My Life in Tokyo

Of course language is on my mind a great deal these days. When we made the decision to move to Tokyo, I fantasized about spending all my spare time studying Japanese and adding another and much more exotic foreign language to my repertoire. How cool it would be to talk to real Japanese people in their own language! I might even learn how to read, I thought.

In the beginning, it was easy to work hard. It was very exciting to learn something new and thrilling to be able to put words together in new and strange ways, and to be understood. It was a major breakthrough to be able to direct a cab driver to my building, and a crucial one too—since there are no real street addresses in Tokyo and you always have to give directions. I have also mastered the crucial and tricky counters and so I can count two when describing pizzas (nimai), pencils (nihon), kittens (nihiki), people (futari) or any general thing (futatsu). I can order in a restaurant and say “for here” or “to go”. I can ask “what is this?” on a menu and sometimes I might even understand a wee bit of the answer. This was useful in a sushi restaurant recently when we were served something which apparently came from the abdominal region of some kind of fish. And I can read a few kanji, even sometimes useful ones like “restroom”.

Yet as time went by, I got tired. The novelty wore off. And there were fewer and fewer circumstances in which I had to be able to speak Japanese in order to get what I needed. But mostly, I was tired. Each time I dropped Juliet off at school and rushed home to meet my tutor, newly confused and ill-prepared, I felt tense and anxious. Finally I decided it was time to take a break. And so for the last two months, I have not had a single lesson and haven’t learned any new words. I feel bad about this. It makes me feel weak and unmotivated. It makes me feel like a bad guest in my host country.

And yet, I ask myself, what was I gaining by learning Japanese?

And this leads me to a related question, which is: why do we learn language in the first place, and why would we want to learn more than one?

Juliet is now 2-1/2 and is talking up a storm in English. She seems to do very well in Japanese as well, though I’m not the best judge. She took her first big leaps in language over last summer when we were in the States. When we retuned to Japan, I noticed that she was speaking mostly in English to Noriko. She seemed to understand just fine when Noriko spoke to her in Japanese, but she would respond in English. Gradually she stopped, and now I hear her speaking only Japanese. I find this very interesting because Noriko speaks English very well, and Juliet hears me speak to her in English all the time. Yet she seems to accept that Japanese is the language Noriko uses to communicate with her. After the initial transition, it doesn’t seem to be any more difficult for her speak Japanese than English.

A few weeks ago I took Juliet to a birthday party for one of her English-speaking friends. Almost all of the guests were English or American, but there was one Japanese mother there. Her husband was English and their baby understood both languages, though I think she was not yet talking. I was chatting with her in English when Juliet came over to us. She picked up a toy that was on the floor and asked the Japanese woman, “kore nani?” (what is this?). To the best of my knowledge, she had not yet heard the woman speak Japanese.

So I’d love to be able to say that my daughter is completely bilingual and so brilliant that she can determine which language to speak based solely on facial features and/or accent. But of course it’s not that simple, and the pattern is not consistent. Another day we had a Japanese friend of hers from school over for a playdate. Her friend understands very little English and I’m sure they only communicate in Japanese at school. The mother spoke to Juliet in Japanese and Juliet answered appropriately, yet she persisted in speaking English to her friend. I found this very strange, since it seemed clear to me that the little girl had no idea what Juliet was talking about. But on the other hand, she spoke very little. I wonder what would have happened if her friend had answered in Japanese?

And then there are the funny and slightly humiliating instances in which she refuses to listen to me speak Japanese. If I try to say a word in Japanese (for example, pointing to a strawberry and saying “ichigo”), she will correct me (“no, Mommy, that’s a strawberry.”) I wonder what she’s objecting to. Is it because I just don’t say it right? Or is it because the word doesn’t match the person? I tend to think it’s the latter, because if I ask her what Sensei (Teacher) would call it, she will say “ichigo”.

She never gets mixed up, but I have heard her use a Japanese word when she doesn’t yet know the English one. They were learning the names of animals in school, and one of the animals was a camel. I didn’t know this, and the word “camel” had never really come up in conversation before. Then one day we were looking at her Sesame Street word book together and labeling the things on the “C” page. She pointed to the camel and said “racuda” I thought she was saying “it’s a duck”, and so I corrected her and said “no, that’s a camel.” The next week was a special observation day at school and the teacher took out the animal cards they’d been practicing with. Up popped the camel and the children chimed in “racuda” along with the teacher. I felt silly about having corrected her, and yet I realized that it was part of the process of separating the two languages. She didn’t say “camel” to the teacher, but now she knew that “camel” was the word to use with me.

Obviously, we use language to communicate. It is also obvious that young children learn language very quickly and can even learn two at the same time. I know that a large part of the reason I find it difficult to learn Japanese is that I’m no longer a child. But it’s also true that I don’t need to use it in order to communicate. I can get what I need, make friends, talk to my family, eat, sleep, shop, everything—all by speaking my native language or by using my few words of Japanese. I think that a huge part of our drive to learn language is the need to connect with other people. Children are making new connections all the time, creating friendships, trying to figure out their place in the world. As adults, we have already made our most important connections—especially if we are married and have families of our own. And we have the flexibility to seek out other people who speak our own language and make friends with them.

We know that children who move to a new country are able to pick up the new language and speak almost as well as a native, yet adults do not fare so well. But children are also immersed in schools and have a great need to make friends. Adults who move to new countries often go with their families or can form communities of others who speak the same language. What would it be like, I wonder, to go alone as an adult? What if you had to make friends and go to work and do everything in a new language? How long would it take to learn, and how well would you learn it?