Wanderlust
Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2018 8:03 am
Wanderlust
English
I think it is time to brush up my overall English skills, especially after a long hiatus. I have been solely working in the past years and I started missing the joy of learning and maintaining foreign languages.
My schedule was and still is very harsh for my own taste: I do work 6 times a week and I usually do overtime. Not to mention that I was frequently working on my day off as well. I look like just one more person with a dead fish face, early in the morning inside the train…However, I can still try to figure out a way to use the long commuting time, despite the crowd inside every morning and night.
I’m considering applying for a job that would pay me 50% of my current wage. Many people will judge me, but YOLO after all. I have to think about its positive side: have a life. No matter how simple it can be, there is no way anything else could be worse than now.
I mean, I can’t complain because I know there are hundred millions of people, if not more, starving every day. Many people don’t have a job, a place to sleep, something on their plates on daily basis. So, yes, in a way, I can consider myself as a lucky person.
I remember that the best thing in my life was quitting a job after feeling so many things inside my heart. I quit from a good position from a very big company in Japan. Things should and will change, but for the better. I will quit my current job when the right time comes by 2019.
When I did it in the past, I haven’t thought about anything, but just traveling as a backpacker. I have traveled around Europe and Southeast Asian countries. How I miss those Golden times. I could wake up and sleep at any time, go wherever I felt like going to, choosing members to explore places or simply going on my own.
I could see the good side of being a place not followed by strict and very strict rules all the time. I mean, there are rules everywhere. But, somehow, I felt and still feel a bit oppressed in Japan, if there isn’t a better term to describe what I truly feel when it comes to working environment.
Sometimes I feel like going to Africa or South/Central American countries and just keep traveling until I end up somewhere I feel like living in. It could be temporary, as long as money and Visa aren’t a real problem to return. Did I say come back home? Well, if this will ever occur to me. Planet Earth is my home place. Truth is, I am afraid if I backpack again, I will not return with the same mentality as before. Traveling and exploring overseas’ lands, it has taught me many life lessons I could never learn at school or university. It has put me out of my comfort zone and get exposure to different cultures, people, backgrounds, etc. It has not a price. Well, it actually has. I had to pay for the air tickets and cheap accommodations, public transports here and there and so on. But my backpack has survived the mission to go to dozen of lands and I could see the joy of life.
Traveling has opened doors in my life. It has broaden my vision by being exposure to a multicultural environment. I really love this. I really miss traveling, working on languages, eating different dishes and talking to people with different backgrounds.
How many times I have been told here: “you are so different. You seem to come from a different planet. You are the most foreign-ish Japanese I have ever seen/met/talked to”. I take it as a compliment, rather than an insult. It is good to be very different from people surrounding me. Language learning and maintaining, however, it can be hard at times because I feel it is a very lonely activity due to the nature of my personality, personal and professional goals and other reasons.
But as I wrote somewhere above, I’d like to change. I will. I will change my lifestyle because this is the only thing I can control.
It will allow me to sleep more, work out more consistently, have a social life, eventually meeting language enthusiasts, have time to travel (even if it is inside Japan), learn and maintain languages, work on other projects, work on photography, smile and laugh more, have fun and enjoy the bright side of life. The focus is to have a healthier lifestyle than I had in all the past years…
So, here we go…
I’d like to use the “in use series” to complement my studies.
In use series
English vocabulary in use - Upper intermediate
English vocabulary in use - Advanced
Business vocabulary in use - Intermediate
Business vocabulary in use - Advanced
English pronunciation in use - Intermediate
English pronunciation in use - Advanced
English collocations in use - Intermediate
English collocations in use - Advanced
English phrasal verbs in use - Intermediate
English phrasal verbs in use - Advanced
English idioms in use - Intermediate
English idioms in use - Advanced
Advanced grammar in use - Advanced
Additionally I’d like to use the recent acquisition of mine:
Michael Swan's Guide Practical English Usage 4th edition.
Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
Obviously, I’m not in a hurry to study them all. They will be just references when I need.
Reading
My strategy will be reading fiction and non-fiction books in English. One of my favorite Bookstores is called Kinokuniya and there is a branch where I can find only books written in foreign languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese and Vietnamese. Obviously, the majority of the books are written in English. I can’t recall if there was a corner in Italian since I’m not particularly interested in that language at the moment. Oh, there is also a section for Japanese for foreigners, so, some of the books are actually written in Japanese, but for teaching Japanese as a foreign language.
