Travel Story – Japan
One of the things I want to do in life is to travel the world, visit and see as many places as I can. I did not have the chance to travel that much as it requires time and a lot of money. If I have I chance where will I travel next time, the answer is simple that is anywhere where I have not been. There will be a very long list of places and countries.
In fact the first foreign country that I touched my feet on is Japan. From a small town in Malaysia and ended up in a big city like Tokyo was a bit of a shock for me. I did not know why but I took a very surprise decision that time that I want to go to Japan to study. Fortunately it was a very good decision as I learned a lot about the country and their culture and it was an experience that we cannot have it anywhere else.
About 20 years ago I took off to the land of the rising sun in an expectation to learn something with hope and big dreams. Little did I know that this country things can be very tough, a place where people only speak their own language and that was an immediate problem for many foreigners who first landed in Japan.
The language barrier
I stayed in the city of Tokyo a big city for a person who just hatched out from a small village and seeing people running around in hundreds and thousands was just something very shocking. Everything is in Japanese, the train station, the taxi and when ordering food are in Japanese. Luckily for me I picked up some basic Japanese and able to communicate in basic Japanese when ordering food or using the train service.
Now I am a Japanese speaker and speak the language fluently although it has been like 15 years I left the country. Japanese language is not that hard to learn especially when you are forced to use it daily, from the moment you wake up and turn on the TV, taking the train, read the newspaper, going to school, having lunch, school again and back home watching TV. All are done in Japanese. Sometimes people asked me if I even dream in Japanese or in my native language.
Many foreigners only need a month to understand the basic language if they attend some Japanese language school and a year to be able to speak and talk fluently with any Japanese. My Japanese was already very good during my second year stay in Tokyo. But even when we speak the language fluently, we will never be a Japanese or be part of their culture which so different and somehow I feel that non Japanese will never able to be part of it even if she or he tries to.
But many foreigners or gaijin speak very good Japanese and there are many who made appearance in TV shows and they speak and write Japanese as if it is their mother tongue.
Foreigners from different countries will also communicate in Japanese among foreigners. Even foreigners who know how to talk English will use Japanese as the primary language to communicate. After leaving Japan for more than 15 years now, I still can remember the language very well. I read the Japanese websites and listen to their music and TV shows. Maybe once you learned about something it is hard to forget about it, just like riding the bicycle.
I will write more about Japan and anything about Japanese the way I understand it in this blog and everything will be categorized at Japan for easy follow up. In my next writing I will write on Japanese people, the good and the bad part, the working culture, before and the present. I hope I can cover some on Japanese food which I believe is the favorite by many people in the world
