Failing At...

This is the beginning of another series of posts.

Get excited!

However, unlike the Pop posts, these will not be posted on a regular day, more like whenever I feel like it. But I have like 7 lined up already, so.

OK then, onwards!

Today’s “Failing at…” is Failing at Literacy.

I like to think I don’t take too many things for granted, but after being in Japan for a while I am quickly realizing how much I took my literacy (and ability to communicate, in general) for granted.

I can try to explain it, and I hate to say it, but unless you’ve experienced it, you really can’t understand.

You don’t realize it until you are forced to function like a baby, but there really isn’t a single daily activity that doesn’t require reading.

I need to bring my mail to teachers to read and tell me what to do with it. I need to play culinary Russian Roulette when grocery shopping. I need to bring a teacher with me to fill out even the most mundane paperwork. I need to play Simon says and simply follow the motions of the person in front of me when boarding any form of public transportation.

And it’s true, half the stuff around me I don’t really need to understand; I could certainly live my life just fine in the U.S without reading billboards or the sides of buses or advertisements, but just staring at them and their having absolutely no meaning to me is similar to losing one of my senses. I’m looking, knowing it should mean something to me, but it may as well be a blank piece of paper.

On the flip side, when I can read something (and understand the gist of it) the feeling is better than having an orgasm while eating the top part of a cupcake.

Thankfully the Japanese pride themselves on their language and like to assume no foreigner brain can wrap itself around it, so my total lack of language ability is expected and usually met with a ‘Oh, silly Gaijin’ smile.

Part of that is insulting, because (and I am guilty of this in the US) it’s assumed that just because the person can’t fully speak the language of a country, this person is an idiot not to be taken seriously. Yet you tend to forget that this same person can function just fine in the home country, and in fact may be quite educated and respected in his/her home country, and may be, I don’t know, let’s say an accepted medical school applicant, for example.

Hypothetically speaking of course.

But if you’re going to be an illiterate asshole who needs his coworkers to fill out paperwork to get his hot water turned on, you damn well better check your pride at the customs counter.