I might take a look at what books are sold at other bookstores such as Maruzen, Junkudo, Sanseido etc and compare with the prices at Amazon, Bookdepository, Rakuten etc.
I’m considering buying Kindle or similar devices for reading fiction and non-fiction books in English. I don’t know what are the best options available, but I might check soon and purchase one from Rakuten.
Additionally to the books, I plan to read news from BBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times from time to time, some academic articles on bodybuilding, rehabilitation, nutrition and its related stuff.
I will also take some articles from Financial Times, The Economist, Wall Street Journal as well as read sometimes some tabloids. The latter has helped me gaining more vocabulary I wasn’t much familiar with.
Listening
Music. I will also consider Netflix and other streaming services for watching Western TV series (American and British TV shows) and movies for “listening” purposes.
Writing
I’m planning to write from time to time and edit when I have time. Proofreading has been one of the ways for me to improve my writing skills. When reading after a while, I might have some better ways to restructure the sentences and replace some words and expressions.
Having a log here could be the first step. I might write in English about other stuff in other platforms.
Speaking
I live in a monolingual country. I have heard from tourists and expats that they have trouble for not being able to communicate in Japanese. Despite the government attempt to invest into foreign language education, I see it as a fail in terms of cost and performance (of the students). Of course, you will see some students who can speak reasonable English here and there; some speaking good English (for Japan’s standards) due to the fact they have studied and lived abroad. There are some advanced and fluent speakers as well. But generally speaking, Japan is still a country where most people can speak solely Japanese.
There are indeed many English language schools, especially in big centers. However, if you take the number of people who attend such schools or hire private teachers, the majority still don’t do well.
In my field, no one (native Japanese) speaks English at all. Maybe they know a couple of words they learned at school, but they can’t structure any sentence. The young generations are probably getting more in touch with content in English. I see so many textbooks aimed to young children these days, so let’s see how things will change 10 years from now.
Speaking about myself, I will need to find some time to go to Meet Ups of my interest and eventually try to make friends with native speakers or advanced speakers. It is important to find a common hobby or interest with foreigners and try to speak to them in English; otherwise, I will not improve my speaking skills. I wanted to pretend I am not Japanese, but I was once told: “you are a terrible actor. You can’t do that because of your facial features”. Lol. The language exchange I have been to, people were solely talking about IT related stuff. Although it is one field of my interest, I don’t want to go to Meet Ups to discuss about programming etc since that was not the specific title or purpose of the organizers.
I will also consider in the future taking an online lesson on Italki with a community tutor. Maybe once a week would be okay for maintenance.
Proficiency exams
Although I dislike the idea of taking language proficiency exams, unfortunately I will have to take one in the future. My idea was to take the TOEIC and 英検. Depending on how the Cambridge exams are accepted here, I might sit for FCE, CAE and CPE in the future as well as other tests that can be taken where I live.
Other languages
What are the strategies and approaches that I have in mind? None to be frank. The first step is to pick up some languages that interest me for a variety of reasons.
How will I choose a language? That's a good question. Let's take a look at some languages...
1. FIGS
I thought about choosing FIGS and work on the “major” or most popular languages. French, Italian, German and Spanish are some of the most popular languages in Europe these days.
2. Sino-Tibetan languages
I could choose the languages spoken in China such as Mandarin, Tibetan, Wu and other Sino-Tibetan languages/dialects.
If I choose Mandarin, then, I could go for the variety spoken in Taiwan to work on and indigenous languages in Taiwan. Austronesian languages from that region seems quite interesting to me.
I’d like to travel to China or Taiwan once a year starting from 2021. I’ve been there before, but there are a lot more to explore.
3. Korean
Why not Korean? I’d like to travel to South Korea once a year starting from 2021. It is quite near, I can find some good fares (if I look 3 months or more beforehand), I love Korean food and Korean culture.
4. Balto-Slavic languages
4.1 Slavic
Russian could be the “anchor language”. If I reach a reasonable level in Russian, I could start picking up other East Slavic languages such as Ukrainian and Belarusian. I could go for West Slavic languages such as Czech, Slovak and Polish; South Slavic languages such as BCMS or Bulgarian and Macedonian and eventually take Church Slavonic.
4.2 Baltic languages
Lithuanian and Latvian. Why not?
5. Germanic languages
English could be my anchor language. Then, I could proceed by taking West Germanic languages such as German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots; North Germanic languages such as Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish etc.
