Japanese Lessons Part 1

I feel illiterate. I AM illiterate. I can’t read street signs, I can’t order from a menu without pointing to a picture, I can’t go grocery shopping without one mystery item winding up in my cart, and I can’t read from the hymnal at church.

I’m also deaf and mute. I can’t ask for directions to go somewhere, I can’t tell someone I’m looking for Ibuprofen, and I can only smile and nod when the cashier explains the point card reward system to me then asks me to fill out a form.

I’m an English-speaker living in Japan.

Thankfully, I have many bilingual friends who translate for me, read to me, order for me, and teach me important words and phrases. Additionally, some important landmarks and tourist spots have signs in English and Japanese, and most official documents are also bilingual. And so I stumble and survive and LEARN.

I don’t expect Japan to be bilingual, and I certainly don’t expect to see English in common places like the drugstore or restaurants. It’s an entirely pleasant surprise to find a cashier who can tell me to fill out my birthday on the point card form, or the barista who understands I’m looking for decaf. I am a foreigner living in a land with an established language and culture—I AM the stranger here. English is a luxury, not a right.

News today is not limited by oceans; because of Facebook, I’m keeping a bit informed about the goings on in the U.S. of A, and so I’ve learned about the recent controversy surrounding the issue of Spanish language and English language in Minnesota (debate).

Now granted, Japan was not settled by immigrants of various nationalities and languages only a few hundred years ago. Here the parallel breaks down. Japanese is an OLD language and Japan has a very OLD culture. Foreigners make up 1.5 % of the population as opposed to America’s entire population (save Native Americans/First Nation peoples) is immigrants. The U.S. does not have an official language, so there is room for debate. Also, I do have many non-English friends who live in America as I do in Japan—fumbling. Fumbling and learning. There’s the key: learning, never settling for playing the victim or expecting to be special but learning to fit in and thrive. Japan is an extremely united country. The literacy rate here is 99% and Japanese have a strong sense of being Japanese, of being part of something greater—the community of Japan. America’s greatest treasure, her New Brunswick stew of ethnicities is also her greatest weakness. Why not unite under one common language? Why not acknowledge that we all came to America as immigrants seeking something better? Why not now decide that we speak, read, and write one official language, and that is English? Maybe we would find out what it means to be togetherly American.
And that’s my two yen’s worth.

Photo Credit – gluttonize.files.wordpress.com