After my six-month intensive Japanese study period at the end of 2009, I had been been burnt out on studying the language for over a year. For six of those months, I was in America and was trying to enjoy the last vestige of college life. During this time, I rationalized that I would make up for this period of inactivity by plunging into another intensive study period as soon as I returned. But my return came and went, months went by, and despite a few feeble attempts to return to my past studying glories, I found that the fire which propelled me through in the past was nowhere to be found.
And here I found myself at a crossroads — because I honestly had enough language ability to “get by” in my day to day life over here. I didn’t “have to” learn any more. Where I spent those many days in the library studying for JLPT level 2 with an unassured future in my mind, and no guarantee that I would ever return to Japan again, I now found that with all the time in the world it was very difficult to get motivated.
But what motivated me in the first place? Walking around the streets of Tokyo, I’m aware of how arbitrary a decision it was to study Japanese versus any other language. If a few things happened differently, or if I had friends with different interests in my life, I might find myself blogging from an apartment in Berlin right now. What is it about this mass of humanity that attracted me in the first place? In light of this feeling of indifference, it is perhaps understandable why I couldn’t seem to relight that fire.
It’s a rediscovery that had no sudden epiphany, no “moment” when everything rushed back to me in a period of clarity. If there was a singular point that I had been missing out on, it was in remembering that the reason I came here never had much to do with the country itself.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of things about this country. The history, the geography, the public transportation, the art styles, the filmmakers, the society (for the most part), and the people I have met since coming here. But I had none of these things in mind while I was staring blankly at Japanese flash cards during the dark ages of 10th grade. I need only look back to the first post I did on this blog in July 2009 to remember what that was.
Going into junior high, I decided that I wanted to learn something by the time I graduated college to justify all those years of existence.
The only reason that “something” turned out to be Japanese was pure happenstance. The love of video games typical for a junior high kid. An infatuation with Pokémon. My friend Alex’s collection of Gundam figurines. Looking at the ingredient list on package of ramen noodles in Japanese. No one of these factors was enough to push me through the times when things felt completely impossible, that fire had always come from the desire to prove to myself that I could actually do something great before college graduation.
So, depending on your definition of “great,” that goal was met when I received an email from Tanaka-san with a certificate saying I had passed JLPT level 2. At that point, my previous source of motivation was dead and I would have to come up with something new in order to progress any further. Only, I didn’t know that while telling myself I would come back to Japan and pick up right where I left off in the language.
And so the weeks turned into months, and nothing much happened. December rolled around and I started feeling guilty about how little I had accomplished with the language compared to where I was the previous December. And that feeling of guilt was still not enough to get me through longer than an hour with my nose in a book.
Despite all this, today I’m beginning one more push towards the goal I had always viewed as the pinnacle of achievement for Japanese proficiency. The ultimate “why-yes-I-am-fluent” indicator — the highest level of the JLPT: N1. This audacity is fueled by a completely different, but I think just-as-valid motivator, of which I have just started to become aware in a big way.
If you were to ask me how I define myself, I would stick “creative” pretty high atop the list. And I have a fair amount of friends who would describe me the same way, including a few friends who have faith in my abilities that far surpass my own faith. And despite this, ask me what I have created in my lifetime. A glance down the last eight years of my life is an endless wave of expectations, excitement, and disappointment as I develop ideas for projects, begin to work on them, and then stop working for various reasons. If you were to ask this film major to show you an example of something recent he has completed, he would still have to refer you to a movie he made in two days with his friends in 2004.
I have been aware of this for years, but I’ve felt as if the moment I would finally prove myself was coming soon. What about all those projects I had planned with my friends? And how could I get through my senior project class without finishing a project? (How DID I get through that…?) I thought I was close to finally getting something finished with the short film we shot before I left in August, but due to recent developments I’m now having doubts whether that will ever see the light of day.
Not even twenty halves make a whole.
My creativity isn’t being called into question, but my persistence is. Despite knowing that I’m capable of finishing what I start, a jury might disagree with such a claim based on evidence. In this light, I can’t look at JLPT level 2 as an accomplishment, but as another incomplete project. And N1 is the completion of that project.
So here’s what we’re looking at. 2000 kanji as opposed to level 2′s 1000. 10,000 vocabulary words instead of 6,000. A 70% pass mark instead of 60%. Only 33% of the applicants who took N1 in the first half of 2010 passed. This is while I’m working full time and attempting to have a social life on the side. I have just over 300 days before the test on December 4, 2011.
Who knows how well this will work? It seems pretty impossible from my perspective, but still within grasp in a strange way. I haven’t felt this way since… studying for level 2 in 2009. And it’s good to feel that way again.