Ed Narrative Rough Draft

     Nobody knows how much choices will affect their lives at the time. Standing there at San Diego International airport looking at the departures/arriving billboard the two words "on time" was the only thing my mind was fixated on. Sitting there with all my belongings in two suitcases and a duffel bag. All I was worried about was boarding that plane and starting my life.

     This moment would start when I just turned 19 years old and boarded that airplane towards the other side of the world. Destination, Okinawa, Japan a tiny, lobster clawed shape island called . Coral reefs and sandy beaches formed the jagged 70 or so mile coastline but more importantly it was "Not the United States" which was the only thing I cared about at the time. At the pinnacle of adult life this place will shape my future whether I liked it or not.

    Coming off the terminal I took my first steps in a different country. The first thing was relief to be out of cramped cabin for the past ten hours. With each footsteps the feeling of relief was slowly turning into mild anxiety. What have I done? No, really!? Why am I here? I was lost and felt isolated from everyone else.  Neon lights and buses lighted the roadways outside Narita International Airport. Luckily I was rag tagged with another group of Americans and we corralled through the unknown together. I would eventually board a separate flight away the next day away from Tokyo and away from the group.

     Thrown into this place with no known prior Japanese language skills, I was starting to wonder about my sanity. My mind scared at the weird, wiggly calligraphy that etched itself on every horizontal surface in site.  This would be the catalyst that made me jump over the edge of uncertain down the path to teach myself a second language. A point of looking at everything as it challenged me. "Try to read my you idiot foreigner." A challenge my naive, boyhood bravery would graciously accept.

     Everywhere I went I needed to know Japanese from menus, road signs, to even advertisements. Never would I think I would miss reading random pointless ads. I enlisted my deeper thoughts and persuaded every ounce of my free time to try and learn this elusive beast. From online texts and self-help to even sinking so low into reading a Japanese: For Dummies book (It was a little helpful but only used it for a week) . Frustration and confusion will be my two new best friends as every night we would spend together reading and learning about it.

     Started with learning the two different alphabets and after months will lead into kanji learning and sentence structure.  After a year or so I moved up the elementary ladder of going to children’s books. Never would you see a more charismatic champion exclaiming from behind the spines of little kids books. TV shows would follow later and afterwards I would start to cruise through some news channels and read thoughtful articles aided with only a dictionary as my atlas.

    At first it was about survival but over time it would evolve into a life necessity. I had to feel the social need in my life. Everyone else was speaking it and I was stuck with my very incompatible English. The feeling of being completely different came in a very steady and slow awakening. Blurred at first than as you move on in your day becoming clearer and clearer. Did I belong here? This other side of the wall became darker and darker and my only hurl myself over it was to study more and more.

    A year later and the thoughts were getting more and more positive .  After a while the dread of going home after a 10 hour shift to not immediately relaxing seemed idiotic at first. Then I started to see how the simple things I learned would present themselves out in the world. From finally identifying one word to slowly forming sentences to shakily asking strangers directions. I started to see the reward. I then started to feel more confident and started to talk more. I even made friends with a lot of people that even to this day I still keep in touch.

    Even after three years living there I was nowhere close to being fluent, but I still wanted to master this new skill. When I moved back to the States I would continue to learn it every day and try my best to recreate all my stimuli from Japan and implement it to my American world. Watching Japanese news programs and reading short articles would start to take priority in my life.

   One of the things that surprised me was the benefit it gave me in other areas. I never took something as serious as this was. I was an average student in high school with no real motivation to learn on my own time. An average worker that made sure my work started and stopped the moment my hours were clocked. This gave me new understanding of taking something and developing it. I became a self-starter and made sure that I applied the same discipline to other tasks I was doing even it didn’t relate to learning Japanese.