I should say a word about FIRST, a non-profit professional organization on whose board of directors I presently sit. I began my association with FIRST in its early years, when I was involved with computer security for a product line at Sun Microsystems. Since then, we have seen more and more emphasis put on how to react to security breaches of various kinds.  But FIRST is an unique organization, bringing together incident responders from across the globe in a common forum.  If you’re interested in learning more about FIRST, its annual conference, and the other work it does, by all means visit www.first.org.

It was a little bit unnerving to give a talk about Japanese language and business culture to an audience that included a large number of Japanese. After all, they would all have much more experience than I do in Japanese business settings. But I tried to make the case that the differences–things that lead to misunderstandings–are extremely important, too. I was really excited to get positive feedback not only from the overseas audience, but also from the Japanese audience. That so many people enjoyed the talk made me very pleased indeed.

Because only my mother knew of my impending arrival, the fact that I had crossed the Pacific came as something of a shock to my dear brother.  I wish I’d had a camera to photograph his face when he realized I was in town! He and I will be returning together to Japan next week, as he will be taking a reciprocal vacation there to see the sights of Asia.

Reflection. The trip home gave me some time to reflect on the outgoing year.  It’s been one of the most interesting twelve months in memory, full of milestones: leaving Skype, moving to Asia, becoming a full-time student again — all while watching the economy crumble. Though I’ve had my ups and downs along the way, I must say that this year has been a really wonderful one.  I’ve made some great new friends and rekindled old contacts.  Despite the world financial situation, I truly think that the horizons are broad and bright.

Of course, the most prominent element of this year has been studying Japanese at the Osaka YMCA Gakuin. I’ve been exceptionally fortunate to have so many kind and bright classmates. For instance, Mei Yu (photo, right) was in my elementary Japanese class from April through September 2008, and is now in one of the intermediate classes that parallels my own.  She helped me make it through our elementary class by providing really amazing encouragement to me and others in the class.

Language learning. Our instructors have been there for us all along the way.  Some are more “there for us” than others, but as a cadre I think that they are very much focused on the students. There are palpable differences between the pedagogy, or strategies of instruction, practiced in Asia and that used in the United States.  Post WW-II education styles in Europe and America have trended heavily toward the use of level-of-learning objectives and outcomes-based instruction review. Yet, my experience in learning Japanese is that the instruction method often borders upon rote learning (though I must stress that the instructional style is not entirely of this form).

For example, students may be directly influenced by their perception of success in learning and levels of expectancy–with realistically high helping to build confidence, and low (or unrealistically high) expectations helping to build incompetence. Bernat & Gvozdenko, “Beliefs about Language Learning”

Quite disappointing to me has been the lack of meaningful feedback from the instructors about one’s learning progress.  Am I shooting too high? How can I learn more effectively? These questions have been asked but largely left unanswered. I have felt, off and on, that the school’s instructors have little or no interest in whether the students succeed or fail, and that the instruction has been tailored to benefit those who already knew kanji (Chinese characters) or languages with grammar similar to Japanese, such as Korean.

When I enquired with our lead instructor about whether it would be wise for me continue in my current class or change to lower division one, I was told that she had an opinion but would not share it with me.  If I wanted to stay, I could stay; if I wanted to move, I could move.  While that afforded me ultimate latitude, I found it to be less than helpful. It took another hour of conference to get to a point where she would give me more helpful advice.  The verdict? My sights were set too high for the time available. Her advice turned out to be invaluable, but it was like pulling teeth to get to it.

All this said, I feel certain that my own lack of cultural awareness makes it very difficult to fit into the scheme that the Asian students more naturally follow.  If I take this as a learning experience and not as a “negative”, I will surely profit from it in the long run.

With all that in mind, I have my sights now squarely set on 2009, but with an eye on the past so I can hopefully avoid repeating my mistakes.

However, I have found one really good audio-based resource for learning Japanese, called JapanesePod101.com. I discovered “Jpod101” right after they launched, while I was working in London at Skype. I started using their free daily podcasts to hear conversational Japanese in a way that I wasn’t getting in my normal Japanese class.  I wouldn’t substitute Jpod101′s podcasts for my formal classes, but they are definitely complimentary to one another.

I feel as if I have become Amazon’s favorite customer, with all the Japanese language learning resources I’ve bought (and used!) during the past year.  However, because one of my biggest challenges is still 聞き取り (listening comprehension), few of the resources I have can compare to Jpod101 for understanding regular everyday conversations.  Of course, conversational groups are great, too, but with podcasts it’s easy to listen to key material as many times as you want, whenever you want.

