ディスパーズレイ
After nearly a decade of being a Mania, I was finally able to send one of the D’espairsRay members a message in Japanese. For the past couple of years, I forgot why I began learning Japanese, forgot original goals in lieu of more immediate, scholastic goals. But now I remember why I decided to take this path in my life: I wanted to be able to understand them, to understand their songs without a translation, to be able to let them know how much they mean to me.
I can even read their blog posts now. Well, somewhat. My Japanese isn’t perfect-nowhere near, especially when it comes to listening and speaking, but I’m getting closer to my original goals, and I sense that everyday. Even though I sometimes feel desperate and horrified when I see a wall of text in Japanese, or even a couple weeks ago when my teacher said that everything we’ve learned so far has been easy, every day I understand more D’espairsRay lyrics and their blog posts. And that’s enough for me to want to keep going on.
I can’t wait to go to Hiroshima and improve my Japanese. I hope that by the end of it, I’ll be able to provide my own translations for Mania. I hope that I’ll be able to thank HIZUMI, Karyu, TSUKASA and ZERO without much of a language barrier issue (unlike in 2008 when I said goodbye to Karyu instead of hello, fuck me). And even if D’espairsRay isn’t together anymore, I can still enjoy The Micro Head 4n’s live and see the fabulous Karyu despite my apathy towards Angelo. Maybe I can even go to one of HIZUMI’s meetings and understand most of what he says and let him know that true Mania will never be disappointed in him, even if his voice isn’t as it used to be.
Even though D’espairsRay isn’t together anymore, I can still enjoy my time in Japan, and I owe that to Kumi-sensei, Saito-sensei and Akiko-sensei for helping me get to where I am and where I will go.