Hey oh y’all,
Today is not a day of victory.
Let’s start with our intanshippu mensetsu (internship
interview). I don’t know if I’ve talked about this much, but this summer I am
fortunate enough to be able to intern here in Japan! This is really awesome -
one, internships in general are not easy to come by these days, and two,
internships are not common practice in Japan so any company that offers one is
basically doing you a huge favor.
For me, I received the amazing offer to work at a law office
in Osaka. I am really excited to work there! I will be given the opportunity to
spend about 10 weeks working in their offices and learn about Japanese and international business law.
To me, that’s pretty cool.
So while a certain lazy panda is sleeping all morning, I for
one am being a productive member of society—
--I heard that. And who’s the one sleeping all morning? Last
I checked, you don’t get up until the afternoon some days –
And back to more important measures.
Anyways, that's the good news.
Now for the not so good news. Well, it’s not really news –
it’s pretty common fact for that matter but whatever – I can’t speak Japanese,
and I for sure can’t speak formal Japanese.
Japanese (at least in the gaikokugo version – foreign
language version) comes in 3 styles – casual, standard, and formal. Each
version has a similar base and regardless of which you converse in Japanese
speakers can understand you (though their opinion of you changes depending on
which you choose). Rather, it rather changes to vocabulary and ending patterns that make one more formal over the other.
Tatoeba (for example):
tabeta vs tabemashita vs meshiagarimashita/itakimashita
(first if you are talking about someone else, second if you are talking about
yourself)
loosely translated, something along the lines of
yeah, I ate vs yes, I have eaten vs Ah, I see that you have
graciously eaten / Yes, I have humbly eaten.
As you may be able to guess, the easiest is casual and the
most difficult is formal.
Me being the great language worker that I am, I
instinctively go to casual…always…standard isn’t even normally on the decision
factor.
This has an unfortunate dual effect – one I unwittingly
insult or confuse people (more so the latter probably/hopefully) by dropping a
lot of grammar particles, and two, if I want to be more formal, nothing happens
(literally…I become unable to speak).
So back to the issue at hand – as would make sense, business
settings generally require more formal speech, especially at a job interview.
It’s one thing to interview in English. It’s another to
interview in Japanese. And quite another to interview in formal Japanese. Long
story short, boku wa kinchou shite shimaimashita (Let’s just say I got a bit
nervous…).
Fortunately, my sensei and professor came to my rescue to
both translate and fill some of the gaps.
And to be honest, I owe me sensei and professor a lot, not
only for translating and saving me from complete communication failure. If not
for my sensei and professor, I would not even have the opportunity to interview
and intern with a company, so they have helped me out a lot.
And I guess the silver lining is that what little I managed
to say was supposedly grammatically correct according to my Japanese sensei. But
still…I have a lot of work ahead of me before the summer.
This kind of reminds me of the even we had a few days ago.
A few days ago we had a psychologist who specializes in
culture shock and culture fatigue issues come to talk to us. He described the
common trend of an up, down, up, and sometimes down again trend amongst long-term
abroad travelers: the up being the “honeymoon” phase, the down being the “I’m
tired, alone, and homesick” phase, the second up being the “things are finally
clicking phase,” and the second down being the “I’m back ‘home,’ back to
reality” phase. But one of his points was how living in a country in which you
don’t speak the language can over time become depressing – you are used to being
able to make a solid connection and parting conversations positively. Come to a
foreign country and let the awkward pausing and embarrassed “I don't know what
to say much less how to say it” events, ensue. In any case, such
[mis]communication events aren’t exactly the easiest to get excited about.
Of course, this all culminates in our Japanese midterm…
I saw a kanji portion followed by a formal Japanese portion…
I don’t really remember much after that – perhaps I am
blocking the memory…
;p
Sigh…
Taihen da na (ain’t it tough)?
Gambarou (back to work)…
DC
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