6. Romance languages
Spanish has been on my radar. I could have the benefit of having Portuguese as my “anchor language”. I’m not in a hurry, so I can take my time. Other languages could be French, Catalan, Italian, Romanian, Galician etc.
7. Afro-Asiatic languages
The two languages that have been on my radar are two Semitic languages: Hebrew and Arabic.
8. Sign languages
I could benefit from learning JSL. I have never talked to anyone whose mother tongue was JSL, but it would be interesting to talk to them.
9. Austroasiatic languages
Khmer has been on my radar. I have plans to visit Cambodia and get deep into Cambodian culture.
10. Kra–Dai languages
I wanted to learn Laotian and then explore Thai; however, due to the scarcity of materials for Laotian, I would probably do the other way round.
I love Thailand and Thai food. Nowadays I have some local acquaintances who could help me improving Thai and also be guided there.
11. Hmong–Mien languages
Currently looking for resources.
12. Uralic languages
Finnish, Estonian, Karelian and Hungarian.
My material has just arrived. Yay! Estonian Textbook by Juhan Tuldava. I’m not sure whether I will study Finnish then pick Estonian or the other way round. Suomen Mestari 1 also came together in the package. Yay! A good headache to pick up the next language!
13. Languages of the Caucasus
I’m particularly interested in Kartvelian languages, especially Georgian. I love sumo and there has been four Georgian wrestlers, according to Japanese Sumo Association data. One hasn’t reached the top two rankings, while the other three has reached the top division. The strongest so far has been Tochinoshin. I was amazed to see him speaking in Georgian with the Georgian minister and few Georgian people living in Japan. I also saw Japanese news showing Georgian news. But before that, I have first researched about Georgia when Kokkai has appeared in the top sumo division. I had no idea where this country was exactly on the map. Since then, Georgian has been on my radar, despite being a challenging language. Perhaps it becomes even harder because there aren’t many foreign user-friendly resources.
14. Niger–Congo_languages
Currently looking for resources.
15. Nilo-Saharan_languages
Currently looking for resources.
16. Austronesian languages
Besides the ones I mentioned about Taiwan (indigenous languages), I’d like to study Malay/Indonesian, Filipino etc.
Well, until I now, I only brainstormed about some languages within a particular family group. So, the question is, what would be the criterion for choosing a particular language?
English
I think it is time to brush up my overall English skills, especially after a long hiatus. I have been solely working in the past years and I started missing the joy of learning and maintaining foreign languages.
My schedule was and still is very harsh for my own taste: I do work 6 times a week and I usually do overtime. Not to mention that I was frequently working on my day off as well. I look like just one more person with a dead fish face, early in the morning inside the train…However, I can still try to figure out a way to use the long commuting time, despite the crowd inside every morning and night.
I’m considering applying for a job that would pay me 50% of my current wage. Many people will judge me, but YOLO after all. I have to think about its positive side: have a life. No matter how simple it can be, there is no way anything else could be worse than now.
I mean, I can’t complain because I know there are hundred millions of people, if not more, starving every day. Many people don’t have a job, a place to sleep, something on their plates on daily basis. So, yes, in a way, I can consider myself as a lucky person.
I remember that the best thing in my life was quitting a job after feeling so many things inside my heart. I quit from a good position from a very big company in Japan. Things should and will change, but for the better. I will quit my current job when the right time comes by 2019.
When I did it in the past, I haven’t thought about anything, but just traveling as a backpacker. I have traveled around Europe and Southeast Asian countries. How I miss those Golden times. I could wake up and sleep at any time, go wherever I felt like going to, choosing members to explore places or simply going on my own.
I could see the good side of being a place not followed by strict and very strict rules all the time. I mean, there are rules everywhere. But, somehow, I felt and still feel a bit oppressed in Japan, if there isn’t a better term to describe what I truly feel when it comes to working environment.
Sometimes I feel like going to Africa or South/Central American countries and just keep traveling until I end up somewhere I feel like living in. It could be temporary, as long as money and Visa aren’t a real problem to return. Did I say come back home? Well, if this will ever occur to me. Planet Earth is my home place. Truth is, I am afraid if I backpack again, I will not return with the same mentality as before. Traveling and exploring overseas’ lands, it has taught me many life lessons I could never learn at school or university. It has put me out of my comfort zone and get exposure to different cultures, people, backgrounds, etc. It has not a price. Well, it actually has. I had to pay for the air tickets and cheap accommodations, public transports here and there and so on. But my backpack has survived the mission to go to dozen of lands and I could see the joy of life.
