I also recall in my teens getting into Japanese animation. I think it started, as it did with many westerners, with the release on VHS in 1991 of the classic Akira. I was already interested in Cyberpunk as a genre by that point and this seemed to be the best representation of it I’d seen on screen. Possibly this was the point where I started to pay attention to Japan and its movies.
Over the years I became more and more fascinated by the feudal period and the samurai (yes the same ones I had hated a novel for years earlier because they were included. What can I say, I was a teenager.) The continuing influx of anime to the west made me interested in learning the language which sounded fascinating to my ears. As a result it was around these late teen years where this started to become a real interest.
In time I started to seriously try and learn the language. The best opportunity came for me when I got a job 50 miles away from home that resulted in an hour’s drive each direction. I got bored with the radio after the first year, and my meagre music cassette collection didn’t get me much past the third. After four years I got a new car, and a new stereo with it. This one had a CD player (it was 2003 and I was behind the times, so sue me.)
Armed with this new CD player I acquired a copy of the Pimsleur Japanese CD courses, so those lessons became a new companion for me on my long drive to and from work.
In 2005 I discovered a new online service Japanesepod101.com. They offered free podcast lessons from beginner level right the way up in MP3 format. Great, this is perfect I thought, but I can’t get them into my car without spending a lot of time burning them onto CDs. Time I didn’t feel like spending as it would remove from more important things like watching TV etc.
One replacement stereo later I had a system in the car that would accept SD cards, so it was now a simple matter of loading them onto the card and listening to them when I wished. The drive to work was now something to look forward to. I would listen to the early lessons over and over while driving and they helped a lot. Let’s ignore the fact that many times I got home with no recollection of the actual drive, but I never once had an accident (kids, don’t do this.)
In 2006 I was made redundant from my job. Don’t be sad, we knew it was coming for a long time and were quite prepared. Armed with a year’s salary as my redundancy payment I took off the next month for a 3 week plus visit to Japan. I’d booked into the Asahi Nihongo school in Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan to study Japanese.
For nearly a month I lived with a great family in Fukuoka and attended school in the day and studied at night. I had an amazing time and could happily have spent an extra month or more there. My Japanese got actually reasonably good, not exactly fluent but I could definitely make myself understood. Unfortunately it was getting close to Christmas and I had a wife to get home to at some point, so reluctantly I returned home.
Unfortunately I am the kind of person who gets obsessed with something for a while, then puts it down never to return for years. This is exactly what happened with my studies once I returned to England.
My biggest regret from my time there wasn’t that I didn’t keep up with my studies, but was that I didn’t get a chance to explore and experience Japan for what it could be. I commuted to school and studied, but never felt like I experienced it as well as I could. Other than seeing Osaka for a day when I first landed I traveled little and yearned for more.
Emigrating to Canada took up most of the next two years. Study was the last thing on my mind as we packed up our entire lives and moved over the ocean to a new land. Finding new jobs, meeting new friends and earning new experiences took up everything. Dreams of Japan and the language were fading.
I’d often brought up the subject of going to Japan again to my wife yet she seemed… reluctant. Okay, perhaps scared, terrified, frightened, out of her depth etc. would be better ways of approaching it. Occasionally the topic would be brought up, and we’d decide to put it off for another year for various reasons.
Things changed in 2013.
For some years I’d been backing small projects on the Kickstarter website, mainly roleplaying related projects from companies and people that I’d bought from before. One day while browsing through the site I came across a Kickstarter for an interesting book. Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo by Matthew Amster-Burton.
Pretty Good Number One Eats is about a family of three that rents an apartment in Tokyo for a month and explores the city mainly through the medium of food. Let’s face it, there are few cities in the world better for food than Tokyo.
I had the book for a while on the conclusion of the Kickstarter but it wasn’t until early 2014 that I got around to reading it. It’s a great read and I encourage you to pick it up.
At the time my wife was looking for something new and different to read and I mentioned it to her, so she took the time and read through it. Once she finished it I believe the comment was along the lines of “that sounds like a great thing to do, let’s do that.” So the seeds were planted.
It was then, in short order, agreed that in 2015 we would take a month’s vacation and rent an apartment in Tokyo for that time. Flights are booked (October 9th to November 10th) and the time also nicely coincides with my 40th birthday on October 13th, which is a great added bonus but not entirely planned that way. Honest :)
So it’s finally happening. I get to go back and experience the Japan I’ve been looking for since 2006.
Nine years later, we’re Tokyo bound.
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