Full of Caaaaaaaake
Hey, everybody. It feels like it's been a while since I've written a post of substance... Will this be the day I buck that trend?!
This weekend I accomplished precisely nothing. Well, I did get my hair cut, ate sushi, walked around Kichijouji taking pictures, and took some more pictures in Shinjuku this evening after having supper with Alexis. We went to the gayer than gay Sweets Paradise, and I was already amused that we were most likely the only non-couple F/M pair there, but given our main topic of conversation over the food, it was kind of funny. Or ironic, I suppose.
Another thing I accomplished was finally finding an acceptable purse and buying it. It's pink! And not the dusty old rose that everything seems to be this season *yawn* but a nice bright one. I didn't have a pink purse yet. Another thing I bought is more nail polish, because I definitely needed more of that! But I can blame Hannah for eliminating any vestiges of shame I might have had left on this particular topic, as she rightly pointed out that, "Nail polish lasts forever."
It feels a bit late to write in detail about my time in Canada, but there are a couple of things that were really driven home while I was there.
The first is that goddamnit, I really miss speaking French regularly.
Those of you I met in Japan might not realise it, but before moving here, my life was mainly conducted in French. I've always spoken French with my mother; all my schooling, except for kindergarten, grade 1, and 2/3 of my university classes, was in French; I studied ballet in French; I taught French full time for three years; most of my closest friendships in Canada were conducted in French; and G and I always spoke French together. As for English, apart from being the language I speak with my father and brothers, it used to mainly be my language of cultural consumption rather than daily life: the television shows and movies and books that I choose have always been overwhelmingly in English (or subtitled in English, in the case of anime), but I never lived my day-to-day life in English until I came to Japan, where I work in English and conduct most of my social life in English.
Ça vous dérange si j'écris un peu en français? Puisque je suis tombée sur le sujet... Ça fait bizarre de penser que maintenant, depuis que j'ai arrêté de donner des cours privés, je parle en français une fois par semaine, au plus. Parler à Croquette compte pas vraiment! =^_^= Et c'est pas comme si je lisais en français non plus (je lis pas beaucoup, peu importe la langue, de ces jours-ci, mais en tout cas...) pour combler le vide. J'ai pas peur de perdre mon français, et les gens de mon âge au Canada sont assez vieux qu'il y a pas de super gros roulement dans les expressions, alors je me sens pas comme si j'ai de la misère à communiquer, mais c'est différent quand-même. On dirait que de plus en plus, je pense à comment dire quelque chose en français, et je suis un peu déçue que les gens autour de moi comprendraient pas l'expression que je voudrais utiliser. Ça prend trop de temps traduire et expliquer le sens de "je suis dans les patates" ou "tirer les vers du nez"! XD
S'il y en a qui ont essayé de comprendre ce dernier paragraphe et en ont manqué des bouts, sachez que je l'ai écrit comme je le dirais à voix haute, grammaire parlée intacte, mais sans changer l'orthographe. Je suis pas rendue au point d'écrire "chus" à la place de "je suis", même si je le dis plus comme "ch'uis".
The second thing is that I'm starting to really notice the shift between... living in Japan and having been in Japan for a long time, I guess. Almost four and a half years! The inevitable question of, "When/Are you coming back?" was asked more than once -- not by people close to me, though -- and I found it a bit harder to answer than I used to. While I still don't intend to spend my life here (I'm not ruling it out, but that has never been my intention), it seems that after four years, "I have no reason to leave yet, and I really like it in Japan" is starting to shift toward, "I have good friends there, a good job, a cat, a good place to live, and I'm happy." And isn't that what we strive for when we build a life for ourselves?
All right, that's enough [badly expressed] self-reflection for now.
This weekend I accomplished precisely nothing. Well, I did get my hair cut, ate sushi, walked around Kichijouji taking pictures, and took some more pictures in Shinjuku this evening after having supper with Alexis. We went to the gayer than gay Sweets Paradise, and I was already amused that we were most likely the only non-couple F/M pair there, but given our main topic of conversation over the food, it was kind of funny. Or ironic, I suppose.
Another thing I accomplished was finally finding an acceptable purse and buying it. It's pink! And not the dusty old rose that everything seems to be this season *yawn* but a nice bright one. I didn't have a pink purse yet. Another thing I bought is more nail polish, because I definitely needed more of that! But I can blame Hannah for eliminating any vestiges of shame I might have had left on this particular topic, as she rightly pointed out that, "Nail polish lasts forever."
It feels a bit late to write in detail about my time in Canada, but there are a couple of things that were really driven home while I was there.
The first is that goddamnit, I really miss speaking French regularly.
Those of you I met in Japan might not realise it, but before moving here, my life was mainly conducted in French. I've always spoken French with my mother; all my schooling, except for kindergarten, grade 1, and 2/3 of my university classes, was in French; I studied ballet in French; I taught French full time for three years; most of my closest friendships in Canada were conducted in French; and G and I always spoke French together. As for English, apart from being the language I speak with my father and brothers, it used to mainly be my language of cultural consumption rather than daily life: the television shows and movies and books that I choose have always been overwhelmingly in English (or subtitled in English, in the case of anime), but I never lived my day-to-day life in English until I came to Japan, where I work in English and conduct most of my social life in English.
Ça vous dérange si j'écris un peu en français? Puisque je suis tombée sur le sujet... Ça fait bizarre de penser que maintenant, depuis que j'ai arrêté de donner des cours privés, je parle en français une fois par semaine, au plus. Parler à Croquette compte pas vraiment! =^_^= Et c'est pas comme si je lisais en français non plus (je lis pas beaucoup, peu importe la langue, de ces jours-ci, mais en tout cas...) pour combler le vide. J'ai pas peur de perdre mon français, et les gens de mon âge au Canada sont assez vieux qu'il y a pas de super gros roulement dans les expressions, alors je me sens pas comme si j'ai de la misère à communiquer, mais c'est différent quand-même. On dirait que de plus en plus, je pense à comment dire quelque chose en français, et je suis un peu déçue que les gens autour de moi comprendraient pas l'expression que je voudrais utiliser. Ça prend trop de temps traduire et expliquer le sens de "je suis dans les patates" ou "tirer les vers du nez"! XD
S'il y en a qui ont essayé de comprendre ce dernier paragraphe et en ont manqué des bouts, sachez que je l'ai écrit comme je le dirais à voix haute, grammaire parlée intacte, mais sans changer l'orthographe. Je suis pas rendue au point d'écrire "chus" à la place de "je suis", même si je le dis plus comme "ch'uis".
The second thing is that I'm starting to really notice the shift between... living in Japan and having been in Japan for a long time, I guess. Almost four and a half years! The inevitable question of, "When/Are you coming back?" was asked more than once -- not by people close to me, though -- and I found it a bit harder to answer than I used to. While I still don't intend to spend my life here (I'm not ruling it out, but that has never been my intention), it seems that after four years, "I have no reason to leave yet, and I really like it in Japan" is starting to shift toward, "I have good friends there, a good job, a cat, a good place to live, and I'm happy." And isn't that what we strive for when we build a life for ourselves?
All right, that's enough [badly expressed] self-reflection for now.