Traveling has opened doors in my life. It has broaden my vision by being exposure to a multicultural environment. I really love this. I really miss traveling, working on languages, eating different dishes and talking to people with different backgrounds.
How many times I have been told here: “you are so different. You seem to come from a different planet. You are the most foreign-ish Japanese I have ever seen/met/talked to”. I take it as a compliment, rather than an insult. It is good to be very different from people surrounding me. Language learning and maintaining, however, it can be hard at times because I feel it is a very lonely activity due to the nature of my personality, personal and professional goals and other reasons.
But as I wrote somewhere above, I’d like to change. I will. I will change my lifestyle because this is the only thing I can control.
It will allow me to sleep more, work out more consistently, have a social life, eventually meeting language enthusiasts, have time to travel (even if it is inside Japan), learn and maintain languages, work on other projects, work on photography, smile and laugh more, have fun and enjoy the bright side of life. The focus is to have a healthier lifestyle than I had in all the past years…
So, here we go…
I’d like to use the “in use series” to complement my studies.
In use series
English vocabulary in use - Upper intermediate
English vocabulary in use - Advanced
Business vocabulary in use - Intermediate
Business vocabulary in use - Advanced
English pronunciation in use - Intermediate
English pronunciation in use - Advanced
English collocations in use - Intermediate
English collocations in use - Advanced
English phrasal verbs in use - Intermediate
English phrasal verbs in use - Advanced
English idioms in use - Intermediate
English idioms in use - Advanced
Advanced grammar in use - Advanced
Additionally I’d like to use the recent acquisition of mine:
Michael Swan's Guide Practical English Usage 4th edition.
Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
Obviously, I’m not in a hurry to study them all. They will be just references when I need.
Reading
My strategy will be reading fiction and non-fiction books in English. One of my favorite Bookstores is called Kinokuniya and there is a branch where I can find only books written in foreign languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese and Vietnamese. Obviously, the majority of the books are written in English. I can’t recall if there was a corner in Italian since I’m not particularly interested in that language at the moment. Oh, there is also a section for Japanese for foreigners, so, some of the books are actually written in Japanese, but for teaching Japanese as a foreign language.
I might take a look at what books are sold at other bookstores such as Maruzen, Junkudo, Sanseido etc and compare with the prices at Amazon, Bookdepository, Rakuten etc.
I’m considering buying Kindle or similar devices for reading fiction and non-fiction books in English. I don’t know what are the best options available, but I might check soon and purchase one from Rakuten.
Additionally to the books, I plan to read news from BBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times from time to time, some academic articles on bodybuilding, rehabilitation, nutrition and its related stuff.
I will also take some articles from Financial Times, The Economist, Wall Street Journal as well as read sometimes some tabloids. The latter has helped me gaining more vocabulary I wasn’t much familiar with.
Listening
Music. I will also consider Netflix and other streaming services for watching Western TV series (American and British TV shows) and movies for “listening” purposes.
Writing
I’m planning to write from time to time and edit when I have time. Proofreading has been one of the ways for me to improve my writing skills. When reading after a while, I might have some better ways to restructure the sentences and replace some words and expressions.
Having a log here could be the first step. I might write in English about other stuff in other platforms.
Speaking
I live in a monolingual country. I have heard from tourists and expats that they have trouble for not being able to communicate in Japanese. Despite the government attempt to invest into foreign language education, I see it as a fail in terms of cost and performance (of the students). Of course, you will see some students who can speak reasonable English here and there; some speaking good English (for Japan’s standards) due to the fact they have studied and lived abroad. There are some advanced and fluent speakers as well. But generally speaking, Japan is still a country where most people can speak solely Japanese.
There are indeed many English language schools, especially in big centers. However, if you take the number of people who attend such schools or hire private teachers, the majority still don’t do well.
In my field, no one (native Japanese) speaks English at all. Maybe they know a couple of words they learned at school, but they can’t structure any sentence. The young generations are probably getting more in touch with content in English. I see so many textbooks aimed to young children these days, so let’s see how things will change 10 years from now.
Speaking about myself, I will need to find some time to go to Meet Ups of my interest and eventually try to make friends with native speakers or advanced speakers. It is important to find a common hobby or interest with foreigners and try to speak to them in English; otherwise, I will not improve my speaking skills. I wanted to pretend I am not Japanese, but I was once told: “you are a terrible actor. You can’t do that because of your facial features”. Lol. The language exchange I have been to, people were solely talking about IT related stuff. Although it is one field of my interest, I don’t want to go to Meet Ups to discuss about programming etc since that was not the specific title or purpose of the organizers.
