Learning Japanese

I just wrote, sort of as a joke; that the hardest things about learning Spanish are: 1) the punctuational dash that is used instead of quotation marks, and 2) remembering the difference between daring (atrevido) and naughty (travioso). (Es posible ser o estar los dos al mismo tiempo!)

I am thinking about studying Japanese a bit when I am taking breaks from Spanish. I think that will actually be less confusing than simultaneously studying German. It is true that Japanese can sound a bit like Spanish once in a while. I think that is the Portuguese influence on the language. When I close my eyes when watching anime I sometimes pretend it is Spanish I am not understanding and try to decypher the words!

Someone once did a spiritual reading for me and told me specifically that one day I would end up helping kids in Japan. I have thought about that sometimes but it didn’t really feel like something that would happen. I am drawn to Japanese culture and fascinated about what yet to be translated works of art I might find in bookstores and libraries there. I love anime and would prefer to understand the original language. There is Japanese cinema! Japanese literature! Japanese spirituality and ways of being appeal to me and always seem to freshen my perspective. I want to learn more about Shinto and I am already interested in Buddhism. There are lots of languages to learn but I think maybe I just made a step towards committing to my next one!

At meeting this morning I was sad but more centred than usual, interested in the experience of being in my body maybe for the first time in so long. Three of us took a beautiful walk in a gorgeous park by the lake and the state Vietnam memorial today. Then we came back to the house and the four of us chatted about things like universes being contained within black holes over raisin bread. And hmmm, that is interesting: I was pretty astounded once when my ex got a psychic reading once and was told of the smell of raisin bread which I guess was her grandfather’s speciality. I just remembered that. I don’t know about the reading I got but if I think about languages in terms of which cultures I might have the most fun participating in more I think Japan would be at the top of my list. So it makes sense to start studying it, I am less likely to give up on it. I just never let myself get into it because I needed to get fluent in Spanish and German there! Well, I am nearly there in Spanish, it should not take too very long, and German can wait a bit, while I am learning some basic Japanese. Once I get back into it, and start reading, I will finally read The Neverending Story in the original.