EDOC TERCES
I keep hoping that Japanese will soon stop feeling like a secret code and start sounding like a language. You know when you were a kid and you made up your own language with friends or tried to talk 24/7 in pig-latin? It never worked very well, did it. The express reason people give up on learning languages is that they don't feel like languages at all, rather just alternate means of conveying tidbits of information.

That's all they really ARE, of course, but it's getting past the small talk that's the tough part. I can give my self-introduction well enough to fool anyone into thinking I'm fluent. I can indulge in daily conversation with rapid-fire ease. But ask me my opinion on anything close to my heart and the most I can say about it is if I like it or not.

When Japanese begins to be about feelings and ideas rather than concrete structures like asking permission and requesting favors, that's when I know I will have advanced. It's already obvious to me that I've improved immensely since I came but only in the respect that I know my basics well enough to get by. I've made great progress but it feels like I've made none at all.

I'm not ready yet to leave my excessive studying and face the world. It's not that I'm particularly embarrassed or afraid because Japanese seems quite "normal" now... it's just that I don't feel prepared enough or relaxed enough to engage. That will come by and by, I think. If I gauge myself on how much "extra studying" I have left to do before I get through the piles of flash cards I made when I got here (things like grammar review, verbs, common phrases, sentence modifiers and important words), I should be "ready" in about three weeks. The way I figure, after Christmas vacation and two weeks AWAY from school, I'll be ready to leave my hermitude (is that a word?) and act like a language student rather than a doctoral student.

I've just got to do things my way.

That says "secret code," you know.