was hanging with people my own age and having great fun! Kinda like hanging around Galway, except with fireworks. And Japanese people, of course. But - and I am a little shamed to say this - I DID talk quite a bit of English! For the first while it was through Japanese, and I got to practice my casual conversation (very different to formal Japanese; even the grammar is different), but when they started talking back to me in English I just kinda forgot... Three people in the group had done exchanges in America, you see, and they were three of the people I became good friends with at school! Not a coincidence - not because they spoke English, which helped, but because they were much chattier than the people in my class! Though I had a great time with the people in my class last night, though there were still only about four of them that I had full conversations with. Oh well!

It was when I was on the train back that I started pondering, I think. Music has a big effect on my mood (whether my iPod shuffles onto songs that reflect my mood, intuitively, or whether I just change to suit the music I can never tell), but now I firmly associate Jason Mraz's "The Remedy" with riding a Japanese train at night, and the Glee cover of "Smile" with a trip back from school. Most of my frequently-listened songs have similar associations: with a tap I can instantly transport myself to that bus stop in Bulgaria, or the Grads last year - loads of places. But when I listen to music I tend to blank out; I don't listen to the lyrics as much as I do the melody (though I AM starting to actually listen to what the singers go on about, lately, at much furious urging from my friends), and then I get a kind of fuzzy idea in my head, and then I'm just staring out the window without really looking at anything.

Shortly after, when I had snapped a picture of a Pokemon poster for my friends and gotten into my host mother's car, I kinda snapped back, and I have to say I was quite quiet. I hope she doesn't think anything is wrong; usually we have great chats in the car! But we both agreed it was very hot (the Japanese also love to talk about the weather), and I kept up with some simple responses as we drove.

But it's been a whole MONTH! Wait, sorry.

*changes song on iPod*

Sorry, WRONG song. You know the way I say that music affects my mood? Well, I nearly ALWAYS listen to music when I write, and some of the tone of that song transfers naturally into what I say. This new song is... actually pretty energetic. Nah. I need something more still.

*changes again*

Perfect! Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova - "The Swell Season". Google it; you'll get why I picked it. This song reminds me of walking down by the river on a winter's night in Galway... The water is beautiful... And I can't help but think of Famine emigrants when I hear it... I think it's the lonely violin in the background.

ANYWAY. Apologies for the musical interlude. Where was I? Oh yes - time! It feels like I've been here for a year on one hand (I tend to settle quickly into new environments... I'm a traveller at heart), but everything is changing so constantly

*song change*

[Joshua Radin - "Winter"]

that I feel like I'm being constantly uprooted! In retrospect, it was hard leaving my first host family, who I'd gotten quite close to over the three weeks, and to think that I'm moving AGAIN tomorrow, away from people I've only just gotten to know! It's a little sad. And it's unfair on them. One week out of six: they aren't gonna get the proper share of my memories of Japan that they deserve. But that's how this trip panned out!

I guess that I'm trying to say that this is one of the most... real evenings I've spent in Japan. I had the brilliant festival, of course, and the huge over-exposure to JAPAN, but right now I feel

[La Roux - Bulletproof] wait, 「Tracy Chapman - Fast Car]. Not a La Roux moment.

more detached. In the good way: I have moved past the "Love at first sight" stage of my relationship with Japan, and am progressing into the "Plateau/Doubting" stage, as I have heard it called. Not doubting as in the "I shouldn't have come here...", but in the questioning way: "What is it that Japan means to me, now?"

I'm not quite sure I have an answer yet.