Jordan M. Nichols
English 101
Dr. Begert
Educational Narrative 1/30/2013
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 plane towards the other side of the world. Destination would be a tiny, lobster claw shaped island called Okinawa, Japan. Coral reefs and sandy beaches formed the jagged seventy 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.
A couple of months ago this was the contract I picked. The place I was working at held openings for positions in Japan. I did not hesitate to pick the furthest place away from home. Growing up all my life in Birmingham, Alabama I felt the need to escape. Being in a small industrial city nestled in the heart of the south my opportunities seemed bleak at most. Since pressures of entering the black hole of blue collar work was not a very well entertained idea for me, I decided to enlist in the United States Navy. I would go on to complete basic training and then schooling to become a Corpsman (a medic for United States Navy and Marine Corps). The next plan was to leave everything I was comfortable with behind.
Thrown into this place with no known prior Japanese language skills, I was starting to wonder about my sanity. My mind scared by 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 me, you idiot foreigner." A challenge my naive, boyhood bravery would graciously accept. Everywhere I went I needed to know Japanese from menus, road signs, and 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 the Japanese: For Dummies book (It was a little helpful but only used it for a week). Frustration and confusion will be my new best friends as every night we would spend together getting to know each other.
At first it started with learning the two different alphabets and after months that would lead into kanji learning and sentence structure. Very arduous at first but over time the headaches would soften with the flashcards retiring to my memory. I moved up the elementary ladder of going to simple words and sentences to whole children’s books. Never would you see a more charismatic champion exclaiming from behind the spines of little kids’ books. You could walk in my room and see my head bobbing left and right like a tennis spectator. Nothing would seem more comfortable than after working a long shift and immediately sinking my teeth into various grammar book. TV shows would follow later and afterwards I would start to sail through some news channels and read thoughtful articles aided with only a dictionary as my atlas. Nothing would be more exhilarating than seeing a new word in the wild as I try to corner it down in my short term memory.
It was about survival and trying to evolve forming this life life necessity. There was still something missing in this process. Even with my jumbled thoughts and expressions in my head, it all felt very cold and one sided. I had to fill that social need for my learning. Everyone else was speaking it and I couldn’t compete with them. I came to a very barren plateau and I felt sluggish. I was putting hours and hours a day learning and was wondering why I could not feel more progress. “Did I belong here?” If I could not hurl myself over this wall it might just enclose me on the outside permanently.
I needed to form friendships and bonds with the locals. I needed to hold conversations in Japanese with another warm body. Somebody to bounce off expressions off of and see the facial cues if what I said was even acceptable. I would slowly form sentences to shakily ask strangers. I then started to feel more confident and started to talk more. Later I would start talking to Japanese coworkers at the hospital. I would approach with the intent to converse while a mix of unsure and excitement would force their facial muscles to strain out an awkward smile. I could only imagine the thought of a Southern, blond haired kid speaking their own language showed instant amusement. They would guide me along through the conversation. I felt like an inexperienced dancer dragging my feet over theirs as a tumbled in and out of the dialect. Neither gratuitous nor spectacular but nonetheless I was holding on. I still talk to some of them to this day. Despite the miles upon miles of blue Pacific that separate with us I still will get pictures of them and notes about what they are doing.
Even after three years living there I was very proficient but not fluent. 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 if it did not relate to learning Japanese.
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