Language and such...

Well, my brother and I are closing down my parent’s house and once that is done, I am going to live with my brother and his family.  Part of me feel sort of stymied by that fact that I have to be taken in by my brother.  Schooling is going so very slow, but I blame that on my stroke.  I think that is why I am moving.  I can get a job with my two year degree teaching English.  I think I would be good at it, teaching.  My father thought so too, so I am going to where I can put my knowledge to work.

The Japanese language.  That is another tough nut to crack.  I knew Chinese but that was one of the byproducts of my stroke, I have nearly forgotten it all due to it.  Japanese I was learning a bit too.  Sigh.  Well, they are similar enough so I am going to try to pick up Mandarin and Japanese, at least to speak.  I think I can do it.  Hell, my niece is learning how to speak Mandarin and she is so very good.   Come to think of it, I used to speak German too.  It was something that dad knew and I picked up that year I was in school in Germany.

Language is so very tough and what I mean by it is of course of nuances of language.  In Mandarin there is the four sounds that every particle makes.  In German all the words are either masculine, feminine or neutral, and there isnt that much reason why a word is either one.  For Japanese, there is hiragana, katakana and kanji, making for a crazy mess when is comes to writing, not to even mention the romanji.  I will just have to muddle through and pick up what I can of all three languages.

It begins...

Oh my... where to begin...

I guess is began with my mother's death on December 1st.  After I got over the grief and all, I was sitting there taking stock of my life, trying to figure out what I should do with my life.  I was always the filial son taking care of my parents, but they are gone to me along with one of my little brothers (fuck you cancer!), I was left with nothing to do.  My remaining brother is moving his family out of the country around June, so what was I to do?  I am going to Japan.

Now I could go to Taiwan or Singapore or some other Asian land to teach English, but I decided to start off going to Japan.  Now I admit, this is partially because of a girl I know, +Rynyn , but she doesn't know because of her new job here in the States.  I wish she would take that leap with me and go now, but she wants to work at this job that has given her so much responsibility.  It makes me sad, but I will wait for her to come.

The other reason is I like Japan, even with its xenophobic tendencies at time.   I am not saying that all Japanese are xenophobes, but some of the older people and the Right-Wingers are.  But people are people all over the world and there are people like that everywhere you go.

I plan on going in September.  I think it will give me time to do a final GenCon and go and talk to people I know.  I will be travelling back South to LA and hanging out with all of my friends there.  I want to talk to my friends +Qrys Cunningham  and +Jay Estrada  and +Kay Sakaue , who has been a JET, married Japanese woman and is Japanese, respectively.  I am getting rid of most of my stuff by selling it on e-Bay or giving it away or going to gaming conventions.

So, what do I have to do?  1) Get my passport renewed.  Big one here because I have lost my birth certificate.  2) I have to live out there, so a job teaching English would be good.  3) A place to live, even though a vagabond lives where ever he throws his hat, hehe.  I know there is a lot more that I have to do, but I will work on my passport first.

So I will try teaching English in Japan to start off with and hope that +Rynyn comes around  :)