Each of the instructors for the intermediate level prefaced their self-introduction by saying that the intermediate level would be “very difficult”, as compared to the beginning level.  Our one-hour orientation in our new classes bore this out.  The work does not seem insurmountable, to be sure, but the coursework load is definitely going to increase in intensity and complexity.  I guess we’ll have to see how the upcoming classes unfold before passing any judgment.

We were each given copies of our new textbook, entitled 中級から学ぶ日本語 (“Japanese study from the intermediate level”), as well as the associated workbook.  At first glance the book seems very dense and hard to follow.  It is very unlike the excellent “J Bridge to Intermediate Japanese”, which has very clearly outlined grammar points in each chapter.

One big difference is in the presentation of new kanji, which are the Chinese characters used to represent most Japanese words.  The number of kanji in each chapter steadily increases throughout the book.  Unlike in the beginning level, we are expected to find the compound words in which each is used, so that we can figure out the associated “reading” (sound) of the kanji.  That may not be particularly difficult, but in practice it is quite time-consuming.

It appears from the first month’s schedule that we’ll be breezing through this book.  The book does not look easy at all, so the idea of “breezing through” is going to invovle a lot of hours of devoted study.  I’ll write about the course curriculum a little bit later.

Guide to the books mentioned in this article:
J Bridge to Intermediate Japanese (Bonjinsha) ISBN 978-4-89358-497-7 (2002 ed)
中級から学ぶ日本語 (Kenkyusha) ISBN 978-4-327-38443-2 (2003 Ed.)
中級から学ぶ日本語ワークブック (Kenkyusha) ISBN 978-4-327-38445-6 (2004 Ed.)

For a native speaker of Indo-European languages, such as English, learning the Subject-Object-Verb (“SOV”) order of Japanese seems particularly hard. However, I am surprised at this difficulty: I studied some Latin during my High School years, and, except for some poetry, it generally follows the same SOV order.

Kanji, the Chinese writing system adopted by the Japanese back at about the beginning of the Common Era, is also very difficult to master.  There are wild numbers thrown around about how many kanji there are.  However big those numbers are, there’s general agreement that you need to know the so-called Joyo kanji list, which is a set of just under 2,000 kanji that are taught in grade school and high school, in order to lead a normal life in Japan—for everything from reading the newspaper to understanding correspondence and everyday writing.

All the complexity of Japanese caught up with me yesterday when we had to quickly write a short essay in class and deliver it in front of our fellow students.  Our topic was about our daily life as students in Japan.  The speech was written as well as I could – which is to say that it had some defects, but was good enough to deliver.

I’ve given a lot of speeches for work, often in front of large, unknown and sometimes less-than-friendly audiences.  I do well at making eye contact, not using notes larger than an index card, and so on.  However, it is a humbling experience to make a speech and not be able to think of even simple words.  Or to be able to remember the outline.  Or, in the case of kanji, to be able to read an important word [see inset, shakai] that I, myself, had written a mere 15 minutes before.

The speech was, in my estimation, a total disaster.  I feel as if I became completely despondent afterward and for the rest of the class session.

However, my fellow students are a real source of inspiration.  During the break after the class session in question, one of my classmates left a small drawn note on my desk, face down (see image, above), that read “Ganbatte! Daijoubu yo!”, which, roughly translated, is a strong expression of encouragement as well as a way of saying that, while there might have been problems, everything’s OK.  “Chin up”, as they say. My classmates’ words of encouragement have been, to me, quite significant. When I’ve felt as if I’m falling behind, they have helped me put everything back into perspective.

Our class is also endowed with several wonderful and professional instructors, including one whose teaching and counseling talent is really great, Aoki Mariko-sensei.  After our class had ended that day, Mariko-sensei and I had a conference, during which she talked to me about the speeches we made, the lesson we were covering at the time, and the tangible signs of progress she saw in me.  I can’t express in words how much her encouragement meant to me.  Whether I will succeed or not in Japanese is up to me, but a bit of positive nudging goes a long way.  Keep going!

This, apparently, is about to change.

In the official exam guide for this year’s JLPT, published by Japan Educational Exchanges and Services (JEES), there is a section entitled “Schedule”, which reads, in part, as follows:

Schedule

[...] Beginning in 2009 the test will be held twice — once in July (Levels 1 and 2 only) and once in December (Levels 1 to 4).

This is really good news for people trying to pass the two highest levels (Levels 2 and 1). Yay! I’m going to take Level 2 this year, but have absolutely no expectation of passing it.  However, the preparation for it will be a very good exercise. I hope to be able to pass it next year, either in July or in December.  I guess it all depends on how my studies go.