Missed opportunities...
When I was in college, I took a lot of Japanese classes. I think if I'd applied myself just a little bit more, I could have minored in Japanese. Like maybe taken a Japanese class my last semester and applied for the minor. Maybe not even the first part, I'm not certain. At any rate, I was halfway to fluent (which is a lot harder than it sounds, starting from zero at age 21) when I graduated college and then I made what is probably the mistake that I will most regret for the rest of my life.
I didn't go to Japan.
Admittedly, Hos and I went there on our honeymoon a few years later, but by then my language skills had degraded pretty significantly and I could do little more than make a few stilted comments and read the occasional kanji.
What I should have done, at the tender age of 24, was join the JET Programme and spent at least a year in Japan, experiencing the culture (and culture shock) of a country that I really enjoy while teaching Japanese students English. Unfortunately, I've realized this about five years too late.
JET is a mainly a teaching program, but there are other opportunities within it for translation work and working with sporting clubs. It's not an exchange program, where you stay with a host family or anything, but there's a lot of support from the community, since most of the schools are outside large urban centers, and support from the program as well. It's challenging, but it's an experience I would have remembered and cherished forever.
There are a number of reasons I didn't pursue JET when I was best suited for it. I wanted to get my career started, and it would certainly have been significantly different at this point if I had gone to JET instead. I also didn't want to leave Hos for that long. It seems silly to say that now, when I see that we got married and are living our "happily ever after," but hindsight is always 20/20. I felt too young to do anything so big, when I see now that I'm starting to reach the point where I'm too old, with too many responsibilities, to take on such a free-spirited adventure. And isn't that just depressing as all hell? The last reason, and the stupidest, is that I just didn't think of it. JET wasn't even on my radar when I finished college, despite the fact that I had learned about the program during all those many semesters of Japanese. I was so focused on getting out of school and "starting my life" (whatever that meant) that I didn't see a really great opportunity passing me by.
Hell, I've looked at JET, considered doing it now before it really is too late, before my language skills are completely gone, and when I have more responsibilities at home than my husband and my puppy. I can think of a hundred reasons why I shouldn't want to: Hos and Inari, being alone in a foreign country, not getting to see my parents for a year, and a host of others. And yet some part of me still really wants to take that plunge.
I'm not sure, at this point, if my interest is true or manufactured. I wish I had done this at 24, so at 29 in a completely different social and financial situation, I still want to do it? I don't know. I know part of it is because Hos and I have been actively trying to get pregnant for the last eight months without any success and that has been depressing me. I want kids. Now is a good time for us both. And yet, nothing. So in casting around, trying to stay upbeat, I think I may have fixated on this as something that's possible when it really is not. Still, maybe it is. I just don't know.
The reality is that no matter how meager my part-time income is, it's vital to our continued financial wellbeing. The reality is that I would be homesick after a week in Japan, isolated from everyone I've ever known, in a completely foreign place -- even a foreign place I know I would love. The reality is that if I was in another country and something happened to my father (mom's never going to die, I've accepted that :P), it would devastate me. And I'd be leaving my husband, who I love so dearly, and my puppy, who I also love dearly, for an amount of time that is almost unfathomable.
If we could somehow manage to get Hos a job in Japan somewhere, maybe work something out for me as far as work, I would definitely like to spend a few months or a year (maybe more, who knows) in Japan. That wouldn't solve all the problems, but it would make the rest bearable. And it would undoubtedly get my parents to Japan -- BONUS! :P
I feel like this is one of those awful times where I'm letting my emotions run away with me, when I want something so desperately that I'm willing to turn my life on its ear just to change something. It's probably not healthy and I can't say that I've ever in my life actually gone through with something so desperately insane as moving to Japan because we can't get pregnant. It might not be a bad idea. It might be the worst idea ever (maybe there's fertility drugs in the water in Tokyo, and wouldn't that be awkward). I just don't know right now, so I'm stuck turning it over and over in my head and being sort of listless. I want life to move forward and right now it feels very much like I've been put in park in perpetuity.
Yes, I did try very hard to make that alliteration work, thanks :P.
I didn't go to Japan.
Admittedly, Hos and I went there on our honeymoon a few years later, but by then my language skills had degraded pretty significantly and I could do little more than make a few stilted comments and read the occasional kanji.
What I should have done, at the tender age of 24, was join the JET Programme and spent at least a year in Japan, experiencing the culture (and culture shock) of a country that I really enjoy while teaching Japanese students English. Unfortunately, I've realized this about five years too late.
JET is a mainly a teaching program, but there are other opportunities within it for translation work and working with sporting clubs. It's not an exchange program, where you stay with a host family or anything, but there's a lot of support from the community, since most of the schools are outside large urban centers, and support from the program as well. It's challenging, but it's an experience I would have remembered and cherished forever.
There are a number of reasons I didn't pursue JET when I was best suited for it. I wanted to get my career started, and it would certainly have been significantly different at this point if I had gone to JET instead. I also didn't want to leave Hos for that long. It seems silly to say that now, when I see that we got married and are living our "happily ever after," but hindsight is always 20/20. I felt too young to do anything so big, when I see now that I'm starting to reach the point where I'm too old, with too many responsibilities, to take on such a free-spirited adventure. And isn't that just depressing as all hell? The last reason, and the stupidest, is that I just didn't think of it. JET wasn't even on my radar when I finished college, despite the fact that I had learned about the program during all those many semesters of Japanese. I was so focused on getting out of school and "starting my life" (whatever that meant) that I didn't see a really great opportunity passing me by.
Hell, I've looked at JET, considered doing it now before it really is too late, before my language skills are completely gone, and when I have more responsibilities at home than my husband and my puppy. I can think of a hundred reasons why I shouldn't want to: Hos and Inari, being alone in a foreign country, not getting to see my parents for a year, and a host of others. And yet some part of me still really wants to take that plunge.
I'm not sure, at this point, if my interest is true or manufactured. I wish I had done this at 24, so at 29 in a completely different social and financial situation, I still want to do it? I don't know. I know part of it is because Hos and I have been actively trying to get pregnant for the last eight months without any success and that has been depressing me. I want kids. Now is a good time for us both. And yet, nothing. So in casting around, trying to stay upbeat, I think I may have fixated on this as something that's possible when it really is not. Still, maybe it is. I just don't know.
The reality is that no matter how meager my part-time income is, it's vital to our continued financial wellbeing. The reality is that I would be homesick after a week in Japan, isolated from everyone I've ever known, in a completely foreign place -- even a foreign place I know I would love. The reality is that if I was in another country and something happened to my father (mom's never going to die, I've accepted that :P), it would devastate me. And I'd be leaving my husband, who I love so dearly, and my puppy, who I also love dearly, for an amount of time that is almost unfathomable.
If we could somehow manage to get Hos a job in Japan somewhere, maybe work something out for me as far as work, I would definitely like to spend a few months or a year (maybe more, who knows) in Japan. That wouldn't solve all the problems, but it would make the rest bearable. And it would undoubtedly get my parents to Japan -- BONUS! :P
I feel like this is one of those awful times where I'm letting my emotions run away with me, when I want something so desperately that I'm willing to turn my life on its ear just to change something. It's probably not healthy and I can't say that I've ever in my life actually gone through with something so desperately insane as moving to Japan because we can't get pregnant. It might not be a bad idea. It might be the worst idea ever (maybe there's fertility drugs in the water in Tokyo, and wouldn't that be awkward). I just don't know right now, so I'm stuck turning it over and over in my head and being sort of listless. I want life to move forward and right now it feels very much like I've been put in park in perpetuity.
Yes, I did try very hard to make that alliteration work, thanks :P.