I will also consider in the future taking an online lesson on Italki with a community tutor. Maybe once a week would be okay for maintenance.
Proficiency exams
Although I dislike the idea of taking language proficiency exams, unfortunately I will have to take one in the future. My idea was to take the TOEIC and 英検. Depending on how the Cambridge exams are accepted here, I might sit for FCE, CAE and CPE in the future as well as other tests that can be taken where I live.
Other languages
What are the strategies and approaches that I have in mind? None to be frank. The first step is to pick up some languages that interest me for a variety of reasons.
How will I choose a language? That's a good question. Let's take a look at some languages...
1. FIGS
I thought about choosing FIGS and work on the “major” or most popular languages. French, Italian, German and Spanish are some of the most popular languages in Europe these days.
2. Sino-Tibetan languages
I could choose the languages spoken in China such as Mandarin, Tibetan, Wu and other Sino-Tibetan languages/dialects.
If I choose Mandarin, then, I could go for the variety spoken in Taiwan to work on and indigenous languages in Taiwan. Austronesian languages from that region seems quite interesting to me.
I’d like to travel to China or Taiwan once a year starting from 2021. I’ve been there before, but there are a lot more to explore.
3. Korean
Why not Korean? I’d like to travel to South Korea once a year starting from 2021. It is quite near, I can find some good fares (if I look 3 months or more beforehand), I love Korean food and Korean culture.
4. Balto-Slavic languages
4.1 Slavic
Russian could be the “anchor language”. If I reach a reasonable level in Russian, I could start picking up other East Slavic languages such as Ukrainian and Belarusian. I could go for West Slavic languages such as Czech, Slovak and Polish; South Slavic languages such as BCMS or Bulgarian and Macedonian and eventually take Church Slavonic.
4.2 Baltic languages
Lithuanian and Latvian. Why not?
5. Germanic languages
English could be my anchor language. Then, I could proceed by taking West Germanic languages such as German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots; North Germanic languages such as Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish etc.
6. Romance languages
Spanish has been on my radar. I could have the benefit of having Portuguese as my “anchor language”. I’m not in a hurry, so I can take my time. Other languages could be French, Catalan, Italian, Romanian, Galician etc.
7. Afro-Asiatic languages
The two languages that have been on my radar are two Semitic languages: Hebrew and Arabic.
8. Sign languages
I could benefit from learning JSL. I have never talked to anyone whose mother tongue was JSL, but it would be interesting to talk to them.
9. Austroasiatic languages
Khmer has been on my radar. I have plans to visit Cambodia and get deep into Cambodian culture.
10. Kra–Dai languages
I wanted to learn Laotian and then explore Thai; however, due to the scarcity of materials for Laotian, I would probably do the other way round.
I love Thailand and Thai food. Nowadays I have some local acquaintances who could help me improving Thai and also be guided there.
11. Hmong–Mien languages
Currently looking for resources.
12. Uralic languages
Finnish, Estonian, Karelian and Hungarian.
My material has just arrived. Yay! Estonian Textbook by Juhan Tuldava. I’m not sure whether I will study Finnish then pick Estonian or the other way round. Suomen Mestari 1 also came together in the package. Yay! A good headache to pick up the next language!
13. Languages of the Caucasus
I’m particularly interested in Kartvelian languages, especially Georgian. I love sumo and there has been four Georgian wrestlers, according to Japanese Sumo Association data. One hasn’t reached the top two rankings, while the other three has reached the top division. The strongest so far has been Tochinoshin. I was amazed to see him speaking in Georgian with the Georgian minister and few Georgian people living in Japan. I also saw Japanese news showing Georgian news. But before that, I have first researched about Georgia when Kokkai has appeared in the top sumo division. I had no idea where this country was exactly on the map. Since then, Georgian has been on my radar, despite being a challenging language. Perhaps it becomes even harder because there aren’t many foreign user-friendly resources.
14. Niger–Congo_languages
Currently looking for resources.
15. Nilo-Saharan_languages
Currently looking for resources.
16. Austronesian languages
Besides the ones I mentioned about Taiwan (indigenous languages), I’d like to study Malay/Indonesian, Filipino etc.
Well, until I now, I only brainstormed about some languages within a particular family group. So, the question is, what would be the criterion for choosing a particular language?