but i have no doubt: one day the sun will come out.

[terrorcandy]

When I first came to Japan it was as if words had been mysteriously eliminated, had vanished from my life. I couldn't understand what anyone was saying, but there was nothing especially new in that, it was an experience I had had many times before in the countries I had visited or lived in. What was unique for me was that I couldn't read anything written. Not one word could I make sense of, or even hazard how to say it. For a literary person this is a disturbing feeling, a traumatic realization. It is like being rendered illiterate or blind - as by the wave of a magic wand. You feel helpless, thrown back onto the dependencies of childhood. There is nothing for it but to work out methods for answering the questions usually resolved by language without recourse to language at all: by heightened observation, and by careful preparation and planning before leaving home, relying on others more than you otherwise would wish to.

Christopher Ross
Mishima's Sword