One Step at a Time

I trudge up the steps, mind blank, sighing as I prepare my umbrella for the downpour waiting for me at the top. I’ve walked these stairs hundreds of times over the last four months. They are boring, beige steps with a black strip at the edge. There are arrows on each side to show in which direction people should walk up or down. On every tenth step there are some incomprehensible hieroglyphs that somehow, incredibly, apparently form sentences in Japanese.

I’ve never looked much at them before, given that they’re a completely unintelligible, albeit beautiful, mess to me. But on this particular rainy day in Osaka, something catches my eye.

雨

Wait a minute! That means rain! I learnt that last week… I remember it because it’s so cute and it looks like a little window with raindrops running down it. That’s definitely rain!

And I’m walking up stairs, and it’s written in black text inside a box coloured the worldwide yellow for warning sign, so that sentence must mean… “Caution. Steps are slippery when it rains.” (Well, more or less.) I plant my feet firmly on each step and hold onto the handrail, smiling a smug little grin to myself, so proud of understanding some real Japanese out in the wild.

“Look, look! That means rain!!!” I want to say to the businessman scurrying up the stairs next to me. “Look at this little symbol here. It means rain!” I’m bursting to announce to the granny shuffling slowly behind me. I feel like standing on that step for the rest of the day pointing out the kanji to everyone that goes past. 雨 “Rain!” 雨 “Rain!” 雨 “Rain!”

And then I realise that, well, of course the salaryman and the little old lady and everybody else walking up these stairs knows it means rain. That’s not exciting or impressive or revelatory whatsoever. It’s one of the first kanji taught to children. 6-year-olds know it.

Also, I only remembered it because it’s a pictogram that looks just like rain. Can I even say that I’ve learned or remembered it? Didn’t I just see it and think… Hmm, that looks like rain.

I’ve also completely made up the rest of the sentence. It might be warning that the stairs get extra sticky in the rain. Or it might be a haiku about rain. Or the symbol itself might have another meaning that I haven’t learnt yet. Kanji does that, you know.

But…no. No. It means rain. I know it means rain. I remember it very clearly, and just because it’s a pictogram that looks just like what it stands for doesn’t mean that I didn’t commit it to memory. I also remember the pronunciation and the hiragana phonetic spelling, meaning I really did learn it.

And of course the sentence means “Careful. Slippery when rainy.” That’s a standard caution sign on steps around the world, especially in stations where people might be rushing and hurrying. I used context and a word that I knew to figure out the meaning. That’s what learning a language is all about. That’s how you end up speaking a language. And I should know, I speak three.

When I was younger, I was good at mimicking. In the 2000s, impressionist comedy shows were very popular, and I would often do impressions of friends, or mimic celebrities, or mimic the mimics on the comedy shows. When I went into secondary school and was forced against my will to start studying French, this became mimicking my language teachers. I quickly picked up new words and phrases, and used my impressionist skills to help me imitate and remember sounds and words.

I discovered a love for languages and foreign cultures that led me to travel all over the world, and everywhere I went I would try to learn some of the local language, carefully imitating the pronunciation and sounds of each individual word and trying my best to learn at least hello, goodbye, how are you, water, thank you, this, please, delicious and beer. (The most important words in any language.)

And with just a few words, so much of the world opened up to me. People love to hear a foreign person at least attempting to speak their language. Even if it’s wrong, they appreciate the effort. I’ve had fantastic moments of connection just through a few snippets of language and a smile. I’ve been invited to birthday parties in Argentina, a hot springs resort in China, a motorbike trip to rural temples in Vietnam, a local pub for banana beers in Tanzania. All for a few words in the local language.

I studied French and Spanish at university and speak them both fluently. Because of the similarities (and a few years of self-study), I can get by in Italian and Portuguese too. I taught English in South Korea for a couple of years, and while there I learned Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, and pretty good conversational Korean. This last one really affirmed my identity as a ‘person who is good at languages’.

