hiragana

We have loosely settled on a trip across the Pacific.

Unable to confidently travel southbound across the border for our semi-annual pilgrimage to the house of the mouse in California, my wife has set her sights on the sister park near Tokyo for sometime, hopefully, next year. And of course a couple weeks checking out more than just Disney, too.

I love the idea of visiting Japan. The art and culture and food and architecture and everything that I feel would be familiar from the exports of media and such in which I partake locally.

And as is my oft-usual approach to these things, I’ve started to prepare for this still-hypothetical trip by taking language lessons. In other words, I’ve been studying Japanese…for about a month now.

And while the actual need to speak the language as a European-toned North American tourist has been repeatedly called into question by many friends, many Asian-descended themselves, I can’t help but feel having a basic grasp of how to (at the very, very least) read some of it might come in all too handy.

I mean, let’s just forget for a moment the academically-rewarding aspect of learning any language, and take that as a given: Learning new languages is simply, well, human.

But instead picture Brad stumbling through the Tokyo subway system or down a bustling alley and having some basic ability to read the signs for a shop or a washroom or even an exit. In that aforementioned Euro-centric approach I’ve taken to travel, the languages are almost always close enough and use the familiar latin-descended alphabet system. I get by. But arriving in Tokyo I would assume that recognition and some general familiarity with hiragana and katakana script will give me some advantage. And increase my enjoyment and comfort on such a trip, too.

Thus, I have been learning. Learn slowly, of course, using apps and flashcards and online resources. But learning.

And that hypothetical concept of a maybe trip to Asia next year seems a little bit more real in the process.