And then four months ago, I moved to Japan and encountered Kanji. Kanji is horrendous. It’s ridiculous. It’s a terrible, stupid, nonsensical system and it’s beautiful and fascinating. It is breaking my brain. It’s the most challenging thing I have encountered and I loathe and love it at the same time.

Japan has three writing systems: hiragana, katakana and kanji. None of them are alphabets like our Roman one or Korean Hangeul.

The first two are called phonetic syllabaries. Hiragana is used mostly for grammatical functions like turning a word into the past tense. (Also for spelling out kanji when even Japanese people wouldn’t be sure how to say it.)

Katakana looks totally different and is used for foreign words adopted into the Japanese language, like ko-hi (coffee). (And by the way, would you be able to quickly tell the difference between シツソン ? Those are four separate sounds. It’s tough, right?!)

Kanji are Chinese characters that were imported centuries ago and made to fit Japanese words. Japanese sentences use all three systems at once.

There are thousands of Kanji. Thousands. You must learn just over 2,100 to graduate high school. You need to know 3000 to read a newspaper. Most Japanese adults know between 3000-5000. That’s a whole lot of tiny, similar-looking symbols, each of which has multiple meanings and pronunciations…

The first kanji I learned was 日. It means sun or day, and is one of the most commonly used kanji. When used on its own like this and it means day, as in “It’s a cloudy day,” it’s pronounced “hee.”

But wait, now I’m learning the word Monday 月曜日 and in that word, it’s pronounced “bee”.

Okay now I’m learning the word Sunday… 日曜日 and at the start of the word, it’s pronounced “nichi” (SUN – DAY, hello? Why isn’t it just hee-hee?)

Oh, it also appears in the word for Japan 日本 and it’s pronounced “nee.”

Look, here it pops up again used for talking about the days of the month. When used to describe the first day as in 1st May, 一日, it’s pronounced “tachi.” Okay… How about the second of the month? 二日. Now, it’s pronounced “ka”.

In the word tomorrow, 明日, we have three symbols in one. It is sun, moon, sun, which is a hilariously literal and cute way of representing tomorrow. 日appears twice, but this word is pronounced “ashita”.

Okay, this is impossible. This. Is. IMPOSSIBLE. It is a code that Japanese people start learning at birth and keep learning throughout their entire lives. Apparently, there are over 50,000 kanji. It is a never-ending task that cannot possibly be completed in a human lifetime, and certainly not when you start at the age of 35. To even try is useless and pointless and I’ll never get it.

Or maybe I’m just not a languages person after all. English has lots of words from French, which is very similar to Spanish, which is closely related to Portuguese and Italian due to all deriving from Latin. Korean was just a fluke. An easy alphabet that anyone can learn in a day, and then I learnt a few words and phrases for daily life. Now I’ve come up against a real language, a real challenge, and I’m not capable of it after all.

Or maybe my brain is just too old to learn new things, certainly too old to learn a new language and a difficult one at that. It’s time to stop learning and accept my decline into laziness and senility. I’ll never understand Japanese, I’ll never learn to read Kanji, and I’ll never feel at home here in Japan.

And yet….

雨

I KNOW that kanji means rain! I now know that sentence on the step means “Careful, slippery when rainy” (or, whatever, something like that). I know to hold the handrail and take care on the steps, and now I won’t slip and break my leg when it rains, which is great because I definitely would not be able to call an ambulance or talk to a healthworker…yet.

Maybe I can learn some kanji after all. Maybe I will be able to learn Japanese. That was the sign, the symbol, the kanji I needed to encourage me to keep trying, keep learning, keep challenging myself. Life is all about challenges and growing. So I’ll keep trying, and failing, and forgetting, and re-reading, and “Oh yeah”-ing over and over again. And now I know that soon I’ll recognise more and more. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to read like a six-year-old child by the end of this year. That’s the goal. One step at a time.